Eight of Swords
The eight of swords in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a woman bound and blindfolded among eight swords. A. E. Waite read it as bad news, crisis and conflict.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "A woman, bound and hoodwinked, with the swords of the card about her. Yet it is rather a card of temporary durance than of irretrievable bondage."
What does the Eight of Swords mean?
Waite's meanings are "bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny; also sickness"; reversed, "disquiet, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery; what is unforeseen; fatality". His list of additional meanings adds "for a woman, scandal spread in her respect", and reversed, "departure of a relative".
In older decks
In Italian packs the suit is spade, swords: the earliest suit marks, the British Museum's catalogue of 1876 records, were coppe, danari, bastoni and spade, "cups, money, clubs, and swords". Papus reads it as "the enemy only partially triumphs".
See also
The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant.
Sources
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A. E. Waite, William Rider & Son, London, 1910 (the sacred-texts.com transcription, on the Internet Archive), The Lesser Arcana; Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana
- The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, Chapman & Hall, London, 1896, translated by A. P. Morton (scan on the Internet Archive), The Divining Tarot, second lesson: the minor arcana
- A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, by W. H. Willshire, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1876 (scan on the Internet Archive), General history: the marks of the suits
Last reviewed September 28, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research