Meaning
The 7 of Swords Tarot card offers all of the symbolism we need as a deception card. This is a card you will pull if you are feeling like someone around you is trying to get away with something or isn’t being entirely truthful with you. In relationships, it could mean another person is involved, or that the individual in question is simply not being straight with you, and isn’t going to be straight with you any time soon. At work, this card could indicate an office politics situation, where someone has gotten away with something or office politics behind your back or things of this nature. At any rate, as disappointing as this card can be to see in a reading, the deception is usually short lived. Nobody is able to carry away seven swords and get away with it. So although the party may feel smug about it at the time, it’s about to blow up in their faces.
This card often appears when you have an intuition that something just isn’t quite right about someone, and serves as a good validation to be on the watch for deceptive or avoidance behavior. This is the Tarot’s way of pointing you to someone shady in your midst. And if it’s you, be careful. Because this is a very short lived smug grin.
Symbolism
In the 7 of Swords Tarot card, we see a man leaving what appears to be a camp or festival playground. He has a sly grin on his face, and he is carrying five swords in his hand. Two swords are stuck in the ground behind him, and we get the sense that he is coming back for them in due time.
The message of this card is clear. He has gotten away with something—possibly theft of these swords—and is feeling pretty smug about it. While festivities carry on in the background in the shadowed figures in the card, he believes he has gotten away scot-free. He may have, but it won’t last for long.