Nine of Swords Tarot Card Meaning

Nine of Swords upright

The Nine of Swords is the card of mental anguish. It shows a situation of total desolation, in which you feel that no one knows a sorrow like yours. You feel despair, anguish, guilt, fear and remorse, and these moral torments weigh on you. Everything looks like failure and loss, especially when you think your own shortcomings or poor management are the cause. You expect the worst, you tend to brood and imagine that everything is going wrong, without seeing what you can do. This card can correspond to a painful truth you have just learned, to grief after a loss or a change, or to the pain of having hurt someone.

It also speaks of disappointment, delay, deception and failure. It carries a feeling of loneliness and isolation. In its oldest meanings, it also evokes piety, conscience and the need to repent.

This card shows the moment of moral agony and inner collapse. Very often, the suffering does not come from what happens to you directly but from what happens to a person you love. Love fills this card and gives it its meaning: your mind takes on itself all the sorrows of others.

The traditional meanings of the card are despair, cruelty, lack of pity, spite, suffering, want, loss and misery. They also include burden, oppression, hard labor, cunning, dishonesty, lying and slander. In the Marseille Tarot, the card speaks of the struggle to succeed and to free yourself, and of the wish to succeed.

Your strengths

There is a point of warmth and comfort in your life, and time can ease you.

What holds you back

You let despair, guilt and remorse overwhelm you.
You are pessimistic, you brood and you imagine the worst without seeing what to do.
You wait for the blow to fall with the feeling that misfortune is near.
You analyze yourself with bitterness and think that nothing leads anywhere.
You feel alone and isolated in your pain.

What helps

Accepting this period with patience, without resisting or seeking endless revenge, is the way the card points to.

Nine of Swords reversed

The upright Nine of Swords speaks of mental torment: anguish, guilt, fear, remorse, a tendency to imagine the worst. Reversed, it can say that you are coming out of that dark period. The nightmare is over and things are improving. You have confessed what was weighing on you, and your guilt and self-reproach have eased. You are coming out of self-pity.

One difficulty remains, though: you may find it hard to find the faith or drive to carry a project through to the end without giving up. You may also deny your shame, sadness or loneliness, pushing them away defiantly or protesting too loudly against them. Grief can also arrive late after a loss.

The reversed card can also speak of work on yourself: you deliberately explore your fears and the hatred you have of yourself. You then have the chance to face your fears. Your anxieties and suspicions may be justified: this sorrow or pain then has a reason to exist. You may back away from a danger and hide from malicious people. If gossip is circulating about you and echoes your own self-criticism, you may avoid other people's gaze and social encounters. If you feel unjustly treated, you may also be pushed to restore your reputation. When you project this onto others, you see them frightened, downcast or fixed on dark ideas.

Placed as the base of a situation, this reversed card says that you carry within you a feeling of shame and humiliation from past weaknesses and fears. This sense of being shut in keeps you from realizing a potential for freedom and hope.

What holds you back

You lack the faith or energy to finish what you started, and you may give up.
You deny your shame, sadness or loneliness, or you protest too loudly against them.
You avoid other people's gaze when gossip echoes your self-criticism.
You see others as frightened or downcast, when it is you who carry that fear.

What helps

Confessing what weighs on you to lighten the guilt.
Coming out of self-pity.
Facing your fears and exploring what feeds them.
Asking yourself whether your fears and suspicions are justified.
Restoring your reputation if you have been treated unjustly.

What the card shows

In the Waite-Smith tarot, a woman sits on her bed and laments, with the swords above her. She is going through a sorrow she believes has no equal, and the card stands for complete desolation.

On the blanket, roses arranged like a quilt remind you that a corner of comfort remains in your life. The zodiac signs drawn on it say that time heals.

In the Golden Dawn model, four hands hold eight nearly upright swords whose points spread away from one another. A fifth hand holds a ninth, upright sword in the center, as if it had burst the rest apart. No rose is shown: it is not only cut but destroyed. Above and below, the symbols of Mars and Gemini mark the decan.

Nine corresponds to Yesod, on the middle pillar of the Tree of Life, where energy returns to the center. But over the course of the series the Swords have lost their pure intelligence: they become the automatic movement of heartless passions, a mind no longer lit by reason. Mars in Gemini is the action of Mars in the sign of thought. The result is suffering of the mind: thought has gone through every possible stage and concludes in despair. A relentless analysis is at work, and the mind senses by instinct that nothing leads anywhere.

What the card says about a person: the crisis of the previous card becomes despair, criticism becomes shame and blindness becomes cruelty. You recognize in it depression, anguish, guilt, fear and remorse, all torments of the mind that weigh on you. You may have insomnia and nightmares, live through the dark night of the soul and see everything as a failure or a loss, especially when you blame yourself for your own faults. You wait for the sword to fall, feeling that the worst is coming. You are pessimistic, you tend to ruminate and imagine the worst, and you no longer see what to do. You may also mourn a loss or a change, or suffer from having hurt someone. Like the other nines, the card carries loneliness and isolation, and it keeps old meanings of piety, conscience and penance.

In a reading, it indicates sorrow, mourning. It can stand for a symbolic mourning: you then grieve something that has lost its meaning for you, and the regret for a former, reassuring self is real, even alongside real joy.

Reversed, it can say you are coming out of depression: the nightmare is over and confession has eased the guilt and self-accusation. A shame and humiliation rooted in past weaknesses and fears can keep you shut in and stop you from moving toward your potential.

Your strengths

Depending on the dignity of the card, it also carries obedience, fidelity, patience and selflessness. You can also show that you know how to face your fears and do deep work on yourself.