Yeah, I think of this sequence as pretty mental too. The Two of Swords is that stuck feeling where you’re trying to keep everything balanced by just not dealing with hard stuff. Then the Three of Swords comes in and breaks through all that (your plans and ideas get disrupted. The Four of Swords is when you need to step back and recover mentally.
Rachel Pollack talks about this in ‘Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom’. She focuses on how the Swords suit is about our thoughts and mental patterns. What do you think about how the Ace’s clarity changes through these cards?