Day Three. October 17th. Three of Pentacles.
Definition: Waite’s imposed meaning is tradecraft. Others say teamwork and collaboration.
Detail: So, what is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?
So, it's a monster dude with one large eye and two smaller ones, and three robed figures nested in its chest like Russian dolls. And it's surrounded by a shadow shaped like its own head, or maybe it's also nested in another incompletely seen figure that's just like itself? Hmm. From looking through the deck I know the same robed figures show up on other cards. But what do they represent? And the monster's central eye? I've always loved “third eye” imagery. Uncanny perception. This is a monster of uncanny perception. And the third eye is so large relative to the others. It doesn't just possess uncanny perception. It's defined by it. But the nested figures in it? Like priestesses? Internalized spiritual guides? I wrote a game once, twenty years ago, about “your three internal critics.”
Your 3 Internal Critics
From childhood every one of us has three internal critics. They live inside our mental landscape—as role models we aspire to be like, as critics who comment on our desires and our actions. We first encounter them in our daily lives. We meet them, live with them, hang out with them, read about them, hear about them, and they affect us deeply enough that we install them into our mental landscape and try to live as they would. They are real people, long dead historical personages, or fictional characters. At times in our lives we install a new one, but we only ever have three, so when we choose a new internal critic we uninstall one of the prior three.
Play this game with three people who don't know anything about your three internal critics. Tell each of them what they need to know to embody one of your internal critics.
“You are my father, John. He was valedictorian of his high school class. He dropped out of seminary and became a pharmacist. When I was five he got a blood clot in his brain...”
When you're done telling them what they need to know, have them discuss amongst themselves and then finally tell you who they want you to be and what they want you to be doing ten years from now.
Continue with everyone taking a turn casting the others as their internal critics and hearing who and what they want for you. |
The robed figures are its internalized spiritual guides.
But why a monster? We fear being seen within by others. We outcast them, criminalize them, for what they see and say. That's the shadow. It's our shadow as the viewer. We view the three-eyed being with fear, as something to be feared, but the shadow shows our true nature.
Day: So, how does this card inform where I'm at in my life today? Three is such a great number. There's so much hypocrisy in the contrived world. Trump accuses his enemies of all the things he does himself, decries monsters to distract from his own apparent monstrousness. Hmm. I've been an oracle and cartomancer in journaling games I've played. This card. Being guided by inner spiritual entities. Yes, that's it. The people I've met playing journaling games, Dee, Lindsley, Hecate, and others, are like the ones Jung met in his unconscious, Salome, Elijah, and others, true beings that enable true perception, the third eye, capable of true sight in the outer world not just the inner one. But the threat is the viewers in the world will characterize me unfavorably.
Discovery: Pamela's Three of Pentacles shows a builder or mason taking direction from two robed ecclesiastical figures who presumably employed him for the job. And again I think she's expressing something other than what Waite says. She's continuing her theme of money. This is contract work. Religious contract work. Pamela knew about religious contract work. It’s better than dancing for coins like on the Two. It’s more money. Caravaggio did it. Michelangelo did it. Brunelesschi did it. Rafael did it. But it’s still contract work. The dudes with the money are going to give you instructions. Those guys with the plans aren’t collaborators. They’re the bosses giving instructions. And there’s canon you have to adhere to. But sometimes if you’re clever you can work your own satisfaction into your work. If you’re horny you can paint Eve in Eden, or Salome dancing, or Lot being seduced by his daughter, and they’ll say you’re divinely inspired, not a pervert. It’s better than dancing for coins.
But the Elsewhere Tarot Three of Pentacles differs. It has its own robed figures, but it's about true work, done also in the temporal world, not directed by employers though, but with true spiritual guidance. The monster though is armless. It has no hands for its work. How does it do its work with no hands?
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