Spring
My friends have snowdrops and crocuses in their yards. My apartment building has mud around the pavers and the one last pile of junk snow recently melted. It will continue to be brown and bare for weeks until all at once, the forsythia blooms and the trees green.
For all that we know that there is new life, that things are getting better, that winter is at an end (that more people are getting vaccinated), we’re not there yet. We have to be content with now and find a way to be in the moment.
The 4 of Pentacles is traditionally thought of as the miser, the scrooge, the evil banker cackling over his pile of gold. It doesn’t have to be capitalist. It doesn’t have to be austerity. What if it was a card about enough.
Every artist shapes the cards to their own needs. This is especially evident when reimagining a traditionally negative card, such as the 4 of Pentacles. The Pagan Otherworlds was the first deck to show me another way to see this card. And by the time I saw the Gentle Tarot’s version, I can’t imagine this card in any other way.
The woman in this card has everything that she needs. She’s relaxed and at peace. She’s not hunched over her hoard, clutching her possessions to her. She knows what she has- which is enough. She is also sitting proud among her possessions. Having enough isn’t anything to be ashamed of!
Reading: [In Just-] by e.e. cummings | The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
Folklore for Resistance issue 1
Cards: 4 of Pentacles from Pagan Otherworlds and The Gentle Tarot