Ten of Swords
Camlann
Fortune Cookie: What is the cycle that is completed? What is the world that should be allowed to fall away, or even to die? What is the beautiful new world to be born from it? How do I begin to create that world, for myself and those I love − for the highest and best of all − today?
Sigh.
This card last turned for us in early October. I know it can be perceived as a real toughie. I mean, just LOOK at the thing.
But work with me. It’s really a superb card. And, as one or two of you may remember from last time it showed up, I have my own divergent take on it. [What ELSE is new?]
Camlann, the image in this card, is the place and thus name of the final battle fought by Arthur and his knights. It’s the battle at which Arthur took his fatal wounds − or, the wounds that caused him to be spirited away to Avalon.
In any case, it’s the battle that (at least according to most opinion) saw the demise of the Round Table, the end of the Pendragon kings and the fall of Camelot.
Most readers see the Ten of Swords as a card of sadness, pain, affliction and desolation. [Charming! PERFECT for a Tuesday with no major drinking holiday in sight!]
Even Anna-Marie Ferguson, writing of her Legend deck, sees it as betokening troubles, conflict, a showdown, or perhaps the climax and end of a chapter. That last one in particular isn’t necessarily bad, y’know.
When this card turns up for a client, I begin by reminding them of what tens mean to me:
Tens in any Tarot deck betoken the end of one cycle and the beginning of another, or even the end of one way of life and the beginning of another.
So, if I were reading for you today and this card came up, I’d ask:
How do the things you have been experiencing – and more importantly, how do the things you have begun to long for in life just now – represent a strong message to you that you must allow yourself to
acknowledge the end of a cycle
and own the great potential for you
to move into something wonderful and powerful and new?
How can you keep that in front of you not only today, but for some time [like the next few months, at least, fer example] to come?
Then I’d say
Beyond that general information about cycles, I believe the Ten of Swords says in no uncertain terms,
You! You! You!
Yes!! You!!!
At this moment, I require of you some courage and faith.
It is time to allow the old world − the world as you know it, your typical, day to day world − to die, in order that a beautiful new world may be born from it.
Yeah, it requires some courage, all right.
But remember the promise: “a beautiful new world to be born from it.” This is in fact a hopeful card.
In following up with clients for whom this card is prominent in a reading, my sense has become that the changes they will need to make usually begin with a kind of ego death: a realization that the direction they have been firmly, even fanatically committed to really no longer serves them.
That does NOT mean they are required to throw everything up in the air and rush off in a direction wholly opposite to that which they have known – or dash off in no intelligible direction at all.
It does mean that they must begin by asking themselves – “What if?”
What if this path HAS taken me as far as it was meant to go? And what if that’s a good thing? What if this potential great change is a perfectly natural evolution?
What if I stand at the birthing place of beautiful new opportunities, beautiful new worlds? What if I let myself fantasize about what I would wish them to be?
What would I wish them to be? How would I wish to pursue them (for the highest and best, of course)? What would I do to begin?
And of course:
What are the baby steps I can take to begin that today?
What is the cycle that is completed? What is the world that should be allowed to fall away? What is the beautiful new world to be born from it? How do I begin to create that world, for myself and those I love − for the highest and best of all − today?
Bright blessings, courage, hope and beautiful dreams!
Quote for the Day: We all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don’t to make it all bearable. ~ Neil Gaiman
Today’s Waethyr: Frogging great billows of snowdrops, rampant squirrels, bluejays and tufted titmouses. It is a Tuesday in February, after all.
On This Date: 1937 – Initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman’s Arrowbile.
Shamanspath's Weblog 