Five of Pentacles

Five Of Pents Revisited

I've been thinking about this discussion and especially the tower behind the window. Looking at it, and considering the context of the card, it seems that only one conclusion can be drawn. The window points to the outside.

The two people represent an inner state. I can't recall who said it, but I remember reading a post that said they represent and "us against them attitude." I can see this. They're alone, destitute, out in the cold(they believe they are anyway). The window clearly shows (beyond their own narrow frame of reference) that they live in a world of abundance, light, and stability, but the are completely oblivious. Robert Place says this card reflects the outcome (or perhaps the cause of - ff) of the miserly attitude illustrated in the Four of Pents.

Where does the bell fit into this scheme? It could be a similar type of bell worn by the Jester, the Fool. It makes a lot of noise and draws plenty of attention, but behind all the noise their's no substance, just noise.

fools_fool

Well this gives me a whole new perspective on the five of pents. I've never noticed the tower there before, but what you all say makes sense.

It might blow my tower card philosophy, though, because I've aways said the sudden changes the tower brings aren't necessarily unwelcome ones.

Hmmmm.....

Jan

Interesting that as I thought of this card, my mind flashed to the movie Sister Act, where a church with great magnitude sat numb and without creativity in a town classed as 'lower class'. Many perhaps passed this church throughout the day, but the essence for what it stood for was missing. You had to question what was standing in the way of the frequency of joy? Perhaps the seriousness of the Mother Superior was too intense, the awakening to the 'house of the lord' taken too seriously. Therefore the church lacked 'people appeal'.

The whole area was in repression, drying, even hardening until Whoopi Goldberg showed up, hiding as a nun and touched the nuns and even the Mother Superior with emotional creativity.

In the Five of Pentacles, it is snowing, frozen emotions, the two together living in fixed certainties which as we know can cause depression. Their lives unvalidated they have already spent years trying to fill their emptiness with people as well as the church.

Their answer to a lifelong search is simplistic. To surrender to the emptiness and access the energy and vitality within ourselves. With the intention to embrace all that we are, we can set in motion events that make us feel as though we are spinning in confusion, which then whirls us out of our 'fixed certainties into the unknown. Every aspect of our lives must be evaluated. Our shadow no longer wants to 'live in the cold' or be denied.

Crazy Raven

pandora said:

I know that The Tower is associated with the 5’s

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Could you explain this? I've never seen that association before, so would like to know more about it.
Actually, there are two towers, which are reminiscent of other pairs of towers including those in Temperance, Death, and the Moon.

The oldest meanings for this card say that it is a card of marriage. But Waite and Smith drew from the GD correspondences to Geburah/Mars - which is why all the 5s are so difficult.

Note that the pentacles are suspended on what looks like an anchor and the anchor was a significant image within church symbology as an emblem of "well-grounded hope." An anchor allows safe mooring in a harbor and thus, the finding of rest and safety. This would seem to indicate that the 'mendicants,' as Waite calls them, are moving toward an entrance to a warm, safe haven.

In addition to being a general world for beggar (from a word originally meaning "physical defect"), a mendicant was a member of an order of poor friars who owned no property and were required to work or beg for a living. This was a requirement for spiritual humility.

I love the fact that when this card is reversed the window becomes a door and the darkness previously at the top becomes white - lightening the whole image.

Mary

Stained glass 'tower' is castle and moat - 4 Swords one!

Surely folks, you can see the 'arch' of the bridge (far left 'tower') going out over a river there (we assume its a river) does this not hark back to the 4 of Swords Castle and Moat and drawbridge? And therefore, showing again, as in 4 Swords Stained Glass depiction, that the 'doorway' or drawbridge is shut to us, to any real forward motion?

Any thoughts oh ye experts?

x Cara - now, SO obviously up to studying 5 pentacles - tee-hee!

Cara Jackson said:

Surely folks, you can see the 'arch' of the bridge (far left 'tower') going out over a river there (we assume its a river)

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Can you blow up the image and sketch where you see the arch over the river? I don't see it.

I'm starting to see this card completely different than before. What I thought was obviously a "tower" behind stained glass looks more like it's part of the window itself, used for attaching whatever it is that it's decorated with. If that's true, then the casement's either incomplete or falling apart, which would match well with Waite's divinatory meaning: "The card foretells material trouble above all..."

Rather than stained glass it might be a lead-based glass on a solid background or leaded enamel, either of which would have a luminous appearance. Waite says it's a "lighted casement" but doesn't say what the source of the light is. It could be moonlight.

I don't know enough about the techniques of the period to say for sure. Hopefully someone has experience in this area and can either confirm or refute my theory.

5 of Pents.

Fulgour said:

After our usual, glum and stuffy meeting tonight, some of us gathered on the sidewalk outside the hall. Across the street there was a church window all brightly lit from within, while the February weather did its best to encourage us to the nearest pub for some mulled claret.

Mr. Loomis was by my side (Yeat's friend, Ezra) so I nudged him so he'd notice two of the most forlorn beggars you might ever sorrow to behold, scuttling by across the way right below that so beatific window. "Poor souls," I said, "and yet so radiant ~ like petals on a wet black bough."

All dreamlike, Ezra intoned, "merely apparitions." I wanted to ask if he had picked up his Continental accent back in Iowa with his goatee, but he'd turned away to chatter with sad old silly Arthur.

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Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) born in Hailey, Idaho, and later taught school in Indiana (not Iowa) ~ attended meetings of the-golden-dawn as "Mr. Loomis" (guest of W.B. Yeats) but begged off apparently as uninterested.
A notable poem of his:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

http://memoryanddesire.typepad.com/blog/images/2008/03/26/ayalas_petals.jpg
(petals = pentacles?)

The way that I interpret this card is that the two people who have fallen on hard times are outside of a church with a stained glass window. They are having financial troubles, are sick, feeling ostracized, and are spending a lot of time feeling sorry for themselves. They could go inside the church for help, but they haven't even stopped to consider it yet because they are focusing on how bad their luck has been. Comfort is close at hand, but they fail to see it.

I'd never considered that it might be the tower - I always thought it was there as a reminder of making too many poor choices or not enough choices or perhaps by being too greedy in the card before - as if the wealth/stability in 4 has dwindled by lack of action/willingness to share or be generous that when we get to 5, freedom of choice is removed and we might need to seek help from someone like we used to be at Card 4...or we can soldier on and not benefit from physical help nor that of learning something about ourselves - we're blind to both, especially the need to help ourself. If we are lucky and/or make good choices we may benefit from the generosity shown in card 6 - if we've learned and are willing to give something back.

I think 5 of P is a powerful card, not a pleasing one but invokes thought in me - I may interpret it differently in relation to its positioning to other cards if that could be a reference to 'The Tower' in the window.

Thank you for making me think!