Nine of Swords
The nine of swords in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a woman sitting up on her couch in lamentation, nine swords above her. A. E. Waite read it as despair, failure and deception.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "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 does the Nine of Swords mean?
Waite's meanings are "death, failure, miscarriage, delay, deception, disappointment, despair"; reversed, "imprisonment, suspicion, doubt, reasonable fear, shame". His list of additional meanings adds "an ecclesiastic, a priest; generally, a card of bad omen", and reversed, "good ground for suspicion against a doubtful person".
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 "certain duration of the hatred".
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