According to The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by A.E. Waite, the Six of Swords is described as the following:
A ferryman carrying passengers in his punt to the further shore. The course is smooth, and seeing that the freight is light, it may be noted that the work is not beyond his strength.
Divinatory Meanings: journey by water, route, way, envoy, commissionary, expedient.
Reversed: Declaration, confession, publicity; one account says that it is a proposal of love.
We see a ferryman on the Six of Swords. He is pushing his boat through the water so he might deliver his huddled passengers to their destination. All three of the figures on the card are looking away from us: they are focused on the journey ahead.
This card wants us to consider ideas of moving. If a move is coming up for you, then that is the move you should be thinking of. If, however, you moved in the past but have no plans to move now, then it might be the case that you never truly finished your last move.
Making Homes Our Own
Sometimes, moves are exciting, positive things. You are going from the place you live now to an even better place—a place that you look forward to living in. But this is not always the case. There can come times in our lives when we are pushed to move because of factors outside of our control.
We might have to live in certain homes that are not ideal for us or for where we want to be in our lives. It can be especially difficult to make places like this feel like homes, but there are steps you can take to truly embrace the various homes that you will live in in your lifetime.
If this is the case for you, resist the urge to put off making the new place feel “homey” because you don’t want to be there long anyway. You don’t have to invest massive amounts of time and money to make the place feel like yours, but make sure to add some personal touches that will help you to feel prouder about listing this place among the homes of your lifetime.
Transforming spaces into homes can make a substantial difference in how you feel when you are in them, regardless of how “nice” of a place you are in.
Even if you are excited to live in a new place, you may struggle—or you may have struggled—in finishing everything you wanted to do in the move. Might you have an extra box somewhere that still needs unpacking? What about a certain window you said you would get new curtains for?
If the move is coming up for you, then try making a promise to yourself that you will go into it with the energy you need to power through until the new place is truly a home.
If the move is in your past, take some time today to walk around your space and reflect on what you have put off doing. Then, set an actionable goal for completing these tasks.
This Work Isn’t Beyond Your Strength
We may notice in the description of the Six of Swords card that the cargo on the ferryman’s boat is “light”, so it is clear “that the work is not beyond his strength.” Neither is the work you must do in moving beyond your strength.
Whether you have a move in your future or in your past, you have the abilities and the strength to change homes and make your residence the place you want it to be. Moving is more than just putting things in boxes and then carrying them from one place to the next.
In truth, moving involves taking a good, hard look at the life you have built in one place, and then envisioning how you might transform and evolve it in the next place. Today, image how you might take steps to make all of the spaces in your life into homes.
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