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

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Sketchbook - Ten of Coins

Behold, the Tetractys. I wrote about it once before, in reference to its four rows of points. I apparently can't keep my mind off it -- here we are, basking in its beautiful symmetry once more.

Let's get the practical card-reading stuff out of the way first. I wanted to diagram the arduous process of refinement one cultivates while traveling through the suit of Coins. In the beginning it feels like a marvel that you're able to manifest anything concrete at all; as time passes and pressure mounts, diamond-hard points begin to emerge from the grit you started with, until finally you have access to the treasure that you hoped was there all along.

And it was there all along -- that's extremely important to remember if the product isn't quite what you expected. In this case, seeing a project through to its completion has been the most significant reward. You should be proud! But you should also know when it's time to stop polishing and move on to the next hunk of rock. Remember, the thrill is in the process of attainment, it's rarely in the actual possession. This is how empires are built.

Now for the Tetractys. In my drawing above, the ten points are connected by 21 pathways -- exactly like the qabalistic Tree of Life diagrams you see floating around out there with Tarot card associations doodled all over them. That's right, 21 pathways for 21 cards (the Fool is either unnumbered or assigned to "zero"). Sure, you could easily connect more pathways between the points on either diagram... but then that wouldn't be nearly as mystically coincidental, would it?

But that's the wonderful thing about numbers and geometric figures: you can customize them to fit almost every need. And if what you need is an elegant framework upon which to drape a complex system of symbols, then the Tetractys has got you covered! You could assign the 21 Trump cards to these 21 pathways, or you could divide them into 3 groups and embed them in the figure's 3 empty layers like fossils suspended in sediment.

Forget the Tree of Life; the Tetractys is a more beautiful and complex system by which to organize your Tarot cards. For example, it's radially symmetrical. It replicates seamlessly, illustrating both microcosm and macrocosm. It has a firm base and won't tip over easily.

Anyone who uses the qabalistic model for their card interpretations, I'd like to hear what you think about this. Whose version of the Tree do you use as a reference, and why? Which parts would you keep, and which parts would you rather throw away?

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten Of Coins

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Sketchbook - Ten of Cups

When I cut the deck and selected this card, I was 27,000 feet over the Great Plains and surrounded by sleeping grandparents.

I really felt pretty torn about what to draw here; for a while I suspected that my Nine of Cups drawing was actually better suited to the Ten, what with its hierarchical overtones and effective infrastructure. But it also seemed a bit... dry, or utilitarian, in a way that seemed unsuitable for the suit's crowning card. The Ten is supposed to seek out that line where a good thing becomes too-much-of-a-good-thing, and then plant its flag right at that edge. Surely a little more fanciful excess was required to construct a proper Ten.

I meditated on this for quite a while -- I had all the time in the world, and no in-flight movie to distract me. Eventually I came up with the idea of a castle built literally on the water. Even though this is just a jaunty little sand castle and not the full-blown citadel I originally envisioned, it seems just as improbable and magical. This is a fortress built on intangible, irrational ideals that somehow manages to stay afloat. It's an embodiment of the suspension of disbelief required to thrive in emotional, mystical, unfamiliar settings. Without that suspension, we'd never be able to answer the initial call of the Ace of Cups, and building a house inspired by it would seem like pure madness.

And maybe it is, but it's a madness which takes us somewhere, offering us temporary shelter as we travel.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten Of Cups

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Sketchbook - Ten of Wands

I brought paper to work today so I could work on a sketch if I had time -- but once I got there, I realized I'd forgotten to pick a card to work on. So I called my friend Chris, and he drew one for me, and I knew what I'd be drawing the moment I heard what it was.

I work a few days a week at a restaurant around the corner from my house. My work schedule is really wonderful for my creative life (not to mention this blog), but on the days I work, I work insanely hard for hours and hours. And while today was certainly one of those days, I stole a few moments here and there to sketch it as it happened.

The Ten of Wands is all about work and he humility it imposes, even upon the successful. Most decks seem to have taken their inspiration for this card from Pamela Coleman-Smith's version. I merely adapted its message to my actual job, showing some of the complications that I deal with from one moment to the next, or even all at once. It's a burden that I bear gladly right now because of what it allows me to do, and it's one that I've deliberately engineered, but still -- yikes. It can be physically and mentally ruinous.

The Ten card in any suit represents fulfillment of some earlier idea -- at this point, you've gone about as far as you can on the track you're on. If you stay on it you're just going to keep going in circles. Some might consider them victory laps, others might say it's a holding pattern. Some are just building up the courage to launch themselves into the next challenge, and some are just killing time and waiting for the future to reveal itself to them.

