Ace of Swords (Reversed)

From The Key to the Tarot by A.E. Waite:

Ace of Swords - A hand issues from a cloud, grasping a sword, the point of which is encircled by a crown.

Divinatory Meanings: Triumph, the excessive degree in everything, conquest, triumph of force. A card of great force, in love as well as in hatred.

Reversed: The same meanings, but the results are disastrous; another account says - conception, childbirth, augmentation, multiplicity.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swords01.jpg

We must live with awareness on this Earth, for if we don't we will leave this lush world a barren wasteland as depicted on the Ace of Swords card. The golden energy of life fills each and every one of us, and with that internal divinity matched with the sword of the mind we as a species are crowned with the gifts of consciousness and creativity.

We have used our gifts to rob the land and sea of their wealth and life, wearing that stolen wealth from our crowned heads, trophies to our hubris. If we turn ourselves upright again we can drop the stolen life back onto the barren ground, allowing the Earth to grow once more.

Our fear of lack led us to want, and our want alienated us from nature. In our wider reading it is the Emperor who wears the crown, and through a lifetime of exploitation and extraction now suffers deeply from lack of basic awareness. The divine gift of life which bears consciousness and creativity fled from him years ago. Even the most simple abilities flee from the Emperor now, those gifts from the Hand of God lost to him forever.

We have wielded the sword of the mind to clear cut our world, strip mining all it has. We can use that very same tool to return the branch and the seaweed back to their proper homes. We can tend to the Earth with the same mental faculties we used to bring it to the brink of destruction.

The Emperor may now be sluggish of mind, cognitively weak, and failing evaluations and assessments as such, but the rest of us are not. At the end of the day, we hold the sword that carries the crown.

From The Tarot of A.E. Waite and P. Colman Smith: The Story of the World's Most Popular Tarot, by Johannes Fiebig with essays by Robert A. Gilbert, Mary K. Greer, and Rachel Pollack

I will use this text to expound on the minor symbols of the Ace of Swords.

"The hand emerging from the cloud: The sword is a gift of life and a legacy from your ancestors. Use it. You grasp how thoughts, words, and deeds can be double-edged. You care for further clarification and help ensure that love and reason wear the crown."

The sword is a gift, wield it.

"Drops of gold in the sky: A sign of inspiration, enthusiasm, and emotion. Sparks of consciousness with the religious connotations of 'divine sparks' and the 'Holy Spirit.' The number six also refers back to The Lovers card in the Major Arcana: The story of paradise lost and paradise found!"

When life gives you lemons. . .

"The blue-lilac mountains: The Earth appears empty and barren. A warning against exploitation and alienation. But the image is an abstraction as well, a view of Earth from above. Varied and wide-ranging experiences can also be gathered into one context (sword tip, crown)."

This point stands on its own, I will leave it as is.