Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
Someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear.
You almost had your hooks in me, didn’t you dear?
You nearly had me roped and tied.
Altar-bound, hypnotized,
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear,
“You’re a butterfly.
And butterflies are free to fly.
Fly away. High away. Bye bye.”— Elton John and Bernie Taupin
If you’re looking at today’s cards, homing in on the Ten of Swords, and thinking to yourself, “Well, this doesn’t make for a particularly up-beat reading,” — you’ve just had a taste of how Swords can play out in your experience.
Swords, by design, are sharp creatures. They are the tarot suit that holds the most negative associations. It is a reputation not entirely unearned. Unlike the organic, leafy contours of the Wands, the promise of succour and satiety of the Cups, the money-like, feminine associations brought up by the Pentacles — Swords are lean and mean. They are designed to cut; there is an association with death because they are what man has brought into battle from the time of the iron age.
If you reacted that way to the Ten of Swords, then I’d like to ask you to do something: Not to avoid it or mitigate your feelings, but to look at them. Invite them in, feel what it is like for them to cut into your consciousness. Let them go in as far as they want to. And when you have done this, you might feel something else happen; something unexpected. Beneath that swords energy that is taking up so much attention, there is something altogether… calmer, perhaps? Accepting? Really quite okay with it all? Perhaps they don’t feel as threatening as they did. Perhaps, now, they don’t feel that threatening at all.
That is the full experience of the Ten of Swords.
Swords can represent the beliefs that hold you to ransom, that seemingly plunge everything around you into darkness, that feel like the kind of pain that might be worth avoiding at all costs. However, what we tend to forget is that swords create, sustain and heal too: the blade that whittles a log into a work of art; the knife that cuts open a tough shell to reveal edible flesh inside; the sword that defends rather than attacks; the scalpel that saves lives.
The whole reading seems to me to be happening in the present. The Ten of Swords has had its moment, and it is passing. All the things you have ever believed about yourself, that you’ve told yourself about yourself, that you’ve bought about what others have told you about yourself, that you have told yourself about others: All the thoughts that have caused damage, that can still cause damage, are in a process of being released. The figure has sustained all that he needs to sustain, and he is still with us, his fingers in a mudra, his head directed towards the clearing skies.
When the Ten of Swords makes an appearance in our lives, we know that it is not going to be an easy process, and it isn’t going to be painless. However, it is transitory, and it is, in a sense, necessary: Sometimes the only way out is through. Swords precede Pentacles, and the Ten of Swords precedes the King of Swords. The King represents the potential for the highest expression in human form of the Swords suit. His sword represents the blade of insight, wisdom and clarity. Yes, it can be used in battle, but the King is not dressed for battle. His garments are flowing — a softness juxtaposed with the blade he is holding. Before the court cards, the last time we were in the company of a single sword was in the Ace of Swords. As we have moved through the Swords suit to get to the King, all the dead wood has been trimmed away: the fighting, tension, wounding, emotional pain and defeat. The sword that the King holds out to us is the only one that we need.
To the King’s left, the Knight of Pentacles sits on his horse, as if offering his pentacle to the figure in the Ten of Swords, who is lying, seemingly defeated, at his horse’s feet. The Knight is not a King, his edges are a bit rough, but of all the Knights he seems the most stable, the most reliable and solid — which is fitting because of the suit with which he is associated. Pentacles follow Swords as the final suit and the highest form of physical manifestation. We cannot hope to start to work on mastering our physical world if we haven’t first mastered our minds. When we see the King and the Knight, we are looking at an evolution from one stage of the creative process to the next.
This reading is about the process of becoming the ruler of your own domain — what form your expressions will take in the physical world. But, first, if we are to become rulers of our domains, we need to surrender everything about ourselves that we think makes us unworthy of the role. The Ten of Swords is, therefore, a key part of this process, helping us to let go of anything that no longer serves us. Our dark night of the soul is lifted by the dawn and the butterfly on the King’s throne, as yet cast in stone, can proceed to its next stage of metamorphosis.
Thank you all – what fabulous comments!
And your tarot reader is not immune from the message of this reading – or any of the readings for that matter. My Ten of Swords came over the past few days … well, it has been there for a while, but it is only now that I see the light breaking over the distant mountains. Yayyyyyyy! I am blessed, blessed, blessed to have the people in my life that I do … and that includes all of you!
The soul-ar resonance here blooms as tears of recognition and solace. Through my salt-streaked face I reflect the kaleidescope of perspectives as they reveal depth, courage, community that are the finest nourishment. Thank you all.
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah…Elton John says it all for me at the beginning (and Rob thank you so much for reminding me of EB and her poignant honesty)–
“But you almost had me again, sugar bear… (but I am a ) butterfly… free to fly… to fly away…high…high.”
For me this morning (worked last night) this is a deep, poignant, multi-layered reading. How your posts help me re-integrate week by week, and along with that, they also help me stand back and look—
and then feel “part of” through the comments from others—and through you and your far-reaching wisdom Thank you (((Sarah)))
Thanks Sarah – this is one of those readings that was so timely I will print it out to have a tangible reminder to keep with me these days!! Yesterday I spent a good part of the day wrestling with an incredible and unexpected onslaught of negative emotion, and after crying out a good portion of all that, I came to check out your reading and resonated quite strongly with it. I’ve been getting that ten of swords card in my own readings quite consistently over the last 5 years of my life, which have been beyond tumultuous. I’m so ready to let it go!! Thanks again.
Gosh! Once again you describe exactly where I’m at, dear Sarah. Those swords are damned painful, but as you say, the only way out is through, and “to surrender everything about ourselves that we think makes us unworthy of the role”. Thanks so much for this, Sarah – it has taken away some of the heaviness of this period and helped me face it more lightly. And thanks Rob for the stunning and apt Elizabeth Bishop poem. xxx
Mmm. Amen to Rob44’s salient share… from a lady just on the brink of letting go.
***sigh***
rob44, thank you for that. i love elizabeth bishop and somehow (hhmmmm…) had forgotten about this one, so brilliant in its quiet pain masquerading as casual ease, given away only in the last line; that last moment of attachment before she surrenders…
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
~ Elizabeth Bishop
Hi Sarah, I love your description of the 10 of Swords. Thanks for this and the context of the reading too! Really lovely.
Last week I had the King of Swords in my future, this week I pulled the Knight of Pentacles in my present. I’ve also pulled cards from another personal (not Tarot) deck that had the words “release” and “integrity”. Further, I’ve been seeing an acupuncturist to help with some stuff – just had a laugh because of Maria’s comment! 🙂 So, although you read this as the present moment, I also see a progression for myself. I personally like the 10 of Swords. I’m not sure I’ve had the experience of it being a continuation of a painful process, rather the ending of it. It differs from the others in that its a clear signal of the end of oppression, rather than being in the midst of it (like the 5, 8 or 9). It’s clear and direct. But yes, as you suggest, we still need to get up again, and the “resurrection” is hard esp when we’re tired from this journey. But it’s a release and so I’m comforted by that.
(btw, my future card this week is the 6 of Wands! Woot woot!)
Cheers Sarah!
Hugging Scorpio
I’m so glad you gave this rich interpretation of 10 swords. I read somewhere to see it as an acupuncture treatment, along the meridians…and have felt that same release you write about. Thanks!