The Spiritual Meaning of the Ten of Swords Tarot Card

The Ten of Swords tarot card is one of the most disturbing images in the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith deck. It depicts someone lying on the ground, probably dead, pierced with ten giant swords. There is a storm brewing in the dark sky, but there is a light rising in the distance. In the Modern Witch tarot deck by Lisa Sterle, the woman in the image is lying on the ground, pierced with the ten swords, but she is so busy looking at her phone she doesn’t notice.

This can be an intense and somewhat scary card to pull in a reading. But there’s more to this card than meets the eye. Let’s talk about the spiritual meaning of the Ten of Swords tarot card.

An Indication of Choice

Within the Tarot, there is the major arcana—which encompasses the big energies related to major archetypes like Death, Judgement, and the Lovers—and the minor arcana. The minor arcana is ruled by four suits: swords, wands, pentacles, and cups. They can have correspondences to major arcana cards, but they have slightly different messages and meanings. When a tarot reading is dominated by major arcana cards, there are movements of fate at play that are much bigger than the person asking the question.

A tarot reading with several minor arcana cards suggests that the answer to the question will involve a fair amount of personal choice, and that more subtle energies are at play. I often take it as an indication that the querent should remember their personal agency and power as they consider their question. The Ten of Swords is a minor arcana card, so even though it might look scary, it is still asking you about your choices—for example, to put the phone down and notice that you’re in pain so you can take the swords out!

Mental and Emotional Pain

Swords relate to the element of air and the energy of the intellect. In an ideal world, the sword is a tool of discernment, able to slice through illusion to access the truth. But as we learn about the energy of swords from the aces through the court cards, we are learning how to wield a sharp weapon without hurting ourselves in the process. So often our thoughts are indeed the source of our pain: overthinking, making assumptions, and being critical of ourselves can hurt more than whatever situation precipitated our pain.

The Ten of Swords indicates a huge amount of mental and emotional pain. This card could suggest that something really devastating has happened, pinning us to the ground in a posture of defeat, grief, and even death. It could also suggest death by a thousand paper cuts—that living in the world with all its small hurts has accumulated so much, we succumb to the weight of our thoughts about it.

Death, with the Possibility of Rebirth

This card echoes the Death card in the major arcana. In that card, we see the Grim Reaper coming to kill anyone who stands in his path—but the sun is rising in the east. Similarly, here we have succumbed to the many swords that have pierced us, but the sun is rising in the distance, and we are reminded that the night is darkest before the dawn. Both cards remind us to surrender, let go, and remember that rebirth always follows death in some way or another.

The difference, however, is that while Death is a major energy you simply cannot bargain with, the Ten of Swords reminds us that we do have some choice. When we are in pain, it can be easy to slip into numbing strategies, like scrolling social media, so we don’t have to feel the pain we are in. But there is incredible medicine in simply allowing ourselves to be in this incredible moment of pain and witness ourselves there, struggling, but ultimately not dead (yet). We can stay pinned down in the sand, or we can get up and allow ourselves to bleed.

If you’ve pulled this card, there is no need to be afraid. The great emotional pain the card speaks of has almost certainly already happened. It’s up to you now to look at how you are going to deal with this major wounding and allow for the possibility of rebirth.

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