Nine of Pentacles: Feminist Icon - from Cloud of Chaos
msesheta
Nine of Pentacles:
Feminist Icon
When you've been studying and reading the tarot for a
while, certain cards begin to resonate in a more
personal way and for you, as a reader, forever after
have deeper, more powerfully nuanced meanings. It's
something akin to what Rachel Pollack refers to as
"the Gates," certain minor arcana cards that open to
hidden experiences in everyday things. For her, these
cards "open a path from the ordinary world to the
inner level of archetypal experiences" and they take
on a "myth-like Strangeness which no allegorical
interpretation can completely penetrate." For Pollack,
the Gates contain layers of meaning that reveal
greater significance upon further study and meditative
contemplation. I believe that it is possible for all
of us to develop our own Gate-like cards when the
synchronicity between an experience in our lives and
the appearance of a card within the context of a
particular reading or spread suddenly clicks.
For me, one of those cards is the Nine of Pentacles.
I learned to read tarot on the Waite-Ryder deck and
anyone who is familiar with tarot has seen the image
depicted on this card: a woman in a lovely dress,
standing in a lavish garden with one hand on a
pentacle and holding a falcon on the other. The simple
interpretation of this card in a reading would be
abundance, good management of material affairs, and
success in the accumulation of wealth and comfort. On
the surface, it's easy to see that in this card, and
it does carry that meaning. However, if you consider
what the card could represent on a deeper level, there
is so much more to it than that.
In her book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel
Pollack begins to explore some of what I mean:
"As material cards Pentacles deal with success and
what it means in a person's life. The woman depicted
in the Nine of Pentacles is sharply aware of the good
things in her life - her hand rests on the Pentacles,
her thumb hooks on a grapevine. Awareness is one of
the card's basic meanings, especially self-awareness
and the ability to distinguish what matters in life,
what goals truly demand our best efforts. The card
signifies success - but not simply the material
benefits; it means as well the sense of certainty that
comes with knowing one has made the right choices and
followed them with the necessary actions. The
pentacles growing on the the bushes symbolize a life
that is productive and alive.
Success here means not so much worldly achievement
as success in "creating" ourselves out of the material
given to us by the circumstances and conditions of our
life. And certainty, in its strongest sense, means
more than looking back and seeing that we have done
the right thing. It also means the ability to know
where others can only guess. The Nine of Pentacles
stands as the emblem of this quality, the true mark of
the evolved person."
For women, personal and professional success is often
hard-won. While our feminist sisters and mothers who
came before us paved the way for women of my
generation to experience less of the sexual
discrimination and inequality present in the workplace
and in the world, for all of their hard work there are
still cultural influences and institutionalized
systems for keeping women not quite as equal as we
should be. All one needs to do is to pay attention to
the continual attacks on freedom of reproductive
choice and to realize that women, on average, still
only make seventy-seven cents to every dollar earned
by men (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population
Survey, 2005 Annual Social and Economic Supplement.)
to know that our society still considers women as less
deserving.
Achieving success, however we choose to define that
for ourselves, often comes at great personal expense.
While it was largely accepted for a long time that
women could "have it all" - a well-paying, powerful
job as well as a family and a fulfilling home life -
more recently women are coming to accept how
difficult, stressful and often impossible that life is
to achieve. On the other hand, women who choose to
stay home to raise their children risk losing the
respect of peers who define success as holding a
powerful job and accumulation of wealth, and in the
worst case scenario, their own self-respect and sense
of self worth when they compare themselves to others,
even to other mothers whom they view as being better
than they are.
Trust me, as an alumna of a prestigious all-women's
college, I understand the pressure exerted upon us to
live up to the examples of those who have achieved
great success in their chosen fields. There is no
allowance for "small" successes. Just today, I
received an email from my college recognizing a woman
in my graduating class for being elected to the "Forty
Under 40 class of 2006," a list of women and men who
have demonstrated their ability to make a difference
in their community. This woman was recently named
president of a high-tech software company that serves
Fortune 100 firms nationwide and she has had a
leadership role in a project to develop improved
mental health services for children in her city and to
eliminate the stigma of mental illness. I applaud her
efforts and celebrate the recognition she is receiving
for them. But a tiny place inside me twists and it
gives me pause to look at what I'm doing with my life.
