The Dreaded 10 of Swords

What makes the 10 of Swords one of the most dreaded cards in the pack? Waite includes "pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation" in his list of divinatory meanings; Crowley writes that it is "reason divorced from reality." For him, it represents the "damping down of the Creative impulse, weakness, corruption, or mirage affecting that principle itself."

But what makes the sun ruling Gemini so disastrous? To understand, we must remind ourselves that 10's are housed in the material, tangible world. As the swords are all about logic, abstract understanding, and theory, it makes sense that they would have little positive capability in this environment. Furthermore, we must equate the sun with the truest, highest sense of self, as well as the redeeming God of creation - the principle which in Tiphareth conjoins physical man to the highest godhead in Kether, and which is a manifested reflection of that godhead. Let us also note that Gemini is a symbol of ultimate division, of two halves constantly struggling against each other to become whole. Gemini's often have "split-personalities," and can change their moods on a dime.

So now we can see the 10 of swords as representing the divine solar principle being refracted by the mercurial principle inherent in Gemini into multiple

parts. The princess of Malkuth (you and I) is unable to perceive herself as one with godhead because she has limited herself by self-imposed mental road blocks. Rather than understanding the freedom of her true self, she has confined her options in order to conform to the incorrect whims of others, and has therefore lost sense of her connection with the solar God through her very identity. Thus, the card represents the breakdown of self, the division of godhead, ultimate isolation as promised by the 3 of Swords. This is the source of suffering - the progeny of Binah/Sophia's great experiment is sadness, complete manifested separation. The card reminds us that the more we think our ways into boxes, the more closed-off we feel, and this is the antithesis to the religious experience as the mystic understands it. The colliding of the sense of "self" with another being is at the heart of the mystical experience, and in order to achieve it, we must shed our mundane, unnecessary, and repetitive thinking, and embrace the possibilities of selfhood as liberally as possible. It also neatly explains Aleister's obsession with destroying Victorianism.