Six of Swords Tarot Card Meaning: Upright, Reversed, Love and Career
By DailyDestiny Editorial Team
If you are leaving something that hurt you and wondering whether it gets easier, here is what the Six of Swords says about your crossing. Covers upright and reversed meanings, love, feelings, career, health, timing and decks.
On this page
What does the Six of Swords mean in tarot?
Imagine you have just packed the last box, or sent the message that ends it, or walked out of a job that was wearing you down. You do not feel brave. You feel tired, a little numb, and unsure whether you did the right thing. Then you draw a card showing a small boat moving quietly away from rough water.
The short answer: the Six of Swords means a passage out of trouble that is already underway. You are moving gradually away from what damaged you, toward something quieter. You have not resolved what happened; you have stopped standing in the middle of it.
Nothing here is triumphant. The figures are not celebrating; they are getting out. Readers treat it as transition, relocation, convalescence and the sober middle of a hard chapter.
It comes straight after the Five of Swords, a fight won at everybody's expense. The argument is over, and now somebody has to leave. And unlike the other Swords, the swords are still here, standing upright in the hull, travelling with you.
Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot gives the plainest meanings: journey by water, route, way, envoy, expedient. Modern readers widened journey by water into any managed transition, but the old wording keeps the sense of a route someone arranged.
Not an escape improvised at midnight, but one that took a booking, a plan or someone to steer: the lease, the flight, the handover, the discharge date.
Feel oddly flat? That fits. The tone is muted on purpose: sadness quiet, relief uncelebrated, and above all depletion.
Its promise is narrow and reliable: conditions improve because you moved, not because the situation you left changed its mind about you.
Is the Six of Swords a positive or negative card?
Mildly positive, wearing a sad face. You are heading toward calmer water, which is genuinely good, but the card will not pretend the crossing is pleasant or that anyone wanted to make it. Readers score it as improvement without joy.
What element and suit does the Six of Swords belong to?
Swords, whose element is Air. Air governs thought, speech and conflict, so this is a transition handled through reasoning and arrangement rather than feeling or effort.
What is the shortest summary of the Six of Swords?
Leaving rough water for calm water, taking your unfinished thoughts with you. Every longer meaning, in love, work or health, is a variation on that sentence.
What does the Rider-Waite-Smith Six of Swords picture show, symbol by symbol?
Look at the people in the boat; you may recognise yourself. Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 card shows a flat punt crossing shallow water with three people and six swords.
The ferryman stands at the stern pushing a long pole, the only one doing anything.
The cloaked figure sits in the bow, hunched forward, head bowed and face hidden. A child leans in close beside it.
Six swords stand upright in a row in the front of the hull, blades down, driven through the floor of the boat.
The water tells the story. Behind and to the left it is ridged and choppy; ahead and to the right it flattens into glassy calm. A low, tree-lined shore waits on the far right. The sky is pale and unlit: no sun, no moon, no star.
Nobody looks back. Nobody looks ahead either.
The detail readers argue about most is the swords piercing the hull. Blades through the floor should sink a boat, and they do not. That is the point: your wounds have somehow become structural. What cut you now helps hold you up, and it keeps working only while the water stays shallow.
The pole matters too. It reaches the bottom, so this is a passage close to the bank at walking pace, not a voyage into open sea.
The cloaked figure and child are read as the vulnerable parts of you, or real dependents whose lives change when you move. The ferryman is the quiet promise: somebody knows this route, and his help is there, if unsentimental. With no sun, you get no light to steer by, only a known direction and a pole that touches ground.
Why does the water change from rough to smooth in the Six of Swords?
It maps the whole transition in one image: rough water behind is what you are leaving, smooth water ahead is what you are entering. The boundary sits near the middle, so the passengers are already past the worst.
Who is the ferryman in the Six of Swords?
He does the work while the passengers sit still. Readers see him as outside help with professional distance. He stands upright while everyone else huddles, marking him as the one who is not personally wrecked.
What do the six swords in the boat represent?
The thoughts, memories and conclusions you carry out of the old situation. They stand upright rather than scattered, read as grief that is contained and orderly. They pierce the hull, so they cannot be pulled out mid-crossing.
