Ten of Swords: tarot card meaning

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Ten of Swords upright means: Whatsoever is intimated by the design; also pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation. It is not especially a card of violent death. Reversed: Advantage, profit, success, favour, but none of these are permanent; also power and authority.

The picture

“A prostrate figure, pierced by all the swords belonging to the card.” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

Upright

Whatsoever is intimated by the design; also pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation. It is not especially a card of violent death.

Waite's additional meanings: Followed by Ace and King, imprisonment; for girl or wife, treason on the part of friends.

Reversed

Advantage, profit, success, favour, but none of these are permanent; also power and authority.

Waite's additional meanings, reversed: Victory and consequent fortune for a soldier in war.

In one line

Affliction and tears, though not, Waite says, violent death. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)

Where it sits in the deck

The Ten of Swords is the tenth card of the suit of Swords, one of the 56 Minor Arcana. The other Tens: Ten of Wands, Ten of Cups, Ten of Pentacles.

In Esbat

Esbat deals a card of the day, face down until you turn it, and holds all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. The Ten of Swords can be shared as a picture. All 78 tarot card meanings.

Sources

Meanings and picture descriptions: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), public domain, checked against the Wikisource transcription. Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, 1910, public domain. Like the app, this page records what the book says; it does not promise outcomes.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Esbat: Tarot & Book of Shadows, on Google Play

A card of the day, face down until you turn it, and all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. For Android.

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