In a spread, the Sword of Healing marks a challenge of love or healing at hand: a body to be restored, a heart to be mended, a forgiveness waiting to be performed.
— The divinatory art of the 52-card deck —
The 7 of Hearts is the healer’s blade. In the Playing Card Oracles it is the Sword of Healing, rising from the depths of the Water: the power of healing and of love — a gift to be revered, for the blade that heals, carelessly used, becomes the knife that injures.
On this card the blade of a sword emerges from the depths of the Water — the flowing Element of life and love. As with all Sevens, it represents a gift, a charm, a power to be coveted yet strictly revered.
When the Sword of Healing reveals itself within a spread, a challenge of love and/or healing is at hand. Directed properly, the cooling, nourishing Waters represented by Hearts are brought to cleanse and restore sickened body and saddened soul.
But be forewarned: sweet medicine turns to vile poison by careless use of this sword. The blade that heals becomes the knife that injures, inflicting sickness and the wounds of passion. As Laddy LaDoux’s verse on the card asks — who can say what healing is? Perhaps a path to peace; but first you must look to yourself, if you want to find release.
In a spread, the Sword of Healing marks a challenge of love or healing at hand: a body to be restored, a heart to be mended, a forgiveness waiting to be performed.
As an energy, it is medicine — literally at times: a surgeon’s blade, a treatment, a course of care. Directed well, the Waters cleanse and restore.
Its edge cuts both ways: careless handling turns medicine to poison and the healing blade into the wounding one. Wield it with the reverence all the deck’s swords demand.
Traditional cartomancy reads the 7 of Hearts warily — fickleness and broken promises in the affections.
In the Playing Card Oracles, the Sevens are the swords: a stone in the road, a challenge that turns you inward. Standing exactly in the middle of each thirteen-card suit, they are the only cards neither high nor low — and like all swords, two-edged.
In the Playing Card Oracles it is the Sword of Healing: the power of healing and of love, forgiveness, even a surgeon’s blade — with the two-edged warning that careless use inflicts the very sickness and wounds it could cure.
The Sevens are swords — implements of challenge that call forth focus and responsibility, turning the reading inward. They stand exactly mid-suit, neither high nor low, and their pips form the geomantic figures Albus from one side and Rubeus from the other: good beginnings or a warning to stop, depending on which edge is used.
It can point either way along the same blade: the power of healing when directed well, and the infliction of sickness and suffering when the sword is used carelessly. Surrounding cards and honest self-examination show which edge is active.
The full grammar of the deck — geometries, timing, and the voices of all fifty-two — lives in The Playing Card Oracles: A Source Book for Divination.