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 think I would do well to take a page from the Queen of Pentacles’ book. Here she is, in many ways a paragon of balance between the spiritual and the physical – one who understands that the care of the body and the care of the soul are synonymous. Here am I, sitting at my desk with an hour-and-a-half to go before I embark on day two of a grueling training process; having had fewer hours’ sleep than I intended; with no idea what I’m going to pack for lunch let alone eat for breakfast; and a late-night trip to fetch my husband from the station.
Not much balance there. Then again, from an alchemical point of view, I clearly have quite a bit of prima materia to work with. (From Wikipedia: “The alchemical operation consists essentially in separating the prima materia, the so-called chaos, into the active principle, the soul, and the passive principle, Mind-body dichotomy the body.”) So there’s always an upside, right?
And yet, here we all are: another week, another Queen. In spite of everything, it is wonderful to work with a progression.
In contrast to last weekend’s Queen, who, like her sword, was set in hard profile, this Queen’s face has a softer aspect, and her gaze is directed downwards towards the pentacle that she is safeguarding. She is more introspective, more grounded.
As we’ve discussed in previous articles, the progression from Ace to King in any suit symbolises our own progression through a particular area of our lives at a particular time. Whereas to me the Queen of Swords speaks of the ’emancipated ruler’, someone who has mastery over their thoughts, the Queen of Pentacles lives out the idea that the body is a temple, and that richness here on earth is not necessarily material. While many of the preceding cards in the suit have hinted at material richness, with the protagonists in a town surrounded by commerce; either dressed poorly or ornately – the Queen is simply dressed, and the prosperity in the card springs from the fertile landscape around her. She is firmly situated in the landscape of the Ace of Pentacles – a human working with the energy of the Ace to achieve, in one of our reader’s words, “The culmination of all things into their ultimate form in the physical plane.” (Thank you, Charles.)