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Minor Arcana · Suit of Swords · Number card
Eight · Swords
A card that falls upside down is read reversed.
Key words
↑ UprightFeeling trappedSelf-made limitsTemporary bonds
↓ ReversedUneasy releaseUnforeseen turnsOpposition
What it means
↑ Upright
Bound and blindfolded among the swords, the woman in the picture is not as enclosed as she feels: the blades do not close the ring, and her feet are free. Waite calls it temporary confinement, not lasting bondage. Name what is actually holding you, as distinct from what you fear, and look for the one step that is still open.
↓ Reversed
The cords begin to slip, and release brings its own disquiet: once you can move, difficulty, opposition and the unforeseen come into reach as well. Not everyone may welcome the change, and a sudden turn is possible. Move carefully rather than fast, and trust what you can check for yourself over what you are told.
Eight is effort, and in Swords the effort is mental: thinking a way out of a trap made largely of thought. In the 1909 Smith–Waite deck, this card shows a woman bound and blindfolded, standing on wet, marshy ground among eight planted swords, a castle on a cliff behind her. There is a gap in the swords, and the cords hold only her upper body; what keeps her there is less the binding than her blindness.
Upright
Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny; also sickness.
Reversed
Disquiet, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery; what is unforeseen; fatality.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III.