TAROTNine of Swords
Upright
Mental anguish, distress or over-thinking.
You are worrying but worry achieves nothing.
Address your problems before they become nightmares. A wake-up call.
Share your problems. If you tackle them alone they will become much larger.
Intuition
The card shows Melinoë, the Goddess of Nightmares and madness. Like dreams themselves, she is neither good nor bad, but neither is she a shade of grey either.
She is whatever you read into your dreams. They could be predicting disaster or a warning that helps you avoid it!
Reversed
The end of a period of anguish.
You are coming to terms with a period of anguish or distress.
You are over the worst of a painful situation, are starting to make sense of it and will soon be ready to move on.
You are coming to terms with a previously troubling facet of yourself.
Astrologia
Quick witted and quick to meet intellectual challenges. Talking through problems rather than allowing escalation. Very adaptable. Can be impulsive or become frustrated in emotional challenges, both of which can lead to arguments or internal anxiety.
Nine of Swords
The nine of swords represents stress caused by your past thoughts, actions or failures. It can also represent anxiety caused by a current situation beyond your control.
The important message of this card is that the anxiety is based on your interpretation of the situation and this is not necessarily the true story.
It does not include the solution to your problem either. For that you need to wake up from your nightmare and make plans or put your fears to one side for a moment. You need to get to the root of the real problem and address it so the specter of your fears can subside.
And talking of specters…
Melinoë
Melinoë literally means dark minded. She is a bringer of nightmares and madness.
She also presided over appeasement of ghosts and other lost or unwilling dead via offerings and prayers.
She was associated with getting justice and retribution for the dead. If you murdered someone and could not sleep because of it, Melinoë was the one invading your waking thoughts and nightmares.
She is often seen as a dark facet (or epithet) of either Hecate (High Priestess) or Persephone (Queen of Pentacles). For this Tarot deck, these associations with Melinoë are both intentional and meaningful. Melinoë represents the failing of an attribute held by both Hecate and Persephone; intuition. When this fails it can come through as nightmares and a general sense of worry and dread, or the ghosts of past deeds and mistakes coming back to haunt you.
Melinoë is historically depicted as wearing greenish-yellow corresponding to the fruit quince (the pallor of the recently departed!) or being equal parts black and white to reflect her half chthonic (pertaining to the ground or underworld) and half ouranic (pertaining to the sky or heavens) parentage. Sometimes only her arms are half black/white.
In this deck, Melinoë’s dress carries the black/white motif, and the swords around her represent the balance of our rights and wrongs that come to haunt us.
Description and Symbology
We see a man awakening from a nightmare (or unable to sleep) with his head in his hands, wracked by fear or anxiety.
Around the figure we see black and white swords ready to stab him. The two colors represent our conscience trying to internally balance our deeds.
Melinoë appears above the man with her outstretched hands holding larger black and white swords as if in judgement, balancing the man’s good and bad thoughts and actions.
Notice that her pose matches that of Hecate as the High Priestess, suggesting that the place these nightmares come from is the subconscious and intuition. We may not know our guilt or try to hide from it, but intuition sits deeper than our ability to lie.
Eight of the swords are silhouettes, suggesting they are in the mind. The ninth one is directly above the man’s head and seems more real. Our thoughts may be in our head, but they can affect and injure us physically if they are extreme enough!
Yet Melinoë is herself a phantom. None of this is real except the man and his bed.
Our minds can create a large and beautiful palace in which we live. Our minds can also construct the smallest prison in the world, in which we gleefully torture ourselves.
Our minds can create a large and beautiful palace in which we live. Our minds can also construct the smallest prison in the world, in which we gleefully torture ourselves.
The sleeper
The man has awoken from a dream through fear and anxiety, shame, or a realization.
The sword shapes
Eight of the swords are black or white silhouettes. They exist in the man’s dreams and represent the good and bad thoughts and actions that made up the dream.
The real sword
The ninth sword appears more real than the others. Our thoughts may be in our head but some can cut and wound us as surely as any real sword!
Melinoë
Melinoë holds a black and a white sword as if balancing and judging the thoughts of the man. The strength of his nightmare is the result of this judgement (and also represents the way the ancients would have thought the concept of having a conscience works).
Tips for Readings
The following table shows the upright and reverse meanings for general questions. The last row ('Yes/No') is useful when you are picking a single card to decide a yes or no decision.
Upright
Reversed
This card is a bad sign for a relationship. It either points to a cycle of worry and stress within the relationship or that someone is not ready to love because they will be constantly coming to the table with issues and excuses.
