9 Pentacles = Earth - Virgo
Hanged man = Water - Water
Earth & water are friendly but passive.
So here we see that the elements are coming together in this pair. Here we see just one Zodiacal entity coupled with a double element which would suggest that the balance is slightly offset. Water water is the Hanging Man's elemental charge while in the 9 Pentacles we have zodiacal Virgo which is of Earth element. We all know what happens when water touches earth, it quenches our mother and life can flourish, but add more water to this equation and what do we get? Deep gorges and erosion that's what. See 'Grand Canyon' for details on this...
So let us see what each of these cards are trying to say.
Card 1 - 9 Pentacles:~ Here we see a beautiful faerie mother with her children out picking Blackthorn berries, which is renowned to have many magickal properties. The wood of the Blackthorn tree was traditionally used by witches as staffs and also wands. It represents the (negative) influences of forces outside your power, especially those that are opposed to your success, and it has been used to try to gain malevolent control of other peoples minds. Keeping with this magickal tree Blackthorn for the moment because it is depicted in many fairy tales throughout Europe, such as Sleeping Beauty as a tree of ill omen. Called Straif in the Ogham, this tree has the most sinister reputation in Celtic tree lore. The English word ‘strife’ is said to derive from this Celtic word. A long hard winter is referred to as a Blackthorn Winter.
Card 2 - Hanged man:~ Here we see the faerie mother's husband bound up in a web of his own doing. He is there being taught a firm albeit scary lesson from the spider faerie. I just don't get the feeling that she is preparing him for lunch, she has something much more sinister in mind than simply death. This guy has to learn a lesson! Again we see the Blackthorn tree and traditionally, Blackthorn is used in protection against evil, creating boundaries, purifying and confronting our own darker side. Blackthorn has been used extensively to dispel negativity, toxins, old wounds, and impurities from within. I has also added this little Druidic poem which sprang to mind when I first put these two cards together as a pair.
With Blackthorn staff,
I draw the bound.
All malice and bane,
I thus confound.
Which led me to the conclusion that "This guy has to learn a lesson!"
Now let us put these two cards together and see what story emerges from within their art work.
So there was once a fae lady, a very well to do kind of fae lady who found out a secret. One of her faerie friends saw her husband with another woman and as you can well imagine she wasn't the best pleased with him. As you well know you never get caught on your first time and she had long suspected him of having a string of affairs in the past. So she spoke with her friend the spider faerie and between them they decided upon a punishment fit for such a cad. She then went home and asked her husband to go into their garden as she had a surprise waiting for him under the blackthorn tree, so off he went happy in the thought of his surprise, but little did he know what was really in store for him. When he got to the tree he noticed many skeletal remains under the tree and at first a feeling of fear and panic struck him but just as he was about to run he heard a gentle whisper of a very feminine voice. He stopped and answered "hello, who is there"? He heard the whisper again but this time it seemed closer, and it was whispering some very erotic and naughty but playful things, telling him what she would like to do with him if he was willing. Forgetting himself for a minute and where he was, as he was totally overcome with passion and lust, he answered "show yourself to me" and quick as a flash something grabbed him from above span him around so fast that all he could see was a blind white blur, the G-force was such that he passed out. A few minutes later he came too and he was suspended not so high off the ground and was bound so tight in a silken thread that he could hardly breathe let alone move his hands to even attempt to free himself. He could however move his neck to see the spider faerie looking down on him and taunting him about his past indiscriminate promiscuity and wrong doing to his wife and young family. And that he was to stay there until they (his wife, children and the spider faerie) were convinced of his remorse.
This is what we see....
What happens next is that the berries his wife and children have picked, they throw at him in a similar manner to when someone was put in the stocks and shamed publicly for minor crimes.
Like I said this guy has a lesson to learn and the only way he will learn it is if he looks at life from a different angle and sees just what he has and can lose if not careful. = The Hanging Man yes
She on the other hand is a self made woman who has everything she needs in abundance, in this instance is a good friend spider faerie so friendship, love from her children, and all the berries she need to chuck at her husband lol = 9 Pentacles yes
Just my thoughts
Let me know what you think...
Aeon