In my case it's all of the above. It's getting me where I need to go. So I'll continue to serve brunch and wipe down tables and take phone orders. I'll continue to spend that first quiet hour setting up the dining room as if I'm throwing a huge party, and to spend the seven hours after that scrambling around like a whole hill of ants. At the very least, being embroiled in all this is a constant reminder of what I originally set out to do. If I was able to pick it up in the first place, I must be strong enough to carry it just a little bit further.

PS: Our phone totally doesn't have one of those old-fashioned receivers like the one in the picture, but cordless phones aren't interesting to draw in the slightest. And the flowers are carnations, they're for the bud vases on our tables.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten Of Wands

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"...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

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"Artifacts from the years we can't remember..."

I have a real weak spot for purely autobiographical comics; there's something about them that's a little more personal than photographs, or even written journals and memoirs. When my friends Megan and TJ had their baby, it was sad for me to know how much I'd be missing out on because of the geographic distance between us. The Danger Science comics that TJ began posting to his blog have made me feel a lot closer to the action. They're just little vignettes of family life -- not really the kind of moments you'd point a camera at or tell someone about on the phone, but the kind that make up the fabric of our everyday lives. Since that's exactly the sort of thing you miss out on when you're friends with someone long-distance, I have found these updates to be hugely gratifying. It doesn't hurt that TJ has a real talent for visual storytelling (I also enjoy his ongoing comic The Konamis!, about a quartet of crime-fighting musicians).

But what I find particularly interesting about this method of storing memories is that they're going to be quite valuable to the baby in question when he grows up. Artifacts from the years we can't remember always hold a special power over us, and so do pictures of our parents when they were young. TJ's comics are the best of both worlds, providing a sort of running prequel to Jonas' own still-forming narrative. As a parent, it's a significant gift to give, and I see more and more people using the internet as a sort of a living time-capsule for these kinds of projects.

It's this aspect of TJ's work that made me think of the Ten of Cups. (See also, last cycle's King of Cups.) We're already familiar with the card as an emblem of arrival, of togetherness and success and satisfaction -- but that momentum must be carried forward, invested somehow, before it's squandered or collapses under its own weight. Everyone invests in their future happiness (and each other's) in different ways. Depending on the eye of the beholder, this card encourages new emotional, professional, or creative endeavors as a way of perpetuating the love you already feel. When the peak you've just climbed turns out to be merely the foundation for even higher hopes and grander schemes, what will you do with that discovery? Probably what you've already done in the past -- only this time you'll do it even better, and more people than ever before will benefit.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten of Cups

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"Love Is A Seller's Market..."

However pure and altruistic our intentions are at the outset, at some point we have to commit to thriving in the world, laying a foundation from which to build our own utopia.

For entrepreneur Craig Zucker, this means bottling New York City water straight from the tap and then selling it as an alternative to pricy brands that are imported from halfway around the world. He considers TAP'DNY a slightly more eco-friendly option for New Yorkers, removing fuel and transport costs from the equation; and since NYC's drinking water is among America's purest, TAP'DNY is easily on par with Dasani and other brands which just reprocess tap water from municipal water supplies. To some people Zucker's business sounds like a joke, but to others it just makes sense. Many people prefer to buy local than put money in the hands of giant international corporations. (Still others carry their own refillable bottles, but let's not get bogged down on fine points.)

I've always thought that the figures on the Ten of Cups look like they're selling something. They're a little too happy, if you know what I mean. The loving happiness of the Nine of Cups ultimately cannot be constrained to just one or two people -- it demands to be shared with the world, and so its burgeoning growth creeps into other aspects of your life. Your family, your business -- whatever is there to catch the runoff will thrive.

While the Ten of Wands andThe Ten of Swords urge you toward a completely fresh start, the Ten of Cups and the Ten of Coins urge you to consider your legacy and proceed with your enterprise, building on what you've already attain and nourishing those who depend on you. If you're unhappy, however, the Ten may be a signal that you've already reached the climax of this part of your story -- even if you stay and gut it out, it may not get any better than it already is. Keep a look out for Aces in your readings, they usually signal the way toward something new and provide the necessary burst of energy required for you to actually do something about it.

We all know this Beatles lyric: "In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make." To me it suggests that love is a seller's market -- if you've already got the capital to back up your enterprise, there's practically no risk of ending the year at a loss. Barring unforeseen catastrophes (which you are hopefully insured against), I think you're going clean up in this town. [Via]

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten Of Cups

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"All That Remains Are The Responsibilities..."

