Minor Arcana, the Swords
Six of Swords
Drawn in 1909 by Pamela Colman Smith for A. E. Waite's deck, the Six of Swords is the sixth card of the suit of swords. A man stands at the back of a flat boat and poles it toward a far shore, while a hooded figure and a child sit huddled in front of him beside six upright swords.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Journey by water, route, way, envoy, commissionary, expedient.
- Reversed
Declaration, confession, publicity; one account says that it is a proposal of love.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 242. Read it in the chapter
A ferryman carrying passengers in his punt to the further shore. The course is smooth, and seeing that the freight is light, it may be noted that the work is not beyond his strength.
What's in the picture
- The pole. The ferryman holds a long black pole, one hand high above his head and the other low, pushing it down into the water beside the boat.
- The ferryman. He stands with his back to us, in an orange tunic, grey sleeves and green hose. In Waite's text he is “a ferryman” and the boat is “his punt”.
- The hooded passenger. In front of him sits a figure wrapped from head to foot in a hooded cloak, bent forward, the face hidden.
- The child. Beside it sits a smaller figure in grey-blue, also turned away from us, close against the cloak. Neither of them holds anything.
- The six swords. Six swords stand upright in the boat in front of the passengers, hilts up, their blades driven into its floor. The row of hilts rises toward the right.
- The boat. The boat is a flat punt with a square end and red-brown sides. A row of small notches runs along its rim, and its floor is made of planks.
- Rough water. On the near right the water is rough, drawn in curling waves that slap against the boat.
- Smooth water. Further out, on the left, the water turns smooth and pale, with only a few short strokes on it, all the way to the far shore.
- The far shore. The far shore is low, with a few small trees, under a plain grey sky. The boat is heading toward it, and all three people in it face away from us.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 56 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Swords
- Number
- Six
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Air
- Astrology (Golden Dawn)
- Mercury in Aquarius
- Title in Book T
- Lord of Earned Success
- 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 hands, as before, each holding two swords which cross in the centre. Rose re-established thereon. ☿ and ♒︎ above and below, supported on the points of two short daggers or swords.
Success after anxiety and trouble; self-esteem, beauty, conceit, but sometimes modesty therewith; dominance, patience, labour, etc.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 191. See the source Papus (1892)
Equilibrium of the opposition. The enemy is rendered powerless at last.
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 ferryman carrying passengers in his punt to the further shore.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Six 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.