Swords

Swords is the suit of blades, one of the four suits since tarot's beginnings in 15th-century Italy, where the suit was called spade. Most modern readers link it with the element air and read it as thought, words, truth, decisions and conflict, which is why the suit has a reputation for hard cards such as the Three and the Ten. It corresponds to Spades in ordinary playing cards, whose name comes from the Italian and Spanish word for sword. In Marseille-pattern decks the numbered Swords are drawn as curved interlaced blades, which makes them hard to count at a glance. See tarot suits.