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.)
Unlike the woman in the Nine of Pentacles, the Queen is dressed in very simple robes, and the throne that she sits on is forged from stone. The only thing that she wears that speaks of monetary wealth is her gold crown, but even here there is a message. The crown’s colour is reflected in the yellow sky behind her – a colour typically associated with the ground when it is as bold as this – whereas the mountains in the background are blue. The colours have been inverted, so what is above is below, and below is above. Finally, both crown and sky are reflections of the Pentacle itself, while the landscape surrounding the Queen is tangible, verdant. This is the point where matter and spirit converge.
In his reference to the Queen of Disks (the corresponding card in the Thoth Tarot), Gerd Ziegler refers to the card as “overcoming the barren past”. And when I look at the Queen, it reminds me in many ways of another card: The Empress, who is often depicted as pregnant. However, here, the Pentacle stands in for The Empress’s fecund belly. The Queen is rather midwife or guardian than mother, the element of us that is responsible for, and adept at, bringing spirit down into matter.
What’s more, the Queen seems to be aware of our presence in the way that she is holding the Pentacle away from her body, towards us. She is mindful of her audience. Perhaps for us this makes the idea of the wisdom that she imparts more personal and more immediate. As with the Ace, where the presentation of the Pentacle on the disembodied hand seemed to say to us, “Here it is, a gift from the divine. Use it well”, so the Queen reminds us of this birthright. We can spend so much time working towards some goal, that we forget that it is in the service of something that isn’t purely material.
We hit our midlife crises. We become confused. We often try to address the chaos through acquiring new things, new ideas, a new body, a new lover. What we forget about is acquiring new meaning. I think this, in many ways, is what this card is about. The Queen’s existence is meaningful because she understands why she is here, and what she is doing. She works deliberately and in balance with nature, and her environment is abundant and supportive, if not opulent or glitzy.
So when I am stuck in my head, panicking and rushing, the Queen of Pentacles is a reminder that there is something bigger going on than my mad ramblings around a messy house. If we were to make time to ground ourselves and to look after ourselves, we also make space for a better working partnership with what brings meaning to our lives. Great advice for the start of the week.
Thank you all for a lively and enriching conversation this week. It is valuable to get all these different points of view.
Charles, I agree it is a fortuitous card coming after the article on the Aces. Your comment about receptivity vs. activity made sense; and yet I wanted to add that I don’t believe the Queen got to where she was unless she in some way harnessed the energy of the Ace. You can work actively at being receptive – otherwise you can simply be passive, and then that energy is inaccessible.
One of the things that I hold in my consciousness when I write these articles is that not everyone has had the benefit of a theoretical foundation to the Tarot; but we can all access our intuition. Hence the fact that I emphasize intuition above all else. That readers – myself included – can build on this by reading all of your comments adds another layer, which is deeply appreciated.
I find this card is often comes up when people, mainly women, have come through a difficult and trying period. They typically are afraid that yet another set of crises will appear, and can feel stuck or chained to the problems created in their lives by other people. Women who are the lynchpin for their family/community, or the problem solvers, will be drawn to this.
The message I usually take from this is to show them that they have managed the journey and can now pause and rest before going onward. The worst is over. The Thoth deck gives the sense very strongly, with the Queen looking backward across a barren waste, and the surefooted goat in front of her. In relation to the Rider-Waite deck, both share the sense of taking the available earth material and creating something solid and tangible.
Women with a strong Capricorn aspect almost always draw this one. A Capricorn influence seems to make the person feel that they have never really arrived. There’s always another climb ahead.
Charles: It’s “every man and woman is a star”. Is the receiver less important than the transmitter? The cube of space is the cross of light folded into 3D. It’s turtles all the way down. In the I Jing the Receptive gets the same respect as the Creative. You can’t exist without the two together.
Hey Jere,
We are trees inside out. Today it was a redwood and later a douglas fir. Yesterday it was a maple (I think). The conifers are definitely more even tempered, though all trees are chillin’ compared to a human. I think the world would be a lot less polluted if this kind of learning were taught as enthusiastically as math and engineering.
funny — the rabbit was one of the first things i noticed, too.
Yes, yeti, there are numerous levels of polarities in these Tarot systems, like light and dark, male and female. But this is a very complex topic. I think your analogy about light and dark is more about the star illuminating, than the planet receiving the light. Remember Crowley said, “Every man is a star”…? But we are talking six of one, half a dozen of another.