Why is the Six of Swords an Air card, and what does the number six add?
Thinking about it all more than crying about it? Here is why. The whole suit of Swords belongs to Air, and the six adds recovery of balance after loss.
Air makes this a transition handled by thinking: the decision to leave, the message that arranges it, the replay that will not stop. So it feels quiet even in devastating readings; the passengers are processing rather than weeping.
Six carries restored balance and mutual help. In the Kabbalistic scheme the sixes belong to Tiphareth, the sephirah of harmony at the center of the Tree. Every six follows a punishing five and offers a settlement:
Six of Wands: recognition. Six of Cups: memory. Six of Pentacles: an exchange of resources. Six of Swords: distance.
Harmony in Air cannot be won by talking things out, so this card makes peace by separating the parties.
Air plus six also explains the cool detachment you may feel. Tiphareth is a solar sephirah, but Smith drew no sun into the sky. The harmony on offer is real but unlit, felt as numbness before it is felt as relief.
The Golden Dawn gave it to Mercury in Aquarius and titled it Lord of Earned Success. Mercury arranges; Aquarius lets you detach from something you are still attached to, exactly what keeps you in the boat instead of swimming back. And earned matters: the improvement is payment for a departure you had to organize and endure.
How does the Six of Swords relate to the Five of Swords?
It is the direct sequel. The Five shows a smirking victor collecting blades while two figures walk away defeated. The Six picks up those departing figures and puts them in a boat: the humiliation happens in the five, the exit in the six.
Does the Six of Swords connect to a Major Arcana card?
Yes, to The Lovers through the number six. Readers using that link treat the Six of Swords as the aftermath of a choice, not the choice itself. The Lovers stands at a decision point; the Six of Swords is already travelling one way.
What season or element timing does the Six of Swords suggest?
Air timing of weeks rather than months, sharpened by its link to the first decan of Aquarius, roughly January 20 to January 29. Seasonal readers place it in late winter, still cold but clearly moving.
What does the Six of Swords mean upright in a reading?
Upright, it tells you the change is already moving and in the right direction, even if you feel flat about it.
The core meanings are relocation, leaving a damaging situation, recovery after a crisis, travel arranged for a reason rather than pleasure, and accepting practical help.
About a decision: the choice has effectively been made, and what remains is logistics.
About grief: it marks the point where sharp pain becomes a dull ache you can carry.
About conflict: the fight ends by separation, not resolution, and nobody gets an apology.
You are not alone: the passenger has company, and a helper usually shows up nearby. It does not promise arrival. The far shore is visible but not reached, so this is the crossing, not the new life beyond it.
Position matters more than usual, because this card is about a stage, not an event.
Present: you are mid-crossing right now. That turns your exhaustion into something normal, not a failure.
Future: relief comes through movement, and readers warn it will involve more paperwork than you imagine.
Outcome: a decent result for a bad question. Nothing triumphant, but you end up somewhere survivable.
Readers also watch for the literal reading, since Waite's list starts with journey by water. A visa, a hospital transfer or a return to your country of origin all fit. When the surrounding cards are entirely emotional, the crossing is internal: moving from one mental climate to another without changing address.
What does the Six of Swords mean for a decision I have not made yet?
It usually reveals the decision is more settled than you admit. The boat is already off the bank, so the leaving has quietly begun. The real question is how you leave, not whether.
Does the Six of Swords mean things get better?
It means things get calmer, a narrower claim than better. It promises less turbulence, distance from the source of harm, and enough stability to think. It does not promise happiness, or that the swords you carried stop hurting once you land.
What does the Six of Swords say about how long the hard part lasts?
You are past the worst but not clear of it. Rough water is behind, the shore still ahead. Readers call this the long middle: no new disasters, no arrival yet, and slow progress to be tolerated rather than fixed.
What does the Six of Swords reversed mean?
Reversed, ask yourself gently: what are you still holding on to? The reversed Six of Swords means the crossing is blocked, refused or being undone.
Most often that looks like not being able to leave something you know is finished, going back to the shore you just left, a move that keeps getting postponed, or travel plans that collapse. The boat cannot move because you will not let go of the bank.
