Swords In The Spanish Tarot: The Suit Of Intellect

Swords are the suit of the intellect and of decisions in the Spanish tarot. Tied to the element Air, these 10 cards speak of choices to settle, of conflict, of news arriving and of the mental energy needed to face it.
When Swords dominate a spread, something is asking to be decided.

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Swords: the intellect suit

In the Spanish tarot, the 40 cards fall into 4 suits of 10. They carry the whole structure of the deck on their own: since it has no major arcana and no queens, nothing else takes the symbolism on.

A sword cuts: it separates, it decides, and it wounds too. That is this suit's ground — thought that cuts to the quick, the decisions to be made, the conflicts they set off.

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The 10 cards of the intellect suit

From the Ace to the King, each card marks a stage in the theme of its suit — a beginning, an ordeal, a culmination. Here are the keywords of each one.

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What Swords reveal in a spread

When Swords come up in numbers, the question almost always touches on the intellect. The number cards, from the Ace to the 7, tell a progression:

• The Ace opens on a warning, often tied to a document or a matter to settle properly.
• The 2 brings the surprise or the important news, the 3 the worry it settles in.
• The 4, the 5 and the 6 form the hard passage of the suit: ordeal, break-up or change, then tiredness.
• The 7 announces an event close at hand — as the Spanish tarot reads the short term, it is one of its most concrete cards.

The court cards of Swords (Jack, Knight, King) stand for people of the head — someone who argues their case, a professional, an authority — or for your own way of thinking and deciding, at three degrees of maturity.

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Your questions about Swords in the Spanish tarot

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Discover the other suits

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