Six of Swords

Identity

Symbols

• The Six Standing SwordsPoints down, planted in the planks — no longer held in the hand, but not thrown overboard. Experience is carried along, but is no longer a weapon.+

  Book T's Golden Dawn design crosses the six swords at the centre and has the rose, torn in the Five, "re-established"; the title is "Lord of Earned Success." Smith's six stand upright in the punt instead, points down, in a row.

• The Poling BoatmanThe boatman stands at the stern, using a pole not an oar — not rowing hard, just pushing gently off the riverbed. This motion needs no struggle, only knowledge of where the bottom is.+

  Waite's note on the scene turns to this man's labour: "the freight is light," so "the work is not beyond his strength." He stands with his back to us, and his long pole cuts the card in a single dark diagonal.

• Cloaked Woman and ChildThey bow their heads, neither looking back nor speaking. A departure does not need to be explained — the safest posture now is quiet companionship.+

  Waite calls them only "passengers." Both are seen from behind, sitting low in the punt below the hilts, so neither face appears; the woman's hood and bowed head close her into one cloaked shape beside the smaller child.

• Asymmetric WaterRipples still fret the water on the right; on the left, the surface is already smooth — you can still feel beneath you the tremor of the shore just left, yet the forward direction is unmistakably calming.+

  Waite writes that "the course is smooth," and Smith grants it on one side only: the ripples run along the right of the punt, beneath the row of swords, while the water to the left lies flat.

• The Far Shore with TreesAhead of the boat lies a low shore with a few trees — the place Waite's ferryman is bound for, "the further shore."+

  The shore is only a thin strip on the horizon, small beside the figures and the swords that stand up against it. Everyone in the boat faces that way; nobody in the picture turns round.

Story

Every figure in this boat faces the same way, away from us, so the card is read from behind. The eye starts at the ferryman's back and climbs his long dark pole, drops to the hooded shape and the child beside her, passes the row of upright hilts, and goes out across open water to a low line of trees. Nothing hurries: the punt is pushed, not rowed, and the sky is a flat, even grey. The far shore is still a strip on the horizon; the crossing is under way, nowhere near done.

Correspondences

Elemental Dignity

Shadow

Related Cards

Death

Three of Swords

Eight of Cups