March 26, 2021: 5 of Chalices and 5 of Pentacles

As I shuffled to prepare for today's card throw, I had two "jumpers" come flying out of the deck.  Okay then, I guess they are my cards for today.  Both cards are numbered 5, so we will be able to do some comparison.

My Inner Focus card is the 5 of Chalices.  The image on this card shows a woman sitting on a chair with a man kneeling at her feet.  The woman's clothes are in disarray, with her breasts showing; the man is fully dressed..  One of her knees is up and the man kneeling before her has one hand cupping her bare heel and the other on her shoe; he looks like he is trying to convince her to allow him to remove the shoe.  She has her head turned away from him and her hand up with the palm facing him, the universal symbol that says "stop!"  Her other hand is pulling the hem of her dress down between her thighs to hide her pubis.  The key phrases for this card are: try new ways of loving, seduction, awakening, and fetishism.

My Outer Focus card is the 5 of Pentacles.  The image on this card shows a closeup view of the man from the image of the 6 of Chalices (in that card image we see him from far away and viewed from the back).   We see him from the waist up in the 5 of Pentacles, and we can see that he is wearing simple but well-kept clothes.   He is sitting in a meadow of green grass and reading a book while being shaded by the branches of a tree which is mostly out of the image. His fingers are holding places in that book and we can see at least one bookmark also marking a place, and he seems very intent on what he is reading, not seeing the world around him at all.  The key phrases for this card are: muddled decisions due to inexperience and intellectualization, and resignation and abandonment.  

I see the number 5 in the Minor Arcana cards as bringing motion into a situation in order to upset the stability of the 4 of the suit, with that motion preventing stability from becoming stagnation.  With my cards today, this motion is happening within Chalices (the element of Water, and the soul ) and Pentacles (the element of Earth, the body, and material goods).  We can clearly see the motion that is being introduced into the 5 of Chalices; the woman is not actively fighting the man, but she is hesitant and unsure of herself.  In the 5 of Pentacles image we only see one person, but he is paired with a book that is very interesting to him.  Here the motion seems to be trying to distract the man's attention from that book so that he can experience things himself rather than reading a book about the experiences of others.  He is alone in his meadow, though, and there is no one to nudge him away from that book.  

Perhaps I am to open myself to new ideas today; that does not mean an automatic "yes" but it does not hurt to think about something new.  I should not allow myself to be distracted by a good book (a difficult task, because I love to read), but rather I should interact with others.