One Card Weekends: Late Edition–Ten of Wands

Today’s card is the Ten of Wands, one that plays pretty heavily into where I am right now. (Won’t go into that, but there’s a lot going on.)

Wands are associated with fire, with conflict, and with struggle. This is a card of having as much on your plate as you can handle, and then some. It can mean that your ideas have spiraled out of control, that you’ve lost command of your own situation, or even that you are carrying burdens beyond your own capacity. Crowley called this card Oppression, because it deals with everything that can keep a good person down.

The Tattooed deck’s interpretation of the card is rather graphic: two figures running away from a flaming skull. To me, this seems to represent the deepest essence of the card, that you see the explosion coming, and you’re struggling like hell to get out of the way. I’m borrowing an image from elsewhere, just for tonight, because Photobucket’s uploader isn’t working for me.

When this card comes up in a reading, it suggests to me that the querent knows hir situation is bad, but doesn’t want to look at it, doesn’t want to admit it. I’m reminded of a quote from Doctor Who: “Look right there.” “Where?” “Exactly where you don’t want to look, where you never want to look.” It’s important to be honest with oneself and see whether the burdens one is carrying are really one’s own, or if one is carrying more than one realizes.