“I woke up this morning
And I got myself a beer.
The future’s uncertain
And the end is always near.”
– from Roadhouse Blues by The Doors

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In my recent essay on the Minor Arcana of the suit of Swords, I mentioned that the 9 and 10 of Swords taken together could be construed as meaning the “death of a dream.” Thinking about this a bit further, I realized that the 7 of Swords represents the first step away from the harmonious mental equilibrium of the 6 of Swords, a departure that signals the beginning of a downward spiral toward the deep, dark hole portrayed by the 10 of Swords. I decided to write an essay about it, using the Thoth model with its titles of Futility (7 of Swords); Interference (8 of Swords); Cruelty (9 of Swords) and Ruin (10 of Swords) that illustrate my point much more vividly than the comparable cards of the Waite-Smith deck.

The drama opens with the 7 of Swords and the urge to give up, but the interference posed by the 8 of Swords makes even the desire to escape difficult to pull off, implying that there is no such thing as a “clean getaway.” The 9 of Swords seems to be holding the victim at knife-point while sadistically poking and prodding at tender spots on the psychic anatomy, and the 10 of Swords completes the demoralizing take-down with utter finality. The question then becomes “Where do we go from here? What is the recovery plan?”

Much has been made of the fact that dawn seems to be breaking on the distant horizon in the RWS 10 of Swords (nobody proposes that it might instead be showing sundown with the dark of night still to come, although I’ve often thought this and the Thoth image seems to bear it out). The usual interpretation is that the worst is over and the situation can only get better, but the preceding three cards make it abundantly clear that circumstances will become decidedly less pleasant before they start to improve. (Another cynical notion I’ve entertained is that this putative sunrise will only throw the dismal scene into sharp focus with the coming of daylight while delivering no relief.) However, there is no hint in either the RWS or the Thoth version of the 10 of Swords regarding what this passage through darkness (and perhaps death, figurative or literal) in search of redemption might entail. Neither card portrays much hope for the future.

In his book Tarot Master Class, Paul Fenton-Smith suggests pulling another card and placing it next to the 10 of Swords to reveal what I call “the rest of the story” as in “What might become of the matter after the unhappy ending?” The expectation is that the supplemental card will be of a more favorable nature, showing a “way out.” But I’ve never considered trying to redeem the 10 of Swords in this way and have taken a different path.

Along with many other tarot writers, Fenton-Smith believes that the Ten of a suit reverts to the Ace of the same suit for its next go at resolution, implying that the progression of the cards is circular like an ouroboros serpent with its tail in its mouth. The argument is apparently that nothing was learned during the previous cycle so it must be repeated in whole or in part.

My own assumption, which I discovered not long ago is shared by Tarot de Marseille author Alejandro Jodorowsky, is that the flow of the suits takes the form of a spiral, not a circular plane, with the Ten of a suit segueing into the next phase of elemental advancement in the Ace of the following suit, offering growth potential rather than precipitating a reboot of earlier conditions. Despite the observation of George Santayana that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” I can see no reason to assume that retracing our steps with that warning in mind is going to produce any kind of salvation. As the saying goes, doing the same thing over-and-over and expecting a different result is one definition of insanity.

My favorite instance of this alternate take – which I’ve used as an example in more than one previous essay – occurred in a reading for a man who was undergoing a devastating “scorched earth” kind of divorce. As you probably guessed, the 10 of Swords came up as the outcome card of his Celtic Cross, with the 10 of Cups reversed in the “Recent Past” position presaging the “death” of his romantic dream. He acknowledged that this scenario precisely captured his current status, and wanted to know about his prospects for improvement. Instead of pulling more cards, I told him that the 10 of Swords gives way to the Ace of Pentacles, signifying a new field that is ready for plowing, sowing and cultivation, and that he should be prepared to take advantage of it. He left with an upbeat attitude, confident that the 10 of Swords represented the “last gasp” of his woes and not a need to continue agonizing over them.

On the subject of death prediction in general, I’m intrigued by Fenton-Smith’s opinion that, while the 10 of Swords on its own can conceivably indicate that something important must end to make way for something new, this is likely to signify “death” only when it appears “in combination with a minimum of three other cards” from among the following: Death itself, the Tower, the Three of Swords, the World, Judgement, the Six of Swords and the “blank card.” This emulates the premise of playing-card divination that the Ace of Spades (its formal “death” card) only conveys physical demise when accompanied by another strongly negative card like the 7 of Spades.

The mention of an inimical blank card seems to point to the fact that at one time a printer’s run of 78 tarot cards was rendered on two sheets of forty cards each, yielding two extra cards that were often left blank for buyers to do with as they chose. As a graphic artist, I occasionally turned them into personal Significator cards, but I’m thinking that it might be revealing to include them in the shuffle and pull as a “neutralizing” agency that abstains from judgment and bumps the matter up to a higher court. In this instance I might pull another card or two to suggest the eventual verdict that could come out of this deferral. It’s just a random thought but it might lead somewhere.