Ten of Pentacles
The Ten of Skulls represents abundant material wealth, solid confidence, and deep satisfaction. It symbolizes the culmination of a journey, material security, and spiritual richness. This card indicates completion, prosperity, and the perfect manifestation of matter, often suggesting inheritance, investments paying off, or achieving long-sought goals. It embodies wholeness, generosity, and the foundation for new beginnings.
Keywords
Alchemy
Mercury in Virgo; Kingdom (Malkuth) of Earth; Manifestation of Material Form
Kindred Souls
Laviah; Hihaiah
Essence
Manifestation of Matter. Perfect wealth and prosperity. Wholeness. Material security. Solid foundation. Success. Completion of a journey. Receiving inheritance. Ancestors, traditions. Celebrations. Spiritual wealth. Permanence and stability. Fullness of preserved power. Generosity. Finding solutions. Receiving profits from investments.
Primary Meaning
The Ten of Skulls represents abundant material riches, solid confidence, and deep satisfaction. It also directly relates to feelings of pride and joy when goals are achieved and journeys are successfully completed. This card represents the golden crown of magnificence, the peak of achievements and prosperity. In relationships, it symbolizes deep and lasting love that gives us complete confidence in our partner and a sense of genuine happiness. The properties of this card are especially pronounced when characterizing family bonds and domestic comfort.
Romantic and Material Aspects
In romantic relationships, it embodies close and solid unity of souls, which occurs when every moment of communication with a loved one brings us genuine joy. In the material sphere, the Ten of Skulls means enormous wealth and prosperity, stable work, and guaranteed high wages. This card can foretell complete satisfaction of our material needs in the near future or receiving unexpected large subsidies, profits, or inheritance. The Ten of Skulls speaks not only of material well-being but can represent abundance of any kind, including fullness of emotional sensations, successful completion of various projects, spiritual enrichment, or acquisition of wealth of knowledge.
Completions and Wholeness
The Ten of Skulls also testifies to various completions, whether fulfilling tasks or work, finishing education, or completing a certain period of spiritual development. The consequence of such completions is often a feeling of confidence and solid foundation for beginning the next chapter of life. This card also symbolizes wholeness, which can have the most diverse manifestations and be expressed in creating a family union, finding an ideal partner, or sudden insight when the last piece of the puzzle takes its place in the overall picture, and before us in all its simplicity and obviousness appears the only possible solution to a question or problem. Often this card means completion of manifesting properties of the card adjacent to it.
Spiritual Development and Timing
Appearing in a spread, the Ten of Skulls speaks of the arrival of the most suitable moment for development and abundant saturation of some aspect of our being. This applies equally to the spiritual sphere. Consciously choosing something for our spiritual enrichment, we rely on the properties of this card so that the acquired wealth gives abundant yields in our soul and brings us deep pleasure. In a broad sense, this card is characterized by lasting confidence and satisfaction, bringing us spiritual, emotional, intellectual, or physical well-being; very often this card unites all these aspects of our being.
Building Foundation and True Wealth
If we feel dissatisfied, we should concentrate all our efforts on long-term work of building a solid foundation for ourselves. True wealth touches all levels of our life, creating a sense of well-being and completeness consisting of understanding that all elements of our being work harmoniously as a single whole. Our spiritual wealth represents such a broad aspect that it extends into all other spheres of our life and affects them, illuminating everything we deal with with our joy and pleasure. Often this is connected primarily with our perception, not with what we actually have: with a feeling of deep satisfaction and gratitude for all the good and bright that happens to us in life, with a feeling of appreciation for the beauty of everything that surrounds us and is within us.
Generosity and New Cycles
These sensations enrich us so much that even if we were deprived of material prosperity and confidence, we would still continue to experience gratitude, thereby attracting and drawing new wealth to ourselves. The Ten of Skulls is also closely connected with magnanimity and generosity, with a sincere desire to share our spiritual and material wealth in the name of love for our neighbors. The more we have, the more we must give to maintain balance and protect ourselves from stagnation in development. We have reached the end of a cycle, gathered all the harvest available to us from the lived chapter of our life, and are now ready to plant a new seed (Ace of Wands) that will climb with the abundant nutrients of our previous successes.
