When I did my annual reading at Samhain, the Card I drew for the sign of Sagittarius was the 10 of Swords, possibly the least auspicious card in the deck.\u00a0 When I asked \u201chow do I fix this?\u201d I drew the 7 of Cups.\u00a0 The worst possible reading for these cards goes something like, \u201cYour life is falling apart and there\u2019s nothing you can do about it, so just pretend it isn\u2019t happening.\u201d\u00a0 The 10 of Swords also appeared in my annual reading as an underlying theme, and in my last full moon reading as the card for the 9th House.<\/p>\n
The 10 of Swords is most often understood as a card about things falling apart.\u00a0 It is a card of death, dismemberment, and betrayal.\u00a0 And endings.\u00a0 Especially endings.\u00a0 Anthony Lewis\u2019 Tarot Plain and Simple<\/em> offers numerous keywords.\u00a0 First and foremost he describes the 10 of Swords as \u201cStabbed in the back.\u201d and \u201cThe end of a cycle.\u201d\u00a0 But as you dig into the keywords it gets a little more interesting.\u00a0 There are of course the expected tragedies: ruin; failure; defeat; separation; pain.\u00a0 There are also some that are a great deal more helpful to me in the moment: a decisive rupture; a forced change; an emotional cut off; a decision that alters your life; possible travel.\u00a0 His interpretation of the card\u2019s \u201csituation and advise\u201d in in respect to the card is more helpful still: your plans are not working out; you may be feeling emotionally cut off; something has ended that may still concern you; a situation or relationship is coming to its irrevocable end, and you may be feeling on the threshold of depression because of your loss.<\/p>\n Then we get to the fun part.\u00a0 I don\u2019t do reversed cards, but that doesn\u2019t make those potential meanings go away: The worst is over; the end of a cycle and a new beginning.\u00a0 Emerging from a period of emotional turmoil, hurt, and sadness.\u00a0 The worst is over and your problems are beginning to resolve.<\/p>\n And while the Robin Wood deck doesn\u2019t carry the Crowley meanings heavily, I think some of them are good to keep in mind: excessive reliance on the \u201crational\u201d mind; collapse of unstable ideas and intellectual constructs; destruction of paradigms.<\/p>\n At first glance the 7 of Cups is an odd solution for anything: Lack of focus; a sense of confusion.\u00a0 If I were to choose two words that describe my understanding of this card in the Robin Wood deck it would be \u201cdelusion\u201d and \u201cdistraction\u201d.\u00a0 But looking deeper, there are some very helpful things going on here: emotion dominating rational thought (a particularly good counter to 10S); altered states; visions; significant dreams; psychic impressions.\u00a0 The card talks about making difficult, even impossible choices.\u00a0 Again, noting the \u201creversed\u201d meanings: the fog lifts.<\/p>\n So I think I understand my 10 of Swords.\u00a0 My struggles with my ceremonial experiment have definitely been a major factor so far this \u201cmonth\u201d, and with my recent decision to slow that down and consolidate what I\u2019ve already learned, I expect they will continue to do so\u2014for the rest of the month, even the rest of the year.\u00a0 I have also become disenchanted with the roadmap I originally chose for that program of study.\u00a0 So we see the sudden stop, and particularly see the meaning of the 10S in my 9th House at the moon and (possibly) as an underlying theme for the year.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also been trapped in the overly-cerebral world of academia-as-the-semester-ends, leaving my creative mind battered and neglected.\u00a0 And there are definitely some decisions that I\u2019ve been putting off to the point where those decisions might just be made for me.<\/p>\n The 7 of Cups is a solid solution for many of these problems: magic, particularly dreams and visionary work.\u00a0 And I need to figure out what, exactly, it is that I want, and put that decision into action before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I did my annual reading at Samhain, the Card I drew for the sign of Sagittarius was the 10 of Swords, possibly the least auspicious card in the deck.\u00a0 When I asked \u201chow do I fix this?\u201d I drew the 7 of Cups.\u00a0 The worst possible reading for these cards goes something like, \u201cYour … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-P","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}