ten of pentacles
Mutable earth: Homecoming, mortality, transition
The Ten of Pentacles is a card of homecoming and transition. There is a hint of mortality to this card, as well as the sense of a life well lived.
This makes sense for a card that sits on the cusp of autumn; melancholy is in the air, but there is still much to celebrate and enjoy.
TEN OF PENTACLES
This scene feels realist, almost vérité, in comparison to some of the other cards in the deck. We feel as though we are peeking in to a scene in progress. No one is looking our way; they are too busy with each other.
There is a sense of material achievement through the combination of the architecture (sturdy buildings, a bridge or archway) and the group of people and dogs in the foreground.
The overwhelmingly earthy colours in this card – the reds, browns, and yellows – belong not to living crops or the landscape, but to materials that have been processed by human hands – bricks, textiles, wood.
This gives a hint as to the meaning of this card. It is not just about materiality, and completion, but about legacy and longevity beyond the human lifespan. Even when the figures in this card have passed on, the works they have achieved, whether in making clothing, or building bridges, will persist.
VIRGO III + TEN OF PENTACLES
This card correlates with the third decan of Virgo. You can learn more about the decans here. And you can find out how I am working with these micro-zodiacal containers here.
This decan is co-ruled by Venus and Mercury and this accounts for the strangely fleeting sense of beauty that can be found here; fruit on the cusp of decay, flowers in their last bloom.
Other writers have given names to this decan that evoke mortality. Austin Coppock calls this decan ‘the Sarcophagus’, and T. Susan Chang calls it ‘Return to Enfleshment’.
For Coppock, this decan ‘makes clear the value of every irreplaceable moment’ and ‘reveals the importance of things as they are—arising and receding—and deserving of love and attention’.
Chang is interested in the way that the image evokes the second half of the Odyssey - one of the oldest stories about homecoming that exists. In this context, the return to enfleshment means Odysseus settling into his old life, more man than god, in contrast to his fantastic exploits in the first part of the book.
In the Ten of Pentacles, homecoming can often mean the end of an adventure, as it does for Odysseus. But the question that it poses is what comes next? For Odysseus, he had a new battle to fight once he returned home.
Ali A. Olomi’s translation of Abu Ma’shar on this decan writes that those born under this decan ‘will have an alluring manner and sweet tongue. They will have a love of knowledge, poetry, and writing and they shall be a scribe, a maker of crafts’. He could be describing charming and resourceful Odysseus, whose craft in woodworking, echoing the emphasis on making in the Ten of Pentacles, is responsible for his ultimate integration into his home – he is able to prove he is the man who carved the marriage bed that he has longed to return to.
This card feels like a hopeful and homely card to pull - it gives a sense of things being in their rightful place - but the ten gives a sense of the next transition to be to something else, another stage of life. For some of us, that transition is into the realm beyond life, and the spectre of death haunts this card and decan.
In fact, Kira Ryberg describes this place as belonging to’ doulas (of birth or death), mediums and those who are drawn to end-of-life care. It brings an inclination to understand the lessons that only time can teach, to hold space for the aging process and to reflect on the choices we have made in order to make sense of where we might go next.’
Bruise Violet is the name that I have given to this decan, because it feels like beauty and melancholy, and because pressing on a bruise reminds you that you are fragile, but you are alive.
Mercury’s swiftness combines with Venus’s sweetness in sorrow, and fleeting loveliness.
TAROT PROMPTS
What does homecoming feel like to you?
Where in your creative project feels like home?
What part of your creative project feels like pressing on a bruise?
What feels sturdy, and long-lasting, in your creative project?