Five of Pentacles.
Help lit, in frame, and unlooked at.
Upright, then reversed, as Waite gave them in 1910.
Snow, night, and a lit window that neither of them is looking at. One is on crutches with a bell at his neck and a bandaged leg; the other is barefoot, wrapped in a shawl, with her head down.
The card people fear drawing, and the detail that changes it is the window. The card does not say whether they will notice. It says the door is where it always was. If you are outside something at the moment, the card is not asking how you got there.
Four things people go to on this card
- the window
You went to the window first. It is the only warm thing in the picture and neither of them is looking at it.
Help that is lit, in frame, and unlooked at. The glass is above them and behind them, and the light from it is on the snow they are walking through.
The card does not promise they will notice and it does not scold them for not noticing. It says the door is where it always was. Somebody would take your call today, and you know which one, and the reason you have not made it is not that you doubt they would answer.
Who would take your call today, and what is actually stopping you?
- the crutch
You went to the crutch. It is doing the work of a leg, which is the kind of substitution this card is full of.
It is not a leg. It is also not nothing, and people who despise their crutches tend to fall over. It is holding him up in the snow, and it was probably not meant to do that for this long.
Whatever is carrying you through at the moment, the card asks you to name it without contempt, and then to ask how long it was meant to last. Those are two separate questions, and the second is usually the one you have been avoiding by arguing about the first.
What is doing the work of a leg for you, and was it meant to be temporary?
- the bare feet
Bare feet, in snow, under a lit window: the card puts the remedy and the injury a few feet apart and lets you notice.
Hardship at the level of the body rather than the story. Not a setback, not a lesson. Cold feet, in snow, tonight.
Before any of the meaning, there is usually one physical thing that would help, and it is normally sleep, food, or warmth. Whatever else is wrong, part of it is that you are cold, and the cold is the part that can be fixed before morning.
What is the one physical thing that would help tonight, and can you have it?
- the bell
The bell at his neck is the loudest object in a silent picture.
A bell like that is worn so that people hear you coming. It marks somebody required to announce themselves, and it rings whether or not he wants it to, at every step.
Being visibly in trouble carries its own tax: the explaining, the pity, the way people adjust their voices. That tax is real and it is separate from the trouble. Some of what you are carrying at the moment is not the difficulty itself but the cost of being seen to be in it, and the two need different remedies.
What is costing you more at the moment, the trouble or being seen to be in it?
Its ten degrees
The Golden Dawn gave the Five of Pentacles 0° to 10° of Taurus, ruled by Mercury, and Book T calls it the Lord of Material Trouble. The Sun is in it from 20 April to 30 April. The decan page for this card.
The wheel runs on from here. The decan before this one is Four of Wands, Venus in Aries, 10 April to 20 April. The one after is Six of Pentacles, the Moon in Taurus, 30 April to 10 May. All thirty-six, in order.
On the Tree of Life, Book T puts the Five of Pentacles on Geburah, severity, in Assiah, the world of earth: every five is Geburah, in its own suit's world. It is the fifth place in the Tree of Life spread.
Draw a card, and if this one turns, press whichever of these four you went to and the reading is written from there instead. Pulled it in a spread of your own? Read the whole spread here.
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