This is a card of…

Ruin

Betrayal

Defeat

Consequences

Darkness before the dawn

“I never thought of losing, but now that it’s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life..”

-Mohammed Ali

In the Nine of Swords we saw a figure paralyzed by fear and anxiety. How to move forward with such a dread of disaster clutching at us? In the Ten we see that when we stop avoiding our fears we come face-to-face with… our fears.

The figure on the RWS card looks as though he’s had a bad day. As flippant as it might sound, at least the day is over. The sun is just beginning to light the horizon in the distance. Here in the suit of intellect the disaster may have to do with the failure of an ideology or plan to which we have dedicated a great deal of time, energy and material. We were sure we were right. We were sure our plan was foolproof. We see now we were absolutely wrong.

This card also speaks to the loss of a treasured identity- our position in society, our career, our perception of ourselves as a good spouse or an innocent victim; something we allowed to define our very selfhood has been lost or no longer holds up to scrutiny. Finding out you are wrong hurts, as does finding out you aren’t who you thought you were. It can also be liberating.

The figure on the card was stabbed in the back. Both betrayal and imagined betrayal are implied here. Looking at the many large swords it seems the betrayed might be overreacting a bit, looking at the situation as more dire and final than it needs to be. When we feel this stung, falling into self-pity is always a danger. But the sun is rising in the background, dispelling the darkness from the sky. If we look up from our sadness we may notice things are looking up.

It doesn’t look as though our poor friend on the card can be saved. Let him go and head toward that brighter horizon.