The Ten of Disks (Tarot Triptych)
Name: Wealth, the Ten of Disks
Number: 10
Astrology: Earth, Mercury in Virgo
Qabalah: Malkuth of He ה
Chris Gabriel April 6, 2024
The Ten of Disks is an earthly card, at the end of its fall from Heaven. Unlike Air and Fire, Earth is happier on the ground than up in the Heavens. When this card comes up in a reading, one thinks of a great investment or a great home. This card is about something stable, but not stagnant.
Mercury is domiciled in Virgo, a sign that it rules. Thus Mercury, God of money, is intelligently utilizing the wealth accumulated over the past 9 cards. Mercury is in fact the root of words like “Merchant” or “Commerce”
This is a card of accumulated resources, and their correct usage.
In Thoth, we are given an image of ten coins in the form of the Tree of Life. Each bears a Mercurial sign with Mercury atop and Virgo below. All about these ten golden coins are the purples of royalty.
In Rider, we see the Pentacles forming the Tree of Life, as in Thoth. Behind this superimposed tree, we see a beautiful scene. It is a kingdom at peace: lovers talking, a child playing with two dogs, and an old man sitting. Rather than the literal wealth depicted in Thoth, this is the wealth of security -all are well dressed and even pets can be fed. A far cry from the Five of Pentacles earlier in this suit.
In Marseille, we see a more mundane layout of the ten coins, more like the fives that appear on a pair of dice. Through Qabalah, we can understand this card as Malkuth, The Kingdom, at the very bottom of the tree of life, which corresponds to planetary Earth. Being a disk, it is of He ה, the Princess and as the final letter of the Tetragrammaton, represents elemental Earth. Thus the kingdom the card refers to is the Kingdom of the Princess.
In some ways, this is the final card in the deck. It is here we reach the end of a long descent down the Tree of Life, through the paths along it, and through the Tetragrammaton. This is a joyous ending. As opposed to the great rises and falls, joys and sorrows of the deck, here we find a very solid, very comfortable, material reality. At last, everything is in its place.
When we think of the Fall to Earth, we often think of fiery Satan, displeased with his crash landing, but our Earthy Princess is very happy here. This is the perfection of our world.
In the Bible, I’m brought to Revelation 21, when the Apocalypse has ceased, and God does away with how things were, and all are united. Yet even this sort of ending is not forever, this is the wisdom of the Aeon, that there are no ends, only ceaseless transformation, and so this happy earth is bound to change to some new form so soon as the deck is shuffled.
We can look to William Blake to help see the relation of the lofty Heavens of Kether with this most earthen Malkuth: “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”
This is the nature of the Ten of Disks, the lovely productions of time.
When dealt this card, we are asked to look upon our journey, what we have all been on: a long, colorful, rainbow path (ס) and here at last is the pot of gold (מַלְכוּת) !