You think you have a lot to live up to? Imagine being the guy who gets to date Lois Lane after she and Superman break up. Or consider the Man of Steel himself, admired and depended on by all, but secretly succumbing to existential crises as he roams the cosmos in search of God. These are the variables in motion within Jonathan Goldstein's short story Man Not Superman, vividly illustrated on yellow Post-It Notes in black marker.

Ten is as high as it goes in the Tarot's four minor suits, and so you'd think that they would represent the very best those suits have to offer. In fact, it's the Nines that have a stranglehold on that title, and the Tens -- while certainly grandiose -- leave us with unexpected (and sometimes unwelcome) realities to stagger under. If you look back over the number cards in the suit of Wands, you see youthful energy and ambition bursting forth into the world and blazing through a series of trials, skirmishes, and victories. Along the way this energy can't help but cool off a bit, becoming tempered by experience and discipline. Which is wonderful -- and downright necessary, if one is to really learn and grow instead of vainly trying to leap from peak to peak -- but by the final card the initial thrill is gone, and all that remains are the responsibilities you've accumulated along the way.

Don't despair: in a suit as dynamic and irrepressible as the Wands, nothing stays still for very long. The same curious or enterprising spirit that gradually got you into this jam can get you out of it too. On Ginny Hunt's constantly illuminating Tarot blog 78 Notes To Self, she has this to say about the Ten of Wands:

"As a ten, this card signals that something is going to break, something will end this insanity, and if you don't choose to put some of those wands down, something will force you to. I'm always struck by the way the figure's face is buried in the stack of wands and it reminds me of someone burying their head either in the sand or up their arse, depending on the attitude. It's as if this person thinks they are the only one who can do what it is they do and the world will just collapse if they don't do it. Not. More likely he will be the one collapsing. Though the card often seems to be saying, 'Press on, you're almost there,' I see it more often showing someone putting too much on their own shoulders that causes them to lose focus on what is truly important."

Rather than groan under the pressure of trying to articulate it any better than this, I'm downright relieved to lay my own sticks down and let someone else get all the credit. Which means that now I'm free to go play outside and take a well-deserved break after a long week of writing and editing, hopefully becoming a walking target for inspiration to strike. See how easy that was? Here's hoping you can get yourself similarly unstuck on your own terms -- after all, unlike a certain Brylcreemed crime-fighter I could mention, you're only human. [Via]

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten of Wands

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"Racking Up Achievements That Border On The Unreal..."

If Serena Williams was merely a tennis star, then her victory at this weekend's Wimbledon championship (against her sister Venus) would be just another feather in her cap. But it's obvious to everyone that she's so much more than that; rather than try to blend into the quiet, WASPy world of tennis, she's turned its expectations and image inside-out at every opportunity, becoming a major celebrity and fashion icon. With their friendly rivalry and insane winning streaks, she and Venus have changed the sport forever -- people try to act normal about it, but if I ever saw her in person I'd scream like a girl at a Beatles concert, and I don't even really care for tennis.

That sort of outsized, long-term accomplishment is what the Ten of Coins is all about. The Nine has already set the pace at which your earning potential will blossom, providing pretty much everything you might need; should growth persist unchecked, you'll practically have a dynasty on your hands, rocketing beyond mere felicity and racking up achievements that border on the unreal.

If that seems impossible to attain, it's even harder to maintain. Becoming well-established means tolerating more scrutiny and responsibility. Everyone's standards for you will change; when you win, you'll win for everyone, but when you lose, everyone will feel the tremors and sell their stock. Normal family drama can become downright Shakespearean as the power dynamic shifts to accommodate your new weight. Those who can handle this kind of pressure long-term make immense personal sacrifices in order to do so, and those who aren't suited for it feel only the burden of their success, and none of the happiness.

Compared to the number Nine, there is a great round symmetry in Ten that is hard to defeat, a balance that is hard to upset -- but in the earthbound suit of Coins, that can be a liability; you need to exercise and stay flexible, lest your senses dull to the natural ebb and flow of your world and your place within it. This card challenges you to embrace good fortune when it comes, but not blindly. Examine yourself for signs of complacency, materialism, or plain old dissatisfaction. Your money, success, responsibilities should always be taking you somewhere new, so if you find yourself just running victory laps, maybe it's time to set off on a new adventure and let someone else win for a change.

(Not you though, Serena! I hope you're still knocking us out with white trench coats and Swimsuit Editions for a good long time! *swoons*)

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ten of Coins

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"...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

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Ten of Coins

For only €80 ($115) a night, your dog can bask in the comforts of Canis Resort, the first full-service luxury hotel for dogs, located just outside of Munich. If your dog prefers to lodge stateside, there's always New York City's DogSpa, where you can often see homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk mere yards from where well-bred hounds await the blow-dryer, reclining on shiny black leather sofas. It seems impossible to enjoy any success in this world without running up against the ethical dilemmas that accompany it.

