Lady Jane Wilde and the Ten of Pentacles

Lady Jane Wilde, born Jane Francesca Elgee in Dublin in 1821, poet, political essayist, and folklorist, is well known as the mother of Oscar Wilde, however was also a formidable figure in her own right.

Jane first made her name as a writer during the 1840s under the pseudonym ‘Speranza’ (the Italian word for ‘hope’), contributing poems to ‘The Nation’, the newspaper of the Young Ireland movement. When the British authorities sought to silence the paper, Jane had the dubious honour of writing the piece they cited as grounds for prosecution.

In 1851, she married Sir William Wilde, an eye and ear surgeon and medical writer. Their Dublin home at 1 Merrion Square became a centre of intellectual and artistic life, frequented by scholars, nationalists, and writers. Jane presided over her ‘salons’ with sharp wit and erudition, engaging guests in debates on literature, politics, and mysticism. Young Oscar Wilde grew up steeped in this atmosphere — adoring his mother, he later said she was “brilliant, and with the most perfect taste.”

While her husband pursued medicine, Lady Wilde turned increasingly toward the preservation of Ireland’s folk tradition. At a time when folklore was often dismissed as peasant superstition, she approached it with scholarly seriousness and deep respect. Her seminal volumes — ‘Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland’ (1887) and ‘Legends of Ireland’ (1887) — captured on paper – often for the first time – the soul of the Irish storytelling tradition.

Lady Wilde didn’t merely transcribe tales — she interpreted them, contextualised them, and reflected on their spiritual, moral, and nationalist significance. Fairies, banshees, herbalists, and old gods populated her books. She believed that these stories preserved the memory of a pre-colonial Irish identity — one that was magical, fierce, and deeply poetic.

In 1876 on the death of her husband William, her family was left in financial disarray. Lady Wilde, accustomed to social prominence, was forced to leave Dublin and live on a modest pension in London. Still, she remained a magnetic presence in literary circles, though her later years were marked by hardship and obscurity.

Oscar remained devoted to her, often writing letters filled with affection and admiration. He supported her financially when he could, and took great pride in her intellect. Her influence is evident in the wit and mythic sensibility of his own writing. When she died in 1896, he proclaimed that her ‘fetch’ (apparition) appeared to him while he was in a prison cell in Reading Gaol.

Today, Lady Wilde is remembered not only as the mother of one of literature’s most brilliant voices, but as a writer and cultural guardian in her own right. Her contribution to the preservation of Irish folklore is invaluable — she gathered a rich and enduring archive of a world whose voices might otherwise have faded.

Lady Wilde's life reads like a story she herself might have written: full of passion, hardship, courage, and an unshakable belief in the power of words. She gave Ireland back some of its oldest stories — and gave the world a son who would become a legend.

The Ten of Pentacles

At first glance, the Ten of Pentacles appears to be a card of wealth, stability, and familial prosperity. But its symbolism reaches far deeper — into ancient esoteric systems, intergenerational wisdom, and the question of what we leave behind when our time is over. A closer look shows how the pentacles are arranged in a Tree of Life shape, known in the Kabbalah system as a diagram of cosmic law. This hidden symbol suggests that the everyday world contains magic greater than any of us can usually see.

On a more grounded level, the Ten of Pentacles is the card of legacy. It asks: What will endure after we’re gone? The image often features three generations and a symbol-rich setting — a reminder that what we build now can echo forward into the lives of those who follow.

This card honours tradition — not as static repetition, but as the fertile soil in which identity, memory, and purpose take root. It acknowledges ancestry and kinship, and the sacred responsibility we hold to pass down values, stories, and stability.

Yet legacy doesn’t have to be grandiose. It can be the mentorship we offer, the skill we perfect and share, or the home we create that feels like a haven. It’s the simple, steady acts of grounded devotion that shape the world in lasting ways.

With its integration of Kabbalistic geometry and earthbound symbolism, the Ten of Pentacles becomes a bridge between spiritual law and everyday life. It tells us that building a meaningful legacy is a spiritual act.

It is also a card of harvest, of seeing the long view. We are encouraged to think about sustainability, intergenerational care, and what really matters over time. When this card appears, ask: Are we investing in what lasts? Are we building something rooted in values?

In essence, the Ten of Pentacles invites us to see beyond the material — not to reject it, but to revere it as the sacred ground where spirit manifests. Through its architecture, it whispers the truth behind every practical act: this world is more enchanted than it seems.

Aspects of Lady Jane Wilde’s life resonate with the deepest teachings of the Ten of Pentacles — a Tarot card that speaks of legacy, ancestral wisdom, and the sacred relationship between the material and spiritual worlds. Like the ten pentacles arranged in the shape of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, Lady Wilde’s life unfolded across many dimensions: poet, political voice, folklorist, mother, and mystical thinker.

At the heart of the Ten of Pentacles is the question: What do we leave behind? Lady Wilde’s answer is multifold. As "Speranza", she gave the Irish nationalist movement a voice of passion and defiance. As a collector of Irish folklore, she preserved the fading oral traditions of a colonised people, protecting the spiritual imagination of a culture that imperial systems had tried to erase. The wit, theatricality, and mythic sensibility that defined her son Oscar’s writing were sown in the salons and stories she shared with him. The Ten of Pentacles reminds us that legacy is not only inheritance of property or name — it is the transfer of values, vision, and vitality across generations.

Lady Wilde believed fiercely in the supernatural, and her writing on Irish legends, fairies, and omens reflects the same hidden magic that the Ten of Pentacles suggests lives within the everyday world. She treated folklore not as superstition but as encoded wisdom — a view shared by esoteric traditions like the Kabbalah, where physical symbols mirror spiritual truth.

In this way, Lady Wilde exemplifies the central mystery of the Pentacles suit: that the tangible world is not separate from the divine but shaped by it. She found magic in hearth and heritage, in story and soil — and taught others to see it, too.

Lady Wilde’s legacy is layered, like the ten spheres of the Tree of Life: poetic, maternal, political, mystical. Like the Ten of Pentacles, she reminds us that the stories we tell, and the cultural seeds we plant can outlive us, rooting deeply into the future.

Sources

• Dictionary of Irish Biography

• De Breffny, Brian. Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopedia. London: Thames and Hudson, 1983.

• Marhorie Howes, "Lady Wilde and the Emergence of Irish Cultural Nationalism," in Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Foley and Ryder, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998.