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.
How did he get here? He worked hard to accrue what he has. The Eight of Pentacles, to the left, suggests the foundation to the story of our king. The Eight is about the application of a skill in order to accrue something of value. It describes the disciplined focus of one who is building their world. The man in the Eight is dressed simply. He is humble. The completed pentacles are at a distance from him; he does not (yet) identify himself with them fully.
However, at some point, the importance of what he has created has grown to the point where he is now in thrall to it. As I mentioned last week, Fours are pauses, and here there is a pause that is both inevitable — there is no room for movement — and also a potential opportunity to participate in a situation that is calling for change.
And change it will. It always does. But will the king let go, or will his precious pentacles be prised from him? The final card suggests that the outcome will be fitting, and unequivocal.
Justice is meted out once all the evidence is weighed and the sword of truth has been wielded with integrity. Notice the evolution of the figures’ positions in all three cards, from left to right. There is an expansion, a change in demeanor, until Justice herself sits fully upright on her throne, liberated from bias, grounded, clear-eyed.
Sometimes the effort that we put into something can no longer justify the status quo. Sometimes what we are holding on to is what is holding us back. And sometimes we are granted liberation through the swift verdict that Justice brings us. It might feel like we are losing something of value, but in this case what we are losing is what prevented us from moving, growing, resting easy and dedicating our focus to what merits, rather than consumes, our energy and attention.
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Eight of Pentacles (Sun in Virgo), Four of Pentacles (Sun in Capricorn), Justice (Libra)
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 explains how to use the spread.
DivaCarla, …maybe just a little mad, with the Sun now coming in to conjoin Pholus & trine Eris (& sextile Juno). Truly, “the conditions I’m tolerating that have me feeling trapped in my own life” really speaks to work I’ve been doing lately. And yet those “conditions” are deeply internal. It’s like those 4 pentacles are the social acceptance I’m buying with my silence over the indignity of not being able to own my desire. I’m pissed beyond words that female sexuality has to be seen as an aberration, spoken of in whispers & giggles. (Not for nothing, but Sun/Pholus opposes my Venus.) …Yeah, actually, getting angry won’t be tough here. Thanks, hon. I can let the lid come off of this.
BTW, I was looking at the DG deck — wow, that carries some wild resonance. After this Scorpionic year, I can see that deck not taking prisoners. You’re a brave woman. 😉
Strawberry, I drew a card last night from the Dark Goddess Deck, the Sun, shown as Sekhmet. Since this is DG material, I won’t know the whole thing right away. The first thing I got was if I want to break out of this prison of my own design, I have to get mad. First mad at the needless suffering of my potential clients I am not working with yet, and at the conditions I’m tolerating that have me feeling trapped in my own life. The Sun card is full of light, power, and completion, which echoes Tower again. After the dust settles. The DG aspect is Uranus/Pluto square. Transformational surprises, so it’s not over, though I did ask that the energy focused on the one question I put forth. It a big questions.
This morning I woke up to the Tower. It is a small piece of my life, one I was considering walking away from but had not announced or settled on a decision. It imploded in my inbox today. I laugh, though it was upsetting and distracting with the vitriol and unleashed emotion of the others involved, and the necessity to respond I felt.
Thought I’d share with you in case My Sun card sheds light on your situation. Remember it’s the Dark Goddess, so look in the shadows as well as the light.
“everything close to my face is stone”
Yeah.
Mary-El is gorgeous! The only deck I have in hand is the Dark Goddess Tarot. I think a person can only stand one reading a year from that deck. I did sign up for this.
Let’s be our own Tower, focusing that energy on what we desire.
Space for expanding my heart is important to me. I go out on the mountain as much as possible, though snowed in and worked in the past couple of days. These lines from Rilke popped as I was reading your post. They came up midyear and they resonate now, but not the same way. Midyear, I woke up in the tunnel, and now, I am not really in the tunnel, just remembering the habit of stone.
It’s possible I am pushing through solid rock
in flintlike layers, as the ore lies, alone;
I am such a long way in I see no way through,
and no space: everything is close to my face,
and everything close to my face is stone.
Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated by Robert Bly)
DivaCarla, I so feel for you. I wonder if Mars’ recent entry into Libra is making this sense of the scales weighing against you feel a little more apocalyptic? I certainly felt that in a huge way — like the energy of my whole existence took a major hit, & it’s taking some time to readjust. I’ve been significantly disoriented for days (and learning to use that disorientation as a space to breathe — albeit awkwardly — within).
I use the Mary-El tarot most of the time, and I lovelovelove her Judgment card: http://www.mary-el.com/majorarcana.html There’s an extraordinary vitality & exuberance in her image of the phoenix reborn…less of the bible-thumping, reap-your-reward, fear-mongering control mechanisms religion uses. I now thrill to see the Judgment card come up, because I know how hard I’ve worked to represent my own truth. And of course I fall short, but I’m learning to focus my energy on what I desire, rather than what I fear. For so long they were indivisible.
All that said, I’d love a little deus ex machina to retrieve me from the mess I’m in, but if there’s anything to Len’s recent post — and when is there not? — the work is mine to do. I can do it. You can, too. I know it. Let’s be our own Tower this time.
loves, ~K
Good catch, Kari. I kept feeling something off but couldn’t stop to nail, or see it if I looked. I do have a whole lot of judgment going on. I’ve been reaching back to Baptist roots for some inspiration, oddly enough, and there judgement day is right there. Justice, and the truth as Sarah says, I fear the long arm of the truth LOL.
I woke up thinking of this array. It feels like No Exit. I can’t breathe. Sarah, can we get some midweek relief?
I need a road trip.
I looked up Justice. “you get what you deserve… You simply get back what you have made for yourself. … you cannot change your actions once they have been made …
When Justice appears, it should be taken as a stern reminder that the deeds of the past form the foundation for the events of the present and the future.”
And yes, this scares me because I confuse justice with judgement. All have sinned, etc. Let me take a cool headed assessment: I have worked very hard in the direction I want to go. I have learned skills and applied them. I have given much. It is time for what I’ve worked to create to take wing, and to receive the reward. I am in judgment of myself, and fear I am getting justice, because I have not received the reward, the fruits of my work.
The only hope is for the Pentacle maker in the 8 card to walk away from his labor. and receive his reward. He can look up from his labor and feel that there is an 8 of wands heading his way. He’s the one with the creative agency. It will save him from becoming the 4 of Pentacles. The Tower may come anyway, blown up by the 8 of wands.
Gosh, Kari, we must be in a state if we are praying for a Tower!
Thank you for your sympathies. It is time for me to make some phone calls and offer my condolence, and service if needed.
DivaCarla, did you notice that you kept using the word Judgment, when the card was Justice? Freudian or not, I again empathize with you, surrounded by such loss. And I’m with you on the way you’re reading this — I have spent a lot of time with your questions, actually. Especially “What am I doing to build this stuckness into my life,” as well as how to invite the Tower in. I can feel — and reluctantly name — those things I’m holding onto which are holding me back. Letting go of them will take effort I don’t know if I can summon. Sometimes the Tower is a blessing. Thank you, and do know my heart goes out to you and those in your community.
DivaCarla – This felt like a Tower-esque reading to me too. Mainly because Justice is not interested in anything other than the truth, and the truth to the figure in the central card is so obscured by matter that it is going to feel like a destruction of what he (feels he) holds dear. Actually, he is holding on for dear life.
I looked up the 4 of cups, wands, and swords, and the same for the 8. Needed context.
Here’s what I see with the 8 of pentacles: Virtue, skill, craftsmanship, with a shadow. He is young, strong, healthy, virile, and focused on crafting those discs. It’s a good life, but I get the feeling there is the raw material for another 8 outside the frame of the card. He can’t get up and walk away.
4 of pentacles is clutching, cramped, weighed down. Craving safety, and not feeling safe. There is no space for movement. Nothing can enter. It will take a bomb or a bowling ball to move this guy.
I feel Tower energy in the deck, the next card to be drawn after Judgment. I really don’t feel the power of decision here. Too many blindspots, too much believing in the status quo. There is a cause and effect energy: If this follows this, without change, then judgment is inevitable. When the scales tip, you may be looking at the Tower.
