Ten of Pentacles: a family under the arch

Start with the picture: a family under an arch, an elder and two dogs in front

Waite's description runs as follows. A man and woman stand beneath an archway which gives entrance to a house and domain. They are accompanied by a child, who looks curiously at two dogs accosting an ancient personage seated in the foreground, and the child's hand is on one of them.

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BaZiFlow original Ten of Pentacles: a family under the arch

In the RWS original the arch is gray stone with the vault pressing down from above; through it a tower and a red-roofed house show. The man wears a blue-gray cloak and faces away from us, the woman is in red, and the child stands at the right edge. At the front left a white-haired elder sits in a richly patterned robe with two white dogs low at the right, pressing toward him, the child's hand on one, and ten pentacles are spread over the whole picture. The BaZiFlow drawing sets the ten pentacles as the arch itself: a man, a woman and a child stand below, a white-haired elder at the right and a small dog at the left.

What Waite lists: gain, family matters, archives, and "extraction"

The divinatory meanings run: gain, riches; family matters, archives, extraction, the abode of a family. The reversed list goes two ways. Half of it is chance, fatality, loss, robbery, games of hazard; then it turns to "sometimes gift, dowry, pension".

Gain, riches; family matters, archives, extraction, the abode of a family. Reversed: Chance, fatality, loss, robbery, games of hazard; sometimes gift, dowry, pension.

The extras say the Ten stands for a house or dwelling and derives its value from other cards, with the reversed card an occasion which may be fortunate or otherwise. Like the extras of the Nine of Pentacles, this reads the card between its neighbors. And because "loss" and "gift" stand side by side in the reversed list, the card writes both losing and receiving by somebody else's arrangement.

Arch, elder and dogs: what Waite wrote, what the picture shows

Three things in the Ten of Pentacles are worth separating: the arch, the elder and the dogs in front, and the ten coins. Waite describes where the first two are and gives no meaning.

Some teachers call the arch "a shared base", since everyone beneath it comes and goes through one door. The name is handy as long as it is labeled as borrowed.

How to read it: set up the shared arch, then a column for each person

The card has a structure of its own: a common doorway, several people beneath it, and an elder left in the foreground. Moved into daily life, that is sorting a household's monthly budget. Suppose three generations live together: an elder, two adults and a child:

1. 1

   First the arch: what is shared?

   Rent, utilities and the internet bill all go in and out through the same door, so they sit in a "shared" column. Once you can see at a glance which items belong to the whole household, the sheet has a frame.

2. 2

   Then the people: whom is each cost for?

   Put each expense under the elder, the adults or the child. "Whom it is for" and "who pays" are often not the same person, and two columns make that visible.

3. 3

   Last the archive: keep a page each month

   Waite's list includes "archives". Save a separate copy of this month's page and do not overwrite last month's, so next month you can see which lines changed.

Reversed and neighboring cards: chance, loss, and also gift and pension

The first half of the Ten's reversed list reads like a risk sheet: chance, fatality, loss, robbery, games of hazard. The second half turns: sometimes gift, dowry, pension. None of the three is earned in the moment; each comes from somebody else's arrangement or an earlier agreement. That is a teaching summary, and the text does not group them so. The extras are plainer still: an occasion which may be fortunate or otherwise.