The card suggests breaking the cycle. Either fix the underlying issues or walk away.
Past issues in a relationship have passed their worst and the problems should now start to subside.
This is a good card overall for new and young relationships as it signifies a great level of trust between the partners and moving forward together no matter what.
Your job is causing stress through either the lack of pay, workload or responsibilities, lack of job security, lack of progression, or personality problems. It could be several issues all together (they tend to come in at least pairs!).
This card could be a wake-up call to handle your work-life balance better because problems in career are getting the better of you or taking too much priority.
Whatever the problem, making a realistic plan to fixing it or moving on is better than worrying about it or turning it into a contest.
Previous problems with career are now becoming more obvious and actionable. You will become more realistic and practical in your decisions.
You may have been previously overworked, undermined, or even over-promoted or lied to, but a new awareness will stop you turning it into an argument or contest, and instead move forward with solutions.
That is not to say it will not be painful, but a resolution and ability to move on is close.
Other issues in your life are causing stress and anxiety and this is affecting your health.
Although it is often impossible to switch the mind off when it is in worry-mode, a focus on yourself and what you do have rather than your problems and what you do not have may be beneficial.
Sharing your problems may also be better than turning them into personal nightmares.
You are ready to move forward after a stressful period in other areas of your life and this should start recovery or a return to a more balanced lifestyle.
It is important to stay on this path and not treat life as ‘periods of binge and rest cycles’!
You will go through a period of stress, anxiety or fear.
The card asks you to realize this happens for a reason – you must grasp the problem and address its cause rather than worry about the effects.
This may be painful but is necessary to move through this period.
You should also be open to seeking help rather than sitting in a dark corner and allow your worries to become fearful specters that keep you awake.
You are approaching a period of inner recovery and the beginnings of regrowth after a period of stress and worry.
It is important to use this change of mindset to fully recover from previous issues rather than jump back into them. This can happen for addictive behavior or any co-dependent relationships and behavior.
The best way to do this will often be painful; to discard the worst of the past you and embrace the new you growing in its place.
Unexpected bills, debt or lack of steady income may cause worries and stress.
It is important that you do not ignore these issues to cause further stress. Instead solve the root problem through addressing both income and outgoings.
You are beginning to turn around previous financial difficulties by addressing the realities of the situation.
This does mean that things will get better, but does not necessarily mean there will not be difficult short term decisions including changes to lifestyle and expectations.
A future you will probably thank yourself for having a more practical outlook!
No through allowing your worries get ahead of your problems.
Yes because you are addressing current problems, although the final result may take longer than expected.
Reading the Card
The upright card
The upright Nine of Swords signifies being haunted by a current or past situation, negative emotions, a sense of helplessness or poor confidence. These can appear as nightmares and poor sleep or being constantly preoccupied by the issue.
The core message of the card is that your fear and anxiety of the situation and the actual situation are two different things. You may be consumed by the problem so much that you make it much larger and much scarier than it actually is.
Rather than creating fearful specters, nightmares and stress are all indicators that tell you something needs to be addressed. Failing to address the root problem makes the problem appear larger (much like a phone alarm that is programmed to get louder the longer you ignore it!).
The card urges you to prioritize your problems and sort them out in that order. Anything that is keeping you up at night probably needs to go at the top of the list because it is almost certainly preventing you doing anything else with any efficiency!
The reversal
The reversed Nine of Swords tells you the same as the upright card but the good news is that the worst is now over. The path to moving on from the problem can soon begin.
It does not tell you the issue is over or that the path will be easy, but only that you have recognized the root problem. This is the first step in being able to take action.
Sometimes problems become large because you internalize them via self-blame, poor self-image or comparing yourself to others, and these need to be addressed otherwise progress will be slow.
A problem not shared can get huge simply because you dwell on it and magnify its importance to a point you can no longer deal with it. Sharing the problem can be beneficial simply because you can start to talk about it.
Card Design Process
Rather than the standard Nine of Swords card that consists only of a single person haunted by bad dreams or emotions, it was quickly decided that the scene would be much more powerful by adding something or someone to do the haunting.
Although previously somewhat unknown, Melinoë has become known in popular culture and she fits perfectly, both graphically and thematically.
Final Words
The Nine of Swords represents thoughts of failure, loss of control or helplessness being magnified far beyond their size so that they occupy far more space in your mind that they deserve. So much so that there is sometimes no room left for thinking about the solution!
Often most of the problem is fear of the problem rather than the problem itself. Simply identifying the real problem and its solution quickly reveals the monster to be nothing more than a shadow created by a much smaller and less ferocious worry, mistake or doubt.