It's difficult not to find my life small and
inconsequential in comparison.
Nine of Pentacles, The
Fey Tarot
Looking at the reality of how we have come to define
success in our culture, for someone who is striving to
create broader-reaching qualifications for personal
success that encompass a spiritual element and a
certain level of intellectual enlightenment, Rachel
Pollack's words serve as a powerful reminder that we
women have the power within to create ourselves - to
use what we've been given in life to carve a space
from this world within which we can live and thrive
and succeed - on our terms. Achieving success doesn't
have to feel so hard or so bitter when we look at it
this way.
In Rachel Pollack's discussion of the Nine of
Pentacles, she goes on to make much of the fact that
the woman stands alone in her garden. This, Pollack
suggests, signifies that in order for this woman to
achieve what she has, she as had to give up normal
companionship. "In readings, this symbolism does not
mean that the card inevitably advises giving up a
relationship; but it does call for self-reliance and a
certain loneliness in pursuit of goals." Here is where
my views differ from Pollack's. I prefer to think not
that the woman has had to give up companionship but
that she has made choices in her life that were for
her own best interest. She has refused to subjugate
her will to that of a companion. Because it is only in
the pursuit of her interests that she will she find
the success that Pollack is describing. Many of us
miss finding that success when we make choices based
on what is better for someone else or what we think we
have to do in order to stay in relationship. If that
ultimately does not feed our soul's need then we do
not achieve this success for ourselves.
How many women have stayed in a marriage or a
relationship for the security it affords them, only to
lose themselves in the process? Ironically, though the
Nine of Pentacles is in the suit that represents the
material realm, what this woman has achieved in her
world is her self. It may not have been without
personal sacrifice and loss along the way. However,
she did what she had to do, she accomplished a lot,
and now that she's there she stands strong and
confident, feeling all the happier achieving her
success because she knows that she's done it for
herself. She's always aware of what it took to get
there but she never looks back, she never apologizes,
and she never again loses herself.
I took a tarot class not too long ago because,
although I'd been reading the cards for a while, I
thought it would be instructional to learn another
approach to reading and interpretation. My teacher had
an interesting approach to interpreting the Queen
cards and it is that slight interpretive shift that
was the most significant learning experience I took
from his class. Essentially, he taught us that the
Queens represent the mature embodiment of the essence
of each of the suits. The mantra of the Queen is: "I'm
old enough, I'm wise enough, and I owe it to myself."
This expression of what the Queens represent I believe
is also what the Nine of Pentacles, as a "gate," has
to teach us. As we move through the suits, the lessons
offered by each of the Queens build upon the others to
bring us to a completion of sorts - to the success
that the Nine of Pentacles enjoys.
The essence of the Queen of Wands is of being and of
self-actualization. She says, "I now have the
maturity, the integrity and the dignity to live my
truth." As the Queen of Wands, you don't feel that you
have to prove anything to anyone. If they don't "get
it" that is not your problem. Others' reactions don't
matter any more. What you are experiencing and how you
are living your life is just a part of who you are.
You are old enough, whole enough, and you owe it to
yourself to just live the truth of who you are.
The essence of the Queen of Cups is about recognizing
the virtue of healthy and compassionate boundaries
within relationships (something we uncover within
ourselves). This is difficult in our culture because
as women we're taught that sacrificing ourselves and
our needs for the good of others is the best, most
noble, thing we can do. The Queen of Cups tells us
that to constantly go out of our way to accommodate
another person we are actually doing a disservice to
both, because we are reinforcing the message that by
sacrificing oneself we can complete another. As
individuals we can complement each other, but we
cannot complete each other. The Queen of Cups invites
you as an individual to recognize your own wholeness
and to understand that it doesn't help another person
to lose yourself.