A second reading turns the swords instead of the boat. The blades fall out of the hull, and you run without processing anything, changing city, partner or job while carrying nothing forward. That is the flight version, where distance works like a painkiller.
A third is refusing the ferryman: help exists, and you insist on poling alone.
It is rarely about the far shore being wrong. It is almost always about the departure being incomplete.
Reversed, it also gains a homecoming meaning. With the boat flipped, some readers see a return: moving back to a place, a family or a relationship you left, sometimes healthily, sometimes as a retreat. The neighbors decide. Beside the Four of Wands or the Ten of Cups, it is going home. Beside the Eight of Swords or the Devil, it is going back into the trap.
Waite's own reversed list is unusual: declaration, confession and publicity, with a note that one account reads it as a proposal of love. Modern readers rarely use those, but confession survives in one form: what stayed unsaid during the crossing tends to get said when the card reverses.
It is also the classic card for a move that happened on paper while your heart stayed behind, which is why it attaches so easily to homesickness.
Does the Six of Swords reversed mean canceled travel?
Often, yes, and readers take that literally when practical cards surround it. Postponed moves, stalled visas and transfers that fall through all fit, especially with the Eight of Wands reversed nearby.
Is the Six of Swords reversed a bad omen?
Uncomfortable, not catastrophic. It marks a stalled transition, which costs time and morale rather than bringing new disaster. Readers treat it as diagnostic: it shows exactly where you still grip the bank.
Can the Six of Swords reversed be positive?
Yes, when it signals a real homecoming or a decision to stop running. You stop crossing water for its own sake and finally put down what was in the boat, which stability cards such as the Four of Wands confirm.
What does the Six of Swords mean in love and someone's feelings?
Has it gone quiet and distant between you and someone you love? In love, the Six of Swords means a relationship moving out of turbulence into something quieter. For a couple in crisis that is relief. For a couple who wanted heat, it is a slow goodbye.
There is almost always distance of some kind: physical separation, a cooling-off period, a move made together, or one person leaving.
For a couple it often shows a shared crossing, leaving a bad chapter such as a job loss or family conflict while holding on to each other.
For a breakup question, the separation is already underway and unlikely to reverse, because the boat travels one way.
As feelings, it describes someone depleted rather than angry. Not plotting, not longing dramatically. They feel worn down and want the noise to stop. Their affection for you may be intact under the exhaustion, but it is not available for anything demanding right now.
The question that matters most here: are they leaving you, or leaving with you? The card shows two passengers, so ask who is in the boat.
Partnership cards such as the Two of Cups or the Ten of Pentacles put you both on the crossing, surviving a hard time as a unit. Solitude cards such as the Hermit or the Eight of Cups put them on the water alone, moving away.
On contact, this person is not in a state to talk much. They answer briefly, put off the serious conversation, and may go quiet without meaning it as punishment. Readers advise against pursuing them with intensity, since the card describes a nervous system that has had enough. Like knocking on the door of someone who has finally fallen asleep.
Hoping to reconcile? It rarely promises that directly. It offers a real drop in hostility, and a later conversation made possible only by distance from the fight.
What does the Six of Swords mean for a long-distance relationship?
One of the more encouraging cards, since it literally shows the crossing being made. It points to a visit, a move toward your partner, or the arrangements that close the gap, while insisting it will be slow and planned, not a sudden romantic arrival.
Does the Six of Swords mean a breakup?
It does when the surrounding cards show separation, and means surviving a hard patch together when they show partnership. On its own it marks leaving a condition, not necessarily a person, so readers check whether both passengers belong to the same relationship before calling it an ending.
What does the Six of Swords mean for a new relationship or a crush?
Someone arriving out of a difficult past rather than into a fresh start, so the connection begins with baggage acknowledged. It favors low pressure, and warns that this person will not move fast or say much about what they just came through.
What does the Six of Swords mean for career, money, and health?
Maybe you have already updated your resume and have not told anyone. For career, the Six of Swords means leaving a work situation that became unworkable and moving toward a calmer one, most often through a transfer, a resignation already decided, a relocation for a role, or a department change after conflict.
It often includes a literal commute or move, favors work with travel, logistics and go-between roles, and describes handovers: notice served, projects passed on, the strange quiet between one role and the next.
