Bean Feasa
Like the Hermit this is an important card for me in any deck. I have to say though that for once I don’t relate quite so well to the ToP version. It’s extremely eyecatching and elegant and I certainly admire it. But it doesn’t touch me the way it does in other decks. I think this is because there’s so much gold in the picture, gold pentacles arc over the woman’s head and gold streams like a waterfall down the mosaic behind her. Her orange robe and the yellow garland on her head add to the effect, and it all seems to me to tip the emphasis of the woman’s self-sufficiency and independence exclusively towards material wealth. I know that this layer of meaning is always there in this card, but usually it speaks as well, through the soft, luxuriant garden of a more rounded fulfilment, possibly even with a touch of the spiritual to it – a blossoming or prosperity in all realms of life, so to speak, and I find that depth lacking here. The figure is also rather stylised and difficult to identify with, I find. But it certainly it is another take on the 9 Pentacles, since most other decks do follow the RW ‘garden’ version very closely, and it is interesting to see a rather different depiction.