"Being" the Queen of Cups is a challenge for many
women. When we care about someone we want them to be
happy and we tend to want to do all we can for them.
We have to be able to be in the relationship but at
the same time require the other person to work by
participating in the process of making themselves
happy. This is difficult because societal influences
often make us feel guilty if we don't do more. We're
painted as selfish if we choose to protect the
integrity of our selves. Knowing where the boundaries
need to be in order to be healthy and compassionate,
going beyond them doesn't benefit anyone, least of all
yourself. You don't have to change; it's up to the
other person to meet you half way.
Another aspect to the integrity of the Queen of Cups
is letting go of the fantasy of how we wish a
relationship (and life) could be and truly wanting to
experience it for what it really is. It's the
flip-side of requiring others to hold up their end of
relationship responsibilities; it's being mature
enough to recognize that we cannot expect others to be
any more than themselves and, again, recognizing that
a relationship is better when both people are free to
be who they really are. In this way, we see the
progression and incorporation of the lesson of the
Queen of Wands with that of the Queen of Cups.
Nine of Pentacles, Blue
Rose Tarot
The Queen of Swords embodies the virtue of discretion
or discernment. She says, "I have the maturity,
integrity and dignity to analyze the pros and cons and
to make a wise choice." The issue isn't one of
compromise; it's about balance. The Queen of Swords
appreciates that balance is the better choice.
Discretion allows us to be open to a variety of
possibilities for thinking and being in the world and
to be open to other points of view. What gives the
Queen of Swords her power is her ability to weigh her
options and to know how to make the best choice for
herself. Discretion being the better part of valor,
our Queen has grown through the lessons of the Wands
and Cups to the point where she can now make decisions
and act within a personal paradigm arrived at through
self-acknowledgement and respect.
The Queen of Pentacles is the embodiment of the virtue
of responsibility and accountability. Once we create
an environment that can support us, patiently working
through the process, we attain the ability to embrace
these virtues. We have a unique ability to tend to our
needs because we now know what they are. Easier said
than done! Responsibility and accountability are
separate things. By the time we have reached the
lesson that the Queen of Pentacles has to teach us, we
understand the difference and have the means to hold
ourselves and others to account. Once we examine and
recognize what we have, both in a material and in a
psychological sense, we can better utilize our assets
to live the life we want. The very definition of
success.
I think the Nine of Pentacles is such an important
card because it represents the process of achieving
success through the lessons the Queens have to teach
us. While technically speaking, the Queens "outrank"
the Nine of Pentacles, that's not really the point
here. The Nine of Pentacles represents the culmination
of the work a woman has to do to succeed for herself -
to become the embodiment of the virtues of the Queens.
To become a Queen herself.
While I was looking for images of the Nine of
Pentacles to illustrate this essay, I came across the
beautiful card in the Blue Rose Tarot by Paula Gibby.
Reading Paula's philosophy behind the picture she
created was like reading a transcript of my own
thoughts on the subject! I knew I was on to something
about the iconic nature of the Nine of Pentacles when
someone else had independently reached the same
conclusion I had.
Here is Paula Gibby's description of her Nine of
Pentacles:
"I've read many descriptions of the Nine of
Pentacles. We all have, so I don't need to reiterate
them here. However, one recurring comment pertaining
to the Waite-Smith card raises a cautionary opinion
that the woman has isolated herself (or can become
isolated) from others. I don't look at it quite that
way and I like to entertain the idea that perhaps
Pamela Colman Smith didn't look at it that way either.
I think people forget the times and circumstances in
which she lived as well as her temperament. I would
imagine that, to her, the ultimate expression of
wealth would also translate to complete material
independence from other people as well as control over
one's own circumstances and environment. A figure
standing alone in a pleasant or prosperous setting
would portray this idea quite well, which is what
Smith did.
However, she took it even further. There were
plenty of independently wealthy men in that era, but
very few women. Most wealthy women had attained their
station through marital or extramarital alliances. But
a woman who had her own money and property along with
the power to administer both was a rare figure indeed.
