Start Today with Guidance and a Glimpse of Possibilities

The Four of Pentacles is a card that indicates possessiveness and the need to control the environment around you. It comes up when there is something important you would like to protect. The focus is usually on the material aspect of your life and the things you own, and it often comes with a fear of losing what you have. 

The Devil card depicts a male and a female demon, with chains about their necks, held captive by a central devil figure. Although if examined more closely: the chains are loose. These human-like figures could easily slip out of them and be free. Their captivity, therefore, is optional; or perhaps a price that they are willing to pay for something else. The Devil, thus, represents what can happen when primal forces, kept in harmony by Temperance and used with direction by The Hanged Man, are allowed to rage unchecked.

Here, we discern a long-held symbol of earthly power: a white-haired man, stern, wearing armor beneath his regal garments, and seated on a stone throne. Note the scepter The Emperor holds, bearing the universal sigil of the male sex, and compare this to The Empress’ totem of femininity, which is carved onto a heart-shaped stone and rests against her dais. His throne bears the images of four rams’ heads, linking The Emperor to the sign Aries, which is ruled by Mars, the God of War. The Emporer is power and strength. The extent to which these can be used for good or ill depends entirely on the personality that directs them.

In the Three of Cups, we see three women captured in the moment of raising their Cups high in the air as they come together. They are surrounded by an abundant harvest and the card radiates joy and celebration: specifically, shared happiness and experience.

The card of Temperance concerns balance, and harmony achieved through successfully merging all the many elements of our lives. This is seen literally in the image of the angel pouring water from one cup into another, mixing the streams in a never-ending flow. The card hints at it figuratively, too, in the way in which the figure stands with one foot on land - a symbol of the outer world - and one foot in the water, which is representative of the inner one. The path in the card’s background suggests that, with the hard-won self-awareness and openness to change brought about by The Hanged Man and Death, we are now ready to return to our lives, clarified, and with a new sense of purpose.

Life is like a wheel and, sometimes, we need to accept that it will turn, this is the fundamental message of this card. Just as the snake depicted on the card follows the downward slide of the wheel, so the fox ascends with the very same turn. The sphinx that sits on top of the wheel in the Rider Waite version of the card symbolizes both mystery and Horus, the Egyptian God of resurrection. Whereas The Chariot depicted the sphinxes pulling the carriage, facilitating its passage, in this card the sphinx’s position at the top of the wheel, above its relentless cycle, suggests that there are things beyond the turning wheel of life that we can only dimly comprehend but that infuse our existence nonetheless.