five of pentacles
I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and anxious about how to live abundantly and create wealth outside the frameworks I grew up with, all the while I’ve been intermittently tasting the sweet fruit of a life without them. My fantasy is to live artfully: practicing with patience and slowness the things that I love. I allow the things I love to grow on their own timeline, trusting that what I need will come to me. I fear that my easeful acceptance of the beauty around me enables a languid effort from me towards all things. It is easy to be happy. I go outside, I sit in the grass, I watch the clouds grow and shrink, I feel the sun on my back, I feel slowly. The core belief that everything we need is already here grows. We have food, we have water, we have sunlight, we have shelter. What’s missing?
Why isn’t our survival this simple when conceptually, it shouldn’t be this hard? This is my question of the day.
And then I try to bring myself back down to reality, I must do what is expected of me. And then I feel like I’ll never be happy. Always reaching for something that doesn’t exist. Only imagining my own peace. It’s not fair. I almost refuse to accept this fate. That I must always be doing something that drains me, that the people around me will never afford me value to do what I love. That we don’t value the things that I love, that I care for, that I work for. And do I even want to work?
I search for the resolution of the thing I can’t even name. I become angry, frustrated, and defeated. I feel devastatingly defeated. What if my dreams never come true? What if I am stuck on this hamster wheel forever? What if I only get to dream? And even when I try, it simply doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s my biggest fear, that even if I try, I won’t get what I’m aiming for. And I’ll be wrong to be hopeful all along.
Despairing and desperate, I pull out one of my personal tarot decks. After shuffling the deck maybe once, the 5 of pentacles (of course) and the 9 of cups in reverse fall out together. Talk about defeat and despair. In my personal deck (I use the Thoth deck), the 5 of pentacles has the word worry at the bottom. I am worried. I am worried in a soft way and then an angry and fiery way. When I feel myself soften, I feel the gravity of reality slipping in, and the heaviness of grief finds its way to the surface. What if things never change? What if my chaotic and unfocused and draining life remains. What if nothing changes?
I wonder what I want to achieve. I want to be self-sufficient. I want to give back to my community. I want to feed my community; I want my work and who I am to contribute to the whole. I want to make us better. I am afraid that I am not valued. I don’t know what I contribute. Or how to put it into words. I don’t know it what form I contribute. I wonder what I have to give.
And here is the crux of the 5 of pentacles. The figures in the traditional deck are hobbling past a church building, outside in the cold. It reminds me of the story in the bible where that woman tithes a penny or something, but Jesus scolds those who scoff at her. She gives what she has, and that is valuable. More valuable, in fact, than those who give millions. This is my disconnect, I think. The idea that spiritual value is separate from “Earthly” value. What those recognize in me as valuable is not what my spirit recognizes as valuable. The point is that we are valuable, what we contribute is valuable, but there’s some kind of disconnect between the idea of value and our reality reflecting this value. Some have commented that the figures in the five of pentacles card could simply walk inside the lit church. The idea is that they would not be cold if they just opened their minds to the possibility of walking inside, perhaps ask for help, that the church is a place of refuge. The only barrier to entry is their scarcity mindset, their desire to stay in the victim position.
I struggle with this concept. I have had a multitude of experiences which support the idea that my mind creates my reality and if I intend good things to happen they will. And I have also had the experience when things don’t go my way, and I’m at a loss. Unfair and unjust things happen to me, and there’s no resolution, they remain unjust. I happen to the world, and the world happens to me. I wonder what the five of pentacles is asking of me. I deeply believe that each card in the tarot brings some kind of wisdom to be distilled from it. Our life shows up with these energies, and we metabolize them. What does the five of pentacles need? What does it understand?
In order to analyze this, I can take several routes. I can look at the context cards: the 4 of pentacles and the 6 of pentacles and see how the 5 sits in this context as part of a story or evolution. I can also analyze the numerological meaning of five and how it interacts with the elements of earth/ the symbolism of pentacles. Finally, I can intuitively seek the meaning by meditating on the imagery of the card that I pulled, noting what I observe for the first time in the card, what jumps out at me: the color, the objects, the flow of the picture, any figures interacting?, what symbols are coming out at me? Shapes? Importantly, I will write these things down in order to flush them out and see my observations with clarity and acceptance.
I’m going to start with meditating on the imagery of this specific card. The most obvious imagery here for me is heavy concrete disks, which are showing cracks, or better yet, they are showing signs of wear. They seem to be pulled together or are being simply held together by a star shape with points made of smaller disks that connect to the center of the bigger disks. In the background, through the cracks are streams of what look like molten lava. Perhaps preparing the disks to be melted down so they can become something new. This is a transitional card, a necessary and uncomfortable moment of erosion and degradation. The light behind the heavy disks almost feels hopeful, like an alchemical elixir coming to alleviate the weight of our expectations. There’s a breakthrough that’s implied with all of this pressure.
Before the 5 of pentacles is the 4 of pentacles. In short, the 4 represents holding onto something. It can mean greed, it can mean hoarding, it can also mean saving. The primary motivating force behind the card is stability. The 5 is what comes to shake up this stability: change, and as a result, loss. After the 5 of pentacles is the 6 of pentacles: the card of reciprocity. When we integrate our understanding that losing is a fact of life, we give and take freely, understanding that the ebb and flow is how this all comes together anyway. We live in the cycle. The 5 of pentacles highlights the pinnacle of our change point. It is the uncomfortable moment after devastation. We are out in the cold. We are lacking. We are at a loss.
To receive something means that we have to give something up that we’re already holding onto. Perhaps the 5 of pentacles is asking us to let go, or rather, it is forcing us to. In the heat of the forge, we give up our form. For what? I think we give up our form for something that can only be seen and understood in relationship to one another. We give up our stable form for something fluid and communal, something vulnerable and mutual.
I wonder where this leaves me today. Can I give up my previous form to become something softer and receptive? Something that both gives and takes?
This is my declaration.
I am soft. I am receptive. I give. I take. I receive. I offer. In the heat of the forge, I give up my form. I offer my form to a greater purpose, to the uplifting of the collective consciousness, to the wholeness of the communal body. I surrender my devices and preconceptions to the divine fires of transformation. I release.
