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 reading feels like an alliance to me — or more accurately, a truce, because it doesn’t seem to be an entirely easy one. This isn’t so much because the two parties, or aspects, are ones that are traditionally at war with each other; rather, they are too dissimilar to create a neat fit.
That being said, they have decided to work together, whether simply for a period or time or for a specific purpose. There is a feeling of ‘agreeing to disagree’ that enables both parties, or aspects, to co-operate in order to effect an equilibrium. Let’s look at the contrast created by the first two cards, and see how they are brought together in the third.
Pentacles are traditionally associated with the physical world and how we choose to operate in it. In the 7 of Pentacles, a man stands in a vineyard, chin resting on a long-handled tool that he has been working with, surveying the product of his labours — seven pentacles which hang like fruit in the vines before him. He seems tired. He has worked hard to get to this stage. It feels hot: the sky is clear — not a cloud in sight to offer any shade — and, apart from the vines, there is little sign of greenery around him. It is as if he has been rearing his crop in an arid landscape, against the odds. Yet he has met with success in spite of this. It reminds me of the vintners in areas such as California, Australia and South Africa, who not only have to work with nature in order to ensure their crops, but also have to work against it, diverting rivers and creating reservoirs to irrigate land that would otherwise be water-less.
Now we have a pause in the proceedings. A moment of review to assess progress. The crop is thriving, but there is still work to do before the pentacles are harvested and yield their value. The man is not yet wealthy: he is dressed well, but plainly, and the fact that he is in the fields means that he is still all too familiar with manual labour. The 7 of Pentacles is concerned with the building of ‘sweat equity’. It is only when we reach the 9 and 10 of Pentacles that the figures are promoted to a time of affluent leisure.
The Queen of Cups sits (literally) in contrast to this. Whereas pentacles are about matter, cups are associated with emotions, so we have an interplay between the tangible and the intangible. The 7 of Pentacles features a masculine protagonist, used to manual labour, active if currently at rest. The Queen of Cups features a feminine protagonist, used to having subjects who work for her, and who is receptive. In fact, the Queen is dedicated almost entirely to the feeling nature. Dry land gives way to the water rippling onto sand, and the Queen’s cloak — held together at the neck by a sea-shell — is an extension of the sea itself, cascading down her body and meeting it at the shoreline. The cup that the Queen holds with both hands takes up her entire focus. The action implied in the card is in the space between the Queen and the cup. It is the energy that I feel streams across it.
In short, the 7 of Pentacles describes doingness, while the Queen of Cups describes beingness. Drawn together here, they are the demonstration of the validity of both approaches in a given situation. How to hold those two ideas at the same time? By holding the tension of opposites.
And these opposites are brought into equilibrium in the final card, the 2 of Swords. Here, the almost androgynous figure (which I take to be female) combines the dark hair of the man in the 7 with the Queen’s robe. She is sitting, yet upright and in an athletic pose. The water is relegated to the background and she is unconnected to it, positioned instead on dry ground. There are echoes both of the pentacles and the angels’ wings on the cup in the crescent moon behind her.
So connections can be inferred, but they don’t… quite… line up. And this, for me, is the feeling evoked by the juxtaposition of the 7 and the Queen themselves. There is no easy resolution to them, no neatly tied-up conclusions. There is, instead, the tacit agreement to sit, side-by-side, as they are, while maintaining their individual integrity. If they don’t fit, perhaps it is our need to make them do so that needs more of our attention than anything else. Yes, perhaps that is where the need for peace resides.
Some great insights here, and as always I love reading them; so thank you!
Charles – for some reason the 7P still feels active to me. Pentacles generally are about doing, and although he’s resting, the proof of his doingness are the fruits of his labours. Your summation makes so much sense to me; and, yeah, I didn’t pick up on the fact that we are dealing with minors here.
The 2S draws me in too, and it is that conundrum that I was reaching at in my description, Jere. Words are sometimes poor substitutes for sensations or feelings. I do find myself physically grasping at words often when I write – as if a physical gesture is what is needed to pluck them from the ether and match them with what has already formed inside!
7 of pentacles.. Autumn colors, harvest. When running up the numbers, or down, view them as a time frame that is in synch with Nature, the Stars, the Elements, and the Qualities. Every farmer knows their work is never done.
Q of hearts.. attachment personified. (Do we think with the high or low?)
2 of swords.. this one gets interesting.. Lady Justice,.. guarding the ‘Riddle of the Sphinx’. Word, if you check it out, the distance between the expanse on the left, versus the clusterf%^ck on the right gives a perfectly balanced asymetrical symetric.
..She’s blind because she’s a 2, prior to 4 it’s all seed idea.. Spring time,.. (no crop ’til you pass the Seasons.) 2S is a conundrum, a mental quandary. Safe at a distance, but know your purpose before you ‘balance’ your will to her’s.
Thank you Sarah, for allowing the space to share insights, understandings, and all other sorts of spiritual magic.
Love and Peace
Jere
More fascinating tarot education!
I do “like” how the 2 of Swords is not only balancing herself next to the water, but is blindfolded to the moon above. Such a defensive position she has taken! What is she protecting? Her heart? (or course, her emotions) Isn’t it interesting how the moon is what make this picture asymmetrical?
The worker in 7 of Pentacles on the other hand has quite a bit of imbalance in his life – he has either just engaged in a lot of work or is contemplating same. But his “load” is not balanced. Interesting that he too has both his hands positioned over his chest. But he is not in a defensive position but one of contemplation.
The Queen of Cups on the other hand – or in the middle of the hand! – seems to be quite balanced and despite the asymmetry of the picture, it is balanced. And her chalice is firmly balanced in her hand – as you have pointed out, she is calm and focused.
Thank you Sarah and Charles both.
I don’t really see the 7P as “doing-ness” like you do. He’s resting, leaning on his hoe (or rake or whatever) and anticipating the rewards of his work. This is extremely passive. Golden Dawn calls this card “success unfulfilled.” Perhaps it is success not yet fulfilled. Thoth goes even further and calls the 7P “Failure” but i never read it that way.
This is a mostly passive spread, earth-water-air. No fire. No major arcana. The 7P-QC pair is very passive, this is about the emotions we have towards the work we’ve done. The phrase “a labor of love” seems appropriate here.
The QC-2S is water-air, strong but neutral, neither passive nor active. The 2S always intrigues me, you used the term “equilibrium” to describe it, and so do I. But equilibrium does not mean stability. The woman is balancing the swords up high, they are unstable. The swords make her center of gravity is so high she has to use bodily force to keep their weight from tipping her over, either forward on to the ground, or backwards into the water. Even though the 2S is an air card, the background full of water, and her blindfold, are speaking of the watery subconscious and our feelings and emotions. She turns her back, even blindfolds herself, and maintains a tense equilibrium between the extremes of her feelings. But the QC is all about vision, she stares at her elaborate cup. She embraces her feelings and looks into them intently. So this is an interesting pair, the 2S blind and feeling the weight of emotions, vs. the QC who look intently into her feelings.
So, to summarize my reading of this… If you don’t love your work, you’ll always be tense, trying to find stability even while you feel like you’re going from one extreme to the other, an emotional wreck. If you love your work, you love how you feel about your work and yourself. If you love what you have created, there is no need for tension and stress, or suppressing your feelings. Anticipation of your just rewards may feel different, depending on whether you have built something positive or not. If you have created good works, you can anticipate good rewards and happiness.