Your Chosen Card – Ten of Swords Upright Rider Waite Deck
When upright, the Ten of Swords indicates that you have reached the end of a period of anguish and suffering and are ready to move on. You have hit bottom and things cannot get any worse. Its one of those times in your life when you come to understand that you were never promised a rose garden. Circumstances are forcing you to confront a problem that has been brewing for some time, and the only way forward is up. The rising sun in the background implies that there is hope of a solution; you are at the dawn of a new day. Release and liberation from suffering are at hand. Since Swords represent ideas and communications, problems created by misinformation can be resolved at this time.
Keywords Upright: a final ending, fresh hope, new horizons, release, liberation, the darkness before the dawn, the end of a bad situation, things cant get any worse, the end of a cycle, success but at a great price, being forced to confront a problem that has been brewing for some time, starting over, a new day is dawning.
Timing: 20 Gemini30 Gemini. Tropical, 10 June20 June. Sidereal, 6 July15 July.
Astrology: The hot dry Sun in the third decan of airy Gemini, realm of the Queen of Cups (Water of Water) and the Lovers (Gemini).
Number Symbolism: 10 – one too many, the fullness of completion, readiness to begin a new cycle.
Rider Waite: A prostrate figure, pierced by all the swords belonging to the card. Divinatory Meanings: Whatsoever is intimated by the design; also pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation. It is not especially a card of violent death; (R) advantage, profit, success, favor, but none of these are permanent; also power and authority.
When Ten of Swords is upright you can pretty much take it that life is going well but that’s when life takes us by surprise. If Ten of Swords is unclear it may help to choose a card from the Major Arcana to provide more insight into what it is Ten of Swords is trying to tell you. If you had a particular issue in mind, or want to seek clarification on something else, you can also choose again to get more guidance.
This chosen card is part of your upright card reading for Ten of Swords using cards from the Rider Waite Tarot Deck. You will find many more tarot pages that will be of great help if you need tarot card meanings. Use the search at the bottom of the page. We have some amazing tarot books for you to browse. Please see below.
Here are some snippets from a few of my favorite books
Complete Book of Tarot: The Ten of Cups (Water, cold + wet) is flanked by a Wand (Fire, hot + dry) on the left and a Sword (Air, hot + wet) on the right. The ‘dry’ of the Wand cancels the ‘wet’ of the Sword, leaving two excess ‘hots’ surrounding the central card. These two excess ‘hots’ cancel the ‘cold’ of the Ten of Cups, leaving ‘hot + wet’ in the center of the triplet. The result is that the Ten of Cups now behaves more like the Ten of Swords (hot + wet) so that the normal pleasure of the Ten of Cups becomes painful to achieve (Ten of Swords). In other words, the Ten of Cups retains its essential happy meaning but the pain and suffering of Swords (hot + wet) modifies that happiness.
Creative Tarot: Well focus our attention here on the twentieth-century postGolden Dawn, around the time that Waite and Smith were redefining the tarot for a new age.
Complete Book of Tarot: The Tarot of Marseille, the oldest known of which is by Jean Noblet in Paris around 1650.
- Do get in touch if you looked for Ten of Swords and we don’t have it listed. We would be more than happy to source the information for you. We hope you visit again for more online tarot information!
Tarot Triumphs: There is not one single ‘true’ Tarot pack because of the variations in traditional designs of the Triumphs and the branching lines of transmission into different countries and cultures. This may indeed be a good thing; the Tarot’s own ‘triumph’ is that the archetypal images on the cards are so strong that the actual designs can take a modicum of variation and still retain their magnetism. Anything genuinely mythical has the capacity to appear in a range of representations: there are many differing images of the Holy Grail or the Green Man, for instance. A good divinatory system has room for adaptation; one where every detail is legislated quickly becomes dated and rigid.2 It is fascinating to compare these differing Tarot designs and to pick out variations in detail, but more as a way of enhancing our understanding and confirming the real essence of the card, rather than pointing the way to a ‘correct’ version of Tarot.