The Five of Swords in a tarot reading asks, is there something that you are overlooking?

It’s a subtle card because on the one side you look at the man on the card with a bit of a smirk on his face, he’s holding three swords (truth) but has left two swords down behind him (for someone else to pick up and stab in the back?). It isn’t so much that someone will stab you in the back but rather you’re lack of attention and perhaps complacency about facing the facts (after all we are talking about swords, truth, intellect etc) might come back to haunt you. So often in my experience the five of swords in a tarot reading is about what’s NOT been said, a conversation that hasn’t been completed, that missed a core truth perhaps.

At its simplest the advice of the five of swords is make sure you have crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s of life.  Have you been hasty in a decision, or hasty whereby you didn’t decide on something but left it undone instead…It often comes up in a reading referring to details you might have overlooked, that might come out of being too hasty, skimming over things, and not addressing the specifics, the unpleasant truth even? Something even, you didn’t consider important enough to do properly, thought would be too much of an effort to express, or perhaps said something a bit harshly that you know needs to be remedied.

In a tarot reading I always ask what the card means to you. Sometimes it’s as simple as you haven’t thought this out properly.  Last week someone who had never had a tarot reading in his life decided he’d give it a go. We met via zoom, me in Battersea him in north London. He pulled the five of swords as his root card in a Celtic cross spread.  When we talked about it in the context of the whole reading, he said one his worst faults, in his opinion, was a tendency to ignore the how and why of how to make things happen.  His example was that only that day he’d decided to come into London, it was a day or so before the Queen’s funeral and London was blocked off all over the places due to crowds queueing and the crowds expected…he laughed as he admitted he hadn’t even done a bit of googling to check out the possibility of how to get to his destination.  What he found interesting was on a deeper level, how this character trait might be affecting his relationship.  He was conscious of just accepting the status quo fully aware that things hadn’t been said by him.  She was confident of her opinions and the relationship and so it was easier to just go along with it. So in his case leaving the swords, his truth, on the floor, was leaving his thoughts in the relationship unknown and open to misinterpretation.

Have you read the small print?  Or the contract, paperwork, your agreement.  You might have read the bits in bold but it’s what isn’t underlined that is implicit.  In relationships assumptions based on only some of the truth suggest it might be a time to get brave and say what needs to be said.  Equally it might be a time ask yourself is there anything you might you have said that you regret? That needs to unsaid?

It’s a funny old card the five of swords and has given me lots of connotations to think about over the years and I always find it fascinating to wonder what details that we may think are not important enough to consider, can turn out to be vital and come and bite us on the bottom.

So pay attention when you get the five of swords, it has very useful advice.