10 of Swords

  • Arcana Minor
  • Suit Swords
  • Figure on this site The heavy burden
Historical evidence

In the earliest decks

Tarot began in northern Italy in the early 15th century, and its four suits follow the Italian pattern: cups, coins, swords and batons. The curved swords and straight batons continue the older Mamluk playing-card tradition, where the swords stood for scimitars.

In the Marseille pattern, which is documented from the 17th century (the oldest surviving cards of that kind were made in Marseille in 1639), the numbered swords are not drawn as separate blades. They are abstract curves that form an almond-like shape, and odd-numbered cards add one fully drawn sword. The tens of swords and batons are an exception to the plain curves: two fully drawn objects are laid over the abstract design. So a Ten of Swords in an early Italian or Marseille deck is a pattern of ten blades, with no scene and no figure.

A picture of a person on this card appears later. The illustrated Venetian Sola Busca deck, engraved and painted around 1490 to 1491, gave every numbered card a scene, and the Rider-Waite-Smith minor cards are often said to have followed that example.

Historical evidence

The Rider-Waite-Smith card

The Rider-Waite-Smith deck was published in 1909 with Pamela Colman Smith’s drawings made for A. E. Waite. Unlike the older pip cards, its Ten of Swords carries a figure: Waite describes it as a prostrate person pierced by all the swords of the card.

Photographs of the Sola Busca deck were given to the British Museum in 1907, where Waite and Smith probably saw them, and some scholars argue that Smith drew on its scenes for her minor cards. Which particular Sola Busca card lies behind which of Smith’s designs is debated, so it should not be assumed that this card was copied from a specific earlier one.

Myth and literature · Quotation

Waite’s description

A prostrate figure, pierced by all the swords belonging to the card.

Modern interpretation

As read on this site

This is the meaning used for readings here. Using the tarot to divine is a modern practice, and the Norse figure shown for each card is this site’s own association; the tarot began as an Italian card game. A short history is on the Tarot page.

Upright

Keywords: rock bottom, betrayal, total defeat, nowhere lower to fall

Ten blades is overkill for any single blow, and that excess is the point: this is the bottom, decisively, a defeat or betrayal with nothing held back. The honest read doesn't soften the wound count. It simply adds the one true comfort available at an actual rock bottom: there's nowhere lower left to fall from here.

In general: This is the actual bottom, not a difficult patch on the way down. The only honest comfort is that the bottom doesn't go lower than this.

In love: A genuinely painful ending or betrayal in the relationship, total rather than partial. It hurts as much as it feels like it should.

In work: A defeat, loss, or betrayal at work that's complete rather than partial. There's no soft-pedaling this one; it's a real low point.

Reversed

Keywords: after rock bottom, slow recovery, the first small movement, surviving the worst

Lying face-down after the worst has already happened is its own strange resting place; the blades stopped falling some time ago, even if getting back up hasn't started yet. This card, reversed, is the slow, unglamorous beginning of recovery; not triumphant, just the first small movement after the bottom, which is sometimes the hardest movement there is.

In general: The worst has already happened and passed. What's left is the slow, quiet start of getting back up, which counts even when it doesn't feel like much.

In love: The lowest point of a painful ending has passed, and the slow, unglamorous work of recovering from it is only just beginning.

In work: Past the worst of a defeat or setback, now in the slow, undramatic early stage of rebuilding, which doesn't feel like progress yet but is.

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