Nine of Coins: Home
We find ourselves living as if we were still hunter gatherers, only with a ton of Ikea furniture being gathered instead of necessities, slowly falling apart and stressing us out if we need to move home. And – as a society – we move a lot, don’t we? It seems like homes are primarily commodities now, something to buy and to sell, rather than a place to settle and to be…. somewhere is always better than where we are, eh? (Or so we are told….)
At what point does a little patch of Planet Earth begin to feel like a place we can stay, a street or land that we will come to know intimately? When do we stop pouring over the ‘for sale’ sections of absolutely everything, always wanting more, even when we have found everything that we need? Sure, some of us like to move, to be on the road, like the old hunter gatherers … I have a lot of respect for that way of living. But those folks travel lightly. Moving home is an altogether different thing when we hoard the way we do these days. (Including me!) It is often a case of the ‘grass being greener over there….’
Above: Nine of Coins from the Metanoia Marseille Tarot. It features chrusanthemum flowers, a symbol of longevity.
The are four coins at the base of the Marseille’s Nine of Coins, in the earth realm of the card (the bottom half). Four are at the top, in the spirit realm. One coin has been singled out by beautiful flowers that grow up and around every coin.
Look at that central coin: that’s home. Right in the middle of the card, between heaven and earth. A place of rest, a place to be. Not a place to sell or abandon in order to find something supposedly better just for the sake of it.
Can’t we stop? Can’t we just settle for a while? Become familiar with that tree around the corner, the way the soil rises to a slight hill in the park, the way that certain animals make an appearance each day (be they pigeons or stray cats)?
Home is inside of us, yes. The only true home is there. For myself, though, I sometimes wonder if I only recognise this when I embrace the physical home where I live. It’s like, when I stop looking for ‘something better’ outside of myself, I do it inside, too. When I sit still, I find home.
In the UK, housing is the prime commodity. Like everywhere in the world, people who live in beautiful places with gorgeous views complain that they don’t live in their ‘dream house’. They sell up in order to climb some mythical object called ‘the property ladder’. I, too, have moved many times in my life – not for that particular reason (frankly, I had to leave some dangerous locations at times!). However, there were other times when I wanted to move simply because I felt that it was ‘time to move on’. And I think I am ready to challenge that in myself.
Lately, as I walk my dog through the familiar wind of the village that has been my home for over five years now, I wonder: how might it feel to be stepping down this curve in 30 years? (If I’m lucky enough to live that long, of course.) What kind of intimacy with the street and the land would I find after all of those years spent in one place? Why does the urge to ‘move onto something better’ occasionally come upon me when I have everything that I need here, and so much more, too?
Above: Nine of Coins from the Philippe Vachier version of the Marseille Tarot, from 1639.
That central coin in the Nine of Coins marks the precise centre of the card. Coins/Pentacles are the suit of earth, the suit of the physical. The number nine marks a reflection on a long process, a settling down perhaps. Maybe the Nine of Coins suggests that it is time to realise that you have found home, inside yourself and outside, too. That work is done, at least for now. Perhaps a good reason to move will come along one day, sure, but maybe now is not a time to actively search for that. Maybe it’s not a time to look for reasons to move, but to put down roots. Time to breathe … to settle. Once you are safe and at peace with your surroundings, perhaps that is enough. Anything else is dissatisfaction – that poison of the human mind that follows wherever we go.
X marks the spot for this card … or rather, the central coin does.
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
