5 of Pentacles. Poverty and deprivation.

This is a card that I always dread pulling for myself in a reading. The 5 of pentacles is regarded as a card of poverty, lack and deprivation...usually on a material level given the suit of pentacles.

Fives are typically related to struggling and strife and this one is no exception to that.

So when I pulled this card out this morning, my first feelings were not too positive. I have had a chequered past with regards to my financial path and this is a familiar card for me. Usually when I get this it pulls me down a little, but I wanted to really understand this card a little more and felt that since I have been so close to this energy I might have something to say about it with the necessary perspective.

 Both my wife and I have had to leave our jobs for various reasons, I felt pushed to leave and Zoe felt stressed in her job enough for it to have physical repercussions. But, remarkably I feel in a good position with regards to myself. I mention this because this card would usually be one that evokes fear in me, certainly in my situation, that and a feeling of hopelessness and exasperation...exactly what the card signifies on an outer level.

But of late there has been a shift in my perspective and I am seeing things in a different light. I no longer see things as hopeless, or as something to struggle through, like the figures in the card as they push through the snow. I have been reading a blog recently by Steve Pavlina, in particular this blog http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-manifest-money/ and several others. In it he suggests a game in which you just look for coins or money while you are walking and that by turning your attention to noticing money, it will begin to open you up to seeing it in all areas of your life.

So, Zoe and I tried this game while walking to our favourite bookstore, there was a little bit of a competition and between us we only found 1 cent...not the greatest result..but a start. The next day I found $40 dollars while at the gym...unfortunately... this was Toy town money...no joke! Although I did find another 1 cent piece as I was unlocking my bike. I was able to see the humour in the situation and I have steadily been finding money in small quantities each day.

I had to have a blood test this morning along with several inoculations in order to continue volunteering at the cancer centre here ( I mention this only because of the parallel of seeing so many infirm people there which is not a usual occurrence for me), so I took a walk and several things occurred to me about the card. It was that whenever I had looked at the card previously, I had not looked at the pentacles depicted in the image, I had just focused on the two figures struggling through the snow. In the image there is a warmly glowing window depicting a tree with coins growing from it and it seems obvious that the it is showing a sanctuary for them from their woes...just a short distance from them. The elderly woman struggles along with her head bowed and isn't even aware of the inviting window..which I feels shows ignorance of abundance which is right there, if she could only lift her head and look up. The second figure I have always felt more of a kinship with. He struggles through the snow, his legs lamed and he is aware of the window and the warmth. Yet there is something there that stops him. I see the expression on his face as one of jealousy and resentment, that others have those things, yet here he is struggling through the snow when it would really benefit him to enter the church and take a seat. The laming of his legs to me parallels my own struggles with my base chakra (the Muladhara) and the lack of connection or groundedness.

What I now see in that card,  is that it shows a lack of connection to abundance, not the lack of abundance. The light, the coins and the warmth are all present in the card... what is truly lacking is the will, the awareness or the motivation to make those things a part of their reality. For me the issues in my base chakra are the cause of much of the trouble integrating the kundalini  process smoothly, motivation has been a serious hold up in particular. I will talk of motivation more, but in another part of the blog as the story is too long.