The Weekend Tarot Reading: Ace of Disks

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

I’m getting a cold as I write this — the first of the season. On the one hand, it’s never great to feel like I’m getting sick. But on the other, it might be a very effective way of grounding the many things that have been occupying me in other areas of my life. I’ve been thinking, reading, learning; some strong emotions have come up of late; and I have entered various forms of spiritual study. On the other hand, I’ve neglected my exercise, stayed indoors rather than out, and my vegetable garden has been inviting me (unsuccessfully) to clear it and dig it over for weeks now. So a cold is in order, methinks. Perhaps I will start tending more carefully to matters physical.

At its simplest, this is what the Ace of Disks (Pentacles or Coins) in Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris’s Thoth Tarot is all about: grounding spirit in matter, bringing what we discover in the non-physical realm and applying it in the physical, the perfect balance of both.

As with all the Aces, the image that the Ace of Disks represents is an ideal — a standard. It is the energy of the suit in potential. How we apply it in our lives is up to us, and the various forms of application are witnessed in the rest of the cards of a suit, from the two up to the King (the Knight in the Thoth Tarot).

The card itself is dominated by earthy colours: greens, yellows, browns, red-browns. Disks are associated with the physical, as well as with money and possessions. This card, however, differs from many of the other Disk cards (especially the numbered cards) because the “physical” here is very much seated in nature rather than anything man-made. I don’t believe that means to imply that anything ‘unnatural’ (i.e. our possessions, the contents of our bank accounts) is wrong. It is simply that the ideal embodies a different emphasis: by going through the various levels of what we believe is important to us, we can detach from everything enough to come to understand our place in the nature of things.

Look at the card more closely. There are two pairs of wings — one set running from east to west, the other from north to south. The pair running from north to south is highly decorative, evocative of a peacock’s plumage; the other is unadorned — purer, in a sense. These represent the physical and the angelic realms respectively. Within the paired wings are the concentric rings of a tree trunk. I associate trees with natural wisdom, enduring yet finite — in contrast with the angel wings, which represent the infinite. At the very centre lies a gem with the inscription “TO MEGA THERION” in a gold band that surrounds it: Crowley’s ‘signature’, which is in keeping with the tradition that many tarot creators adopt of using the Ace or two to ‘sign’ their particular deck.

I could write a much-researched essay on the significance of the inscription and the symbols contained therein; but, as Lon Milo DuQuette so eloquently states of the three circles alone, they are “the symbol of so many things that I would be an idiot to even start a footnote.” [Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot] It was Crowley himself who suggested that to “do what thou wilt” should be the only thing of any significance in a person’s life, and therefore I am going to leave any explanations at this:

This card is the card of the initiate. The wings and the tree trunk form a cross — and at its intersecting point is where Crowley chooses to put his signature. Our eye is drawn here immediately. This is the point where magic happens. It is where we draw on inspiration (from the Latin “spirare” to breathe, from which the word “spirit” is also taken) and make it manifest. It is the moment where spirit becomes matter. When we are able to do this, we have become initiates. We are the initiators of our own experience. No-one else can stand at that point and do it for us. The meaning becomes real to us when we do it for ourselves.

We might have an inkling of the presence of something that lies beyond our physical bodies. We might visit there from time to time, in whichever way we choose to do so (and tarot reading can be one of those ways). Yet the meaning for us is somehow incomplete unless we bring it ‘back here’ — and we can only do that when we have a sense of our existence as physical beings. Hence the grounding. It is a vital part of the process. Next time you feel the call of the great outdoors, you have a yen to cook, to dig your hands or toes in the earth, sweat it out in the gym, or in the bedroom — perhaps you can view the call to this activity in another way: as one of the means of preparation for your own initiation. Hell, even a cold will do. The words of Ram Dass speak pointedly to me: “Be here now.” Indeed. By whatever means, this is our entreaty. This, for me, in this moment, is the Ace of Disks.