Western Tarot symbolism
Three of Swords
The prose identifies three swords piercing a heart against cloud and rain. It treats the design as sufficiently direct to support meanings involving absence, rupture and dispersion without extended explanation. The additional list instead assigns a lover's flight to a woman, and its reversed list includes a meeting or a nun. These specific roles differ from the main reversed list of error and confusion.
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In the sources
The card account
LiteraryThe prose identifies three swords piercing a heart against cloud and rain. It treats the design as sufficiently direct to support meanings involving absence, rupture and dispersion without extended explanation.
Comparing the lists
LiteraryThe additional list instead assigns a lover's flight to a woman, and its reversed list includes a meeting or a nun. These specific roles differ from the main reversed list of error and confusion.
Context & interpretation
The active library scan carries L. W. de Laurence’s name and reproduces material associated with A. E. Waite’s Tarot exposition. This entry follows that supplied edition’s card prose and supplementary lists. Historical divinatory assignments and period character labels are distinguished from the pictured symbolism and from independently supported judgements about people or future events.
Original passages
Source 1
The Illustrated Key to the Tarot: The Veil of Divination
Three swords piercing- a heart; cloud and rain behind. Divinor- tory Meanings: Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dis- persion, and all that the design signifies naturally,Open this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: The Illustrated Key to the Tarot, supplied de Laurence edition; card description, active reader leaf 131
Exact supplied-edition extracted passage actually read; whitespace-normalised quotation anchor and original-leaf mapping checked. Image descriptions attributed to printed prose; no new full-plate visual inspection asserted.
- Edition
- IMJ-0149-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0149-E001-P0131
- Original scan leaf
- 137
- Recorded leaf number
- 137
- Current Reader position
- 131
- Reader verification
- Matches the reviewed Reader
Source 2
The Illustrated Key to the Tarot: The Veil of Divination
Three.—For a woman, the flight of her lover. Reversed: A meeting with one whom the Querent has compromised; also a nun. Two.—Gifts for a lady, influentialOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: The Illustrated Key to the Tarot, supplied de Laurence edition; additional meanings, active reader leaf 152
Exact supplied-edition extracted passage actually read; whitespace-normalised quotation anchor and original-leaf mapping checked. Image descriptions attributed to printed prose; no new full-plate visual inspection asserted.
- Edition
- IMJ-0149-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0149-E001-P0152
- Original scan leaf
- 158
- Recorded leaf number
- 158
- Current Reader position
- 152
- Reader verification
- Matches the reviewed Reader
Illustrations
Continue exploring
Ace of Pentacles
A cloud-borne pentacle raises a distinction between material prosperity and its benefit.
Shared source pageAce of Swords
A crowned sword represents force whose outcome is not uniformly favourable.
Shared source pageEight of Pentacles
Stone work supplies an image of craft that can be preparatory rather than complete.
Shared source pageFive of Pentacles
Two figures passing a lit window receive explicitly incompatible interpretations.