Money: stabilizing rather than prosperous. Finances recovering after strain, transition costs such as moving expenses or legal fees, and income that becomes reliable with less drama.
Health: this is the convalescence card. It marks the shift out of an acute phase into recovery, transfer between facilities or practitioners, and a nervous system that needs quiet more than stimulation.
At work, it often exposes a departure you have not admitted yet: the resume updated, the internal transfer floated. Readers take it as permission to make that exit orderly, since the card rewards a managed exit and punishes a dramatic one.
On health, readers repeat one warning: the swords come along. The body tends to recover faster than the mind, and beliefs formed during the crisis cross into the new phase with you. Mental health readings use the card for exactly that transition, whether that means starting therapy or the flat stretch after an acute episode when nothing is wrong but nothing feels good either. If you are in that flat stretch, talking it through with a doctor or therapist can help.
In money questions it flags the cost of leaving that people underestimate: deposits, transport, duplicated bills, and weeks of reduced earning while the crossing is made.
Does the Six of Swords mean I should quit my job?
It supports leaving when the situation itself is the problem, and favors going in an organized way with a destination in mind. The card shows a route and a ferryman, not a jump, so readers take it as approval for a planned exit, not walking out unprepared.
What does the Six of Swords mean for a job interview or offer?
Favorable but subdued: a role that improves your conditions rather than one that excites you. It goes with positions involving relocation or a move to a calmer team, and suggests the change feels like relief within months rather than triumph on day one.
What does the Six of Swords mean in a health reading?
The acute phase is passing and recovery has begun, often with a change of setting, practitioner or treatment plan. It emphasizes rest and patience, and flags the mental residue of illness, since the card carries its swords across instead of leaving them behind.
What is the Six of Swords advice and timing?
What now? The advice is plain: leave, take the calm route, and accept the help that is offered.
Stop trying to win the argument you are in. Put distance between yourself and the source of the damage. Let the crossing be slow. And travel light, since the passengers keep only what stands upright in the boat.
On timing, it points to a crossing measured in weeks rather than days, with three anchors readers use:
Element: Air, which conventionally gives weeks.
Astrology: the Golden Dawn's Mercury in Aquarius, the first decan of Aquarius, roughly January 20 to January 29.
Number: six, read as six weeks or the sixth of a month.
It is rarely sudden, because the boat is poled by hand. Things resolve through steady movement, not one decisive day.
Experienced readers add: do not relitigate. You may be tempted to go back to prove a point, collect an apology or explain yourself one last time. The card treats that as returning to rough water and asks you to let the record stay incomplete, hard precisely because Swords are Air and the mind wants closure.
The other piece concerns the ferryman. The passengers do none of the steering, a rare instruction in tarot to let yourself be helped: hire the lawyer, let the friend drive, accept the discharge plan.
In a stalled situation, the reversed card postpones rather than cancels, usually by the same weeks the upright would have taken. And if you are asking when the difficulty will end, the honest answer is that the ending has already started and will finish quietly.
What single action does the Six of Swords recommend?
Physically change your circumstances, even slightly. Leave the room, leave the group chat, sleep somewhere else, or hand in the notice. The card treats changed surroundings as what makes the mental change possible.
How many weeks does the Six of Swords indicate?
Most often six weeks, from its number, while astrological readers narrow it to the Mercury in Aquarius window of roughly January 20 to January 29. Both agree more on character than length: gradual, arranged in advance, and not something you can speed up.
What should you avoid when the Six of Swords appears?
Going back to argue, and rushing the crossing. Returning to rough water undoes your progress, and forcing speed on a punted boat usually leads to a second departure later.
Which Six of Swords combinations matter most, and how does the card change across decks?
The cards around yours name what you are leaving and what waits on the far shore.
With the Three of Swords: a departure driven by heartbreak; the swords in the hull are grief.
With the Eight of Swords: an exit from a trapped mindset, often therapy or the end of a coercive situation.
With the Ten of Cups or the Four of Wands: the crossing lands somewhere settled, a move toward home or family.
With the Tower: the departure was not chosen and the boat left in a hurry.
