May 9, 2010 - The Ten of Swords

The Ten of Swords is one of those cards you get whose bark is worse than its bite.  Of course that's not how it feels.  There is a definite sense of melodrama with this card.  Killing a guy with 10 swords smacks a bit of overkill and we do tend to like to go to the worse case scenario.  At least I tend to.  I am constant proof that a mind is a terrible thing to waste and it is a waste to turn as I so often do, to all the things that are wrong, to the worst case.

When the Ten of Swords comes up in a reading, you have bottomed out.  There's nowhere to go but up.  You think things can't get worse (I'm Greek so for me, things can always get worse... we're good like that).  Knowing its darkest before the dawn doesn't mean you don't fret that dark, worry it like a dog a bone.  Even knowing the sun will come, there is often little darker, sadder, more hopeless, than those bleak hours before dawn.

The Ten of Swords may also be saying that you feel like a victim, that you're bemoaning your fate, feeling powerless.  I can definitely say right now I'm definitely suffering from "why me?" Not sure how I feel, actually.  Mourning I think, the way I did years ago when my father left, that same sort of inchoate sort-of grief that comes when you have no control and are losing something precious.  Of course the dad I'm mourning is not the dad I know.  The dad I'm mourning is the father of my childhood, Sonny, turned Sunny, the center of my universe, the star I was happy to revolve around.

During my counseling training I learned the why of our relationship as my parent's marriage was disintegrating.  It's called triangulation.  Two pair to the exclusion of the third.  In my early years, that was my dad and I, leaving my mom out in the cold.  Later I'd learn just how cold those outlands were.  My dad and his new wife became the pair and I was the perpetual outsider.  But the child in me still misses that golden man.  I even found myself in my midlife in love again with sun and star, with a golden man, and I was so willing to make him the center of my galaxy.  I didn't.  It ended just the same, with him leaving, now re-married.  Funny how the history we do not understand, we are doomed to repeat.

This doesn't mean that the Ten of Swords might not herald true misfortune.  Sometimes it does, but then you know when it does.  Your mind doesn't have to fabricate swords and wounds; you feel those swords, know them, and you bleed.  I'm not sure what this card means.  Is the pain I feel from imagined swords, or real?  Not really sure but I'll keep you posted.