Card of the day: the nine of Pentacles

A lady stands in a garden full of ripe fruits, a hooded falcon perched on her glove. In the background we can see the city that occurs on many other cards. Surrounded by nature’s bounty, she doesn’t look entirely happy.

Let’s take a look at the nines.

None of the characters look particularly happy, with the possible exception of the chap on the nine of Cups. Nines relate to excess: as we progress along each suit from its inception to its ultimate form, we take a brief detour towards the end where we get too much of what we’ve been developing. It’s a speedbump on the road to spiritual completion. Here, we’re concerned with the grounding, earthly energies of Pentacles, relating the the mundane world and the things we have to do to continue to exist in it. We’ve built a garden and now we’re trapped in it.

There’s a refined melancholy to this card which, to me, suggests decadence. We’ve all been there. Perhaps we’ve built a career but neglected the more important things in life. Survival, taken to its extremes, can lead to comfort but also to stagnation. We have everything we need to live and thus we have grown fat, and soft, and weak.

In the context of our journey through the Pentacles, the nine looks like this:

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Hard work and industry has led us to this beautiful garden, but here we stand in it, alone. Even the falcon is hooded but we gaze wistfully at it, envious of its capacity for flight. Once we break out of this, we can progress to the Ten, where we see the same garden but expressed in much more convivial terms. Completion only occurs when the garden we’ve built is combined with energies from the other suits.

Here is some quotation relating to the nine of pentacles

some dude

Pentacles relate to Legacy in the LAAE system, security needs in Maslow, and the mundane, physical world in the qabalah. These things are all necessary for our survival—we have to live here. But the Nine reminds us that it’s only one thing, and we won’t be properly fulfilled until we balance it with more.