THE TEN OF SWORDS, LORD OF RUIN

   Your ally sprawls face down with ten swords piercing his body, but there is no blood on the ground. The swords are positioned vertically to suggest that your ally’s ruin was orchestrated carefully and carried out by more than one person. The water behind the body is calm, the black storm clouds lifting. The sky is yellow, suggesting either dusk or dawn. Either way, the sun (associated with the higher self in Tiphareth, the sixth Emanation on the Tree of Life) is peeking through. The moment of total ruin, however, is like death, paralyzing, which suggests, on a symbolic level, the inability to move on. Even though everything is lost, a moment of calm illumination has arrived. This recalls the archetype of the Hanged Man, who is suspended upside down by the foot, a luminous glow surrounding his head, as if the suspension of the conscious mind has led to inner illumination. Both the Hanged Man and your ally in the Ten of Swords have been targeted by a group, both are totally alone, and both experience death, but no matter how horrible, death, as revealed by the Major Arcana trump of the same name, is transformation, which can occur not only on the physical level, but on the emotional, mental, and spiritual levels as well, and what eventually follows is regeneration. Both the Sun and Gemini have an influence on this level in the tenth Emanation. The sun suggests the spirit, the source, which might show through for a moment at least. The Gemini myth concerns twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, one mortal, the other immortal. When the mortal one died, Zeus formed a constellation so that mortal and immortal could be joined together.

CORRESPONDING COLOR: Citrine, olive, russet, and black, flecked with gold.

Reversed: avoidance of ruin, escaping defeat, resilience