57-Eight of Swords – Upright Rider Waite Deck

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Your Chosen Card – Eight of Swords Upright Rider Waite Deck

When upright, the Eight of Swords suggests that you are feeling trapped or hemmed in by circumstances. Some of these restrictions may be of your own making and others may be due to the interference of unforeseen events. You tend to over-think situations and to inhibit yourself though limiting beliefs, excessive self-blame, or surrendering your power to others. You may be suffering from the paralysis of analysis. Now is the time to take off your blindfold and take a good look around you. Freedom is within your grasp. Consider the words of poet Richard Lovelace (1642): ‘Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage.’

Keywords Upright: Confronting self-imposed limitations, freeing yourself of restrictive beliefs and oppressive self-criticism, overcoming interference, clearing obstacles that hem you in, liberating yourself from a situation in which you feel censured or trapped.

Timing: 0 Gemini–10 Gemini. Tropical, 21 May–31 May. Sidereal, 15 June–24 June.
Astrology: Expansive Jupiter (debilitated) in the first decan of airy Gemini, the realm of the Knight of Swords (Fire of Air) and of the Lovers (Gemini). Jupiter is linked to the Wheel of Fortune. Jupiter’s debilitated state in Gemini brings about increase without accompanying good fortune.
Number Symbolism: 8 – movement, action, power, determination.

Rider Waite: A woman, bound and hoodwinked, with the swords of the card about her. Yet it is rather a card of temporary durance [confinement] than of irretrievable bondage. Divinatory Meanings: Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny; also sickness; (R) disquiet, difficulty, opposition, accident, treachery; what is unforeseen; fatality.

When Eight of Swords is upright you can pretty much take it that life is going well but that’s when life takes us by surprise.  If Eight of Swords is unclear it may help to choose a card from the Major Arcana to provide more insight into what it is Eight of Swords is trying to tell you.  If you had a particular issue in  mind, or want to seek clarification on something else, you can also choose again to get more guidance.

This chosen card is part of your upright card reading for Eight of Swords using cards from the Rider Waite Tarot Deck. You will find many more tarot pages that will be of great help if you need tarot card meanings. Use the search at the bottom of the page. We have some amazing tarot books for you to browse. Please see below.

Here are some snippets from a few of my favorite books

Complete Book of Tarot
Book Details
Complete Book of Tarot: When upright, the Eight of Swords suggests that you are feeling trapped or hemmed in by circumstances. Some of these restrictions may be of your own making and others may be due to the interference of unforeseen events. You tend to over-think situations and to inhibit yourself though limiting beliefs, excessive self-blame, or surrendering your power to others. You may be suffering from the paralysis of analysis. Now is the time to take off your blindfold and take a good look around you. Freedom is within your grasp. Consider the words of poet Richard Lovelace (1642): ‘Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage.’

Tarot Books

Creative Tarot: We’ll focus our attention here on the twentieth-century post–Golden Dawn, around the time that Waite and Smith were redefining the tarot for a new age.

Complete Book of Tarot: The Tarot of Marseille, the oldest known of which is by Jean Noblet in Paris around 1650.

  • Do get in touch if you looked for Eight of Swords and we don’t have it listed. We would be more than happy to source the information for you. We hope you visit again for more online tarot information!

Tarot Triumphs: This kind of process may be mirrored to some degree in your own use of Tarot, in that it will evolve and be shaped by your own life experiences. Your personal relationship with the cards may be modified over the years. My first encounter, as I’ve described, was with the Rider-Waite pack, a vividly-colored and fully pictorial set of suits and Trumps all heavily imbued with esoteric symbolism. I marveled at it, was transported by it even. However, after a period of research and decades of using Tarot cards, this has evolved into a quieter sense of affection and respect for that particular pack, while on the other hand my interest in the symbolism of the Major Arcana of the Marseilles pack has grown and proved to be a more lasting flame. This is my Tarot of choice, and it is the version I feature in this book. It is the closest representation we have of the core of the Tarot tradition, and for this reason it remains a classic and, to my mind, offers the best way to try to understand the essence of Tarot.