To Pamela, such an individual would be the
personification of the Nine of Pentacles. Someone who
had not only the material means but also the
independence to thoroughly enjoy and control it. For
me, the Nine of Pentacles is not just about one of
these gifts, it is about both all three in harmonious
concert with each other: wealth (prosperity),
independence, control.
Now, let's take it a step further. "Wealth" is a
relative term. I'm sure Bill Gates' idea of wealth is
vastly different from my own. I don't know what
Smith's idea of wealth was. But if we look at the
Waite-Smith Nine of Pentacles, we can speculate a
little.??The woman in the card is dressed well, but
she isn't dripping with jewels, nor does she have
servants trailing behind her. She is simply out in her
garden, enjoying it and the day. And that's the key.
It's not the amount of money she has that is the
issue, rather, it is the fact that this woman has the
luxury of time. Time to walk slowly and happily
through her garden. She has no dishes to wash, no job
to go to, no errands to run. Daily toil and trial have
not etched their signatures upon her face and hands.
She has the ultimate gift that material prosperity
means brings...time. And, as is evident from the
Smith card, she has the independence to control that
priceless gift.??How much wealth, independence and
control does she have? The answer is: she has enough.
Enough to enjoy life at a more leisurely pace. Enough
to bring that look of quiet contentment and
fulfillment to her expression.
Personally, I've always thought assessments about
the woman in the Waite-Smith deck having isolated
herself from others was a rather stereotypical
analysis. Were that a male figure in the same card, I
don't think you would ever read such a comment. It is
interesting to contemplate that, even in this day and
age, some of us (men AND women) think that a woman
alone is somehow incomplete. That she is isolated. Or
in danger of becoming so. Considering that, all these
decades later, we still cannot wholly accept that
image/concept, Pamela Colman Smith's depiction becomes
even more apparently masterful.
So masterful, that I, as a woman, couldn't bring
myself to veer away from it by introducing a different
set of images.
The woman in my Nine of Pentacles is wealthy. She
is independent. And yes, she is totally in control.
The material world has given these gifts to her and
she handles them well. Look in her eyes. Look at that
warm, self-assured expression. There is no sign of
coldness in her. This is not woman unaccustomed to
human interaction or who turns away from it. Do you
see a woman who is lonely? I think not. If this woman
is alone (and who says she is?), it is because she
chooses to be so. The words "alone" and "lonely" have
entirely different meanings.
Besides, I will not allow you to think of her as
such, for I have placed her at the bottom of the grand
staircase leading to her candlelit ballroom. Yes,
"her" ballroom. The similarity of coloration between
her beautiful dress and her elegant ballroom have been
deliberately chosen to emphasize this point. See how
perfectly she and her environment are matched and
elegantly blended with each other. Note also that,
even though the room is built upon a grand scale, the
lady is neither dwarfed nor diminished by it. She is a
perfect match for it, totally in command of it.
She stands in the center of her lovely dwelling
waiting for her hundreds of guests to arrive. And when
they enter her home, she will make them
welcome...entertain them with beautiful music, food,
wine and the company of others. She is, after all, a
symbol of her suit - Pentacles, the material world.
Just a few cards away from her stands her sister, the
Queen of Pentacles, who is one manifestation of the
archetypal Empress.
Such a positive card...which begs the question:
what if it appears reversed in a reading? In that
case, you would want to ask yourself (as Mary Greer
has so excellently instructed): how is that energy
being blocked? Again, like all the tarot cards, this
card is about balance. It is not just about wealth,
control or independence. It is about all three and how
successfully (or not ) you handle them. Remembering
this raises all kinds of interesting and possible
permutations with regard to balance and energy.
The lady in the card has already successfully
balanced all three. The question then becomes: can we?
So here she is. I hope you enjoy and admire her. I
know I do."
http://cloudofchaos.com/2010/01/nine-of-pentacles-feminist-icon/
