The Eleven of Swords - Escape

[jack_babalon]

"The Eleven of Swords does not exist and hence it is one of the most powerful cards of all."


Beware the Ten of Swords, ten sparkling blades of utter hopelessness baptised in the back of the careless initiate. A grim omen of ruin's certainity and the herald card of the Destroying Angels. There are those wise pilgrims on the Golden Trident's Path who have learned to fear this card even more so than the Scythe Knight of the 13th House. Even the Shadow Chiefs ov thee Nimbus Lodge cannot help but shudder upon its arrival during a candid reading.

But know that there is hope!

The Eleven of Swords does not exist and hence it is one of the most powerful cards of all. It is ruled by the Black Hole Sephiroth, the (n)one that collapsed after the fall of Unity and whose absence must be crossed by the earnest adept. It symbolizes the Miracle of the Inexplicable Escape, the Impossible Dodge and the Improbable Conclusion. Ten venomous daggers deflected by a secret eleventh revealed from up the sleeve of those who dare. The slit throat thrawted with a well placed whisper. The guillotine that snaps across the empty collar and the whip's crack caught like a rose in the grin of a defiant slave.

I have heard rumors that once this card is pulled it will never again return to the pack that dealt it nor to the beneficary of its arrival. Once drawn it moves on again back into the divine country of Chance. Though rarely seen, there have been a smattering of historical accounts of the card's passing. Sir Richard Francis Burton, for example, drew the Eleven of Swords the night before a duel against a formidable swordsmen and there is the infamous report of Charles Baudelaire using it to pay the Devil back his due back when the Devil was frequenting brothels in France. Lord Byron was said to have composed a magnificent poem about this card, but soon lost this work during an evening of casual madness. Later he wrote of being unable to recall even a single verse of the the lost work with even the poem's title as elusive as a detail in a dream.

Such is the way of the Eleven of Swords - the Secret Chance and Hope's Promise Spent.