7 Pentacles/ fruits of his labor?

I can't tell if the farmer is waiting for the bush to grow a little more so he can put the last, finished, waiting, pentacle ornament on it, or if he has plucked one of the fruits of his labor and is waiting, patient and satisfied, for the rest to ripen?

I've done a lot of gardening and to me, he looks like he's just resting a little while from weeding. When you reach a point in gardening where your crop is grown and starting to produce the harvest, then you can be a little less diligent about getting all the weeds out because there's not so much danger of the weeds choking out your plants, so that's what stage he looks like he's in to me. It's a time of satisfaction and not so much anxiety over whether you'll be successful with the crop or not.

Of course, that's assuming your crop is a good one. I guess it could also be the point at which he's saying "well, I've given it my best and this is all that's going to result, so I'm resigned to it" if his crop isn't the greatest.

In _A Pictorial Key to the Tarot_, Waite writes: "A young man, leaning on his staff, looks intently to a clump of greenery on his right; one would say that there were his treasures and that his heart was there." However, the R-W 7 of Pentacles card image is wonderfully ambiguous and so it is capable of many interpretations. Some tarotists are of the view that (though Waite tried hard not to break his oath of secrecy with the Golden Dawn, of which he was previously a member) the RWS deck is a Golden Dawn inspired deck (though subject to other influences such as Etteilla meanings and cartomancy meanings). In Golden Dawn tarot curriculum, the card name is the Lord of Success Unfulfilled. The writeup in the Golden Dawn's manuscript "Book T" on the 7 of Pentacles includes the following (which, to my eyes, could fit the R-W card imagery):

Promises of success unfulfilled. (Shewn, as it were, by the fact that the rosebuds do not come to anything.) Loss of apparently promising fortune. Hopes deceived and crushed. Disappointment, misery, slavery, necessity and baseness. A cultivator of land, and yet a loser thereby. Sometimes it denotes slight and isolated gains with no fruits resulting therefrom, and of no further account, though seeming to promise well.

Click to expand...

Crowley's Thoth deck, also a Golden Dawn based deck (in great part), assigns the keyword "Failure" to the corresponding card in the Thoth deck (7 of Disks). In "Book of Thoth", on the 7 of Disks, Crowley writes: "On the background, which represents vegation and cultivation, everything is spoiled." This contrasts to the Thoth deck's 8 of Disks, which shows a tree in bloom.

However, as mentioned above, the R-W 7 of Pentacles card image is wonderfully ambiguous and so it is capable of many interpretations.

Horace said:

I can't tell if the farmer is waiting for the bush to grow a little more so he can put the last, finished, waiting, pentacle ornament on it, or if he has plucked one of the fruits of his labor and is waiting, patient and satisfied, for the rest to ripen?

Click to expand...

Hi Horace! Have you ever compared this card with
the 8 of Pentacles? There you will see a Pentacle is
actually floating in the air... beside the work bench.

Pamela Colman Smith created original interpretations
for her very original illustrations (NOT Golden Dawn).
She allows things to happen that never do in Book-T.

Hi Fulgour!

I did go to the 8 Pents next in my thought process. That was what helped clarify my thinking that the farmer was almost ready to finish, not start, his planting. Seven planted is nearer to the end than one plucked. (In my 8P it looks like the pentacle is leaned up against the workbench and the others are attached to a display. I don't understand what you meant by PCS having her own agenda. ?)

I've learned that the 7's present a challenge. One of the hardest things to do is wait for the harvest to ripen. Take a little kid, some radish seeds and see how many times in that 2 week period they pull up the plant to see if they are ready. They've done all the prep work, now they just have to wait. It's time to let nature take its course. This is what I see for me when I draw this card. Hh

"Now" is the time of power

If the 7 of Pentacles represents (also) a negative condition, then that negative condition is 'waiting for something to happen'.

'Waiting' is a waste of the present moment. The Tarot (eventually) teaches that the 'here and now' is the moment of power. To 'spend' one's 'here and now' in a waiting for rewards condition misses the point. 'Waiting' places one's vital energy into a 'fiction'. The 'fiction' is the future; the other 'fiction' is the past. The goal (one of them, anyway)
of the Tarot is to place the adept on the razor's edge (between past and future) of 'here and now'. To enjoy is to enjoy, to wait is to wait.
Perhaps the solution for the 7 of Pentacles is to continue one's activities in another format (e.g. planting another garden, or clearing a field, etc.) because (philosophy) the 'accomplishment' is in the doing... not in the waiting.
The moment of power is now!

Horace said:

In my 8P it looks like the pentacle is leaned up against the workbench and the others are attached to a display. I don't understand what you meant by PCS having her own agenda.

Click to expand...

Hi Horace! Here is a link to the complete
Pamela Colman Smith Tarot of 1909
(published one year before Waite's book,
and created four years before Book T...)

Click On:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/xr/index.htm

Now here is the 8 of Pentacles with the "floating"
Pentacle there next to the bench (not touching).

Click on:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/xr/pe08.htm

*

Pam "had her own agenda" because she created
her cards independently ~ she owned all 78!
Talk of it being a work for hire is a sad legalism,
designed to give Waite credit for doing nothing.

What about this one: the farmer contemplates the huge bush with the 6 pents on it and thinks "I wonder how long it will take the little one (the bush with just one pent on it, maybe an offspring of the big bush?) to grow like this one?"

7of pentacles

In some cases I often think of the 7 of Pent in the Rw deck, as a job well done , money in the bank=pents on bush, and living on the interest= Pent at his feet.
Now he has the opportunity after working really hard to maybe diversify his business and look in other directions. Maybe new investments, he is thinking ahead and taking his time, not going to jump into any get rich quick schemes. This man has earned his money the hard way through hard work.
I often see this card as future planning especially if the question is about business.

Doreen.

I tend to see this card as the need to make a decision - as in "shall I or shan't I?". Is it going to be worth it in the long run? Shall I take my new seed and plant it elsewhere, or shall I stick with my own vegetable patch, because even though it takes a lot of time and effort, it usually gives me a good return.

Shy x