03. Three of Swords
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Number: 3
Card Title: Three of Swords
Esoteric Title: Lord of Sorrow
Numerical Keywords: 3: Form, Container, Fertility
Numerical Attributions: Saturn, Black, Year, End
Intelligence: Sanctifying Intelligence
Element: Air (hot, wet)
Elemental Keywords: Mind, Ideas, Cutting
Elemental Attributions: East, Spring, Sunrise
Astrological Attribution: Saturn in Libra
Dates & Timing: October 3 to October 12
Qabalistic World: Binah of Yetzirah
Translation of World: The Understanding of Formation
Suit Color: Swords- Yellow
Keywords: Tears, emotional suffering, emotional pain, sorrow, intense pain, worries, love triangle, separation.
Ill-Dignified: healing, deep sympathy, disorder, confusion, loss but not as extreme as upright.
Interpretation: Relationship is causing deep emotional pain. Surgery. Emotional wounds. Divorce. Abuses, transgressions. Relationship crisis. Very destructive relationship.
Reversed Interpretation: Recovery from emotionally painful relationship or triangle. May be involved in a very difficult relationship and doesn’t realize ending won’t be as painful as he things. May recover quickly. Deep sympathy for those in pain.
Rider-Waite Imagery
The suit of swords is related to the element of air. It concerns matters of thoughts, ideas and the mind.
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite (1911)
Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind. Divinatory Meanings: Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being too simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration. Reversed: Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion.
4 Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana
Three.–For a woman, the flight of her lover. Reversed: A meeting with one whom the Querent has compromised; also a nun.
The Recurrence of Cards in Dealing
In the Natural Position: 4 Threes = progress; 3 Threes = unity 2 Threes = calm.
Reversed: 4 Threes = great success; 3 Threes = serenity; 2 Threes = safety.
The Tarot of the Bohemians by Papus; tr. A. P Morton, [1896]
Signification of the Four Series of Minor Arcana in the Divining Tarot
SWORDS. Transformation. Hatred. War.
THREE. Realization of the enmity. Hatred.
The Tarot by S.L. MacGregor Mathers [1888]
Meanings of the Cards
61. Three of Swords.–A Nun, Separation, Removal, Rupture, Quarrel; R. Error, Confusion, Misrule, Disorder.
Additional Remarks
The following additional remarks may be serviceable to the to the inexperienced Cartomancer. They are chiefly taken from Etteilla.
61. Three of Swords.–R. May show simply that something is lost, or mislaid for a time.
Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Henry Cornelius Agrippa
Libra II
Two men furious and wrathful and a man in a comely garment, sitting in a chair; and the signification of these is to shew indignation against the evil, and quietness and security of life with plenty of good things.
Picatrix the Goal of the Wise by Ghayat Al-akim
Book “T” The Tarot
XXVIII. The Lord of Sorrow:
Three of Swords or Spears
THREE White Radiating Angelic Hands, issuing from clouds, and holding three swords upright (as though the central sword had struck apart the two others, which were crossed in the preceding symbol): the central sword cuts asunder the rose of five petals, which in the previous symbol grew at the junction of the swords; its petals are falling, and no white rays issue from it. Above and below the central sword are the symbols of Saturn and Libra.
Disruption, interruption, separation, quarrelling; sowing of discord and strife, mischief-making, sorrow and tears; yet mirth in Platonic pleasures; singing, faithfulness in promises, honesty in money transactions, selfish and dissipated, yet sometimes generous: deceitful in words and repetitions; the whole according to dignity.
Binah of HB:V (Unhappiness, sorrow, and tears).
Herein rule the Great Angels HB:HRYAL and HB:HQMYH as Lords of the Decan.
Often the General signification of the Majority of a particular suit and of the particular signification of the either 3 of 4 cards of a sort in a reading:
- A Majority of Swords Trouble, sadness, sickness, death.
- 4 Threes Resolution, determination.
- 3 Threes Deceit.
