Been studying the 3 in tarot numerology… and something’s not adding up.
Three of Wands? Victory and expansion. Three of Cups? Celebration and joy. Three of Pentacles? Mastery and teamwork. Then Three of Swords shows up like “LOL here’s a heart with swords stabbed through it, enjoy your heartbreak.”
Started looking into the Kabbalah angle - Binah is supposed to be understanding, but also sorrow and restriction. Maybe Swords shows the dark side, while the others get the creative expansion part?
But that feels too neat. How do you all make sense of the 3 in tarot numerology when one suit breaks the pattern so hard?
23 Likes
Deepen Your Tarot Practice Beyond the Cards
Finding meaningful tarot discussions and authentic guidance can be surprisingly difficult. Discover a space where your questions are welcomed and your intuitive growth is celebrated: Start Your Journey
Mercury retrograde and the Three of Swords make sense together when you think about it. All the threes in tarot show ideas becoming reality, the energy from the twos finally manifests. Been seeing this pattern in client readings lately.
-
Three of Wands = vision becomes action.
-
Three of Cups = connection becomes celebration.
-
Three of Swords = mental clarity becomes painful truth.
The Swords fit the pattern fine. They just show the uncomfortable side of manifestation, which Mercury retrograde seems to love bringing up.
Those older deck references are fine, but symbolic meanings change more than people think.
The Three of Swords has undergone significant changes in newer decks. Many contemporary creators are incorporating imagery related to mental health and current issues. Traditional meanings still matter, but a whole layer of modern interpretation has emerged, changing how people interpret the cards.
The elements really matter here.
Cups and Pentacles (Water and Earth) are receptive, so they blend nicely with the 3’s creative force.
Wands channel it outward because that’s what Fire does.
But Swords? Air element means thought and communication. Triple that and you get stuck in your head, overthinking, analyzing everything to death. Sometimes seeing too clearly just leads to pain.
I always tell new tarot readers about the Three of Swords being this moment of mental clarity. You know how in the Two of Swords there’s that blindfold? Picture it coming off suddenly. The swords suit is all about thoughts and mental stuff.
This card is when you break away from illusions or what everyone else is thinking. That’s why it’s so different from the other threes, they’re about unity and this one’s about separation. You see things clearly, but yeah, sometimes what you see kind of sucks.
So I was doing readings at this gallery opening and someone got all four 3s. Kind of rare.
Each one seemed to represent something different in the creative process. The wands 3 was like having the vision, cups was caring about it, pentacles was doing the actual work, and swords was editing out the bad parts. Makes sense when you think about it. I use this example in my workshops now.
The chakra connections with the threes really highlight this pattern, Three of Wands hits home with the solar plexus (personal power expanding outward), Three of Cups vibrates with the heart chakra (love multiplying through connection), and Three of Pentacles grounds into the root chakra (building stable foundations together). But Three of Swords? It pierces straight through the heart chakra to create space for deeper truth, sometimes we need that sharp mental clarity to clear blocked energy before real healing can begin.
The Empress is number 3 in the Major Arcana and how that relates to triangles having three points. She carries the same creative energy as the minor 3s, though she also has connections to Binah’s sorrow. Kind of a mixed bag really.
The odd cards do seem more unpredictable than the evens. Makes sense that the 3 of Swords would follow that pattern too, even if it’s one of the harder cards to deal with.
I struggled with the sword cards for ages. Whenever I’d pull that specific one, my mind would just go blank.
Every interpretation I tried felt wrong. Like I was just repeating what the books said without understanding any of it. The swords still aren’t my favorite, but at least I can work with them now.
Yeah, I think of this sequence as pretty mental too. The Two of Swords is that stuck feeling where you’re trying to keep everything balanced by just not dealing with hard stuff. Then the Three of Swords comes in and breaks through all that (your plans and ideas get disrupted. The Four of Swords is when you need to step back and recover mentally.
Rachel Pollack talks about this in ‘Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom’. She focuses on how the Swords suit is about our thoughts and mental patterns. What do you think about how the Ace’s clarity changes through these cards?
Just wanted to mention something about the Three of Swords that I see beginners miss a lot. This card isn’t always about romantic heartbreak. I’ve seen it come up for mental overload or just being completely drained.
Pay attention to what other cards are showing up reversed too. Don’t let the imagery freak you out and make you assume the worst.
I pulled the 3 of Swords today with the crescent moon. That card always gets me, it’s just straight up about heartbreak and pain. Sometimes things just hurt.
Last month at tarot circle, we focused on how numbers work with the elements. The Three of Swords finally clicked for me… that combination of the 3’s creative energy with the Swords’ mental clarity creates those painful breakthrough moments.
Unlike the other threes that expand outward, this one tears through illusions. Hurts like hell though.
The number 3 in tarot is about things opening up and expanding.
You’ve got the push-pull of the twos behind you, and you’re moving toward something more stable. Look at the 3 of Wands, suddenly your plans are bigger, you’re looking further ahead.
The 3 of Pentacles shows teamwork clicking into place. The 3 of Cups is when a friendship becomes a friend group. With the 3 of Swords, it’s the same expansion happening, just in a painful way.
The 2 of Swords is like being emotionally frozen, that blindfolded figure with crossed arms, shutting everything out. We’ve all been there. The 3 of Swords breaks through that numbness. Yeah, it sucks. But at least you’re feeling something instead of being stuck in that frozen state.
Sometimes you need to feel the hurt before you can do anything about it.
Threes are set up like a triangle, you can go up toward joy and expansion, or down through sorrow and understanding. The Three of Swords is on that downward path. It’s reaching for the same unity as the others, just taking a different route. Meanwhile, the Three of Cups is going through celebration and connection to get to the same place. Kind of makes you think about how there’s more than one way to reach understanding.
The RWS 3 of Swords comes from the Sola Busca deck from 1491. I’ve always wondered if Pamela Colman Smith saw those cards at the British Museum and had some moment with them.
The Sola Busca is weird (it’s one of the only early decks with illustrated pip cards. Nobody really knows why it was made that way. Maybe the original artist was hiding alchemical formulas in the minor arcana, and when PCS borrowed the imagery, she mixed up the hidden meanings.
She was trying to combine Waite’s ideas with these old Italian images, plus stuff from French occultists like Wirth and Etteilla. Each borrowed image likely retains some of its original meaning, allowing for these layers of symbolism. The 3 of Swords tells multiple stories, whatever the Sola Busca meant by it, and then Waite’s take on heartbreak and painful clarity.
It’s like looking at old writing where you can still see traces of what was written before. Maybe that’s why some RWS cards feel more powerful - they’ve got centuries of mystical associations built up from all their sources.
I’ve been thinking about how the 3s show different sides of being with people. Cups and Pentacles are the fun ones, friends celebrating, people creating things together.
Then you get to Wands where someone’s staring off into the distance, already mentally checking out because something new is calling them. The 3 of Swords is rough though. That moment when you know you have to leave, even if it breaks your heart.
I’ve never liked seeing the Three of Swords with the Seven of Cups.
The heartbreak card mixed with all those illusions just makes everything murky. It reminds me of something my grandma said about not chasing after things that aren’t real when you’re already hurting. These two cards together just mess with your head.
You really need something solid to focus on when this combo shows up.
