7 of Pentacles (Housewives Tarot)
7 of Pentacles (Housewives Tarot)
One of my favorite decks when I am in need of a smile – the Housewives Tarot serves up its wisdom with a wink and gracious bit of hospitality. Modeled after old magazine images from the Donna Reed era of America (or at least, the fantasy of it we all imagine existed), this deck is a joy to work with and prone to some pretty biting observations.
The 7 of Pentacles (Coins) show a woman tending her garden – she has a basket of flowers she’s picked and a hose to water it all, and she is looking with pride and pleasure at a tree bearing seven brightly colored pentacles.
It’s worth noting that they are the fruit of a tree and not one of the flowers – she didn’t plant these a few weeks ago or even last season – for this tree to bear fruit it was planted years ago and has been tended and cared for ever since. And while it is clearly nearing time to harvest the fruit, she isn’t doing so yet.. Pick the flowers while you may, but leave the fruit until it is fully ripe or it will be at best tasteless and hard, and at worst bitter and completely unusable.
The 7 of Pentacles is about patience, and knowing how to tend to what’s necessary while waiting for the right time to reap the reward – no jumping the gun or trying to hurry things along here – the time spent waiting is part of the necessary process that allows the fruit to ripen to its fullest juicy sweetness. And in the meantime, there are plenty of flowers to offer their shorter term pleasures.
4 of Coins (Nigel Jackson Tarot)
The 4 of Coins and I have a sort of love hate relationship, where love = eh and hate = curses, foul beast! In the typical RWS style deck, it shows a miser hanging onto his money for dear life, or some other image that could be interpreted as grasping, miserly greed.
But there is a flip side to it – the concept of conservation of resource, of protecting what we have from wasteful expenditure. Sure… every miser thinks that’s what they’re doing – avoiding waste, so there is certainly a need for balance between a failure to use resources appropriately, and indiscriminate waste of them.
The Nigel Jackson Tarot depicts this version of the 4 of Coins well, I think. The image is that of a fortress on a cliff – strong sturdy walls to protect the inhabitants from marauders, a location with a far reaching vision to enable one to see what’s coming and prepare for it, and the four coins are in a stable square pattern reminding me of the need for stability of resources.
It doesn’t say don’t use what you have – it says use what you have in the most efficient way possible to maximize its worth. The miserly notion some other variations depict demonstrate a false idea of worth – inflating the worth of what you have as idols and fetishes, rather than in understanding that the value is in what you can do with what you have.
I was a child of the 60s and adolescent of the 70s and ‘conservation’ was about saving water, saving the whales, learning that ‘ecology’ means that we are all connected, like it or not, and everything we use impacts us and everyone around us. So mindfulness…being aware of how you use your resources, and what the longreaching impact is is very tied up with what this card is all about.
Doesn’t mean stick your money under the bed. But it may mean that if you drive a gas guzzler and don’t bother to turn off your lights when you leave a room, you’re not only tossing your money out the window, you’re expending resources in a way that have a serious impact on many people and creatures who are connected to you by invisible threads.
Use.
Don’t waste.
Don’t hoard for no purpose other than to be the person with the most stuff.
Set aside something for emergencies and try to be attentive to avoid emergencies where possible.
That’s the short advice of this card that is all about a stable relatinship to money and things.
XX – Judgement (Revelations Tarot)
XX - Judgement (Revelations Tarot)
In the Revelations Tarot, each card has built in depictions for reversed cards, allowing for an interesting exploration of the range of meaning inherent in each one.
The image of Judgement shows a Christian-style Judgement Day scenario … an archangel blowing a trumpet, surrounded by choirs of heavenly host, as a naked human ascends through the clouds to meet them.
In the upright position, the human greets them, arms open, ready to embrace this new life after death. In the reversed position, the human is covering his face to hide from the call, and the choir of angels have their own arms out, beseechingly.
I think the dual concepts here are rebirth and forgiveness vs. judgement with the expectation of punishment and what stands out for me is that the difference is not coming from the angelic beings, but from the human’s expectation and response.
And ultimately, that difference in how this is going to be experienced makes no difference at all… either way, the human self is passing through that reddish amniotic pool into the clouds of rebirth – go easy or go kicking and screaming, you’re still going.
This card makes me want to ask myself what do I need to forgive? What do I need forgiveness for? What new start do I need to meet as a joyous opportunity rather than with a heart full of fear? What does rebirth mean to me? What aspect of the divine is speaking to me that I can’t hear due to my own assumptions and insecurities?
It’s a big card…big concepts here.
Morgana Fillions's Tarot Journey 