Sketchbook - Ten of Swords

I don't know what led me to this drawing. Perhaps I was inspired by the lone moth in the Ace of Cups I drew many weeks ago, a free creature enslaved by its desire for illumination. Perhaps it was the Puma's Moth King sneakers, a limited run which apparently I'm a year late in discovering, and which I'll bitterly have to make do without. Perhaps it was this month's BPAL's new series of fragrances based on moths and butterflies (scroll down). These are limited edition as well, but I guarantee you I'll be smelling like the "Great Grey Witch" for many months to come.

Partly I wanted to make a version of this card that effectively communicated its meanings without resorting to the rather strident traditional imagery. And what are those meanings? Funny you should ask, as this week I added a label to the site which gives you three basic meanings for each card (for a particular reading, just choose a card from the sidebar). The Ten of Swords entry says:

1. Surrender
2. Undisciplined thought
3. Failure of a plan or project.

So there it is. At a certain point things become get so intense that there's nothing left to do but quit struggling and face the facts -- you're pinned. Whether the cause of the derail is natural or unnatural, personal or professional, this is totally irrelevant and you will gain no peace of mind from twisting about trying to understand the significance of it from your current position.

The Ten isn't pure doom and gloom -- just as every cheerful card carries its own warnings, every "dark" card contains the key to its own shackles. In this case you are urged to cultivate stillness, reflection, and humility, in hopes that you will actually recognize your next big idea when you see it, and follow it out of darkness into the light.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten Of Swords

Summary only...

"...A Price For Human Progress."

There's this video that people keep forwarding to me that shows the Manhattan Bridge (which is an suspension bridge, after all) swaying gently as the subway runs back and forth across it:

The video is usually accompanied by a degree of semi-panicked goggling as people speculate whether that's actually an okay thing for a bridge to be doing. Short answer: it is, at least for now. And chances are that when something really is wrong, you'll know in a hurry.

Take for example the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which collapsed into the Puget Sound less than a year after its completion. You want spine-tingling documentation? At the time of the disaster, a local camera store owner managed to capture footage that makes the Manhattan Bridge thing look quite harmless:


There were no human casualties from the Tacoma Bridge collapse, though there was a dog trapped in that car you see, and it was unable to be rescued before everything fell apart. The video is hypnotic, I've been watching it all day. It evokes a very complex emotional response, something right out of a terrible dream -- one restated beautifully in Gary Peterson's pen and ink drawing, excerpted in the card above.

The event was a failure on a grand scale, and it wound up changing the way all future bridges would be built. But standing and watching that day -- as you can see people doing at the beginning of the video -- I imagine everyone must have felt a profound sense of wonder and vulnerability. All of that money, all of that hard work and scientific derring-do, blown out of the sky by a little bit of wind. Just the wind, that's all, triggering a little-understood principle called "aeroelastic flutter". Scratch any large-scale disaster, however, and you usually find a purely human failing just beneath the surface -- in this case, consultants had replaced the original plans with a speculative design that had cut costs nearly in half.

In drawing allusions to the Ten of Swords, I freely confess that I'm just cribbing from Wikipedia by including this quote by Othmar Ammann:

"The Tacoma Narrows bridge failure has given us invaluable information...It has shown [that] every new structure [that] projects into new fields of magnitude involves new problems for the solution of which neither theory nor practical experience furnish an adequate guide. It is then that we must rely largely on judgement and if, as a result, errors, or failures occur, we must accept them as a price for human progress."

That's cold comfort if it's your car or dog or peace of mind that's left to undulate in the breeze, but I can't think of any path through life that doesn't require each of us to occasionally pay this price. We don't always know what is happening or who is to blame -- the ground is literally dropping out from under us, we don't have the time or the presence of mind to wonder whether it's the inclined cable-stays or the eight-foot-deep plate girders that are causing the problem. It's only after, if we survive, that we find out. It reminds me of that Portia Nelson poem that Buddhists and AA'ers are always quoting:

1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost...
I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...it's a habit
My eyes are open; I know where I am;
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.
[Via]

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten Of Swords

Summary only...

"...The Revelation That Arrives At The Instant Of Defeat."

Sorry to do this to you. I personally tend to avoid thinking about this card, and am always hoping it won't come up in readings, but it's included in the deck for a reason and is certainly worth examining on many levels. The imagery in this post is a bit graphic, but I can't help feeling that Pamela Coleman-Smith would approve.

