Ten of Swords

✦ Card Name

Ten of Swords

✦ Keywords

Surrender, ending a negative cycle, finding acceptance, letting go.

✦ Meaning

✦ Endings and Acceptance

All things end. It’s an unavoidable fact of life, but its inevitability doesn’t make it any easier to experience. Often, we resist endings out of fear—fear of pain, fear of struggle, fear of being alone, fear of the vast unknown on the other side of the ending. We spend volumes of mental, physical, and emotional energy trying to cling to what we have, to refuse to accept defeat, to resuscitate a dying thing. But an ending isn’t just an ending; it’s a beginning of something else, something unfamiliar, raw, and strange. The 10 of Swords welcomes us into the sweet relief of accepting our endings, the Fool’s leap of letting go.

✦ Acknowledgement

When this card appears, it wants us to acknowledge what in our life needs to end. This may be an external thing, such as a relationship, a job, a home; or an internal thing, such as an identity, a belief, a way of thinking.

✦ Choice and Release

Some say that the metaphysical death in the 10 of Swords is inevitable, but I say that it’s natural. It’s necessary. We can choose to release it with gratitude for what it has given us, with love for how we’ve grown and learned, and with a benediction for its passage. We can face the unknown beyond this ending with grace.

✦ Imagery

Our card bears a fallen bird, run through with ten pins. It lies in a puddle, which is the waters of the unconscious, with six droplets of tears for harmony on its passage. Above, the bird’s spirit rises in an egg of light, a skeleton and a fetus at once, a death and a new unknown on its way to be born.

✦ Unlabeled Symbol

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