Ten of Pentacles: a Kabbalistic interpretation

Ten of Pentacles: a Kabbalistic interpretation

by Brother Harmonius


This Kabbalistic interpretation of the Ten of Pentacles is specific to the Rider-Waite-Smith card. I don't know if other interpretations resemble my own, but I would welcome that knowledge as a validation of my own perception.

Of course, in the arrangement of the ten pentacles superimposed over the domestic image we see an incontrovertible Tree of Life glyph, which obviates a Kabbalist rendering of the portrait.
The heart of my interpretation has to do with the dogs, which act as an axis mundi (or canis mundi, if you will), the hermetic medium between God (the old man) and humans (the child).

Note that both are petting the dogs. The child is not sitting on the old man's lap, the child and old man are not in direct contact with each other. In fact, the distance between the "enthroned" patriarch and the child is separated by the hounds. Replace the dog that the child is touching with "prayer," replace the dog the patriarch is touching with "grace" and what you have is an image of holy communion.

Therefore, what the Ten of Pentacles represents is a system of magic orderly and proper. The way people communicate themselves to God is through a go between, an agent of communication, which the dog represents. The two might speak a different language, or not speak at all, yet the message of the soul is relayed forth through the dogs. They are the alchemical flux, the interstitial connecting energy of the harmonious family.

As above, so below
The hypothetical reciprocating principal of the Tabula Smaragdina1 (Emerald Tablets of Hermes) is represented by the dynamic tension of the old man and the child, connected as they are by the dogs. Both dogs are facing the old man. Maybe the old man conceals a biscuit underneath his ornate cape (my humour—laugh). Or maybe each dog has its own function. The child is delivering his message to the old man through one dog, while the dog in the foreground awaits the old man's (God's) grace, to be delivered in turn to the child.

In this action, the dog represents an Archangel, for it is the Archangel that leads Enoch and Ezekiel to the seven layers of heaven. The Archangel Micha-el is the guardian of men. The Archangel Rapha-el is God's messenger.2

So, the canis mundi ("dog of the world") is the intermediary, the channel we must take in order to bring about personal success. That isn't just personal, by the way, because as Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai of the Zohar said, "one righteous soul can uphold the pillars of heaven." So, whenever the heavenly order is upheld at all,then universal harmony cannot be snuffed out, and total chaos and evil cannot prevail.

The card, some may impatiently remind us, isn't about making deals with God, it is about "arriving," and material stability, the harvest of a lifetime of familial accordance.

Yes, but that is really the most evident, sensational effect of universal concordance.

Now, look at the man and woman. They are not just talking and holding hands, but seem to be in a swirling kind of dance, just like the yin and yang components of the T'ai Chi. They also appear between the child and old man, as a kind of buffer zone. They represent order, as well, the universal compatibility of the feminine and masculine forces. The child can't "get around" the laws of nature, and we are the child, so neither can we!

The card is saturated with orderly progression. And, while it is a card portending good fortune, it is not like the kind of fortune of winning a lottery, but the kind of fortune that follows right action in a tedious, selfless natural system.

The man and woman remind me of gears or cogs in a machine. So do the dogs. There is no immediate effect; effects arise from circular and indirect interactions of the moving parts, requiring intermediate steps.

The way to God is by adhering to the physical laws of nature, and also by petitioning the angelic intermediaries whose business it is to traverse the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth.

1C.G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis. (Bolingen Series XX, The Collected Works of C.G.Jung, Vol. 14. 1963) p. 17, "II. That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of One Thing." The Emerald Table of Hermes Trismegistus (an unattributed translation in my electronic collection). Jung refers to Tabula Smaragdina, De alchemia, p.363, and also Tabula Smaragdina, Ruska, p. 2.
2Angelus, derived from Koine Greek: άνγελος, angelos, messenger

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