The instant I heard the news about Spanish matador Israel Lancho suffering a nearly fatal loss in the ring, I thought of this card; that may sound callous, but it's just the way my mind sorts information. The story and the gruesomely compelling photos and video that accompany it are intensely symbolic (by design, considering the history of the sport) and provide our imagination with endless footholds for climbing all over it. Our reactions to these sorts of things are difficult to predict, control, or understand.

I consider the Lancho incident, like all bullfighting, to be a fundamentally ugly spectacle. It's a game between a beast driven mad with pain and rage and a human being at his physical and mental peak. For the man it is sport, but for the animal it is war. Without an element of genuine danger, the man's victory means nothing, so rooting for the man is practically identical to rooting for the bull. The bull is the one variable in an otherwise meticulously controlled environment, and even his power as a variable is purely symbolic; when the bull "wins" -- as the bull who gored Lancho arguably did -- he is killed afterwards anyway.

It isn't the violence of Lancho's setback that connects him to the Ten of Swords. Rather, it's the revelation that arrives at the instant of defeat, which I can't help imagining that he experienced rather profoundly at the moment he was thrown clear from that horrible horn. As we experience life's challenges, we begin custom-tailoring our identities in hopes of becoming impervious; we try to make ourselves hard. You could see the entire suit of Swords as a gradual loss of flexibility. We start off with a clear, open mind, but after suffering an intense hardship, we gauge our potential for success on our ability to withstand future hardships, and we gradually forget how to predict, avoid, and forgive them.

This sets a person up for a painful comeuppance: by cultivating a harm-or-be-harmed mentality, you will unconsciously begin gravitating toward situations where these are the only likely outcomes. Confidence blossoms into pride, which ferments and becomes hubris. It is only when you finally experience an unequivocal loss that you see the corner you've been painting yourself into all along. The Ten of Swords depicts both that loss and the realization that follows. If you look closely at the Coleman-Smith image above, note the felled figure's hand flashing the same signal that the Hierophant uses, "distinguishing between the manifest and concealed parts of the doctrine" (in words of Arthur Edward Waite). This weak gesture is the figure's way of communicating the newfound personal enlightenment which is a byproduct of his suffering.

Drawing this card isn't a curse, it's both a warning and a reminder from the powers that be. A warning, in the sense that you may be softer and more susceptible to harm or criticism than you ever might imagine, and a reminder that there is light in the dark, that pain and loss are subjective and can be transcended if you accept the reality of your situation. The card describes our worst fears, but meditating on it may help you avoid the most dire consequences. I prefer to think of Lancho's near-death experience in the bullfighting ring as an opportunity for him to internalize -- okay, bad word choice -- to fully reconsider his role in this dangerous, illogical, inhumane pasttime. I wish him a speedy recovery, and a new career, in that order!

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten of Swords

Summary only...

Ten of Swords

1. Surrender
2. Undisciplined thought
3. Failure of a plan or project.

-- David Allen Hulse, The Western Mysteries

Summary only...

Ten of Swords

Yes, it's come to this. I've already knocked out all of the other big scary cards that most people hate to see come up in a reading -- and for the most part I've offered explanations that prove them to be necessary (and often, welcome) phases in one's personal growth and development. But sometimes nasty, traumatic events occur for no apparent reason, and these times are particularly challenging because they shatter our logic and and threaten to erase the notion that progress is even attainable. "What did I do to deserve this?" one might ask. "Nothing," hisses the Ten of Swords in reply, "and that's the point."

Drawing this card doesn't guarantee catastrophe -- but it warns of the possibility. It could also indicate a situation which has reached its nadir or isn't salvageable, and this actually might come of a relief: if you can bring yourself to accept it and admit failure, then you can just move on instead of continuing to struggle. The figure we usually see on this card is prostrate, completely resigned to his or her fate. And maybe that's what makes this card so threatening when we see it in a reading -- we tend to consider surrender as a last resort, even if we're fighting a battle that we suspect can't be won.

If you want to avoid this sort of disaster to begin with, then you need to start paying serious attention to the signs in your life that point toward reason and safety. At least that way you'll know you did the best you could, and you can move on blamelessly if tragedy still finds a way to strike. Do you know why stick figures are used on caution signs all around the world? It's not just a matter of making the stencil-cutter's job easier; it's because of how easy it is for us to psychologically project ourselves onto a completely featureless figure. Once our imagination has been triggered, we're more likely to take the sign seriously. Maybe once your own imagination has been triggered by seeing the Ten of Swords in a reading, you'll be similarly prone to fits of self-preservation and acceptance.

Summary only...