What does Ten of Swords mean reversed?

The Thoth Tarot is traditionally read without reversed cards: the reader judges from the cards around it whether a card is well or ill dignified. This is its ill-dignified or blocked reading: The worst is over and the climb begins; or resistance to recognising an ending that has already happened.

What are the Kabbalah and astrology correspondences of Ten of Swords?

In the Golden Dawn system Ten of Swords corresponds to the sephirah Malkuth, the element Air and Sun in Gemini in astrology.

Thoth Tarot · Minor Arcana

Ten of Swords — Ruin

Ruin

ruin · ending · disintegration · collapse · liberation

A reflective starting point

What is Ten of Swords — Ruin asking you to look at?

Meaning changes with the position, the surrounding cards and your question. Take what follows as a language, not a verdict.

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Upright

Something has ended for good: accept it, because only after the end can rebuilding begin.

At first sight

Ruin, a painful end, the collapse of a plan or a situation. It points to a clean conclusion which, once the bottom has been touched, leaves room only for rebuilding.

Within you

The mind which, pushing reasoning to the extreme, destroys what it had built; the end of illusions and defence strategies.

On the path

Air in Malkuth, with the Sun in Gemini in the third decan: sunlight fragmented by the dual mind. Ruin is the intellect cut off from its source, reason which, left to itself, breaks down every harmony into chaos.

The shadow

Ill-dignified, it signals disaster, despair, blind destruction, relentlessness.

Reversed

In the Thoth tradition a reversed card is read through its dignity with the neighbouring cards; this is its shadow side.

The worst is over and the climb begins; or resistance to recognising an ending that has already happened.

In love, work and spirit

Love. A breakup, the end of a bond; a need to close in order to heal.

Work. Failure, the closing of a project, loss; time to start again on new foundations.

Spirit. The ruin of the mental ego as a prelude to a higher understanding.

Correspondences

Malkuth · Air · Sun in Gemini

Crowley's note

Crowley arranges ten swords according to the sephiroth of the Tree: the hilts occupy the places of the sephiroth, and the sword of Tiphareth, the heart, is broken by the others, beneath a red sky.