The Tens ~ Part I

I've been getting tens more than usual lately in spreads I do for myself. This morning I drew the 10 Wands and the 10 Swords in the same spread, and in an earlier spread the 10 Pentacles. So I got to thinking about tens. They're a bit different than the single digit pip cards. The ten is, at the same time, a ten and a one. It contains within it an ending and a beginning. Not to minimize the number ten, but I tend to think of them as the "pit stop." A place you arrive at while you're waiting to go on to something else, and I also think of the tens as just a bit too much of either a good or a bad thing.

In the Rider Waite standard decks the passive suits of Cups and Pentacles seem to fare much better at the ten level than do the active suits of Wands and Swords. I've never really been comfortable with this happily ever after happy endings, but I'm also not comfortable with the utter ruin depticted in the 10 Swords. The 10 of Wands is the only ten I've really been able to accept. 

It is the Bright Ideas Deck which solved this problem for me by presenting a way of looking at the tens with some consistency, showing how too much of anything can become uncomfortable and out of balance.

10 of Wands

Here both decks have pretty much the same perspective.

The Golden Dawn title for this card is Oppression and the image in the Universal Waite certainly depicts this idea well. It generally means someone who has too much to do and is carrying a heavy load.  Anthony Louis titles it The burdens of success.

In the Bright Ideas Deck the same idea is depicted in more modern imagery. The title of the card is Exhaustion. A few of the key phrases for this card are: "admitting when you're overwhelmed, understanding when enough is enough, taking responsibility for regulating your own workload and schedule."  Reversed it cautions against, "feeling chained to your work, allowing yourself to become exhausted, sloppiness due to weariness, allowing others to overburden you."

The 10 of Wands can represent someone who has too much on their plate because they are holding on too tight and need to learn to delegate; someone who is at the age of retirement and doesn't want to let go; or a situation where others are expecting too much and some boundaries need to be set.

10 of Swords

Well! These two depict very different situations indeed. The Golden Dawn title for the 10 of Swords is Ruin and the idea is well depicted in the Rider Waite card; perhaps even a bit overdone, but overdone is in keeping with the tens in general.  Following the imagery in the Rider Waite 9 of Swords, the "sleepless nights" card, this card seems to represent the result which follows if those issues were left unresolved.

In the Bright Ideas Deck the title is Obsession. Since Swords are the mental suit, I think the Bright Ideas deck gives us a very good modern image of the essence of the card.  Bright Ideas key phrases are "attention to detail, tweaking, recognizing when it's time to move on or cool off, deliberately trying to transcend the way you normally approach a situation."  Reversed the card cautions against, "endless analysis, second guessing, mistaking intensity for insight, destructive criticism, deliberation as a substitution for action."

I usually see the card as over-examination, over-analysis, and unproductive intellectualizing.  It's a mental state I'm quite familiar with, in fact.  When I find myself in it, it's time for me to stop thinking and and go do something, preferably something grounding like taking a walk and getting some fresh air; having something to eat also helps..  However, I've also seen the 10 of Swords represent a difficult ending to something that failed, so I keep that interpretation in mind.  It just seems to me that far more often the card represents some form of mental obsession or mental exhaustion than it does utter ruin.

In the next post I'll look at the differences in the Rider Waite and the Bright Ideas decks of the 10 of Cups and the 10 of Pentacles.

Illustrations here are from the Universal Waite Deck and the Bright Ideas Deck.

Quote from Tarot Plain and Simple by Anthony Louis.