Minor Arcana, the Swords
Seven of Swords
The Seven of Swords, seventh card of the suit of swords, comes from the deck Pamela Colman Smith drew in 1909 for Arthur Edward Waite. A man in a red cap creeps away from a camp of bright tents with five swords in his arms, looking back over his shoulder, while two more swords stay standing in the ground behind him.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Design, attempt, wish, hope, confidence; also quarrelling, a plan that may fail, annoyance. The design is uncertain in its import, because the significations are widely at variance with each other.
- Reversed
Good advice, counsel, instruction, slander, babbling.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 240. Read it in the chapter
A man in the act of carrying away five swords rapidly; the two others of the card remain stuck in the ground. A camp is close at hand.
What's in the picture
- The red cap. He wears a red cap with a band of dark fur, and black curly hair shows beneath it.
- The look back. His head is turned back over his shoulder toward the camp, and he seems to be smiling. His shoulders are hunched forward over the swords.
- Five swords. He carries five swords in a bundle, held by their blades in both hands, the hilts sticking up in a fan. Waite: “carrying away five swords rapidly”.
- The two left behind. Two swords still stand upright in the ground behind him, hilts up, near the tents.
- The tiptoe step. He moves on his toes, the back foot lifted and knees bent, in red boots with pointed toes, like someone trying not to be heard.
- The tents. On the right stand the tents of a camp, patterned in red, green and blue, with a small flag on a pole above them. A striped pennant flies nearer to him.
- A distant group. Far off on the left, by a puff of smoke or cloud, a few tiny figures stand, one holding a long spear or staff.
- His coat. His long tan coat is mottled and loose, with a white collar and dark trim at the cuffs. His hose are blue.
- The yellow sky. The sky is flat yellow from the numeral down to the camp, with no clouds. He walks along a strip of ground at the bottom of the card, from right to left, away from the tents.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 57 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Swords
- Number
- Seven
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Air
- Astrology (Golden Dawn)
- Moon in Aquarius
- Title in Book T
- Lord of Unstable Effort
- 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 Angelic Radiating Hands as before, each holding three swords. A third hand holds up a single sword in the centre. The points of all the swords just touch each other, the central sword not altogether dividing them.
The Rose of the previous symbols of this suit is held up by the same hand which holds the central sword: as if the victory were at its disposal. Symbols of ☽ and ♒︎.
Partial success. Yielding when victory is within grasp, as if the last reserves of strength were used up. Inclination to lose when on the point of gaining, through not continuing the effort. Love of abundance, fascinated by display, given to compliments, affronts and insolences, and to spy upon others. Inclined to betray confidences, not always intentionally. Rather vacillatory and unreliable.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), pp. 191–192. See the source Papus (1892)
Success assured to the enemy.
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 man in the act of carrying away five swords rapidly; the two others remain stuck in the ground; a camp is close at hand.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Seven 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.