october 2025: ten of pentacles // building ourselves home

hello, friends. my disruption-themed community study container rebel rebel begins today, which means that today is your absolute last chance to join us for this transformative experience. paid subscribers get a discount (yes, even if you upgrade your subscription right now). additionally, CALL YOUR COVEN's october forecast is live and ready for you, and the conservatory has gotten an upgrade and an expansion, so there's plenty to support your tarot practice and your daily life right now. sending you so much love and strength — this world is so heavy, but i'm glad we're together.

after exploring cards from the suit of earth all year long, we’ve reached the ten of pentacles: the true end of the story, that somehow isn’t really an ending at all. 

the journey of the suit of earth, the cycle of pentacles, the planted seed rooting and growing into something that can sustain us, is a story of patience, perseverance, intentionality, responsibility, boundaries, and devotion.

and by the time we reach the pinnacle of the adventure, the triumphant conclusion that makes space for the next beginning, we have something tangible that we can wrap our hands around, something that provides support, something that has woven its way into our regular life without constant tending. the ten of pentacles is the energy of the ace pushed to the extreme, solidity and liminality all at once. fool and magician energy together, wrapped up in the stable resources of the element of earth and the endless, predictable mutability of the wheel.

so what do we do with this card? how do we understand it? standardized meanings include security, legacy, prosperity, success. very capitalism-coded, very much about an abundance of resources that protects us from lack, and not much else. and listen, these days those things sound pretty damn good — but where’s the liminality? where's the fool, the magician, the possibility, the uncertainty? where's the curiosity, the hope, the what's next of it all? in a card that’s so much about protection and wealth, is there anything more to discover, especially something that might help us find our way into a new beginning?

what else can we find in this card beyond material achievement?

if we’re thinking about pentacles-coded personal journeys of health, wealth, and stamina, my own story for 2025 is extremely literal.

at the beginning of 2025, after years of debilitating pain and endlessly brutal symptoms, i finally had a desperately-needed robotic laparoscopic hysterectomy. if the ace was my surgical appointment in january to confirm that insurance would actually finally approve the procedure, and the two of pentacles was february's juggling of resources to make sure i could afford to take that much time off, the surgery was the three of pentacles right at the top of march, quite literally releasing something from my body that i couldn’t carry any longer. resources of support from my beloved wife and community, care and patience from clients, showing myself grace for a long and tender healing process. the first major mini-arc of the transformative journey.

throughout the year, as we've explored the pentacles suit from ace to nine, i’ve been on my own health journey of stability, tending, learning to trust my body again. it’s slow going, and it’s not done yet — i still experience occasional swelling and pain when i push too hard, i still can’t quite figure out which size pants to buy, i still have to pay careful attention to my iron and protein levels. but the ways that my energy levels and stamina have shifted is almost impossible to describe, so dramatic is the difference. i feel like a different person.

not every pentacles journey is going to be this obvious, this linear. not every pentacles journey is going to reach such a satisfying conclusion. and just because we can point to a clear beginning doesn’t mean that every pentacles beginning is clear when it’s happening. i’ve had other surgeries and procedures before this, seen countless doctors and had the same exams and tests and scans over and over again. this hysterectomy has been more than 20 years in the making, with many ace-coded moments that fizzled into nothing.

yet here, in this ten of pentacles place, i’m finally feeling steady, stable, safe within myself in a way that i couldn't have imagined even a few years ago. my body used to feel like the enemy. but now finally, just a month before i turn 40, it’s starting to feel like home.

so here in 2025, with so many things in our world falling apart, what even is material success through the lens of the ten of pentacles? what would it mean to live in abundance, to feel secure and stable, to have plenty? what is enough that we might feel satisfied, that our ambitions would be soothed, that we could trust enough in what we have to truly rest? what does the ten of pentacles mean these days, on a personal level, as a goal and a guide?

i’ve spent so much time this year speaking with other small business owners, who are also scared about the future. one year plans and five year plans and ten year plans, retirement plans and savings plans, it feels like all of it is crumbling so very quickly into never-ending "god i hope i can make rent this month." who knows what our government will become, what our country will look like in the future? who knows if our businesses will still be possible? who knows how we will continue to adapt in increasingly chaotic circumstances?

striving for the security and material success of the ten of pentacles, in this economy? who the hell do we think we are?

i admit that i’ve never been much of a five-year-plan kind of person. the older i get, and the more financial catastrophes and fake raptures and once-in-a-century storms i live through, the less far ahead i can think. it probably helps that i’ve also never really described myself as ambitious, never been someone with huge clear lifelong goals that i wanted to strive for. i'm more mercurial, more quicksilver, more trusting-my-gut than year-ahead-spreadsheets. these aspects of the suit of pentacles often feel challenging for me: the idea that i should always have my gaze steadily fixed on my next objective, should be constantly working towards something specific, should never be satisfied.

but the success of legacy is a different thing altogether. does anyone want to be forgotten? don’t we each want to make a mark in some way, press our fingerprints into someone else’s heart, leave something behind that tells the world who we were and what we loved? is that a better, truer, more honest measure of success?

