Five of Swords: the holder and the two who leave

Start with the picture: three swords in one pair of hands, two on the ground

Waite puts the card this way: 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.

Open the full-size diagram

BaZiFlow original Five of Swords with three labels

In the RWS drawing the man fills the foreground, looking back over his shoulder. Two small figures turn their backs on him and walk toward the sea; the clouds are torn into strips, and the two fallen swords lie at the lower left of the card, in front of the two who walk away. Count the five swords: three are with the man, and the two on the ground are the ones the departing pair left behind. From front to back the picture has three parts:

What Waite lists: degradation, destruction, revocation, and no word for gain

Waite's divinatory meanings are: degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonour, loss, "with the variants and analogues of these". He does not go further.

Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonour, loss, with the variants and analogues of these.

All six words sit on the side of being taken, lowered or destroyed, and none says what the master of the field gains. The front of the picture belongs to the swordholder while the list gives consequences: the position and the words do not line up, and that is the first gap you meet when reading this card.

Disdain, dejection, a point to earth: Waite's adjectives and later additions

Waite uses a few feeling-laden words when describing the picture. Taken apart, they describe the look of the figures:

"Holding as keeping the field" and "fallen swords as things set down" are readers' additions. The next section puts them to work. Both come from the structure of the picture, so when you use them, say the reading is yours.

How to read it: one picture from three positions, in a dispute over shared notes

The card carries three positions ready-made: the one holding swords, the two who leave, and the swords on the ground. The way to read it is to stand in each in turn and write one factual sentence:

1. 1

   Stand with the holder: what does he actually have

   He holds three; the other two are not in his hands. Write what he actually holds, then separate "the field is his" from "the things are his": keeping the field does not make everything on it his.

2. 2

   Stand with the two who leave: what did they leave behind

   The swords lie on the ground and the people walk away. Write what they left. "Dejected" is Waite's word for their look and not their thoughts; if you want those, ask.

3. 3

   Stand with the fallen swords: can they be picked up

   The list has destruction, revocation and loss. What fell may have been destroyed, taken back, or only set aside, and each calls for a different response.

An example: a study group writes a course literature review together, with five reading-note tables. The member in charge merges three of them into the master table; the other two belong to two members and were not merged, and those two stop replying in the chat. Write it from the three positions:

Reversed, additional meanings and neighbors: the same words, with burial added

Waite's whole note on the reversed Five of Swords is one phrase: the same; burial and obsequies. So the six upright words stand as they are, with two words connected with funerals added.

Two short notes by other readers follow: upright, "an attack on the fortune of the querent"; reversed, "a sign of sorrow and mourning". These words are heavy, and they can be read at their full weight; they are the phrasing of an old card book, used to describe a kind of situation, and none of them is a forecast about any person or event.