Ace of Swords
Minor Arcana · Swords · number 1 · Asso di Spade
Upright
The Ace of Swords is a blade emerging from the clouds with a crown on its tip: triumph, conquest, the highest degree of everything. Waite calls it a card of great force, in love as well as in hatred. And he adds that the crown on the tip may carry a much higher significance than usually falls within fortune-telling: the force this card speaks of is not only yours, but that of a truth imposing itself. If these days you feel a cutting clarity, a decision that imposes itself, it is no accident: you have seen the truth and can no longer pretend. At work it is time to say no to whatever belittles you; in love, for a definitive word. Beware of excess: the same blade that frees can wound. The practical advice: use the force to cut a knot, not a person.
Source: Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) · read the original passage
Reversed
Reversed, the Ace of Swords keeps its force but the results are disastrous, says Waite: the same blade, badly used, ruins. If these days a decision taken in a rush is turning against you, a quarrel, a job quit or lost, a breakup, it is no accident: you cut too much and too fast. But the card has a surprising second reading: conception, childbirth, increase, multiplicity. Something new can be born precisely from the tear. It is not a sentence. The practical advice: put the sword down, repair what can be repaired, and look at what is growing in the ground you have broken open.