Day Five. October 19th. Five of Pentacles.
Definition: Waite says “material trouble”. I’ve read “help is close” if you could just recognize it in guide books to other RWS decks.
Detail: So, what is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?
It’s the front of an urban, multi-unit residential building you can see into through the windows. What a journey we’ve been on with the prior two cards. On the road to a living city. Residing in the city, unhoused and separate from its life and culture. And now peering into apartments at what life is like for its residents. In one you can see a cat stalking a pet bird in the adjacent window. In another someone eating alone at a table, or perhaps worshipping at an altar. In another a female presenting figure with long hair looking out her window and you can see the letters RF or BF on the wall behind her. In another you can see at least seven clocks on the wall set to different times, and maybe a grand piano. A couple have their curtains closed, but for one of them they must be somewhat sheer, because you can see a figure through them, and it might have wings like an angel. And in another potted flowers with clouds and a sun above them, almost like there’s another world inside through the window and not just an apartment. And the front door to the building has a triangle shaped window. I don’t think I’ve seen a triangle shaped window ever. So…geez…. My first thought is they could be representations of other cards in the RWS deck. Is the figure behind the sheer curtains Temperance? Is the scene with clouds and sun The Sun, or The World? Is one that kind of looks like it has leaves in the lower corner and maybe a chaise lounge The Empress? But I’m not sure the idea holds up across all of them. The female presenting figure with RF or BF on the wall behind her? The one with the clocks and maybe a grand piano? I know an upward facing triangle is the alchemical symbol for fire. This is an earth card, so the triangular window on the front door is a hmm. Hmm. In general I think what’s showing is other worlds. We’re not looking into apartments exactly, but other worlds. This is the “Elsewhere” tarot. Within our city here people live in their own worlds.
Day: So, how does this card inform where I'm at in my life today? You know I’ve been totally swept up in journaling games the past couple of years. I’ve lived in dozens of other worlds playing them. I just published a zine about how the worlds we make make us who we are. I feel like I’m made of worlds. So a card that expresses how everyone in a city is living in different worlds from each other certainly matches my sense of things. I definitely believe our challenge for human connection is from how much of our lives play out in different worlds from each other.
Discovery: Pamela’s Five of Pentacles is such a bleak card. Poverty. Out in the cold and snow without adequate clothing. Probably you have leprosy. A moneyed church with a beautiful window is right there, but you’re not inside. You’re out in the cold and snow. I like the idea that it could mean help may be close if you could just recognize it, but I don’t feel that’s what Pamela was drawing. There’s no door on the church. Pamela’s Five of Pentacles is about the misery of just holding on without money, in the shadow of it.
So, a similar theme of people’s lives in physical proximity to each other actually playing out in very different metaphysical realities? There are other worlds all around us. We just aren’t able to enter them. That cat on the Elsewhere card can maybe? To get at the bird. Maybe cats are better at entering other worlds than we are?
