5 of pentacles as hidden desires

I'm at a complete and utter loss for how this card can be attributed to a hidden desire.

This reading was for a closeted gay man who is married to a woman, pertaining to a relationship he had (and just ended) with another closeted gay male who is also married to a woman and ended their relationship because, as he told my client, he was "overwhelmed" and wanted to go back to his life that he was accustomed to.

So, 5 of pentacles as hidden desires for this man towards the querent...would that be to cast aside social roles and traditions and come out of the closet together?

Other than that, I am stuck.

The other man's hidden desire toward the Querent is that he wants the two of them to stick together through their mutual hardship.

I'm assuming that the hidden desire is something that's unknown to the Querent, not something that's unknown to the other man.

Rodney

What came to me about this was that they wish the two of them could be alone on a deserted island with nothing to interfere. It would be a very simple and sparse existence, but without all the problems that daily life brings them right now.

calichick1985 said:

I'm at a complete and utter loss for how this card can be attributed to a hidden desire.

This reading was for a closeted gay man who is married to a woman, pertaining to a relationship he had (and just ended) with another closeted gay male who is also married to a woman and ended their relationship because, as he told my client, he was "overwhelmed" and wanted to go back to his life that he was accustomed to.

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Perhaps he will stay married and have great difficulty expressing the other side of his physical needs. Some people have a deep-seated need to be in some kind of long-term hardship because in their minds there is a certain mystique in being the underdog or having to endure hardship. I believe that might be the "hidden desire", not just his closeted homosexuality: what he is hiding from himself is his need for the sympathy of those few (like readers) that he might confide in, which he wouldn't get if his life didn't have denial, loss and unhappiness in it.

If I understood your question well, maybe the hidden desires is precisely that the hardships continue up to a point when he decides to literally give it all up and find a different path. Sometimes, only VERY harsh reality will quick you out of torpor...

According to Sasha Fenton, 5 of Pents can mean a casual or physical relationship, one without commitment. This take could be relevant here?

Maybe he wants their wives to kick them out of the house. Or just his. Then he'd be free, in a sense. He could be with his lover and suffer together or whatnot. Desires aren't always flowery stuff.

It might be a cop-out way of handling it but maybe he fantasizes about her finding out and kicking him out, just like that. Instead of taking responsibility himself....not that I blame him, it sounds hard.


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5 pents indicates isolation, so the desire for the ex relationship to remain a secret forever because coming out could cause serious financial loss, and also turn him into an outcast in the eyes of his family and in his work place.

I'd have to agree with RWCarter, the 5 of Pentacles is the whole concept of "through thick and thin." Or perhaps even "misery likes company," in a more darker sense. Most people don't like to be alone in their own doom and gloom, they would rather have someone with them to get through it.

There is some fascinating stuff in Joseph Maxwell's book The Tarot (English translation, Neville Spearman Ltd, 1975) about the 5 of Pentacles and the concept of marriage.

A couple of samples:

". . . in the Pentacles the five breathes tenderness, devotion, and announces the coming consort of spirit, or soul, or body, or all three together. This can suggest, certainly, an exaggeration of sentiment, not in the direction of carnality, but in ways which disturb the clear, intellectual vision . . ."

"We are no longer on a level where we have to quibble about the merits or demerits of committing ourselves to a sexually-oriented decision; the 5 of Pentacles ordains only those unions which have resonances on the three planes of being. The social contract of marriage is of no account if there is no true wedlock from the physical, astral and spiritual viewpoint."

This strongly suggests that the "hidden desire" is one of wanting the complete and utter commitment of marriage, assuming it is legal in that locality or in one within reach. Perhaps the individual backed off because of an overpowering urge in that direction, since it would have disrupted both families.