The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Ten of Swords

Swords, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

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

the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time

In divination

Whatsoever is intimated by the design; also pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation. It is not especially a card of violent death.

Reversed: Advantage, profit, success, favour, but none of these are permanent; also power and authority.

The library's note

A single prostrate figure lies pierced by all ten swords the card holds, and Waite closes the suit's numbered run at what looks like its plainest extremity, pain, affliction, desolation named directly. He adds one careful boundary, though, "it is not especially a card of violent death," the image standing instead for grief exhausted past any further intensity, the suit's conflict having nowhere further to go.

a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come

Doors Onward

Sources & Further Reading

  1. Waite, A. E. (1911). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Card text quoted verbatim, his punctuation kept. (Public domain.)
  2. Card described at: http://sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pktsw10.htm

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