5 swords

Losing the fight.
The swords cards are a hard lot to bear. We look at this card and see not only loss, but the humiliation of defeat. Notice the victor with his strange grin; he may have won, but it wasn’t a clean victory, there was something sneaky about it.

I love the image of the female boxer with the bruised eye, the loser in the fight, but also feeling lost herself. When you get this card it means you are embroiled in a no-win situation, look for another solution, because fighting won’t get you what you want.

In the Inner Child version, the boy from the previous card (the 4 of swords) has lost his companions. He has escaped, alone, to the beach, and is trying to lose himself in playing with the sea creatures, but he knows that sooner or later he has to go back on his raft and face his situation, and the longer he waits, the worse it will feel.