The 78 Cards
Six of Swords
Minor Arcana, the suit of Swords, the Six. Element: air.
Moving on towards calmer water.
The picture
A man stands at the back of a small boat, pushing it along with a long pole. In front of him sit a figure wrapped in a hooded cloak and a smaller figure beside them, both with their backs to us. Six swords stand upright in the boat. The water beside the boat is choppy, and ahead lies a far shore with trees.
Upright
Six is the number of harmony restored, of give and take. In Swords, that harmony is found by leaving. A move, a change of job, the end of a hard chapter, the slow crossing from a painful time into a better one.
Notice that the swords come too. Your thoughts and memories travel with you. They stay upright in the boat, and for now somebody else is doing the steering.
The passengers are hunched and quiet. This is a transition, and nobody in the boat is celebrating yet. That is fine. It is enough to be moving. You do not need to feel good in order to be heading somewhere good.
The man with the pole matters as much as anyone in the picture. Let someone help you across. A friend, a counsellor, a person who has made this crossing before and knows where the rocks are.
Reversed
Reversed, I read this as delayed or blocked. Delayed is the move that is coming more slowly than you would like: the paperwork, the waiting, the boat inching forward against the current. Blocked is when you cannot leave at all, or when you keep turning the boat around and rowing back to the shore you were trying to leave.
To tell which, ask whether the boat is moving. If it is, even slowly, it is delayed, and the job is to keep pushing on the pole. If you keep finding yourself back where you started, it is blocked, and the useful question is what you keep going back for.
When it turns up
What are you carrying across with you, and who is helping you steer?
If you would like the cards read against your own chart, my readings are here.
Related pages
The Number 6
The 78 Cards
Every card in the deck, upright and reversed.
See every page and post in the Contents.
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