The Ten of Swords is like a record scratch interrupting a beloved song. When it appears in a reading, people notice, and often with a healthy dose of fear and trepidation. But if there’s anything I’ve learned in (*gasp*) over twenty years reading the cards, it’s that they all unfurl on a wide spectrum. The Tower doesn’t always mean imminent destruction. The Ten of Swords doesn’t always mean intense or life-altering suffering. Still, it always hurts.
This morning, as I sat trying to savor my coffee in the indeterminate minutes before my son woke up, I noticed a painful feeling arrive in my mind. As is my custom, I started poking and prodding it with frustration and suspicion - a sword clashing on another sword - why was I feeling this way?? Another morning marred by suffering!
Maybe it’s the parental exhaustion, maybe it’s the new moon in Pisces tomorrow, or maybe something just clicked into place with this week’s forecast. Regardless, part of me decided to make a slight shift: What if I welcomed this feeling? My initial reaction was, to put it plainly, rude. Just shoving it aside like that! There is a lot going on right now. Maybe that feeling was an invitation to extend some grace and love towards myself.
Of course, these are all themes I touched on in the weekly forecast, but you probably can relate with how it’s easy to articulate something and far more difficult to integrate it into your actual experience. This is one thing I like about tarot; it gives you insights, laid out neatly in card form, that you can then practice applying to your everyday life.
So, this morning as I sat bleary-eyed on my couch in a comical set of mismatched pajamas, I contemplated the Ten of Swords with new appreciation. When you find yourself face-down on the shores of life, stuck with ten swords, it certainly doesn’t help to add more to the pile. Fighting your feelings only adds to the pain. And I also thought about how those swords ended up there in the first place: running away from sharp edges only exposes us further. We may be able to run with a few swords, but given time the load becomes too much to bear and we collapse.
It’s easy to think of emotional overwhelm, suffering, or injury as failure, but in the spirit of tarot’s tens (conclusive endings that contain a new beginning, already unfurling) these states are also generative - invitations that we must begin a new chapter or approach. For me, it’s realizing when I’ve been injured, and welcoming that emotion as a messenger bearing important news. I need help, and I certainly don’t want to end up as a human pincushion in the future - how can I be gentle with myself, change my framing, or ask for support from others? Seeing a Ten of Swords moment as a gift of wisdom from the self and then doing something about it - that’s the sliver of dawn’s light rising above a dark and painful scene.