By Sarah Taylor
As I was shuffling for this week’s reading, the Four of Pentacles slid out the deck across the table, face-down. Call me superstitious, but I see “pack jumpers” as a particular form of synchronicity: the card isn’t only putting itself forward for the reading — it comes italicised. It is a focal point in the layout.
The Four of Pentacles paints a clear picture. The figure of a king sits outside a city on a stone throne, his limbs and his head occupied with the task of holding on to the four pentacles in his possession. He cannot move. He can’t even look around and see what lies behind him.
As a king, he seems devoid of subjects, who may well be in the city, leader-less, due to their ruler’s preoccupation with the matter at hand. The matter in his hands, on his head, under his feet.
Pentacles describe the physical world. Here, the traditional idea of a king has been up-ended. Instead of exercising his authority as ruler, he is being dominated by the very things over which he should have dominion. Priorities have shifted, power structures have changed, and ‘king’ has become ‘subject’.
He looks tired. His eyes are shaded, the lower lids heavy and bagged. He is hunched and sitting awkwardly, feet on tiptoe. He is off balance in every sense of the word. How does he have room to think or feel, let alone move? His arms curl around a pentacle that sits over his heart. He is a veritable fortress, barricaded by the physical elements of his circumstances.