Tarot · Swords
Six of Swords
Six of Swords - Air
Correspondences
- Element
- Air
- Planet
- Mercury
- Sign
- Aquarius
- Number
- 6
- Yes / no
- Yes upright, No reversed
Traditional Golden Dawn attributions. The yes / no value is a convention for single-card questions, not a prediction.
Upright
A slow, steady passage away from difficulty is underway.
Six of Swords. A slow, steady passage away from difficulty is underway. As a Six it is recovery after the crisis: equilibrium restored, usually with help, and usually with something given away to get it. In Swords, that stage plays out in thought, conflict and hard truth. Under Mercury, it moves by message, exchange and quickness of mind, and its characteristic failure is cleverness outrunning judgement. Being Air, it resolves through what is thought and said, and it will need words. Its keyword range runs through transition, moving toward calmer waters, gradual progress, and leaving hardship behind.
Reversed
The passage forward is being resisted, or unfinished business is holding it back.
Six of Swords reversed. The passage forward is being resisted, or unfinished business is holding it back. Its sign is Aquarius, which stands apart: the outside view, the principle held against the group, and progress that costs belonging. Reversed here, it is loosening rather than failing. The grip of this is coming off, and the reversal reads as release rather than denial. Its keyword range, to be read here as difficulty, delay, or a lesson not yet learned: resistance to moving on, unfinished business, feeling stuck, and a rocky transition.
About the Tarot
A 15th-century Italian card game that was turned to fortune-telling only 350 years later.
The upright and reversed meanings here follow the mainstream Rider-Waite-Smith reading tradition. A reversed card is treated as the same force blocked, turned inward, or overexpressed - not simply as its opposite.
Full history →Meanings are a guide to a symbolic tradition, offered for reflection and entertainment. They do not predict the future or describe real people or events. See the Terms.