Maybe the question to ask of this array is where am I stuck? What am I doing to build this stuckness into my life. And of course, what am I holding on to. What am I clenching, body, mind and soul? The decision to change can enter through judgment, though it may be that it’s too late. The next phase will be about creating from the pieces left over. Where can I invite the Tower in, if freedom is something I long for?
Perhaps there is the thought of all the people dying around me running my interpretation.
“The Four is that fulcrum between concretisation and fall out. It is stable but needs to move because it cannot be a position that is held indefinitely..”
Sarah thank so much for your valuable insights. This statement alone has, and will continue to bring, much for me to contemplate.
I don’t know why I said Mastery, but now with your in depth explanation, I am glad it came up. I realize now this was too far a strength for this card, as in the Yoga, the position is in sequence and personally most often, (or always) must end in fall-out.
Still the ‘container’ is to the potential of Mastery (which is not of our own), it flows–‘through’, is always in movement and as you say reaches, and touches beyond what we can see, or comprehend. This is also how I see the Justice Card, may be something similar to dharma I feel?!
Thank you for your suggestion to look at the Four of Cups, Swords, and Wands to further understand the IV theme and of a tangible decision that is asking to be made. But here somehow I think the decision made is still one ‘being’ in transition.. after Justice after all, is Hanged Man!
Sarah, sincerely remain in humble appreciation of your talent and gifts you share.
thank you Sarah, for your clear-eyed assessment of the situation … shades of the Rolling Stones tumbling through my head about getting what I need, versus what I want .
Sarah, this feels very much like a personal reading having been tied to “something I’m holding onto” for a long long time Sadly our legal system is what compels the “holding” and I cannot fathom what Justice would have the power to do to change what she already decreed. However – Uranus and Pluto are active. Perhaps there is yet another act of – or type of – Justice that will yet prevail. Thanks for a potent reading and lesson in Tarot.
You’re welcome!
P. Sophia – I agree with you about the idea of focus and discipline, yet the idea of mastery feels an uneasy alliance to me given the card’s numerical position. It comes after the Three, which is beginning of concretisation of something in the world of duality, and before the Five, which spells some kind of “fall out” from that concretisation.
The Four is that fulcrum between concretisation and fall out. It is stable but needs to move because it cannot be a position that is held indefinitely (look at the Four of Cups, Swords, and Wands by way of further illustration). In it, it holds an implicit decision that is asking to be made. It is a containing of energy within set limits that gives rise to a clear way out or through — if we are able to pause long enough to notice it, and not so long that we stagnate.
I think that Justice can very much work through a person, although Justice as an archetype will stretch beyond strictly human limits. It is an experience, and that can be expressed in someone’s actions, but it is more far-reaching. Hard to explain 🙂 I would be looking at a court card to describe a particular individual. “Justice” is both concrete and abstract and my suggestion would be to see how justice can appear in different forms, all running in parallel, one of them very possibly being expressed by a person.
Funny, the King’s posture and position in the IV of Penicles very much reminded me of the Bikram Yoga Utkatasana (Awkward Pose). Yet here, although potentially precarious, I see it as of great discipline, extremely focused, and at the moment is balanced, and in mastery.
The number 4 represents, “the builder”, is of solid foundation and is of hard work.
In this case Sarah, with Pentacles could the Justice represent someone who is in good submission of physical/material value? In fairness use their energy and action-ability (business sense) wisely, to equal success, or incoming prosperity?
Thank you for the reading, and this I will take along with me this week:
“..a potential opportunity to participate in a situation that is calling for change.”
When Mercury finally moved out of the shadow of its last retrograde, & moved into Sagittarius, I indulged in a little fantasy that maybe the shit would stop hitting the fan for 30 seconds. Well, maybe it did; maybe I should’ve asked for longer. But this theme has been echoing throughout my little world lately. Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah, thanks for this very powerful reading. I always look forward to your sage words each Monday morning here in Sydney. I sit in bed with a cuppa, look/wait for your reading, read, absorb, think and set my intentions….love starting out the week this way, thank you!