With the Eight of Cups: two leaving cards stack into a complete break with a chapter.
With the Ace of Pentacles: the move comes with an offer that funds it.
With the Moon: you cross before you understand what happened.
With Death: there is no return ticket.
Another deck may look very different in your hands.
In the Tarot de Marseille there is no boat and no ferryman. The pip shows six curved blades woven into an oval lattice with floral flourishes above and below. Readers take the six as a balanced arrangement within the suit of conflict, a calmer card than the sorrowful crossing.
In the Thoth deck by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris, the card is titled Science. Six swords meet precisely at a central rose upon a cross: blades brought into agreement. It stresses intellectual order won after the chaos of the five rather than a crossing, though the attribution is identical, Mercury in Aquarius, and the Golden Dawn title Lord of Earned Success applies to both.
Readers who work across systems keep the transition meaning from Smith's image and borrow the hard-won clarity of the Thoth title.
What does the Six of Swords with the Moon mean?
Leaving before you know the full picture. Readers treat the pair as a fog warning: the move is still worth making, but you are working from partial information, so expect the real story to arrive after you land.
What is the Six of Swords called in the Thoth deck?
Science, in the deck by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris, where six blades converge on a central rose and cross instead of crossing water. It emphasizes method and intellectual balance won after conflict; the Golden Dawn title is Lord of Earned Success.
What does the Six of Swords with the Three of Swords mean?
Leaving because of a specific heartbreak, with the pain named rather than vague. The Three is what the blades in the boat contain, and the pair describes moving on physically while the wound is still fresh.
Questions people ask
Is the Six of Swords a yes or no card?
A conditional yes: yes, if you are willing to move. What you asked about works out on the far shore, not the near one. So it is a yes to leaving, relocating or accepting help, and a no to saving the current arrangement. If you asked whether something happens quickly, it softens the yes, because the boat is being poled, not sailed.
Does the Six of Swords always mean a physical move or travel?
Not always, though more often than most cards. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot lists journey by water and route among its meanings, and readers take a literal relocation seriously when it appears beside the Eight of Wands. Just as often it is a change of situation with no suitcase involved: leaving a job, ending contact, or shifting from crisis into recovery.
Is the Six of Swords a good card to get in a love reading?
Calming but rarely romantic. The drama is ending: good news if things were exhausting, flat news if you wanted passion. For a couple, it often means moving somewhere quieter together, sometimes literally. For a breakup, the separation is already in motion. It almost never describes a sudden reunion, because the card moves one way.
What planet and zodiac sign rule the Six of Swords?
The Golden Dawn gives it Mercury in Aquarius, the first decan of Aquarius, roughly January 20 to January 29. Mercury supplies the thinking and arrangements; Aquarius the detachment that lets you walk away from something you are still attached to, which is why the card feels cool rather than grieving. Its Golden Dawn title is Lord of Earned Success, and Crowley and Harris named it Science.
What is the difference between the Six of Swords and the Eight of Cups?
Both describe leaving, for different reasons. The Eight of Cups walks alone, by choice and feeling, from something that was fine but no longer feeds you. The Six of Swords leaves something unlivable, driven by circumstance and often helped by someone else. The Eight of Cups leaves its cups on the ground; the Six of Swords carries all six blades in the boat.
What does the Six of Swords mean as a person?
Someone in transit, not a fixed temperament: leaving a difficult chapter, or working in travel and logistics. The ferryman gives the card its helper figure: a therapist, lawyer, relocation contact or steady friend who handles the crossing without commenting on it. As a described person, the Six of Swords is subdued, competent and not currently at home.
What does the Six of Swords mean in a past position?
The crossing already happened, and you are being asked to notice what came over with you. It marks an earlier move, exit or recovery that set up your present, often one you play down because it was quiet. The reading turns on the swords still in the hull: beliefs picked up on the water that now shape your decisions on dry land.
What does today hold for you?
Pop in your birthday. Your reading shows up right here. No email, no account.
Try it for yourself, free
Related topics: six of swords meaning, six of swords tarot, six of swords tarot card, six of swords reversed, six of swords love, six of swords feelings, six of swords timing, six of swords advice, six of swords upright, six of swords career
