Ten of Pentacles upright
The prosperity won earlier becomes a lasting estate here: old money, family values. The card is mostly about inheritance and legacy in the broad sense: what remains and what is permanent. You may be concerned with a financial, genetic or cultural inheritance, or with wisdom and knowledge handed down. The card touches family, friends, community and traditions, as well as domestic matters, relationships and property. It also speaks of gain, wealth, archives, origins and a family's home.
In practical terms, you may be tracing your family tree or looking through archives, going to a family reunion, thinking about a will, insurance or what you will leave to the next generations. A family business, an institution or a company may affect you personally. You may have an elderly relative in your care, or be the heir to some property. Loyalties are sometimes at stake, your sense of belonging or your wish to fit in plays a part, and you may want someone in your family, even one who has died, to approve of what you have achieved.
The card puts the home first: offering a stable setting to those you love. It can announce a return home after a journey, a move to a better house or the growth of your household. It represents the well-established home, the good life, a secure and comfortable position in the world. It is the completion of material gain and fortune, the peak of success, with nothing beyond it.
This material success needs to be put to use. Once wealth passes a certain point, it becomes inert, or it needs intelligence to serve any purpose other than piling up. It is the last of the small cards, and it sums up all the work done since the start. The other tens lose their nature and decline; this one is the exception: having reached the very bottom, it turns back upward. After touching bottom, you begin building again.
Your strengths
You carry wisdom and knowledge handed down, and you care about the honor and security of your own people. You are shrewd and prosperous in money matters. You are attached to your family, your background and your traditions.
What holds you back
- You take your comfort for granted, and you can find security boring or stifling.
- In your family, people communicate little: each looks in a different direction.
- You do not see what is remarkable in your ordinary life.
- You can fall into laziness, heaviness and slowness of mind.
- You follow the role your upbringing and your society gave you, without questioning it.
What helps
Using what you have acquired for purposes other than accumulation. Learning to appreciate what you and your family already have. Realizing that your role comes from your upbringing and your background: this is the first step toward freeing yourself from it. Welcoming each person with attention, because your way of acting makes you able to recognize and receive the good things around you. Thinking about what you will pass on to the next generations.
Ten of Pentacles reversed
The upright Ten of Pentacles is about inheritance in the broad sense: what lasts, family, traditions, home, the security of those close to you.
You may turn away from your family situation or reject traditions. You feel either unwanted or distant from your family's beliefs and heritage. There are often problems with family, community, an organization or an institution: quarrels, open conflict, difficulties in the couple. Your loyalties conflict and you feel like an outsider. You may also find yourself deprived of help or possessions. Your wisdom and advice go unheard.
This card can also speak of what you keep to yourself: you hold back your talents and skills, or on the contrary you make the material world your only source of value. In that case, you are either stuck in matter, or at the start of a path that has you leave material concerns behind and turn toward the spirit. When you project this card onto someone else, you see them as an elderly person who needs looking after, or as someone weighed down by inheritance and obligations.
On money and security, the reversed card signals a risk of major losses affecting home, family or savings, if the other cards point the same way. An inheritance or a treasure may turn out to be worthless. You may squander everything on lotteries or gambling. You may feel that fate is against you. The words associated with this reversed card are chance, gambling, dissipation, loss, uncertainty and insecurity.
There is also an inner reading: the riches of this card are then spiritual. Ancestors and what concerned them for their group are involved, and the card opens onto your inner world, where you can meet your psyche or communicate with those who have passed on.
What holds you back
- You feel outside your family, your community or your traditions.
- You are torn between conflicting loyalties.
- You hold back your talents and skills.
- You place all your trust in material things.
- You take risks with your money, even to the point of squandering everything on gambling.
- You feel uncertain and insecure, and you may believe fate is against you.
What helps
- Looking at the emotions you inherited from your family.
- Turning toward your inner world and what your ancestors passed on to you.
- Accepting, when your situation is comfortable but limited, to risk some of that security in order to deepen your bonds.
What the card shows
The card speaks of wealth, home and what is handed down.
In the Waite-Smith tarot
The family lives well, with comfort and security, but they seem to find it commonplace, even boring or stifling. They do not talk to each other: the man and the woman look in opposite directions, the woman casts an anxious glance at the man, and the child clings to his mother while looking away.
The ten coins are arranged on the pattern of the Tree of Life, which happens on no other card in the deck. A magician's wand leans against the arch, and no other minor card shows one. On the arch, a relief shows a scale, which points to justice and to the quiet laws that keep everyday life in order, like gravity. These signs say that ordinary life hides a part of wonder, which we no longer see because everything works well.
The old man wears a many-colored cloak, with astrological and magical signs. He recalls the visitors disguised as beggars or travelers, who test a family's hospitality before leaving it a gift. These stories invite you to welcome everyone well, because that is how you cultivate the ability to recognize the blessings that arrive. In the image, the inside of the arch is bright and ordinary, while the outside is darker. The family poses as in a play: comfortable life and even daily worries follow roles received from upbringing and society. The card's point of view puts you outside, with the visitor, to watch the small scenes of your life from the other side of the arch.
The old man also recalls Odysseus, who came home disguised as a beggar and was recognized only by his dog. He had known the wild world before finding his home again.
What the card means
The number ten corresponds to Malkhut, the lowest and most material sphere: force has reached its end and matter solidifies. The card means the fulfillment of wealth and material success, which reaches its peak. It speaks of inheritance in the broad sense: goods, genetic heritage, culture, handed-down knowledge, family, friends, community, traditions. It evokes what lasts: the house, the archives, savings, security.
When wealth goes beyond a certain point, it becomes inert, or else it calls on intelligence to serve something other than possessing. The card is also the summary of the whole road traveled through the series of numbered cards. Once it has reached the end of matter, it is the point from which a renewal can start again.
Your strengths
You can offer those you love a stable, secure setting.
What holds you back
- You take comfort and security for granted, to the point of finding them boring or stifling.
- You communicate little with those who share your home and do not notice what turns up at your door.
- You play the role your upbringing and society gave you, without noticing.
- Boredom can push you to take financial or emotional risks, sometimes out of simple impatience with what you already have.
- You can accumulate without doing anything with it: wealth that serves only to pile up loses its value.
- You may feel heavy or numb once you reach the top of your success.
What helps
- Welcoming the people who pass with courtesy, even those who don't seem important: it makes you able to recognize what is good.
- Looking at your daily life as if from outside, to see the roles you follow.
- Putting your wealth and knowledge at the service of a purpose wider than mere accumulation.
- Taking the risk when the context justifies it, telling real need apart from impatience.
- Thinking about what you can leave to the next generations and to those you must support.
Family
The card speaks of the settled home, family, ancestors, lasting bonds and traditions. You may want to trace your family tree, consult archives, or take into account responsibilities toward an elderly relative. Your sense of belonging to a group and your wish to find your place in it weigh on you. In the same family, everyone can live side by side without talking.
Money
The card stands for acquired wealth, savings, goods, wills, insurance and pensions. It invites you to put what you own to use, otherwise wealth stops counting.
Home
The card puts the emphasis on the house: offering a stable environment to those you love, coming back home, moving to a better place or enlarging the household.
