The Tarot Year: March 1-10

the decan

the middle Pisces decan is Material Happiness – the IX of cups. this tarot always reminds me of the Beatles lyric ‘Money can’t buy me love’… although it can always buy a better class of misery, of course.

what does the 9 of cups mean in tarot? what does the 6 of pentacles mean in tarot?

the Tarot I drew to read this decan is the VI of pentacles – Material Success. these cards look like opposites – images of generosity and greed, perhaps – and we love to organise things around polarities – but life is never that simple.

giving and receiving is the basis of life itself. the very first moment of our lives is when someone gives birth to us. we are given life, we don't have to earn it. but we get giving and receiving wrong all the time, despite being born into it, usually because we rely on that most broken of symbols as our means of exchange – and that symbol is, of course, money.

together, these cards ask us to extract finance from our thoughts, to really understand what worth, value, wealth, and cost, truly mean in human terms – to rethink saving and spending, and to see investment as a question of giving life, not just one of endless numbers.

money has been our most universal symbol for millennia. perhaps with the help of the Tarot we will find new symbols to replace this crumbling order – symbols that place humanity in all its glory at the centre of existence on this planet, instead of pushing it to the edge.

have you put your life on hold because of cash? are you worried about buying that leopard? are you sitting pretty, or have you painted yourself into a corner?

visit my readings page to book a reading or drop me a message online!

the advice

always take time to revel but never forget to reflect

what use are billions if you have no heart?

understand your own value and you will understand the value of everything

without boundaries and a sense of our worth, all our decisions are rolling dice

contemplate your choices but don’t forget to make them

stopping to enjoy good fortune and being finished are different things

cycles end when seeds are planted

don’t let money blind you to your need for growth

how to get out of a dead end; help someone else find their way

happiness comes to you when you give happiness to others

if shit has to roll downhill, why can’t money?

money is the poorest symbol: a better symbol at the heart of life will change everything

the symbols

there’s no depth in the IX of cups – everything is foreground. the VI of pentacles is, similarly, a card where depth needs to be investigated. what’s foregrounded here is distribution – playing against the IX’s accumulation.

but the VI is a ‘stage card,’ as shown by that border across the bottom fifth of the card. these beggars are kept outside the city walls, or castle, it seems. perhaps it’s because they are contagious, or criminalised, but it could also be this is a superficial performance of generosity, designed to attract virtue to the giver, and not just an altruistic act of charity.

together, these cards therefore ask us to look more deeply at the question of giving and receiving, keeping, and sharing, accumulation, and distribution. once more the RWS cards pop up with what seems like a polarity, and in showing us opposites, we are invited to explore the spectrum between them and determine our own point of moderation. whether we save or spend, the crucial decision is whether or not we act in accordance with our highest principles.

the figures in these cards are remarkably similar, which is delightful. of course there’s the shared theme of what we do with our good fortune, be that money, or another type of resource. but more concretely, these figures have the same kind of hat, viewed front, and sideways. the recoloured version really brings home just how much their tunics are similar, as well.

they could be indoor and outdoor versions of the same figure – just add scarf, cloak, and scales, and it’s off to the market we go. private wealth and public giving – it’s never far from our minds – and given a recent emblem in the public attitude towards Ukrainian war refugees, and willingness to give support, and the British government’s slowness to offer anything meaningful when compared to countries like Poland.

I think by now we’re all pretty much used to the idea that money, like everything else, is not so much the root of all evil, as a form of energy like any other. if we lock it down, eventually the energy dies. it needs to flow, in and out, moving through, in order to invite new energy to arrive. we cannot just nail down the Wheel of Fortune and so stay on top, that’s not how it works.

holding on too tightly to wealth can cause us to stagnate and cause the very unhappiness we seek to avoid. the VI asks us to apply discretion as to where we direct our energy. planted feet in the IX versus a pointed foot in the RWS VI card gives us a symbol of this choice to be passive or active about the things we receive.

painful as it is, we must always ask why the VI helps one beggar, and not the other. the beggar on the right has lost his hat, and his cloak is torn, patched. the beggar on the left is in a better condition, stronger perhaps. the VI knows which is a lost cause, and which will put his contribution to good use – helping those around him, like the broken-down beggar.

that’s why I like to see those four little circles as seeds, rather than coins. if we reframe the idea of spending and think of it in terms of where we are investing our resources it will be clearer to us where we are wasting our energy, and we will be able to plant seeds more effectively.

both the figures in these cards are well-balanced, as shown by those folded arms, symmetrical seated posture, and the scales of the VI – the shape of which is mirrored in the image of the three figures. sitting and standing – passive and active. it’s easy to turn that into negative and positive, but sometimes being passive, and being restful, is the better choice.

the IX’s name is the clue – Material Happiness – meeting the Material Success of the VI. money can’t buy us love, but it can buy a better class of misery. few would choose the way of poverty, though that is the path of many great teachers.

the key here is the difference between the suits – cups and pentacles. whatever we think is accumulated in those cups is not solid. it easy to spill, and once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. we might say the VI’s pentacles are no more solid, because they are in the sky. but that’s precisely why they are stable – being above and around his head, these pentacles are aligned with higher purpose, making the situation stable both internally and externally.

