10 of swords: having your cake & eating it

It is interesting, learning la methode Etteilla for reading tarot, not least to see which of his interpretations Waite & Smith (sounds like a firm of solicitors but I don't feel I know them well enough to call them Pam & Art) picked up & ran with & which they didn't.
A card which always fascinates me is the 10 of swords, in reality much more nuanced than Smith's picture makes it look at first glance - people seem not to notice that the clouds are actually clearing. 'You are such a goth,' a friend said to me when I asked tarot what is my true will & got this card. Being a 10 it comes really low on the tree of life: it is both the height of the swords energy, & also the point at which it becomes sufficiently unstable that it really has to spill over into something new. I would hate people to think that my mind automatically thinks of a sexual image, but it's kinda the point at which you have to orgasm, the tension is at its height & you can't go back, try as you might.
Etteilla picks up on this end-of-the-cycle, all-aspects-of-this-energy-are-at-their-height feeling by giving two apparently contradictory meanings for this card. Upright it means such things as affliction, tears, lamentation, grief, sadness & desolation. Reversed it means advantage, gain, profit, success, favour, gift, ability, authority & power. The RWS image therefore, in my opinion, includes both of these aspects, these two sides of the same 'coin'.
And these aspects really are two sides of the same coin: this is exactly the energy involved when anyone uses anyone else to their own advantage, it is making sure someone else gets the short straw while you laugh all the way to the bank.
But it doesn't have to be like that. On Monday I went to the Clun Green Man Festival with a friend & his other half: probably the most Merrie England you'll ever catch me being, although I did have the hots for a border morris man: a recurring fantasy of mine is being abducted by a bit of rough at the Appleby Horse Fayre. Anyway, the Clun festival isn't ancient, & this is most shown by an opposition which is set up as part of the festivities, between the Ice Queen (who was overtly referred to as a Witch: you can't go anywhere without seeing a wommon raped & where's Z Budapest when you need her?) & the Green Man. We were expected to cheer for the one we wanted to win in the battle between them. I cheered for the Ice Queen because she was a victim of dualistic patriarchy, but in reality it doesn't have to be that way. We need both the winter & the summer, & it isn't necessary to have one win: they can both live in harmony & take it in turns.
The same goes for the two meanings of the 10 of swords: it isn't necessary for one person to win & another to lose. This of course is where the difficulties arise, since there are always people who want everything for themselves. It will come as a surprise to some people that I rate Silver Ravenwolf very highly as a writer: she talks somewhere about how witches should maintain the balance & she's absolutely right. But sometimes if someone is deliberately imbalancing things you have to pull or push things the other way to balance it again.
In saying this I am not claiming to be left hand path: you have to have both. This is why both the fluffbunnies & the left hand brethren are magically on a hiding to nothing: by only functioning on one side of the coin you are actually invoking the energy of the other side to restore homeostasis, & so you will create the exact opposite of what you want.
'Thinking positive thoughts' on its own is not enough: you have to keep an eye on the other side of the coin. A world in which you only have high summer & have ridded yourself of the ability to have winter would be a very harsh one. Imagine not being able to lose something you don't want!
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