Six of Swords · Swords · Air

A ferryman in a rust tunic and green hose stands in a flat punt, back to us, one arm high on a long dark pole, the other hand low on the shaft, which runs past the hull and off the plate. Two passengers sit ahead: one wrapped head to foot in an ochre cloak, bowed, face hidden, a small blue grey one huddled beside it. Six swords stand in the bow, two set apart and four clustered, white pommels up, blades dropping out of sight into the red hull. Pamela Colman Smith ridged the water beside the boat and left it flat further out, a low wooded bank under an empty grey sky.

The swords come with them, and the boat still floats.

Waite’s note is clerical: a ferryman carrying passengers to the further shore, the course smooth, the freight light. The Golden Dawn seats this decan with Mercury in Aquarius and titles it Earned Success, the colder, better name.

Upright, the tradition reads passage: the leaving that comes after the damage, when there is no argument left to win. Readers have long held the blades fixed in the hull, so that pulling one would let the water in; the plate shows only that they came aboard standing, no hand on them. Classically the card asks the grief be carried while it is still grief.

Reversed, the crossing stalls. Readers name the passage refused, the fare paid and never used, the turn back to the bank you know. Others read landfall: the swords drawn out on dry ground where they cost nothing.

The ferryman is paid to move people, not to mend them. That is how they get across.