Barbara Walker and the RWS Suit of Pentacles
Although it’s a bit overstuffed with mythology and “armchair” anthropology (think “Golden Bough Lite”), I’ve been reading Barbara Walker’s fascinating and frequently enlightening 1984 book Secrets of the Tarot: Origins, History and Symbolism. Despite the meticulous academic tone of much of her writing and its overarching themes of matriarchal culture and Goddess worship in antiquity, I’m finding a few nuggets of practical wisdom in the brief Minor Arcana essays. Two of those that stand out address the 6 and 9 of Pentacles (the book is illustrated with Walker’s personal deck, but her text sums up the card meanings from several traditions including the RWS, making it relevant for the modern practitioner). Here are a few observations that I found particularly useful.
The RWS 6 of Pentacles as “Hospitality”
As I’ve written on several previous occasions, I’m not enchanted with the interpretation of the Waite-Smith 6 of Pentacles as “generosity” and “charity,” both of which depart too drastically from Waite’s Golden Dawn source material: the simple idea of “Material Success”” with no dependent ramifications (I think this was Pixie’s doing). But I’m not entirely hostile to the concept of “applied success” or “wealth-at-work.”
In The Secrets of the Tarot, Walker offers a more useful take on this card, one that I can live with: “Hospitality.” In her view, a host welcomes a guest to his or her hearth as a convivial setting for sharing the former’s good fortune. It’s an elegant vision of symbiotic give-and-take: one provides comfort and the other contributes companionship, and both are happier for it. It’s a two-way street, and a far cry from the vulgar (and somewhat smug-looking) unilateral disbursement of coin shown in the RWS card, a modern coda to which might show the benefactor returning home with a self-satisfied smile on his face (and hopes for a future tax break) while the recipients of his largess go out and buy some drugs. In Walker’s version there is no hint of economic disparity, class division or moral superiority; both host and guest meet as equals and bring value to the relationship.
The obvious connotation for the RWS image is “Virtue is its own reward,” but the fact that the hand-off appears to be taking place in a public plaza makes me think the giver wants to be seen doing it: “Look at me, I’m so well-off I can freely give my money away!” (Don’t try that in today’s inner city, bro, you might not live long enough to regret it; I once saw a not-so-sneaky ambulatory exchange of “drugs-for-money” while I was walking down a street on the west side Portland, ME.) Modern charitable institutions are by-and-large abstract and cynical endeavors: we send money to the administrators and feel good about ourselves while the directors skim off 95% or more of the “take” for personal gain (euphemistically called “salary”) and pass only a pittance through to the intended needy. Even donating to one’s church mainly helps to fund continued operation and doesn’t necessarily filter down into any humanitarian acts. In short, the RWS image of open-handed giving just doesn’t “work” any more, unless we choose to hand out dollar bills on the street (about which, see above).
Starving in Paradise: The RWS 9 of Pentacles
Walker brings up the old view of the Pentacle symbol as being “gateless” due to its continuous-line construction; it’s a completely closed system. Years ago when I first started free-associating from this card, the very first thing that struck me was that there is no gate in the woman’s secluded garden, no path leading through the arbor back to the castle. I saw (and still see) it as a card of forced self-sufficiency, either externally or internally imposed; once she eats all the grapes (or more likely — given her visibly epicurean tastes — turns them into wine), she has no source of resupply and must fend for herself. Thus, I consider it an image of unsustainable self-reliance and rather pampered faux-independence (maybe Daddy is still paying the rent on that plot), but also of eventually having to make do with what you have for as long as you have it (or perhaps a more appropriate if slightly skewed aphorism is “Live for today, for tomorrow you starve.” I wonder how she likes escargot? I wouldn’t want to be that little snail . . . )
All of the Nines have a sense of “fullness” about them since Nine is considered the last of the Greek’s “Three Perfections” (the others are Three and Six). Also, in the tarot universe, Nine represents the “completion” of a suit; Ten is more of a postscript that is edging toward exhaustion of the elemental force that drove it predecessors, something Crowley and Harris made abundantly clear in the Thoth deck but Waite and Smith not so much with the RWS. The woman in the RWS card seems oblivious to the fact that she could soon be “running on empty;” she is living entirely in the present with no thought for any kind of “rainy-day fund.” In her distracted and short-sighted view, what has been unfailingly adequate in the past will without fail always suffice for the future; there is almost no long-range perspective in this card since she is the antithesis of a “prepper.” Crowley was fond of talking about various cards carrying the “seeds of their own destruction;” here I think ennui and benign neglect fed by an “It’s all good” attitude will be her downfall. In short, this is a cautionary card that warns against complacency, not a promise of good things to come.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on February 7, 2022.
