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
This week’s tarot reading is about bringing something into balance in preparation for events that are apt to move swiftly.
The Queen of Pentacles makes her second appearance in as many weeks. (She also turned up in the Weekend Reading on Jan. 2.) There seems to be a need to emphasize the qualities that she embodies — though this time instead of her working in harmony with the Queen of Cups, she is partnered with her masculine counterpart, the King of Pentacles.
The Queen of Pentacles (like the King) understands the laws of the physical world, and has learned to live within her means: she knows and works with the principles of sustainability — that being in the world and thriving in it is about balance. She is wealthy (evidenced by her dress and gold crown), yet she holds her Pentacle forward, as if in offering, denoting stewardship rather than ownership. There is a sense of detachment from material things. She is regal, yet she is humble: her throne, though ornate, is fashioned from stone; her ‘court’ is the natural world; a rabbit roams freely at her feet. She seems to meld into the landscape, her green veil folding into the grass, the red in her tunic mirrored by the flowers. It is as if she were made from the earth itself — Eve, reinstated in Eden.
Next to her sits the King. The blue mountain ranges behind them match up where the card edges meet, suggesting a strong, enduring but subtle bond between them. They are not facing each other; both are focussed intently on the Pentacles that they hold. They are together and yet detached. They hold their Pentacles gently, rather than clutching them like the man in the Four of Pentacles. Perhaps they have learned that possessiveness works both ways, and that when they let go they, too, are liberated.