Minor Arcana, the Swords
Nine of Swords
Smith's Nine of Swords is the ninth card of the suit of swords in the deck she drew for A. E. Waite in 1909. A figure in a white nightgown sits up in bed with face in hands, under a quilt of roses and dotted signs, while nine swords lie flat across the black wall behind.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Death, failure, miscarriage, delay, deception, disappointment, despair.
- Reversed
Imprisonment, suspicion, doubt, reasonable fear, shame.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 236. Read it in the chapter
One seated on her couch in lamentation, with the swords over her. She is as one who knows no sorrow which is like unto hers. It is a card of utter desolation.
What's in the picture
- Face in hands. The figure sits up, bent forward, with both hands pressed over the face. We can't see the eyes. Waite has her “in lamentation”.
- The nightgown. A long white nightgown covers the arms and back, falling in folds. The shoulders are hunched.
- Nine swords. Nine swords lie flat across the wall, one above the other, all pointing to the right. Their hilts are stacked at the left, and the blades run all the way to the right edge.
- Not touching her. None of the blades touches the figure. They hang in the dark behind like bars, and the lowest two pass just behind the bowed head and shoulders.
- The black wall. Everything behind the bed is solid black. It is night, and there is no window, lamp or door.
- The quilt of roses. The quilt is made of squares, laid over the figure's legs and down the side of the bed. On the yellow squares are red roses.
- The dotted signs. On the blue squares, between the roses, signs are drawn in dots. Some look like the signs of the zodiac and the planets.
- The carved panel. On the side of the bed is a carved panel. It seems to show two figures, one fallen, but the carving is hard to read at this size.
- The bed. The bed is wooden and painted a warm orange-pink, with a white sheet. Its warm colour and the red roses stand out against the black of the room.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 59 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Swords
- Number
- Nine
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Air
- Astrology (Golden Dawn)
- Mars in Gemini
- Title in Book T
- Lord of Despair and Cruelty
- 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 Hands, as in the preceding figure, hold eight swords nearly upright, but with the points falling away from each other. A fifth hand holds a ninth sword upright in the centre, as if it had struck them asunder. No rose at all is shewn, as if it were not merely cut asunder, but utterly destroyed. Above and below are the Decan symbols ♂ and ♊︎.
Despair, cruelty, pitilessness, malice, suffering, want, loss, misery. Burden, oppression, labour, subtlety and craft, dishonesty, lying and slander.
Yet also obedience, faithfulness, patience, unselfishness, etc. According to dignity.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 199. See the source Papus (1892)
Certain duration of the hatred.
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: one seated on her couch in lamentation, with the swords over her.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Nine 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.