10 of Swords. Defeat and failure.

  The 10 of Swords is one of those cards that people dread to draw, the imagery alone is enough to frighten people away from understanding the meaning behind this card. I had been a little nervous of drawing this card, as my life usually reflects the energy of the card that is currently in play, when it arrived yesterday I immediately knew what it pertained to.
   The figure in the card has been pinned to the earth by the ten swords and his life blood pools below him. Above him dark clouds gather as he gazes sightlessly out towards the ocean before him.
   Failure, defeat and humiliation are the bywords of this card and its energy. Of course, they are not pleasant and pain is doubtless going to ensue. It the the fulfillment of a road not followed, a path ignored. This can only lead to pain, humiliation and outright failure. Each one of his thoughts has come back to destroy him and immoblise him with their weight and deadly force.
    This card can be the culmination of a series of bad or uninformed choices that eventually leads us to this point. The weight of all these choices finally brings us down and gives us no choice but to buckle under their weight. It is the end of a phase, it is a stage of completion and from it something new will emerge. The tens are always completion and as such, even though it is difficult to see in this card, presage a new beginning.
     Each of the swords is driven into the spinal column, creating a line down his back. The spine is the vessel for the energy of awakening and it shows that in order to awaken one must go through a painful initiation, on all levels.
    In my own life the symbolism of the card speaks directly to me. During the last stretch of my life I have ignored my own health and fitness, choosing to focus on other areas of my life. As a result there are deep tensions in my body that need to be worked out. In order to do this I have found a friend who is willing to work on these deep tensions in exchange for energy work of my own. He uses a technique known as the Spiral technique, which involves massaging out the stuck and calcified spots in my musculature and tendons. Regardless, there is pain involved as these spots are pressed on and straightened out. At some points the pain is very intense as I can literally feel the tense muscles coming apart and releasing their toxins. The massage actually involves me laying face down and having a blanket lain over my body similar to the pose adopted in the card. It does indeed feel as though swords are being pushed into the super tense areas.
    I understand now that in order to release this mindset I must fully release all these blockages, even though it is a very painful process. I must take greater account of my health and fitness if I am to continue in the field of health and well-being. Don't get me wrong, I am hardly unhealthy or weak, but I am certainly far from my ideal and as a result there is no way that I can advocate being physically healthy and at the peak of fitness without sounding hypocritical.
   I only arrived at this juncture by not listening to my physical needs and not keeping on top of things. There have been mitigating circumstances that have not made it easy up until this point, but I also have to accept that I did not do all that was possible. The road to recovery will be hard, painful and most likely humiliating. But if I accept this as my journey, then I can rise above it, even as I push through it.
  In the card you can see in the distance on the horizon, that there is a light creeping in, even if the current prognosis is grim. This card is a what happens when you ignore the wake-up call in an area of your life and must eventually face your own failure. Drawing this card alerts us to areas we may have ignored or given up on. It shows us that from this point progress is possible, but to do so we must go through the difficult and painful process or removing the fruits of our ignorance. These toxins have to be removed and doing so is painful as we have to see exactly where we have failed. It can serve to grant us a new level of humility, which is borne from suffering humiliation and raising ourselves above it.