my books are legacies, and i'm certainly proud of them. my classes and writings can be legacies too. but i also want to leave a legacy of generosity, compassion, kindness. a legacy of staying tender in brutal times, of holding space for grief and joy simultaneously, of listening with care, of offering truths and insights that challenge and inspire. a legacy of being brave, and fighting back, and using everything i have to protect what i love.

that kind of legacy, that version of success, feels far easier to focus on long-term: a kind of abundance that i personally am far more interested in. maybe i can’t control the economy, or my savings account (lol), or the price of groceries — but i can control how i show care to my loved ones, how i participate in organizing efforts and community support networks, how i live and breathe and laugh and cry and grieve and create here in the fall of an empire.

maybe this, too, is the ten of pentacles: the work we have woven into our daily lives, the ways we continue to fortify our homes of self, the legacies we establish and invest in day by day.

the ten of pentacles is what we’re building, and what we’ve built, and how what we’ve built gives us joy. legacies don’t spring into being fully formed — they are carefully crafted, over time and investment, with effort and vision and care and intention. and also, sometimes, legacies are created without us even realizing it, in the ways that we show up and the impressions we leave, in our own sincere consistency. in the ways that we serve and care. in the things that we model for others, simply by being ourselves.

sometimes this means volunteering every week at the same place for a year, and seeing how your efforts create possibility for your community. sometimes this means slowly building relationships with your neighbors, until you know everyone on your street and find common ground. sometimes this means consistently sharing where you are with people, and learning to be vulnerable even if you aren't sure how that vulnerability will be received.

what happens when you do something regularly, until it's such a regular part of your world that you forgot what your life was like without it?

because we're talking legacy and long-term growth, pentacles journeys are slow, just like healing journeys or learning journeys. they force us to grapple with how much we really need something, to consistently attend to our own devotion, to eventually make something that will last beyond us. there is pleasure in this final stage of the cycle, magic in something being finished to the point that we can trust it to be secure on its own without endless tending or decision-making. 

post-surgery, i’m no longer stuck on the couch clinging to a heating pad for weeks at a time, or dizzy from blood loss, or planning my life around unpredictable cycles. now i can lift weights, and i do, and it’s absolutely great. i can go for long walks again, wandering down to the water and listening to the birds. i have to remind myself that even a year ago my life looked incredibly different — because i hadn't taken this journey yet.

now my body is finding strength, becoming something i can trust a little bit more than before. 

and also, i’m still disabled. i still live with idiopathic insomnia. i’m still immunocompromised in a country that is restricting vaccines, that has largely done away with face masking in public. i’m still afraid of future cognitive decline, of what i might lose over the next ten or twenty years in terms of mental acuity or clear speech. 

the body journey of mine is far from over – but fuck, does it feel good to be on the other side of this particular cycle, to be seeing the fruit of my patience and slow healing efforts. this, too, is a kind of legacy: to be done, to celebrate, to trust in what is complete by looking to something new.

building ourselves home, to me, is the heart of the ten of pentacles. not the completion, not the success, not the achievement of our greatest ambitions. not endless wealth, or perfect health, or never needing to work again.

instead it’s the establishment of routines and devotions, the trusting in our own capacity to keep showing up, the paths we can walk without having to think about it. it’s the physical steps we take to tend ourselves and our loved ones and our neighborhoods and our communities, the work that has become part of the rhythm of our lives. it's the ways that we have invested in self, and others, and the ways that we trust those investments to keep growing even if we aren't tending them with all of our might.

it’s living bright and true, blooming hard wherever we’re planted or plucked, taking care with every fiber of our beings because we don't know how to do anything else. it’s loving what we love, without shame or hesitation. it’s the devotion of care, the repetition of adoration, the things we reach for even when we can’t see them.

yes, what gardens are you building — but also, what blossoms are you preserving? what actions are you savoring, that feel satisfying and impactful? what choices are you cherishing, that have become a consistent piece of your days and nights? what are your fields, your orchards, your fruits on the vine that will keep fortifying you? what can you look to when you worry that you aren't doing enough?

what has become a part of your foundation, a cornerstone in your home of self? and what does it mean to approach whatever your next pentacles journey is, with the support and abundance of this particular thing already firmly fixed in your world?

as we move into october and into this final beat of the suit of pentacles, i want you to consider where your joy lives. i want you to recognize what you have been carefully tending this year, that can now stand on its own and bear fruit. i want you to celebrate what feels solid and true, even if you can still see more to do in other areas or know what your next journey needs to be.

what have you been supporting, that can now support you? what have you been building into, that can now build you up? where have you been leveling up internally and externally, and what might that now empower you to try in the future?

what are people seeing in you, that you have been working hard and consistently for? how are you supporting others with your ongoing efforts? what does it mean to build something that will last beyond you, that others can see and engage with?

and when you think about the legacy you want to create, the mark you want to make on this world, the kind of person you want to be remembered as, what does that mean? what do you want to leave behind, and how can that bone-deep knowledge guide you forward?

wishing you a stable, abundant, meaning-oriented october, friends.

remember that if you could use some support in learning to break rules and challenge your own understanding of obedience, you still have time to join my new community container rebel rebel!