Is Two of Swords a yes or a no?

This card leans no. It carries obstruction, ending or delay, and in a straight yes/no draw most readers take it negatively.

The Two is stalemate maintained by refusing to look.

Blindfolded, arms crossed, two blades held in perfect balance: a peace that only holds as long as nothing moves.

Golden Dawn titled it Peace Restored, which is unusually ironic given the picture. Waite's blindfold is the addition that turned a card about balance into a card about refusal, and her crossed arms form an X over her heart: the intellect protecting her from her own feeling.

Yes/no readings are the most popular use of tarot and the one it is worst suited to. A seventy-eight card deck built to describe nuance is being asked for one bit of information, and most of what it knows is discarded in the process.

A more useful version of the same draw: read Two of Swords as what shape this takes, not whether it happens. An avoided decision. Blocked information, often self-blocked. A truce that resolves nothing.

The card's sharpest claim is that you already have enough to choose and are declining to. That is not always true and it is true more often than people want, and the card is the deck's most direct challenge on the point.

In an advice position it asks a single question: what would you have to do if you looked? The answer usually explains the blindfold.

Reversed, the lean weakens or inverts. The blindfold coming off. Information arriving, a decision finally made.

Or overwhelm as the standoff collapses, which is the version where everything that was being held apart arrives at once.

The useful reading is that the balance was costing more than it appeared to. Holding two swords level is not restful, and people rarely notice how much effort a stalemate takes until it ends.