Eight of Swords: tarot card meaning

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Eight of Swords upright means: Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny; also sickness. Reversed: Disquiet, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery; what is unforeseen; fatality.

The picture

“A woman, bound and hoodwinked, with the swords of the card about her. Yet it is rather a card of temporary durance than of irretrievable bondage.” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

Upright

Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny; also sickness.

Waite's additional meanings: For a woman, scandal spread in her respect.

Reversed

Disquiet, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery; what is unforeseen; fatality.

Waite's additional meanings, reversed: Departure of a relative.

In one line

Bound and blindfold: power in trammels. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)

Where it sits in the deck

The Eight of Swords is the eighth card of the suit of Swords, one of the 56 Minor Arcana. The other Eights: Eight of Wands, Eight of Cups, Eight of Pentacles.

In Esbat

Esbat deals a card of the day, face down until you turn it, and holds all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. The Eight of Swords can be shared as a picture. All 78 tarot card meanings.

Sources

Meanings and picture descriptions: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), public domain, checked against the Wikisource transcription. Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, 1910, public domain. Like the app, this page records what the book says; it does not promise outcomes.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Esbat: Tarot & Book of Shadows, on Google Play

A card of the day, face down until you turn it, and all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. For Android.

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