Analysis and Symbolism - The Red Roses
In the upper left corner of the card, ten red roses are depicted, symbolizing the complete realization of the first Minor card, the Ace of Wands. Its original seed of inspiration has passed through the energy of all other cards, collecting and combining them, then descended into Malkuth, to the very roots of the Tree of Life. Being the last of all numbered cards, the Ten of Skulls reflects the results of this continuous and unceasing development — the manifestation of the original energy of the Eternal (Ace) in matter (Tens). The process that began with the Ace of Wands has brought material fruits of its creative impulse.
The Creative Cycle
The primary spark of inspiration, passing through feelings and thoughts, found its embodiment in substance, completing the cycle. Creative energies concentrated in the Aces unfolded into their material expression. The Ace of Wands is the Divine spark, that seed in which the final result — the Ten of Skulls — is already contained in an incomprehensible way. Understanding the inner creative nature of all external objects, we begin to value life more and see perfect beauty in everything that surrounds us.
Material and Spiritual Unity
Material wealth becomes less significant for us when we feel ourselves bathing in external and internal abundance. If previously all existence was perceived by us as unstable and disparate forms of being, now we see that they are closely connected and intertwined with each other, interpenetrate each other and are a single whole. And this, in turn, helps us realize our own inner wealth and wholeness. The capacious cup carved from a skull, which the vampire girl depicted on the card holds in her hands, symbolizes abundance and prosperity; it is filled to the brim with the life blood of the universe — this is the seed of the Ace of Skulls, full of the energy of the Ace of Wands.
The Cycle of Return
This seed of the universe is embodied by the skull on the throne, representing it manifested in matter and our life experience. Since the Ten of Skulls is the last numbered card, it must find a way to return to the Ace of Wands, the first card of the Tarot deck, so that the cycle continues. This process, which is traditionally called the 'culmination' of descent into matter, is a signal for the spirit's return to the cycle of rebirth. This card represents the lowest level of the Tree of Life, in which all the powerful energies of the cards located above are grounded.
Root System and Regeneration
Here is the root system, saturated with abundant nutrients of the Earth. Since it is impossible to descend any lower, energies must reunite with the original mystery of creation. The only possibility for this is the connection between the Ace of Wands and the Ten of Skulls. Both these cards possess the same essence: the Ace invisibly contains all possible energies, and the Ten allows these energies to manifest. As each apple seed stores the entire potential and knowledge of a fully grown apple tree, so in the Ace lies the genetic map of the Ten of Skulls. In the fruit carried by this card are contained new seeds that continue the cycle of creation.
Astrological Interpretation
This concept finds its development in the astrological interpretation of this card, according to which it is characterized by Mercury in Virgo. Virgo is the deepest and most passive of all earth signs (see the Hermit card), while Mercury embodies creative activity and sociability (expressed in the Magician card). Its creative force gives impetus to the rebirth of the entire cycle, and fertile earth serves as the womb in which it matures. When wealth, accumulating, reaches a certain magnitude and exceeds it, it becomes a factor that slows development or generates something new.
Practical Applications
In a practical sense, this card can be perceived as a call to share wealth with others and enrich them, donate to charity, or use it to establish new educational institutions and provide support to those in need. On an individual level, this card can be understood as advice to form new enterprises or proceed to the next stage of one's spiritual development.
Shadow
Poverty, insufficient resources. Lack of patience, faith, balance, and broad-mindedness. Disorganization. Deprivation. Greed, callousness, or avarice. Selfishness or stinginess. Mercantilism. Prohibitions or obstacles. Feeling constrained by customs or traditions. Need for new inspiration. Undesirable changes. Absence of reward. Family disagreements. Inertia, mental sluggishness. Lack of enthusiasm. Stagnation. Suffocating dogmas.
Visual Description
A pale woman with long dark hair sits in a shadowed chamber holding a chalice fashioned from a human skull. Red roses climb in the upper left, and a carved skull with a Virgo glyph rests on the arm of her seat near entwined vines. She wears many beaded bracelets, gold bangles and pendants, and a small blue tattoo on her upper arm; the scene is dark, ornate, and quietly macabre.
Tarot of Vampyres
💜 Please support creators. Buy official decks.
ℹ️ Disclaimer
All card images and descriptions are taken from public sources. They are used for review purposes only. All rights to these images and descriptions belong to their creators. If you believe there is a copyright infringement, please contact us at [email protected].