Tarot Discussion Group, Card of the Week.

As events have unfolded the last two weeks the one card that comes up time and time again is the XII of Pentacles. It does not matter which deck I am using on a given day the card has come up repeatedly. Now in the UW or Robin Wood, the card is a Knight, while Melanie has depicted the card as Princess. I have always liked both visions, but I have never been able to truly reconcile them in my mind. (If you click on the Gendron Card, a Popup will allow you to compare the cards side by each.)

As a person of basically Pagan spirituality I consider Melanie's card a gift. The young girl on a pony, riding through a virgin field. With the Spirit of Mother Earth herself watching over her. The green goddess is nature, but also communing with nature as she breathes in the scent of a flower. It is an act of self love, Gaia's love of her creation that is ultimately part of herself. The girl seems to be communing with nature as well. Calmly soaking up the beauty around her as her pony clops along. The flowers in her hair, echoing the flowers in Gaia's hair making their relationship clear. Highlighting the reflection of the Goddess in all women.

There is a sense of deep and abiding love about this card to me. The slow burning enduring love of a mother for her daughter. A love rooted as deep in the earth as an Oak, and as innocent as a girl and her pony. Everything about this card seems to me to be timeless and beautiful.

The Robinwood is as Masculine as the Gendron is Feminine. The knight is presented in platemail. Fully Armored against the world. His Destrier is heavy and armored as well. The Charger adds a tremendous physical weight to the image, these two are not be taken lightly. Yet Robin has presented us with a little riddle, the Knight is unarmed. She could have placed the Pentacle on a great round shield and armed the knight with a crushing morning star. Instead no weapon appears in the frame, and the knight holds up the pentacle in a position of some reverence.

Clearly the power the knight relies on is not the powers of weapons, but the powers of the earth. The tremendous power of the earth to simply endure. The bitterness of winter, the crushing glaciers of an Ice age, and now she faces her greatest challenge, the folly of man.

The tone of the recent SUV debate is a perfect example. The mind boggling level of self righteousness. What would Jesus drive? Well lets see, he was a carpenter, and he lived out in the boonies, I expect he would drive a fairly big truck. |Thank you Jay Leno, I'm not that funny.| Most of us however aren't carpenters, we don't need a work vehicle, we just want a bigger car than our neighbors so we can look down on them in traffic, literally. Now when people concerned with the environment say something, and challenge that hubris, look out. Go ask Joe Public to think about global warming. The response all to often is, "Look at my lawn. See how green my lawn is, My Lawn is the greenest thing on the damn planet. Don't tell me about the environment buddy, see my lawn, that's all the environment I need. When my lawn turns to scorched dust, then, maybe, you'll have something to say."

Im a big fan of Whitley Striber, and one thing Whit is spot on about is this; Both sides of the climate change debate are so interested in blame that they have lost sight of the real issue. The real issue is Nature. Nature does not give a tinkers damn about who's to blame, Nature does her sums, and if the system falls out of balance, if just does. You see natures got another face, a face we don't want to see. The mask she wore when she unleashed storms that froze Mammoths into blocks of Ice. Frozen in an instant the grass they where chewing still in their mouths. Nature can be loving, and nature will endure, but never forget, Nature has a Terrible Wrath.

Well I've wandered off course haven't I? dear reader. I hope you dont mind. I had thought to talk about how, in my own small way, in my own small life endurance has been a recurring theme. Not too long ago I was working two jobs. My life became an relentless blur of unending work. At one point I had to pay for my daughters music lessons for the comming semester. It just happened at the same time I put a good sized hole in the sole of my shoe. Well the money for the lessons could not wait, it was a move it or lose it situation. So I coughed up the money, and used cardboard from a cereal box to cover the hole for two weeks. In time I learned endurance was not enough. Boxer Jerry Quarry, used to say his father taught him, "There's no Quit in Quarry." I understand that, I was raised much the same way. As I struggled to make a living working those two jobs I hit an all time spiritual low. I could not see the forest for the tree's and trudged from day to day. If I had simply kept on trudging I might still be working those jobs and living that life. The Knight of Pen, can be a good friend, he can see us through hard times. Yet one must know, or discover, when to leave him behind. Without other friends, like the Fool, one could trudge on along side the knight forever. I have however come to believe, God/dess has bigger dreams for each of us than that grind.

Divination: Endurance, Hardworking Mature, Practical, Patient, Responsible. |but perhaps a bit unimagainative.

Reversed:Avaricious, Idle, Inertia, Grasping, Stagnat, Narrow-minded
(sounds all too familiar).