AUTHOR’S NOTE: The reversed image of the Waite-Smith 4 of Swords offers some interesting insights. The vision of an inverted sarcophagus immediately makes me think the lid is ajar and the contents might spill out. This notion leads to a couple of satirical “Hollywood moments:” 1) after Graham Chapman died, the remaining members of Monty Python did a TV show in which they brought a funeral urn on-stage, pretending that it held Chapman’s ashes, and one of them carelessly knocked it over, scattering dust across the set; and 2) there was a scene in The Big Lebowsky where The Dude and Walter were trying to sprinkle Donny’s ashes into the Pacific Ocean but the soot blew back into their faces.

A more useful reference for my purpose here is Pandora’s Box. When the coffin is overturned, a variety of inconvenient realizations can enter the matter at hand, and we must hold them at arm’s length so they don’t attempt to coax us into doing (or thinking) something we would rather not. The title of “Truce” for the Thoth version is suggestive of ways in which we might do so, but one of them isn’t denial. The flip side of “rest after struggle” (the usual upright meaning) is “ongoing unrest” and in military terms a truce is an uneasy pause in hostilities while negotiations take place. Perhaps the reversal means that reconciliation of our hopes and fears must ensue to reinstate stability (one of the hallmarks of the Fours) before we can achieve a more lasting period of peaceful recovery.

I’ve come to see all of the Fours as “reaching a plateau” but reversal tilts the landscape so the “rest stop” is no longer habitable. (It could be that someone has tipped over the Porta-Potty with the querent inside. Now there’s a disgusting thought.) If the anxiety pushes us out of our mental comfort zone, it may be impossible to stuff the psychological “vices” back into the box because the offsetting “virtues” don’t provide a big enough shoehorn. If we aren’t vigilant, the skeleton in the closet could become the demonic nightmare perched on the edge of the bed in the 9 of Swords.

In the upright orientation, whether it is a corpse lying in state as seems to be the case in the Golden Art Nouveau image or a carved figure as in the standard RWS version, the knight on the sarcophagus is mute; he is keeping secrets and holding the cover down, preventing the skeletons from creeping out and wreaking havoc. Maybe when the reclining knight has been “turned out” of the upset coffin, he can hide underneath until the danger subsides. Passive contradiction might not work, but prudent avoidance could be the answer, and reversal of this card promotes strategic retreat over stoic forbearance since the implication is that the truce won’t last.