Six of Swords Tarot Card Meaning: Upright & Reversed

Keywords, Symbols, Colors, Astrology, Love, Timing & Yes or No

A ferryman poles a small boat across the water. Inside it, a cloaked woman sits hunched beside a child, six swords standing upright in front of them, with rough water on one side, smooth water on the other, and a far shore waiting ahead.

Most people meet this card while they are still in the boat, somewhere between the life they left and the one they haven’t reached yet.

Welcome to the forty-third entry in my tarot glossary, and the twenty-first card of the Minor Arcana.

Every Five broke the pattern. The Sixes are the calm after that storm, and some readers call every Six a gift, the first breath once the worst has passed.

Below you’ll find the card’s symbols, its color psychology, upright plus reversed meanings with keyword lists, what it means in love or as feelings, how other cards amplify or diminish it, its element, its astrology, timing, whether it leans yes or no, and my own intuitive read after years of pulling it for clients.

Stay to the end for the one sentence I ask clients to say out loud when this card keeps following them.

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What Does The Six of Swords Tarot Card Actually Mean?

The Six of Swords is the passage from one chapter of your life to the next.

Transition is the word most readers give it, and I agree with them. What I add is how much the crossing asks you to leave on the shore you came from.

Nobody in this boat is celebrating. They’re leaving, carefully, with a child to protect and a destination they can only half see.

A crossing, not an escape

In the Rider Waite Smith image, a ferryman steers a boat carrying a cloaked woman and a child, six swords planted upright in the hull.

Look at the water on either side of them.

Choppy on the right, smooth on the left. The boat is moving out of one and into the other, which is exactly where this card finds people.

Swords trace back to the swords of the older European decks, the suit that has always belonged to thought, speech, and the mind’s long habits.

Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom reads this card as a quiet passage through sorrow, and the swords travelling with the passengers suggest the thoughts come along for the ride.

What Are the Symbols on The Six of Swords Tarot Card?

Every detail on this card is about what you carry when you leave.

Pamela Colman Smith chose the middle of the journey, neither departure nor arrival, and that in-between is the whole meaning.

• The ferryman: help that moves you when you can’t row yourself, a friend, a counsellor, time itself.
• The cloaked woman: grief or exhaustion kept close, head bowed, still going.
• The child: the people who depend on you, and the reason you keep crossing.
• The six upright swords: thoughts and memories brought along, heavy but no longer sinking the boat.
• The rough water: the situation you are leaving, still choppy behind you.
• The smooth water: calmer ground ahead, already visible to anyone who looks.
• The far shore: terra firma, the new chapter waiting even before it feels real.
• The pole: steady, patient effort, one push at a time.
• The number six: harmony returning after disruption, the calm after the storm.

What Do the Colors on The Six of Swords Tarot Card Mean in Psychology?

Color does its work on you before a single meaning gets read.

Researchers have long tied specific hues to specific responses, and this palette is muted, the colors of a long day and a slow journey.

How Do Other Cards Amplify or Diminish The Six of Swords?

No card reads alone. In every spread, the neighbouring cards either speed the boat along or hold it near the dock.

This is called adjacency: two or more cards working in unison, building one cohesive story instead of a list of single card definitions.

When two cards disagree, don’t pick a winner. Acknowledging the disagreement is the reading.

Is The Six of Swords a Yes or No Card?

It leans toward yes, gently.

The Six of Swords says the move is right, provided you take it one push at a time.

Its yes comes with a condition, which is that you leave some baggage behind.

Joan Bunning reads this card as recovery and travel, picking up the pieces and entering a new frame of mind.

Reversed, the answer slows toward not yet, since something is still holding the boat in place.

In a live reading I steer away from flat yes or no answers anyway, since your free will does the real work and no card gets to choose on your behalf.

This one simply asks whether you’re ready to leave the shore.

What Is The Six of Swords’ Timing in a Tarot Reading?

Timing under the Six of Swords is gradual and steady.

Nothing jumps. Progress happens in stages, the way a boat crosses water, a little closer with each push of the pole.

Six is the number clue, pointing to six days, six weeks, or six months.

One push at a time

Mercury in Aquarius places the card in the second decan of Aquarius, roughly the thirtieth of January to the eighth of February.

Late winter fits it, with the worst of the cold over and spring still on the far bank.

When this card shows up for timing, I ask what they’ve already started leaving.

