Day Thirteen. October 27th. Queen of Pentacles.
Definition: The traditional interpretation is…magnificence, liberty, “greatness of soul”.
Detail: And what the hell is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting??
Seriously, what is it? I actually posted to the deck creator about this card when I drew it previously, asking for guidance, and didn’t get a response. Are we looking up through some kind of chimney? Or down on a flat-topped pyramid? Or down into a square pit? What are the sketchy symbols around the perimeter? The snake/tentacle things? What’s in the center? A storm? My sense is the things on the four faces of the pit/pyramid are living beings. At first I was thinking they might be priestesses or spiritual guides like within the monster on the Three of Pentacles, spiritually actualized beings like the one rising above the contrived city on the Eight of Pentacles, with white heads and dark cloaks, but…the shape of the dark blotches doesn’t look as much like cloaks or robes as on prior cards, and the white “heads” are pretty detached from them. So I’m thinking the white “heads” are actually tiny cloaked figures on stairs and the black splotches are stains…or…blood, from the robed figures, like the blood pouring from the sink on the Six of Pentacles. I think this is a ritual. The little white figures are casting their living blood into the central pit/maelstrom, and it’s giving rise to the snakes/tentacles going outward from the structure. But what’s the vibe? The Six of Pentacles was a card about how your living essence resists commodification. This almost feels like the opposite. They are fueling something with their living essence, willfully, or because they’ve been influenced. Is that the Queen? The one who influences you to sacrifice your living essence to some inimical purpose? Are we witnessing this from the vantage of the Queen? What are those symbols around the perimeter? They look like campsite or picnic table symbols from park maps. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to feel like the influence of the Queen of Pentacles is an enlivening thing. Those tentacles aren’t resistance to commodification. They’re something inimical. But the symbols opposing them? I don’t know. In general I don’t think of snakes as necessarily inimical. But the Queen of Pentacles definitely feels inimical. Hmm.
Day: I don’t know. Same feelings of this card’s correspondence to the current U.S. political landscape, and to the workings of a world contrived from the commodification of life. The figures on the steps could be anyone, spilling their life out trying to have a career for a company that undercompensates them, spilling out their life trying to make it as a writer, or social media star, or porn star, or waitstaff, or game designer, or artist, or anything where the system is stacked so you’re lucky if you can sell yourself cheap and unlucky if you can’t sell yourself at all. The queen tells you it’s how she got to where she’s at herself, tells you exactly how to do it, cast your lifeblood into the maelstrom for the success you deserve, but it’s a lie. She never worked her way up. Never made sacrifices like she asks of you. She works less than you do. “greatness of soul” my ass.
Discovery: A purportedly dark complected woman contemplating a golden pentacle. Waite says she has the “cast of intelligence”. But does that mean…not actual intelligence? “She contemplates [the pentacle] and may see worlds within,” he says. But like the Page/Knave, not the world outside? These pentacle court figures are all consumed by their pentacles in unhealthy ways. The contrived world we live in is made of money/currency that commodifies life. If the Queen is seeing worlds in her pentacle, they’re not ones that work differently. Why do I love the woman on the Nine of Pentacles, or y’know, maybe not love, but feel drawn to her, when she is every bit as much a figure of privilege, but not this one at all? This card by Pamela almost feels like a horror illustration to me. Why?
#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #QueenOfPentacles #Pentacles