The Wild Unknown Tarot - X Swords

Sulis

There's no colour at all on this card and no space either.

This is a very disturbing image. The top half of the card is light and the card fades to complete blackness at the bottom. At the bottom of the image a bull can just be made out, a bull pierced with 10 swords as he would be at the end of a bull fight. Most of the swords (black swords) are in his back but the final sword goes through both of his eye sockets.

Swords are about communication, thoughts, struggles and problems and I'm certainly getting problems and struggles mostly from this card but I'm sure context may change that.

So his suffering is over, it's gone on for quite a while but now it's over for him and things can start again. The sword through the eye sockets make me think that sometimes when things are bad and we feel as if it's difficult to actually think, that may be because we're actually blinded by the seeming enormity of our problems. There is an element of overkill here and one of my key phrases for the number 10 is 'too much' which fits with that.
Change is in the air, things cannot get any worse and (to coin a phrase), 'the only way is up'.
This card and most 10 Swords cards make me think of the Oscar Wilde quote 'We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars'..

You can look at this card as all doom and gloom or you can take the 'cup half full' path and say that the worst is over, suffering is done and things can now only get better. This phase is over and may not even be as bad as it seems.. Get ready for something new. 10s relate to The Wheel of Fortune and so are about change but also about not forgetting what's gone before... The start of a new phase is about to happen.

What a powerful image.
 

lark

It sure is a powerful card...when I first saw it the word melodrama came to mind...the look of drizzly rain falling, the sword through the eyes.
When I got the book that goes with the deck to my surprise it talked about melodrama too...if not for all the melodrama what would you focus on?
For some reason I just got the feeling of someone who tends to turn their suffering into their identity.
At some point you hit rock bottom with that and you have to move forward...but '"none so blind as those who will not see" and with that sword throught the eyes I feel like they are not willing to look at the problem or relationship that brought them to their knees.
 

Sulis

Yes, I got the melodrama too; that's what I meant when I said 'too much'. I like that 'there's none so blind as those who cannot see' - that's often how we feel when we're in the midst of something that seems so awful.

Thanks Lark :).
 

Mi-Shell

.....and now he is dead.
...becomes food...
...food for thought.....
Something to digest
Something to internalize
Something learned -
- the painful way.....
 

Sulis

.....and now he is dead.
...becomes food...
...food for thought.....
Something to digest
Something to internalize
Something learned -
- the painful way.....

YES definitely. Thanks for this Mi-Shell.. All of that makes sense with this card.
'Something to internalise' and 'Something learned, the painful way'...
 

a*weaver

This is such a powerful image. Recently in a reading when this card came up the querent became teary, though not from fear. It was from relief. The stricken beast, thoroughly defeated, blind from confusion, was exactly how she'd been feeling. And she was indeed ready to leave the bull to his end.

I always say this to others, but was reminded yet again, the dark & edgy cards aren't frightening. They are a necessary reflection of life's valleys... and in the course of a reading, it *can* be comforting to see that acknowledged!
 

Winterchild

X of Swords

When I first glanced through the deck I thought the eyeballs on the 9 of Swords were from this bull, but then that would be going backwards... unless that was just a small tiny microscopic image of the big picture which we dont see until Card 10. I haven't looked closer at the 9 yet but will do. I haven't read the book at all by the way, as I like to get my own impressions down first.

It is a sad card, it speaks to me of the senseless of human brutality towards animals... for the sake of fun... truly the darjest place one can go has to be using other beings for sport with litle regard. No wonder the card is so dark, it truly does look like the dark night of the soul. Not for the bull who has now been freed to pass on and fly again, but for the person who did this to the bull.

It is extemely dark because it is more of something one has done to another rather than something done to you, but the result is the same.... you fall into hell.... and so you have to find reason and foregiveness... it is very disturbing indeed... for me one of the most dark cards I have ever come across. Usually I can be rather Pollyanna like about the 9 and 10 of Swords... but this is despair, the broken dark soul....

I need to look further at the 9 of Swords and this card and the meaning.....

Forgive my ramblings here.....
 

Starshower

My deck has arrived! :)

Thank you for your kind offer, karen0205 but I bought my deck from Essjay, who also lives in England & was selling a couple of spare decks in Trading. Thanks anyway!

I'm really looking forward to getting acquainted with it over the holidays. So far - except for that nasty 10 of Swords - it looks absolutely breathtaking in its design & simplicity. Such subtle, elegant, understated beauty ... magically evocative and full of meaning for the calm, receptive imagination ...
 

Mi-Shell

10 of Swords - my post from the study group:

10 of Swords:

.....and now he is dead.
...becomes food...
...food for thought.....
Something to digest
Something to internalize
Something learned -
- the painful way.....
 

Reyan

Everybody's really hard on that 10 of swords. Hey, 10 of swords is supposed to be a little dark. Dark things (like bullfighting, for example) really exist, so it seems to me that including it in this manner is quite appropriate. The fact that its a bit disturbing means its doing its job well.