What does Four of Swords mean reversed?

The Thoth Tarot is traditionally read without reversed cards: the reader judges from the cards around it whether a card is well or ill dignified. This is its ill-dignified or blocked reading: Rest that is forced or refused; the truce breaks, or you hide behind prudence for too long.

What are the Kabbalah and astrology correspondences of Four of Swords?

In the Golden Dawn system Four of Swords corresponds to the sephirah Chesed, the element Air and Jupiter in Libra in astrology.

Thoth Tarot · Minor Arcana

Four of Swords — Truce

Truce

truce · rest · retreat · convalescence · compromise

A reflective starting point

What is Four of Swords — Truce asking you to look at?

Meaning changes with the position, the surrounding cards and your question. Take what follows as a language, not a verdict.

Read this card in a ritual Draw it from your own deck

Upright

Stop and recover: a strategic pause makes you clearer. Accept a reasonable compromise.

At first sight

Truce, rest after the struggle, convalescence, a suspension of hostilities. It points to a period for recovering strength and reorganising ideas, often thanks to a compromise.

Within you

The mind granting itself a pause so as not to break; the wisdom of withdrawing before exhaustion, but also the temptation to mistake the truce for a final solution.

On the path

Air in Chesed, ordering Mercy, with Jupiter in Libra in the third decan: the intellect settles into agreements and conventions. Truce is an order imposed on the mind, useful but provisional, because the peace of Air comes from a compromise.

The shadow

Ill-dignified, it signals isolation, renunciation out of tiredness, conformism, agreements that hide tensions.

Reversed

In the Thoth tradition a reversed card is read through its dignity with the neighbouring cards; this is its shadow side.

Rest that is forced or refused; the truce breaks, or you hide behind prudence for too long.

In love, work and spirit

Love. A period of distance to reflect; a truce after a conflict that still needs clearing up.

Work. A pause, holidays, restructuring; union agreements or temporary compromises.

Spirit. Meditative retreat as regeneration of the mind.

Correspondences

Chesed · Air · Jupiter in Libra

Crowley's note

Crowley arranges four swords with their points converging at the centre of a rose of forty-nine petals, forming a St Andrew's cross: the social order that contains conflict.