Eight of Swords

Eight of Swords from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck

The Eight of Swords is the eighth card in the suit of Swords. It usually stands for bad news, a crisis, censure, conflict, or sickness.

General description

In the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, Pamela Colman Smith depicts the Eight of Swords as a woman, bound and hoodwinked, with eight swords place in the ground around her.

Divinatory meaning

Despite the harsh imagery, this is a card of temporary hardship rather than of irretrievable bondage. The image drawn on this card may well indicate the blindness of man amidst the dangers of this world and of our own desire-nature.

It indicates physical sex-nature above all. Further, we shall find everything relating to the revenge of matter upon spirit, the latter being bound and blinded by the former, consequently everything in the nature of obstacles and hindrances, pain and affliction.

The house of avenging justice may well cause a condemnation, or a sickness which is the result of sinning against nature's laws; patience is required where this card rules and endurance will save the position. In its most general sense it means the binding by the laws of matter, suffering from the lack of money, impotence by debt or material want, poverty. It may be a great strain on the feelings. As the eight of each suit is accepted as indicating some feminine influence to which we are ready to subscribe, there will be danger from an acquisitive girl or uncouth female here, or even sickness through same. As far as material laws are compelling in this world, there must be fatality in this card, or at least something from which there will be no physical escape.

If reversed, the card can mean: Disquiet, difficulty, opposition, accident, or treachery. Departure of a relative.