What does Five 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: Defeat denied or brooded over; resentment, a desire for revenge, or a first step toward redemption.

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

In the Golden Dawn system Five of Swords corresponds to the sephirah Geburah, the element Air and Venus in Aquarius in astrology.

Thoth Tarot · Minor Arcana

Five of Swords — Defeat

Defeat

defeat · humiliation · loss · weakness · rout

A reflective starting point

What is Five of Swords — Defeat 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

Acknowledge the defeat without making it an identity: learn the lesson and withdraw with dignity.

At first sight

Defeat, loss, humiliation, the failure of a plan. It points to situations in which strength or intelligence are not enough and a conflict ends badly.

Within you

The mind weakened by sensitivity: the fear of conflict, or the tendency to yield for a quiet life, which leads to the very defeat you feared.

On the path

Air in Geburah, Severity, with Venus in Aquarius in the first decan: Venusian sweetness, in a cold sign, weakens the sword. Defeat is the intellect broken up by its own mildness, peace bought at the price of truth.

The shadow

Ill-dignified, it signals cruelty, pettiness, victories won by deceit, bitterness and a wish for revenge.

Reversed

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

Defeat denied or brooded over; resentment, a desire for revenge, or a first step toward redemption.

In love, work and spirit

Love. Arguments lost, wounded pride, a relationship weakened by mistrust.

Work. A failed project, conflicts that close at a loss; a need to change strategy.

Spirit. Humility as the fruit of the ego's defeat.

Correspondences

Geburah · Air · Venus in Aquarius

Crowley's note

In the Thoth deck five swords with differing, bent hilts form an inverted pentagram while the petals of the rose fall to the ground: the mental order broken up.