the cups are also above the IX’s head but look at that table. it’s very narrow, and one mistake could lead everything to crash down on his head. the Sensual Wicca deck (right) gives us a useful comparison – there’s no room round that table in the RWS IX for anyone else to attend the banquet. these cups can be an ostentatious display of wealth, and little more.

but they could be an amazing moment in life – nine gold cups – a solid place to sit, albeit a lonely seat for one – and folded arms. my work here is done, he seems to say. we should always stop to enjoy good fortune, I think.

but this isn’t the end – we see this in the arched pattern of cups lifted into the sky in the X of cups – Perfected Success – and we can think of the mixture of the IX of cups and the VI of pentacles is showing us the way to the X, in both title and image.

success is only perfect if it goes beyond the simply material. happiness is only true if we live in alignment with the divine as we understand it. perhaps the VI has come to remind the IX not to rest on his laurels for too long, to think about the correct use of good fortune, to remind him that energy must go out if it is to come in, lest it become a poison for the soul.

in the extreme, this is greed versus generosity, of course – and a good symbol for this is to compare the style and tension of the main figures’ belts. they are both contained – but the VI is broad, loose – the IX is thin, and tight. we all have to decide how to wear our ‘belt’.

when I was growing up, I used to hear things like ‘a fool and his money are soon parted,’ all the time. ‘penny wise and pound foolish,’ was another saying that got trotted out every now and then.

all too often we blame ourselves for being stupid about money, but we shouldn’t feel too guilty, because money itself is an incredibly stupid idea. in our never-ending competition for wealth we have brought the planet to the verge of ecological disaster, and for what? more and more zeros. utter idiocy.

the poet Charles Bukowski wrote “sometimes you’ve got to kill 4 or 5 / thousand men before you somehow / get to believe that the sparrow / is immortal, money is piss and / that you have been wasting / your time.” he seemed to appreciate that perhaps only mass destruction can open our eyes to reality.

we can read in the IX of the Manara erotic tarot an act of sexual dissidence, a woman pissing with glee upon the meaninglessness of our obsessions with money, royalty, and out of date tradition.

perhaps Bukowski was influenced by a famous speech, most convincingly attributed to Alanis Obomsawin, “an Abenaki from the Odanak reserve,” a reservation outside Montreal. (quoteinvestigator.com):

“Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”

the basic problem with the idea of accumulation, and the symbol of accumulation – money – is that it is infinite. there is no bottom, there is nowhere to stop. there are no boundaries. the logic of acquisition is simply more, more, more – until there’s nothing left.

that’s why it’s so interesting that the IX and VI are inherently structured around the idea of boundaries (and why it's curious the Manara IX shows someone transgressing boundaries). as noted, the VI of pentacles is a ‘stage card,’ and the IX of cups is what we might call a boundary or fence card, much like the VIII and IX of swords –

and like the VI, VII, VIII, and IX of cups –

and like the IV, VII, and IX of wands –

each of these cards presents a wall of symbols, either in front of, or behind a main figure, creating a boundary suggesting some form of containment – which can be positive or negative. the effect is made stronger where the symbols touch one or more frames of the card.

money has no frame of containment, or boundaries, of course. that’s why it’s so laughable that we call capitalism ‘the system.’ systems have limits, boundaries, and they offer containment. money does not, indeed it cannot be contained, because it is only how we symbolise the process of giving and receiving, and symbols are infinite.

we, and our resources, however, are not infinite. allowing the principle of exchange at the heart of life to be determined by a symbol like money means Western economies condemned the future to chaos many years ago. money is not only our worst idea, but also our poorest symbol.

that’s why it’s so interesting the pentacles don’t have a boundary card, as such, like the other suits. there are fields of containment we could say, but they are not strictly speaking 'fences' in front or behind made of the suit symbol itself.

rather, in the IV, VI, IX, and X of pentacles –

we have images where the suit symbol surrounds the figure, showing us how their particular mind is absorbed into, or by, the material world. the wisdom of the Tarot may well show us better symbols we can gather around – without destroying ourselves in the process.

we need boundaries, we can’t function positively without them. we need to integrate the material world with self. these cards speak to us of the challenges we face in doing such a thing. is the IX sitting pretty or painted into a corner? the VI can help us to determine the reality of whether or not we are destroying ourselves with wealth, which is often the case.

these cards show us the shift we need to make, from always trying to receive happiness, and instead thinking about how we can give happiness. for, in this, is a more sustainable joy than that of a narcissistic, capitalist individualism. the symbol that will replace money is waiting to be born.

and it will come from art, spirituality, or sex. and that’s why capitalism hates art and spirituality and turns sex into commodity wherever it can. because it’s in these arenas of life where we learn to use and recognise symbols and separate the symbolic from the real.

so art, spirituality, sex – these must be pushed down, or commodified. otherwise, someone might discover a better symbol to put at the heart of life, so creating a new symbolic order – which would make the world a better place for every being on the planet – which would sweep away every corrupt institution underpinned by the symbol of money.

and that’s why Tarot is so precious. readers and deck makers are constantly involved in reworking the symbolic order to meet and understand human existence as it is, and as it must become.

