A Little Bit of Reaping

Welcome to the Lammas Tarot Blog Hop. This time, the theme is “Pentacles: The Fruits of the Harvest” and the idea is to connect with the Pentacles suit and write about which of the cards you can relate to right now.

When I first signed up at the end of June, I thought “Fab! The garden is taking shape nicely, by Lammas there will be very literally a harvest, so the 7 of Pentacles is obviously going to be the card for me!” Sure enough, I have a pumpkin plant bent on world domination, a courgette producing fruit on virtually a daily basis, the green stuff is growing well (peas, beans, lettuce, cauli,cabbage, etc), the tomatoes are just starting to swell and there are cute little knobbly cucumbers forming behind the flowers. Yes, indeed, I can definitely relate to the 7 of Pentacles  – a little light weeding, liberal sprinklings of slug pellets and leaning on my hoe waiting to pick the fruits of my labours is the order of the day. You can see how my garden grows here.

Of course, that’s not the whole story. Is it life ever that simplistic? You see, I don’t really have a favourite Pentacles card as such. The Pentacles are almost the suit you can take for granted. They’re always active, part of everyday life in a rather unassuming way, simply there, like…the toaster or…umm, windows – the transparent kind, not the sprawling, buggy, crashy software variety , (at least, they’re transparent if you clean them now and again). Even the 5 of Pentacles has its place as a reminder that sometimes we need to take the rough with the smooth and the ups will be less ‘uppy’ without a few downs by way of contrast.

My 5 of Pentacles this month was being flooded out at Kelmarsh,thereby losing a substantial chunk of expected income, a bad situation compounded by car trouble and a problem with my sewing machine, necessitating a bit of 4 of Pentacles parsimony, combined with some careful 6 of Pentacles management of finances and energy. Fortunately, the Ace of Pentacles came to the rescue with several jobs coming in close succession and leading to something of a 2 of Pentacles week last week, as I juggled this work with preparing and collating my research material for the TABI Conference this weekend, where I was a speaker. Phew! Something of a Pentacle pile-up.

I hugely enjoyed both delivering my own workshop and participating in the other workshops and, of course, the social aspects of the weekend. It was a true 3 of Pentacles affair and I don’t think anyone will contradict me when I say that everyone learned something in that supportive environment. It was also very much an 8 of Pentacles situation in terms of working at mastering one’s craft and, for me, all the work involved in researching, preparing and delivering my own workshop (though the last part was mostly fun).

And what did I learn? Well, according to Richard Abbott’s numerology workshop, it seems that my “magic number” is 1 which means “independence” (in fact, I have a double dose of that, apparently). I can’t argue with that as independence has been a major theme throughout my life, but it is a characteristic, if that is the correct term, that I associate with the 9 of Pentacles, that confident, serene lady, living life at her own pace and in her own good time. I can live with that 🙂

In all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable albeit tiring weekend, so I was glad to get back to my 10 of Pentacles family home, which it must be said, is a much happier place than the one depicted in the RWS deck appears to be, though, sadly, with fewer dogs, (i.e., none :()

As for my Pentacles family, well, my King generally prefers the hop to the grape, but wouldn’t say no to the latter; my Knight is a bit prone to needing a kick up the backside to get him moving and my little Princess is a smart little cookie, who enjoys her learning, even I have my Queenly domestic goddess moments (as long as it’s in the kitchen and doesn’t involve too much by way of  cleaning, which fortunately my King had taken care of this weekend while I was away). So there you are – my Pentacles life in a nutshell. How have the Pentacles manifested themselves in your life this month?

Of course, that is the nice thing about Tarot: it all applies to everyday life so well, particularly the Minors. I have enjoyed this little exercise so much that I think I may have to repeat it for the other suits ;D