10 of Coins: Transformation of the Body

In the Tarot of Marseille, the 10 of Coins mirrors The World: the final card in the Major Arcana. Six coins create a central oval shape, circling a large flower, the way that an oval shape in The World encircles a naked, dancing human. Four extra coins in the corners of the card could be the animals in the four corners of The World card. I came across this way of looking at the coins in this card in Alejandro Jorodowsky’s masterpiece book on the Marseille Tarot, The Way of Tarot, and it’s something I find to be really helpful in readings with clients. There is something ultimate and final about the 10 of Coins – more so than the Tarot’s other 10s, I feel – in the way that there is in The World card.

Above: 10 of Coins and The World from the stunning Anima Tarot de Marseille by Myths in Art.

In both the Jodorowsky/Camoin version of the deck and the Anima Tarot de Marseille, two of the central coins are orange, whereas the previous nine coin cards show yellow coins only – a sign of transformation. I started to notice this more and more after someone important to me died. This card would come up for me regularly, the simple coin symbols speaking to me, pulling tears from my eyes that needed to be shed. The term ‘transformation of the body’ comes to me always with this card – the suit of coins/pentacles/earth being the suit of the physical, the ten being the (perceived) end.

Above: 10 of Coins from Tarot de Marseille by Jodorowsky/Camoin

Of course, we can notice other patterns and shapes in the Minor Arcana cards of the Marseille, much like the famous Rorschach test where we look at ink blots and say what we see, revealing aspects of our psyche. That’s why the Marseille pips can be such powerful cards for reading with (although harder to get to grips with than Waite-Smith-influenced Minor Arcana cards, but worth the effort). Sometimes, for example, I can see two sets of five coins in this image: one set of five at the bottom of the card, one at the top. In the early days of grieving for the special person who I mentioned, I would read the four outer coins at the bottom of the card as representing myself and three other people who were working together preparing for her death, and then afterwards, working on the funeral. We were the four yellow coins, putting this wonderful vibrant person at the centre of our lives, helping her as much as we could, knowing that her time was coming – and fast. (The progression of cancer from diagnosis to death was six weeks.) When I then looked to the top of the card, and saw how the sequence of five coins was repeated in a higher realm, I saw how we gathered around her, dropped everything in our lives, helped to carry her from her physical, earthly existence (the bottom half of the card) into the mystery of the unknown, into a higher realm (the top of the card). This, of course, was an entirely personal interpretation, suitable for me in this circumstance, reflecting my inner world. That’s the true beauty of Tarot reading. If we can learn to let go of expectations and ‘meanings’, we see that the cards speak on a much more personal level than any set of keywords found in a book. At other times when I have read this card (for myself or others), it has represented the end of a job, a simple abundance of coins/money, leaving behind a place of Nature we love or other things.

Whatever we see in the 10 of Coins, one thing is for certain: the 10 is the final card in the numerical sequence. We can’t go any further with the coins after this: the ‘court cards’ are a little human progression all of their own, another grouping of four. I don’t personally see them as cards 11-14 unless the deck shows those numbers on the cards (which a few do, but the Marseille certainly doesn’t). But in this case, the World card, which the 10 mirrors so much, can represent the ultimate completion, wholeness. Perhaps death makes us whole again, returning us to the abundant source that we came from.

This physical body is a miracle. We are Water, Earth, Fire and Air combined with consciousness, finding the energy to move. But everything changes, transforms. When the body has disintegrated back into soil, or burned up, what happens to the consciousness or energy that has been present throughout our lives? Is it constantly moving in and out of us always? Are we simply returning to the great pool of everything, the way raindrops dissolve into the ocean? I have no idea what happens to us when we die, what we are transformed into when our physical earthiness changes. In the most scientific way of understanding, it is clear that we become many things! This card, this ending of the Earth sequence, sometimes asks us to look at this question. Not to come up with any answers – but perhaps just to look without the usual fear.

That’s all for now, friends. Thank you for being here – and please check out my Therapeutic Tarot Sessions and my courses embracing Tarot and Nature if you’d like us to work together. You can also sign up for the Tarot Blog newsletter (different to my main newsletter) below to receive occasional email updates (roughly monthly) with the latest posts.

Smiles from Scotland,

Stephen