The Thoth Queen of Disks is a lot more astrological. Note her horned crown and the prominent goat, symbol of Capricorn, a decan she rules. The goat also appears on the armrest of the throne in the RWS Queen, but it is much more subtle, you’d really have to look for it. The Thoth Queen card shows no sky at all, and the green growth surrounds her and is raised over her like an arch, just as the RWS card has a vine growing over her. It is a “bower,” a gazebo-like structure made from growing plants. Her face is turned away from us, towards the land laying before her like a flat plane (and a vast plain) while her personal realm wraps around her. Again the dichotomy between the distant and the close.
One particular element I like about the Thoth Queen of Disks is that she bears a scepter with a cube at the top, it is “The Cube of Space.”
(..just on the side..), Yeti, (I’m with ya on the deeper’s but,..) ..what about, instead of, “I didn’t have to hold my focus, it’s as though the tree held it, its presence powerful enough to push my mind into its groove.”, you said, “I relaxed enough to where I was one with everything, and this tree was kickin’ back, and we stood there and chatted a bit.”? (Forgive, excuse, accept, or understand the obviousness but, “You are the tree”.)
I do enjoy hearing about your practices, it encourages me to seek out others who are interested in body/soul work. Thanks man, for being you,.. (cypress? Oak? [baffled]).
Take care man (if I weren’t in California I’d share space with ya..),
Love, Peace, Happiness, (BALANCE! 😉 )
Jere
And the disk she holds is a globe.
Aleister Crowley and Lady Harris’ card from the Thoth Deck gives much more of the composition to the landscape, the body of our homeworld.
Charles: consider that the half light/half dark is a condition of manifesting a body dense enough to be a planet in our universe of stars and space. At least when you have a single star solar system. One way of viewing this card is as the planet under our feet who always has one face toward the sun and the other toward the vastness of night.
This is a fortuitous card to study after the Aces. The Queen plays off some of the iconography of the Ace of Pentacles.
Consider the positions of the symbols being held in the Aces. The Wands and Swords are being held upright, the hand maintains a firm grip. The Cups and Pentacles are being supported in the palm of the hand, but not gripped. This is the difference between the active and passive suits.
And again in the Queen of Pentacles, she is receptive, the disk sits lightly on her lap, she barely needs to hold it in position. So I would not say she is actively “..working with the energy of the Ace to achieve..” She is putting herself in a position to be receptive to the energy of the Ace of Pentacles. It is a passive position that receives the energy into its home on the physical plane.
But more interestingly, note that she is underneath a flowery arch. Do you remember how I said the Ace of Pentacles is the only Ace that has the horizon obscured? We see the horizon only through a flowery arch, with a view of a distant, double peaked mountain. Now look closely at the horizon line just to the right of the edge of the throne. Notice those two distant mountain peaks again. This tells us the Queen is actually sitting IN the archway. She is in a sense, the gatekeeper between the two realms, one inside that flowered hedge, one outside, as we saw in the Ace of Pentacles. Her position determines whether we allow the energy of higher realms to ground itself into our physical surroundings.
A confirmation of this symbolism comes from the Golden Dawn, which describes this Queen as having one side of her face towards the light, one side in shadow. We can see this symbolism vaguely followed in the RWS image, one side of her face (away from us) is covered by the green veil flowing down from her crown. The other side, towards us, is bared. Her face is turned away from the light, shielded, but she is receptive to the light’s manifestation in the large Pentacle. Her pentacle is even larger than the King’s, larger than in any other card except the Ace.
I remember doing a reading with a woman when this card appeared. The woman said, “oh look, a rabbit!” I had never noticed that there was a little rabbit down in the lower right corner. The brown rabbit blends in so well with the brown earth, as if it is a little earth spirit. It is often significant where feet of the person depicted in the card contact the ground. In this case, we see her brown shoes in contact with brown earth, blending in so well, she is grounded in the most literal sense.
Yesterday I took a cue from my teacher’s teacher and did the bagua circle walking with a tree at the center. I’ve been standing with the center of my vision resting on a tree, but the feeling of walking the circle with the tree at the center was even more profound. I didn’t have to hold my focus, it’s as though the tree held it, its presence powerful enough to push my mind into its groove. The movement of my form in a circle brought the tree’s rootedness into sharp relief. In both stance practice and circle walking the tree’s rootedness in my vision starts as a picture and becomes new states of mind through repeated interactions.
Building a root ins’t only for plants.
Thanks Sarah… I pulled this card last night as answer to the inquiry: How I am presently held by the Beloved? It took my breath away, since in a flash I saw the relationship to the Empress and as a testimony to the *clean* wealth that we are accumulating. It was great (& serendipitous — Sara’n’dipitous, ha! get it?) to see your explanation.