8 of Swords

  • Arcana Minor
  • Suit Swords
  • Figure on this site Swift tidings
Historical evidence

In the earliest decks

The suit of swords is one of the four Latin suits of Italian playing cards (coins, cups, swords and batons). They were taken from cards imported from Mamluk Egypt and Moorish Granada in the 1370s. Tarot is Italian in origin, and its minor cards keep these suits.

In the 15th century, numbered cards such as the eight were usually plain pips: the suit sign repeated eight times, with no scene. A Visconti-Sforza pack painted in Milan around 1450 is the best-known early example. Its Eight of Swords is said to be held in Bergamo, and it is described as eight curved blades arranged in a symmetrical woven oval, with no figure.

The first tarot deck known to give every numbered card a picture is the Sola Busca, engraved around 1490 and hand-coloured around 1491, probably in Venice or Ferrara. Its pips carry Arabic numerals. Some scholars think Pamela Colman Smith saw photographs of it, which reached the British Museum in 1907, and drew on it for some cards. The sources checked name the Three of Swords and Ten of Wands as comparisons, not the Eight.

Historical evidence

The Rider-Waite-Smith card

In the 1909 design by Pamela Colman Smith for A. E. Waite, the Eight of Swords shows a woman, blindfolded and loosely bound, standing among eight upright swords. This scene has no basis in the plain-pip cards of the 15th-century decks; the figure and the sense of being held in are Smith’s own picture, made for the Waite deck. Waite himself, in his book, calls it more a card of temporary restraint than of lasting bondage.

Modern interpretation

As read on this site

This is the meaning used for readings here. Using the tarot to divine is a modern practice, and the Norse figure shown for each card is this site’s own association; the tarot began as an Italian card game. A short history is on the Tarot page.

Upright

Keywords: entrapment, self-imposed limits, feeling powerless, the blindfold and the gap

Bound staves around a blindfolded figure who hasn't noticed the gaps between them — that's the trap this card actually describes: restriction that looks total but isn't, held in place as much by the blindfold as by the staves themselves. Something right now feels like it's boxed you in completely. Worth checking the actual edges of the cage before accepting that it has none.

In general: A sense of being trapped or powerless right now deserves a second look — the restriction is real, but it may not be as total as it feels from inside it.

In love: Feeling stuck in a relationship dynamic that seems impossible to change, when some of what's keeping you bound is the story you've told yourself about it rather than the dynamic itself.

In work: A situation at work that feels completely fixed and inescapable, when there may be more room to move than the immediate panic suggests.

Reversed

Keywords: loosening restriction, recognizing the gap, partial freedom, the cage tested

The blindfold comes off, or the staves are finally counted and found fewer than they felt, and the trap that seemed permanent turns out to have had an edge to it the whole time. This is the relief of recognizing a limitation as partial rather than absolute, and it usually arrives the moment someone's willing to actually look at the cage instead of just feeling it.

In general: What felt like a total trap is loosening, or turning out to have always had more room in it than it seemed. The way out starts with looking.

In love: Realizing a relationship constraint you'd accepted as fixed actually has more give in it than you assumed, once you're willing to test it.

In work: Recognizing that a restriction at work, a rule, a role, a limitation, isn't as absolute as it's been treated. Worth testing the edge of it directly.

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