No Tarot Cards: The 12 Cards That Answer No

No cards

1215.4% of the deck

Strong noes

5strength 3 — clear refusal

Soft noes

0none below strength 2

There are no soft noes

That is the first thing to notice. A yes can be tentative — three yes cards sit at strength 1 — but a no never is. If a card answers no in this deck, it is at least a clear no, and five of them are strong noes.

This matters when you are tempted to rephrase the question until you get a different card. The deck is not being coy. A no is asking you to change the plan, not the wording.

Swords carry five of the twelve

The Three, Five, Eight, Nine and Ten of Swords are all noes. No other suit is close. Swords is the suit of conflict, information and the stories we tell about both, so its noes tend to be about a conversation that has gone wrong or a decision made under pressure.

The Ten of Swords is the extreme case: the worst has already happened, which is also why the card is often read as an ending rather than an ongoing threat. The no is real, and so is the fact that the next card starts after it.

The four major noes

Death, The Devil, The Tower and The Moon are the major arcana noes. None of them is literal. Death is a clean ending; The Devil is a bargain that costs more than it says; The Tower is a structure that cannot stand; The Moon is a situation you cannot see clearly enough to consent to.

If one of these appears, the practical question is not “how do I make this a yes?” but “what part of this am I still pretending is optional?”

What to do with a no

Read the condition on the card page. Then change one variable: the timing, the person, the amount, or the definition of success. A no is most useful as a design constraint. It tells you which door is closed so you stop pricing the room behind it.

If the question was about another person’s behavior, remember that the no describes the situation, not your worth. The card has no access to that.