Hope you had a great Christmas!
Today, we are working with the suit of Pentacles. This suit is about actual outcomes or material manifestations, day-to-day life, and all the things we need to keep our physical self alive and vibrant. Pentacles are connected to health, career, safety, prosperity, diligence, practical matters, quality rather than quantity, and of course, our physical world and the material resources contained in it that sustain life.
The image on the VIII of Pentacles is of a worn and heavily used hammer or metal mallet; the two faces of the hammer are red, as if the metal was super-hot because of excessive use. Floating around the hammer are eight golden coins, each embossed with a part of a star map. The keywords for this card are crafting, work, quality, and diligence.
The Queen of Pentacles image shows a seated woman. Behind her is a leafy plant; one of the leaves stretches up over her head, sheltering her. Around he plant and over her head are golden coins. She offers a coin to both a bird and a snake, two animals known for their distrust of each other. The keywords for this card are giving, nurturing, welcoming, and authentic.
In the Tarot, the number 8 is about the deliberate action or remediation or response to a slowdown or pause that could bring some discomfort. My VIII of Pentacles is about applying sustained efforts in order to manifest something, even if those efforts are repetitive and boring. Yes, this card tells of physical effort, the kind of effort that would make a hammer glow from excessive use, but it also tells of attaining both knowledge and a higher understanding of that knowledge (which also takes a sustained effort), as symbolized by the star maps embossed on the eight coins. This card is about progress mixed with education, not about instant success but rather, about patiently learning skills that will eventually be of use to me over the long term. The Queen of Pentacles makes practical use of the world around her, using her knowledge of the physical world to create a safe space where all are welcome. She asks me to take the time and make the effort to learn to do the same.
Not a bad New Year's resolution.
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