Most people realise they’re halfway across, which tends to steady them more than any date could.

What Element and Astrology Rule The Six of Swords?

The Six of Swords is Mercury in Aquarius, the messenger planet in the sign of perspective.

Mercury governs thought, travel, and communication. Aquarius steps back far enough to see the bigger picture, which is often what a transition needs.

Air is the element, here moving the mind from one point of view to the next.

Each numbered Swords card takes a decan, a ten-degree slice of an air sign, and this one holds the middle of Aquarius.

Travellers, people relocating, anyone rebuilding after a separation, plus everyone learning to think differently about an old wound, all live under this light.

Worth knowing that Mercury here is a guide, not a critic. The detachment is there to help you see clearly, never to make you cold.

What Does The Six of Swords Mean in Love, as Feelings, and as a Person?

Moving on in love is this card’s territory, handled with care rather than drama.

Here’s how it tends to read in the questions people ask most.

• In love, if you’re single: leaving an old pattern behind, and the calmer kind of love that becomes possible afterwards.
• In love, in a relationship: moving through a hard stretch together, or one person quietly preparing to leave.
• As feelings: tired, hopeful, careful. Someone who wants peace more than they want to win.
• As a person: steady, protective, quietly brave, often carrying more than they show.
• As advice: pack the lesson, leave the weight, and keep the boat moving.
• Reversed in love: unable to let go, returning to old patterns, or a move that keeps getting postponed.

What Does the Six of Swords Actually Feel Like?

Here’s the part no keyword list covers, learned from pulling this card for clients rather than from a book.

I’ve seen this card show up when somebody has called it quits on a marriage and is working out the next step. There are children to get to safety, and a quiet question about what life looks like as a single parent.

That is the woman in the boat for me. Head bowed, child beside her, someone else steering for a while.

It also shows up between jobs and between relationships. Sometimes the relationship is with an aspect of yourself, since relationships aren’t always connective tissue with someone physical.

Occasionally the whole crossing happens inside your head. Swords are your mind, your thoughtforms, communication, behaviour patterns, analysis, and logic, so this card can mean getting from one point of view to the next.

The water isn’t pleasant. It isn’t somewhere you’d want to swim, though you will reach terra firma eventually.

Psychologists have a word for that in-between stretch, liminality, the threshold after an old life ends and before a new one settles.

Say what you learned

If this card keeps turning up for you, try one sentence out loud.

“This is what I learned about that situation.” Then finish it, plainly, in your own words.

Saying it labels it. Once a lesson has a name, it becomes something you carry rather than something that carries you.

You get to bring that with you. The rest can stay on the shore.

The Six of Swords Tarot Card: Quick Answers

Is the Six of Swords a good card?

Yes, though a quiet one. It shows you leaving something hard for something calmer, even when the trip itself feels heavy.

Does the Six of Swords mean travel?

Often. A move, a trip over water, or relocating, plus the inner journey from one way of thinking to another.

What does the Six of Swords mean in the future position?

Expect a transition that brings relief once you commit to it. The calmer water is already in view.

What element is the Six of Swords?

Air, under Mercury in Aquarius. A mind finding perspective after a storm.

Save this card for later

Where The Six of Swords Might Be Pointing You Now

If the Six of Swords keeps turning up for you, in a reading, a dream, a tarot deck you shuffle at midnight, it’s worth listening.

This card tends to appear right after the hardest decision has already been made.

What’s left is the crossing, and you don’t have to row it alone.

When you’re ready to look at it with someone who’ll hold the whole picture, your reading is waiting.

Click here to book your reading to see what you’re carrying across, plus what you can safely leave behind.

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Keep Reading

Five of Swords · Six of Wands · Six of Cups · Six of Pentacles · Reversed cards · Start reading

About the Author

Nothing here requires either of us to travel. Chris Bennett is The Tarot Medium, counted among the best tarot readers in the world and one of the most trusted psychic mediums working today. Every reading happens online, which is how his week takes in Houston, Bristol, Charlotte, Denver, Sydney, Halifax, Edinburgh, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Auckland, Portland, Montreal, and Melbourne, along with clients right across Canada, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, plus South Africa. Evidential mediumship, intuitive tarot, psychic life path readings, plus grief support with real psychological depth behind it make up the practice, with no fear and no theatrics in any of it. Anyone ready to read for themselves can start with his online tarot courses.