05. Five of Swords
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Number: 5
Card Title: Five of Swords
Esoteric Title: Lord of Defeat
Numerical Keywords: 5: Discipline, Clarification, Might
Numerical Attributions: Mars, Red, World, North
Intelligence: Radical Intelligence
Element: Air (hot, wet)
Elemental Keywords: Mind, Ideas, Cutting
Elemental Attributions: East, Spring, Sunrise
Astrological Attribution: Venus in Aquarius
Dates & Timing: January 20 to January 29
Qabalistic World: Geburah of Yetzirah
Translation of World: The Severity of Formation
Suit Color: Swords- Yellow
Keywords: Defeat, Loss, Failure, Anxiety, Greed, Shameless Opportunist.
Ill-Dignified:Vindication, Restoration
Interpretation: Short-lived victory. Contest is finished and decided against you. Beware of retaliation. You have a need to rebuild your reputation. Need to do damage control for gossip.
Reversed Interpretation: This card is an indication that some of your indecision about what direction you should go in is a concern about dealings with other people. Is there someone who has been deceitful to you? Or has bad talked you. The card is a good sign that that will be cleared up.
Rider-Waite Imagery
The suit of swords is related to the element of air. It concerns matters of thoughts, ideas and the mind.
The main figure is a man holding three swords. He is wearing a red shirt, green tunic, red tights and brown boots. He is looking back at two other people in the background. There are two additional swords lying on the ground. The two people in the background are facing the water in the distance. The man who is closer to the water is looking down with stooped shoulders.
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite (1911)
A disdainful man looks after two retreating and dejected figures. Their swords lie upon the ground. He carries two others on his left shoulder, and a third sword is in his right hand, point to earth. He is the master in possession of the field.
Divinatory Meanings: Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonour, loss, with the variants and analogues of these.
Reversed: The same; burial and obsequies.
4 Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana
Five.–An attack on the fortune of the Querent. Reversed: A sign of sorrow and mourning.
The Recurrence of Cards in Dealing
In the Natural Position: 4 Fives = regularity; 3 Fives = determination; 2 Fives = vigils.
Reversed: 4 Fives = order; 3 Fives = hesitation; 2 Fives = reverse.
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.
FIVE. Opposition to this opposition. The enemy triumphs at the moment one fancies the victory is secured.
The Tarot by S.L. MacGregor Mathers [1888]
Meanings of the Cards
59. Five of Swords.–Mourning, Sadness, Affliction; R. Losses Trouble (same signification, whether reversed or not.)
Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Henry Cornelius Agrippa
Aquarius I
prudent man, and a woman spinning; and the signification of these is in the thought and labour for gain, in poverty and baseness.
Picatrix the Goal of the Wise by Ghayat Al-akim
Book "T" The Tarot
XXXIX. The Lord of Defeat
Five of Swords
TWO Rayed Angelic Hands each holding two swords nearly upright, but falling apart of each other, right and left of the card. A third hand holds a sword upright in the centre as though it had disunited them. The petals of the rose, which in the four had been reinstated in the centre, are torn asunder and falling. Above and below are Venus and Aquarius for Decan.
Contest finished and decided against the person; failure, defeat, anxiety, trouble, poverty, avarice, grieving after gain, laborious, unresting; loss and vileness of nature; malicious, slanderous, lying, spiteful and tale-bearing. A busybody and separator of friends, hating to see peace and love between others. Cruel, yet cowardly, thankless and unreliable. Clever and quick in thought and speech. Feelings of pity easily roused, but unenduring.
Geburah of HB:V (Defeat, loss, malice, spite, slander, evil-speaking).
Herein the Angels HB:ANYAL and HB:Cha’aMYH bear rule.
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 Fives Order, regularity.
3 Fives Quarrels, fights.
