Minor Arcana, the Swords
Eight of Swords
Pamela Colman Smith drew the Eight of Swords in 1909 for Arthur Edward Waite; it is the eighth card of the suit of swords. A woman in a long red dress stands blindfolded and bound on wet ground, with eight swords stuck upright around her and a castle on a rocky height behind.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny; also sickness.
- Reversed
Disquiet, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery; what is unforeseen; fatality.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 238. Read it in the chapter
A woman, bound and hoodwinked, with the swords of the card about her. Yet it is rather a card of temporary durance than of irretrievable bondage.
What's in the picture
- The blindfold. A grey band is tied over her eyes. Her dark hair hangs loose behind it to her shoulders, and her mouth is closed. Her head is bowed a little.
- The binding. Grey bands wrap around her body many times, from her chest down to her hips, pinning her arms to her sides. Her hands are hidden.
- Her feet. Below the bindings her legs are free. Her feet show under the hem of the dress, standing in the wet.
- The swords on the left. Three swords stand on her left in a ragged row, one shorter and in front of the others, its hilt lower down.
- The swords on the right. Five more stand on her right, closer together, like the bars of a fence. Their hilts are all at about the height of her shoulders.
- The gap. The swords don't close around her. There is open ground in front of her, and nothing in the picture blocks her way out of the row.
- The wet ground. She stands on muddy brown ground full of pools of pale blue water, and more water lies flat behind her, toward the cliff.
- The castle. Far behind on the right a castle with a red roof stands on top of a steep grey cliff, small with distance.
- The red dress. Her long dress is orange-red with dark folds, the brightest thing on the card. The sky is plain grey. Waite called this a card of “temporary durance” rather than lasting bondage.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 58 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Swords
- Number
- Eight
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Air
- Astrology (Golden Dawn)
- Jupiter in Gemini
- Title in Book T
- Lord of Shortened Force
- Drawn by
- Pamela Colman Smith
- Planned by
- Arthur Edward Waite
- Published
- London, William Rider & Son, 1909
- Scan
- Pam-A printing, c. 1910, Wikimedia Commons
In the old books
Book T (1912)
Four White Radiant Angelic Hands issuing from clouds, each holding two swords, points upwards; all the points touch near the top of the card. Hands issue, two at each bottom angle of the card. The pose of the other sword symbols is re-established in the centre. Above and below are the Decan symbols ♃ and ♊︎.
Too much force applied to small things: too much attention to detail at the expense of the principal and more important points. When ill dignified, these qualities produce malice, pettiness, and domineering characteristics. Patience in detail of study; great care in some things, counterbalanced by equal disorder in others. Impulsive; equally fond of giving or receiving money or presents; generous, clever, acute, selfish and without strong feeling of affection. Admires wisdom, yet applies it to small and unworthy objects.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), pp. 198–199. See the source Papus (1892)
Partial opposition to this success. The enemy only partially triumphs.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 314. See the source
Before 1909
The older cards and pictures behind this one will be shown here once their licences are checked.
The film
No film for this card yet.
Sources
- Waite: a woman, bound and hoodwinked; rather a card of temporary durance than of irretrievable bondage.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Eight of Swords
Around this card
Before and after it in the deck
The same number in the other suits
All the cards of the Swords, or the whole deck.