The Six of Coins showed a beautifully harmonious balance of prosperity and generosity, a marriage of material success and spiritual growth. When that balance becomes tipped, as it does in the Nine of Coins, we can't help but revel in the awesome transformative potential of material gain. Ten takes a longer view, proposing the tempting notion that this kind of success may be more than a fluke -- it could become your new status quo. It's important to remember, however, that staying on top changes the way you see the world; it imposes its own limitations and perpetuates its own interests. It exchanges the flexibility of the generous mind for wealth's ability to bend all obstacles to the side. I always recall the Alchemical deck's Ten of Coins whenever I see this card in a reading -- whether success is inherently corrupting is up to each of us to decide, but it certainly helps one turn a blind eye. It's a compromise many are willing to make, because they usually don't have to sense themselves making it.

For some, this card will be the ultimate assurance of stability, security, influence, responsibility, and fulfillment -- a wonderfully assuring influence, perhaps hard-earned. It can also portend a stifling or corrupt state, however, forcing one to do battle with corruption, greed, and other forms of resistance to change. In a world where there is only so much to go around, this is only natural; I'm not here to make value judgments. Having personally known little of wealth, I'd be in a pretty pathetic place to do so! Just try to remain mindful of your humanity as you go for the gold, and hopefully you'll avoid some of the harder lessons that accomplishment teaches. At the end of the day, your dog won't care how much your portfolio is worth. [Via]

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Ten of Cups

While the Nine of Cups was a wonderful embodiment of the triumph of love over adversity, there is still work to be done before this triumph is complete. The Waite-Smith version of the Ten celebrates an ideal of familial togetherness that, in keeping with the mores of the early 20th century, stems from the union of one man and one woman. A century later, that concept has evolved and expanded, though its underlying principle of love, devotion, and fulfillment is more or less unblemished.

With the fight over Prop 8 continuing to divide communities and families, non-traditional families of all stripes have begun to come forward into public view, hoping to convince opponents' that non-traditional families can be just as happy as traditional ones. It's one of the final phases in a complete image overhaul: an attempt to modify and broaden existing ideals to show a more complete picture. This slideshow by the Courage Campaign presents a full spectrum of mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles and pets, urging viewers to reconsider the concept of "family."

Practically, this card represents a great conquest, one which transcends the personal and binds others to you. While it may be a romantic achievement, it could really be anything -- your awareness of relationships has expanded to the point where you've become innately sensitive to the connections that link you to those in your life. This can be a glad, empowering position to find oneself in, but depending on the people you're bound to, it can also be too much to bear. Whether your sensitivity to these connections affirms or hinders you, they are an incredible force to reckon with, demonstrating the awesome power of the intangible over the tangible. And remember, your ideals make for a convenient measuring stick to gauge your success and happiness, but at the end of the day it's important to remind yourself that ideals themselves have a funny (and necessary) tendency to change as you grow. [Via]

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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.

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Ten of Wands

By the time you get all the way to ten, the idealism and ambition of the suit of Wands have started to lose their charm. Success can ruin you, after all; if you blaze through challenges with optimism and vitality, you wind up taking on bigger and bigger challenges and bearing greater responsibilities. Thus, this card is often entitled "Oppression," and people have mixed feelings about drawing it. On one hand, you got everything you wanted -- on the the other hand, you now bear the weight of the world on your shoulders. This card is a handy warning to re-assess your priorities. Get a grip on your ambition before it runs away with you; distribute authority evenly so that others can help with the burden; try to rekindle the enterprising spirit that you had when you started. You don't want to become consumed by the the very fire that used to nourish you.

Your incentive is the video linked above; in "Corporate Cannibal" Grace Jones expertly personifies this ravenous and obsessive force that feeds on humanity from the inside out. When I interviewed the video's director, Nick Hooker, I was intrigued by his description of Jones as someone who has been famous for so long that she has really learned how to master her own charisma. "I've been out with her at times when she's dialed it down, and she becomes practically invisible... anonymous," Hooker told me. "And then I've seen her turn it on and turn it up, and when she does that, within 5 minutes people are suddenly starting to pay attention, and within 10 there's a crowd. After about 15 it's like, 'How are we going to get out of here?'" It's Jones' control over herself, not others, that makes her seem powerful and alluring. Remember that the next time you find yourself struggling to move mountains.

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