Why are the swords so negative?

[wulzcat]

It occurs to me that nearly all the sword cards are difficult cards. I am a very airy person astrologically, and while I realise that too much 'monkey mind' is no good, I do wonder why the mental swords seem to be so overwhelmingly troublesome. Is it because of a natural tarot bias against logic in favour of intuition?

Anyone...?

 

[Zephyros]

It depends which tradition you are following. The Golden Dawn attributions for swords are kind of bad, but there are Kabbalistic and astrological reasons. There was a very interesting discussion on this thread that talked about just this issue.

http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=169130

 

[BodhiSeed]

Thanks for that link Closrapexa - had some excellent information in it!

 

[wulzcat]

thanks closrapexa - that is a really useful thread, and your contributions to it are most excellent!

What got me thinking about this is that I am more and more using the astrological attributions of the cards, and I was fairly staggered to find the 10 of swords is Sun in Gemini. I read Crowley's explanation which made peftect sense - however, I still am slightly jarred that such a famously 'bad' card (yeah, I know no card is good or bad in itself, but still) as the 10 is equated with the fairly innocuous Gemini sun.

I now wonder if the swords just don't fit well with the minors, since the courts are not especially troubling, and the air-attributed Majors are not especially difficult either (thinking of The Fool, The Star, and Justice). Is it just the everyday-ness of the pips that is less compatible with air energy? If so, why?

I feel very swordish asking this question.

 

[wulzcat]

Then again - I suppose one could view the state of completion/squared perfection in all the suits as represented by the 9, and the 10 is one step over? So the difficulty of the swords reaches its apotheosis in the 9 (Mars in Gemini), whereas the 10 signifies the 'after'. There is a sense of split/cleaved identity inherent in Gemini which may be relevant to this. Just answering my own questions, as is my Queen of Swords wont...

 

[Cassandra022]

You can use a staff to hit someone over the head, but you can also use it as a walking stick, as a torch, to prop something up. A coin can buy you things, good or bad. A cup is a vessel, you can fill it with poison or with awesome water, waterever you wish. swords you can...hurt/kill someone with, or threaten them with violence. this could be necessary, if its a bad person, in fact if you have no one armed with swords then according to realism/ security theory at least, you might actually be increasing likelyhood of violence by making yourself an easy target but...by its very nature and purpose swords are more negative than the other suits.

this was mean to be a semi-silly answer but got kinda meditative on me :0

 

[WolfyJames]

As an air sign myself, Aquarius, and a Prince of swords, I have to admit that seeing effectively much negativity in the Swords minors troubling. At the same time, I remember someone saying here, don't remember who or when, that Swords people, unlike the others, do not live in delusions and imaginary worlds, but in the concrete world and view reality as it is. And well, reality is NOT pretty. Facing reality and the facts all the time can cause stress, fears and more, which I think can be seen in the Swords minors. The Thoth is a bit more positive for the Swords, like the Six of Swords. In other words, the Swords minors represents moments of clarity and realizations which bring downsides along with them. And I'm not saying just Swords people are like that, everyone gets moments of clarity and realizations here and there, which can be sometimes painful.

 

[wulzcat]

by its very nature and purpose swords are more negative than the other suits.

this was mean to be a semi-silly answer but got kinda meditative on me :0

You're right about that but then why is air/mental primarily associated with swords/violence? Any of the other elements could be 'bad'... fire, emotion, the physical/material... in fact all of these things can be very, very bad! If you think of Aries (Fire) associated with War and Capricorn (Earth) associated with the Devil...?

I can make use of swordly reason to explain why swords are troublesome - or, to put another way, why mental air is associated with swords - but it doesn't seem quite balanced to me... Closrapexa's helpful post on the previous thread helps to explain it in the context of the Tree of Life but it's still kind of odd to me. Hmm.

 

[wulzcat]

As an air sign myself, Aquarius, and a Prince of swords, I have to admit that seeing effectively much negativity in the Swords minors troubling. At the same time, I remember someone saying here, don't remember who or when, that Swords people, unlike the others, do not live in delusions and imaginary worlds, but in the concrete world and view reality as it is. And well, reality is NOT pretty. Facing reality and the facts all the time can cause stress, fears and more, which I think can be seen in the Swords minors. The Thoth is a bit more positive for the Swords, like the Six of Swords. In other words, the Swords minors represents moments of clarity and realizations which bring downsides along with them. And I'm not saying just Swords people are like that, everyone gets moments of clarity and realizations here and there, which can be sometimes painful.

...kind of like a flash of cold insight in the darkness? Although there seems to be a lot of mental delusion going on in the swords...? Perhaps the Ace is the only one whicj shows that flash of cold insight; the others are all (nearly all) over-thinking, or the product thereof?

Am I over-thinking this?

post edit Ace of Swords moment: AH, so inkeeping with Closrapexa's postings about air on the tree of life degrading as it gets closer to earth, so the ace is the pinnacle of mental force, and clarity; thereafter it degrades steadily through every shade of dithering, confusion, deceit and despair...? INTERESTING.

 

[Cassandra022]

well there are SOME decks that reverse it and make swords = fire or whatnot, or even weird balbi where swords = water, so at least some deck creators agree with you lol.

it makes sense to me i guess because all the most negative stuff in my life comes from my mind