The Five of Swords - Two different tarot decks

Today I planned on taking a break from writing my usual daily tarot readings. However, I was still planning on doing a reading just for myself. I pulled a single card and pondered it for a bit. I read about the card and thought though about it. And then I thought about the Transient Light Tarot deck I picked up a few weeks ago. I wondered what the same card would say to me from another deck. I pulled out that card and thought this might make an interesting read. From my Rider-Waite-Smith deck, I pulled the Five of Swords.

The five of swords is about loss at the hand of someone else. It shows a man with a smug-looking smile on his face. He’s holding two swords in his left hand while he leans on another one in his right. On the ground are two more swords, and one man is walking away while another is in the background, appearing to be crying. The man with all the swords wears a green tunic over a red shirt and pants. The smirking man doesn’t look like a nice person. It seems like he bested someone but not by honest means. He’s won through trickery and deceit.

This card brings up all kinds of emotions about loss and grief but also about losing when you’re not supposed to. When the wrong person for the job gets the job or the promotion. Perhaps someone cuts in front of you at the store just as the cashier puts out the closed sign. And now you’re left to find another line. This card represents the energy that things are not going your way—a red light when you’re running late for work. The paper in the register runs out just when you need a receipt. Sometimes it can be small and silly or a big ordeal that sucks the wind out of you. Whatever it is, this card speaks to us about something taking the wind out of our sails. We feel dejected and defeated. We don’t want to go on. But we must, and we do. Eventually, we get over it and move on to fight another day.

That’s the Rider-Waite-Smith Five of swords. I placed the Transient Light Tarot Five of Swords next to it’s counterpart, and I get a different story here.

The card from the Transient Light Tarot shows four swords stuck into the ground with their handles pointing up. A fifth sword hangs in mid-air with its blade pointing up, opposite from the direction of the other four swords. The fifth sword, in the center of the card, has an eye on the hilt. The sun is setting on the horizon, causing the four swords on the ground to have long shadows. The stars are starting to emerge, and two butterflies are flying about.

In a deck like this one, you often rely more on the symbols than the picture. When there’s an absence of storytelling in the card, it’s up to us to understand the card’s symbolism and dig deep to find the meanings behind the imagery. As I look at this card, I see the swords. One is higher than all the others. Perhaps this sword is better than the other four. Swords are often connected to the conscious mind—our inner thoughts. Fives are about chaos and destruction. But in this card, I don’t feel the chaos so much. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, it’s clear the guy in the foreground is a bully. While in the Transient Light deck, there doesn’t seem to be a bully. What I get from this card is about not letting the sun go down on an unresolved conflict. All of the swords here are perfectly usable. Suppose we see the swords as individual thoughts. There is one that has bested the others. But is this thought or idea the best one? Perhaps we can address it from a different angle? Butterflies symbolize change and transformation, appearing on every sword card in this deck. To me, this indicates changing thoughts. And being that there are two butterflies, perhaps that symbolizes two thoughts. They are on opposite sides of the central sword. Two opposing thoughts? But as always, we can change our thoughts. And in changing our thoughts, we change our outcome.

Here they are side by side:

So you can see just how very different each of these cards is read and the difference in messages. But what fascinates me even more, is using them together to answer the same question. Each card gave me a slightly different answer, but now I feel my question is answered more completely. Perhaps I should do all my readings from two decks.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this or if it resonated with you, please let me know by leaving a comment. And also, let me know if you’d like to read more pieces like this one. If I did another one like this, what card would you like to see next? Let me know.

Thanks again for reading, and have a great day!