Card of the Week: Ten of Blades

If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.  Your success may be determined by what you are willing to sacrifice for it.

The Ten of Blades represents a finality, a sacrifice with no hope for revival.  An end has been reached, and there is no turning back.  This may be a personal burnout or a tragic loss, but it can sometimes bring with it a paradoxical sense of release and closure.  There is no more waiting and wondering, no more ambiguity.  No more progress can be made here.  It is time to  let go and move on.

Inverted, this card suggests there may be a way to turn a dark situation to your advantage.  If the worst is now behind you, that may clear the way to act with more self-assurance.

In “By Any Other Name”, the Enterprise responds to a distress call, but the aliens they meet immobilize the landing party, then demonstrate their advanced tech to condense some of them down to geometric shapes.  Their leader, Rojan, demonstrates that if a shape is left intact, that person can be restored, but if a shape is crushed, that person is lost.  They take over the Enterprise, turning nearly its entire crew into shapes, leaving only four senior officers to help them redirect the ship on a three-century trip to their origin in the Andromeda galaxy.  Spock learns that the aliens have only assumed human form to use the Enterprise.  Kirk convinces Rojan that if they stay human for the whole voyage, they would no longer be welcome by the time they finally reach their origin.  Rojan agrees to stay in our galaxy, release the ship and restore its crew.