Tarot Spread: Ancestral Gathering

Working with the 10 of Pentacles

The period between Halloween and the Winter Solstice is potent for connecting with family spirits and ancestors. For those of us in the States, Thanksgiving thrusts our family right into the midpoint. It’s a time for connection and healing. Many of us are glad to connect with those who share our blood and memories. But not everyone loves their family or is loved by their family in the way they would want.

Sometimes it’s easier and more enriching to engage with our ancestors, setting aside the problems that the mundane concerns of the living create. While some of this is bypassing, much of it is necessary for the time-being, so I want to offer a spread for connecting with your family of the past, known and unknown.

Whatever you know of your ancestors’ lived experience, there is much more you don’t know, including their experiences after life. And these are rich beyond imagination. May you find the time to connect with your family this season, both living and dead.

The Home: Where are my ancestral connections housed within me [or my world]?

The Tree: What central focus helps me to connect with branching timelines?

The Elders: Who waits for me, ready to grant access to my legacy?

The Companions: What energies guide and protect me as I journey into this Other world?

The Next Generation: How can I work with the past to build my future?

You may be wondering why there are no questions directed toward a specific ancestor such, “Who are you?” Or “What was your life like?” That’s because I use mixed modalities for my conversations with the ancestors. And as in real conversations, you shouldn’t go in with a list of interrogations. You can have a goal, but make sure to listen and respond. If you want to learn how to conduct ancestral readings using tarot and other tools, you should consider taking my course, Reading the River of Time.

This spread is based on the 10 of Pentacles as depicted by Pamela Colman Smith in Waite’s Rider Tarot. (The single-line art interpretation comes from my own Life Line Tarot.) The 10 is a card of familial and material legacy as it transitions to another generation. Often it is seen as a complete, stable family environment with multiple generations happily coexisting. Since the Pentacles are associated with earth and money, the card can mean inheritance of finances, but Pentacles are spiritual too, and the inheritance includes more than just the family manse and heirlooms.

The 10s of each suit end the suit in order to restart it: in Pythagorean numerology, 10 is also 1. As the end but also a beginning, there’s a translation of what has been to what will be. We as the person in the position of the 10 connect with the past to shape the future. It’s for this reason that I focus on this card as the transition between generations. It is not just inheritance but legacy that carries forward.

My focal point for this card’s image is the diagram of the Tree of Life mapped by the ten pentacles. But I’m not comfortable with the rampant appropriation of Kabbalah by esoteric Qabalists, and so I don’t want to overemphasize the meaning of the Tree for a general audience. Instead, it is still relevant as a tree that provides energetic connection points. That seems suitable as a spiritual family tree. You can research the Tree of Life on your own terms.

Next up was the old man and his dogs. Work with the dead often requires a psychopomp, and your beneficial ancestors can serve that role for you. But even then, you may not feel comfortable without the support of your faithful spirit companions. Whether these are your familiars or the fylgjur of Norse mythology or tulpa you manifest for special workings or just good vibes for anchoring your shadow work, there’s power in protection. Don’t ignore how they will help you find your way in the Other world of your psychic landscape.

And since I’m first and foremost a coach whose goal is to help people transform their lives through tarot, I couldn’t leave out a card for creating your future. In the illustration by Smith, there are multiple younger generations. For me this is you now and your future self, whether or not your future includes your own biological children.

I originally had four cards in this spread, but 4s are too stable for the purpose of the spread. Yes, the 10 offers familial stability, but you need the fifth point (in numerology and in a pentacle) to create that shift into another phase. And for me that meant looking at the physical structure of the “housing” for our ancestors.

In Smith’s illustration, that housing is the family manse, passed down generation after generation. For the 99% percent of us who don’t have such inheritances, we still have the housing of our bodies. Physically, we carry our ancestors in our DNA. Your body is home to them. But if you are uncomfortable inviting spirits into (or actually, out of) your body, you can use external channels, from heirlooms to photos or paintings to favorite foods to rocks and plants from their region of the world. Let the card provide inspiration into the part of your body or the parts of your world that will provide easy access. (If you pull a major arcanum and don’t have physical meanings for those cards, check out anatomical astrology for mapping body parts to the signs and planets, among other correspondences.)

Connection with the ancestors is truly empowering and healing. If you’re not comfortable reading into the ancestors, you can order a Tales from the Well ancestral reading from me. Or better yet, sign up for my course, Reading the River of Time. It includes an ancestral (or other) reading with the course, along with ways of connecting with your ancestors, past lives, and inner child, and real-time practice.

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