Tarot makes reality sensible to us through symbols – we literally perceive the world better when we have passed through the ritual of a reading. in this sense, we are practising the skills needed, and preparing the way, for a quantum leap in human consciousness. one Tarot reading at a time.

beneath the surface

the VI and IX are dignified cards, as part of a supporting numerological triangle, along with the III. the progress from 3 to 6 to 9 generates the first geometric pattern – the triangle – and produces the idea of the sacred trinity, present in so many different belief systems.

moving from the trinity to the six, we have the doubling of the three into the pattern of the hexagram, or six pointed star, a symbol of energetic balance and harmony. and with the nine we have the tripling of the trinity – 3×3 – giving us the nine, and so indicating the end of a cycle – or at least, the first part of that ending.

endings only truly happen when the seeds of another cycle have been planted – a condition most often indicated by the X’s, which tend to indicate a future condition –

whereas the IX’s tend to show figures at rest, if not always at peace –

IX, then, is that part of an ending where we are satisfied (or not) with the results of the process and are able to revel in it – even if only for a brief moment. the VI here reminds us to use that time well, not just to revel, but to reflect on the best use of our resources, and the results of the process.

the astrology of the IX is Jupiter in Pisces, the planet that in the old astrology ruled Pisces – the modern rulership being Neptune, of course. Jupiter’s love of play and pleasure sits well with Pisces, and what we have in the IX is an image of pleasure in what we have.

the RWS shows us this can easily sink into squandering resources – a blowout – as indicated in the RWS by that thin table, precariously laid. as noted, what else can be served here, or who can sit? wealth is alive, to be shared and enjoyed, not just for ostentatious display.

at the opposite end of the scale, defensiveness can result – with a desire to hold on that becomes solidifying, and stagnating. the IX needs to learn from the astrology of the VI – Moon in Taurus. here, the earthly stability of the bull is lent imagination and compassion by the Moon, and the correct use of resources is indicated.

we must judge how to maintain our position through our resources, but also remember that how we use our resources is an important way of showing that our position remains valid, and correct. what use is being a billionaire if you lack moral foundation, or compassion for others? then you are not rich, you are a soulless vampire.

in terms of the Tree of Life, here we have a direct pathway from Tiphareth to Yesod – from the beauty and harmony of sephiroth six, and the Sun, to the foundation of sephiroth nine, and the Moon.

the pathway between them is 25, assigned to XIV, Temperance. the image of Temperance is almost the highest level of spiritual balance – in this image of alchemical mixing we have the integration of the material and the metaphysical.

we might allow the two cups to remind us of the scales in the VI and remember that all our material decisions impact our spiritual growth. XXI The World shows us the fullest implication of balance in the development of our consciousness.

it’s easy to be distracted by material wealth – its greatest danger in this sense is persuading us falsely that because we have accumulated wealth, our work on this plane is done. the truth is if we have nothing to work towards our work is all the harder – because first we must overcome our blindness as to the nature of reality.

the image of Temperance helps us to understand the need to create a solid foundation from which to work, but also to maintain an active investigation of life and its possibilities.

tempting as it is, shutting down is not a real option. we all need to do it from time to time, but if it’s anything more than respite we may be in need of more help than a Tarot reading can provide.

Yesod is assigned to the Moon – the VI is Moon in Taurus – and the symbol of the bull was originally that of the solar deity. Temperance represents Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter – which once ruled Pisces – which is the astrology of the IX of cups.

there’s a connection between these cards which speaks about how to control powerful, expensive energy, when it comes our way. it may well be best to sit on it for a while – to think, reflect, contain – lest we make bad decisions before we have come to terms with the change we are living through.

and then, understanding that we are leaving rest behind, we can make active use of our resources in a way that brings balance to ourselves, and into the world. after all, the mini-quintessence of this reading is 9+6 = 15 – XV, The Devil.

if we don’t use what we’ve got well, it becomes a heavy attachment, and the likelihood is when we do use it our resources or good fortune will dig us deeper into our own hole/hell. better to borrow the devil’s intelligence – that aspect of the godhead which is The Renewing Intelligence – and commit to using our resources for renewal of self, other, and world – at the right time – and in the right proportion.

with thanks to the decks and designers – the RWS of Pamela Colman Smith with Mary Hanson-Roberts, Chris-Anne's Muse and Lightseer Tarot, RuPaul’s Drag Race Tarot, Manara, Kim Krans's Tarot, Siri Rose’s Cascadia Tarot, Elisa Poggese’s Sensual Wicca Tarot, Nicoletta Ceccoli’s Tarot, Antonella Platano’s Tarot of the 78 Doors, Jack Sephiroth’s Heaven and Earth Tarot, Marco Proietto’s Capobianco Nero Tarot, MJ Cullinane’s Crow Tarot, and Star Spinner Tarot by Trungles.