Card 57 • swords

Eight of Swords

Brief Description

The Eight of Swords depicts a perilous situation in which you feel trapped, with your hands tied and no visible way out. As a card of Swords, the confinement often stems from your thought processes—how you think about the circumstance can create or exacerbate it. Liberation comes by quelling rising emotions and deliberately reframing or thinking about the situation in a completely different way. Reversed, the card warns of making excuses, adopting a victim mentality, or inventing problems.

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Divinatory meaning

Some situations are truly perilous. Your hands are tied, dangers surround you, and you literally (or figuratively) can't see a way out. Because this is the suit of Swords, which represents our thought processes, very likely this situation is created or exasperated by the way you think about it. Doing the same thing and thinking the same thoughts increases the hold the situation has on you.

Advice

Like Houdini escaping from seemingly inescapable bonds, you can free yourself by quelling your rising emotions and thinking about the situation in a completely different way.

Reversed

Making excuses, victim mentality, inventing problems.

Visual Description

A blindfolded woman stands waist-deep in dark water, wearing a pale, flowing dress bound with straps. Eight swords surround her, planted vertically into the water and earth like a cage. In the background a jagged fortress or cliff rises beneath a crescent moon and heavy chains that arc across the sky. The palette is dominated by purples and pinks, and the woman's head is bowed, lips closed, with ribbons trailing from her blindfold.

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Mystical Manga tarot

✍️ Deck author(s): Barbara Moore, Rann

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