Minor Arcana, the Swords
Five of Swords
Smith drew the Five of Swords in 1909 for Arthur Edward Waite's deck, as the fifth card of the suit of swords. A red-haired young man holds three swords on a shore under torn clouds and looks back at two figures walking away toward the sea, while two more swords lie on the ground.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonour, loss, with the variants and analogues of these.
- Reversed
The same; burial and obsequies.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 244. Read it in the chapter
A disdainful man looks after two retreating and dejected figures. Their swords lie upon the ground. He carries two others on his left shoulder, and a third sword is in his right hand, point to earth. He is the master in possession of the field.
What's in the picture
- The young man's face. His short red hair stands up in the wind. He looks back over his shoulder at the two figures. Waite calls him “disdainful”; look at his face and see whether you agree.
- Two swords on his shoulder. He holds two swords upright against his left shoulder, their hilts gripped together in one hand at his waist.
- The third sword. His other hand rests on the pommel of a third sword, its point down on the ground beside his foot.
- Swords on the ground. Two more swords lie on the ground near his feet, dropped at an angle, one across the other's path. Waite: “Their swords lie upon the ground.”
- The figure walking away. On the left a figure walks toward the water with its back to us, in a yellow tunic, a red cloak hanging from one shoulder.
- The far figure. Further off, a smaller figure stands at the water's edge, also turned away. Neither of the two carries a sword, and neither looks back.
- The torn clouds. Long grey clouds with ragged edges streak across the blue sky on a slant, as if a strong wind were driving them.
- His clothes. He wears a green tunic over red sleeves, red hose and tan boots, and stands nearest to us, filling the right half of the card.
- The far shore. Across the water a dark line of hills closes the view. The sea between is grey-blue and flat, and the ground in front is bare.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 55 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Swords
- Number
- Five
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Air
- Astrology (Golden Dawn)
- Venus in Aquarius
- Title in Book T
- Lord of Defeat
- 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)
Two Rayed Angelic Hands each holding two swords nearly upright, but falling apart of each other, right and left of the card. A third hand holds a sword upright in the centre as though it had disunited them. The petals of the rose, which in the Four had been reinstated in the centre, are torn asunder and falling. Above and below are ♀ and ♒︎ for Decan.
Contest finished and decided against the person; failure, defeat, anxiety, trouble, poverty, avarice, grieving after gain, laborious, unresting; loss and vileness of nature; malicious, slanderous, lying, spiteful and tale-bearing. A busybody and separator of friends, hating to see peace and love between others. Cruel, yet cowardly, thankless and unreliable. Clever and quick in thought and speech. Feelings of pity easily roused, but unenduring.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 190. See the source Papus (1892)
Opposition to this opposition. The enemy triumphs at the moment one fancies the victory is secured.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 313. 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 disdainful man looks after two retreating and dejected figures; their swords lie upon the ground.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Five 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.