This earthy lady is a mix of watery emotion and grounded pragmatism. Her card is a quiet idyll in the sense of a storybook cottage complete with cute bouncing bunny and bordered in roses. To me it looks like a page from an illustrated children's book.
Our Queen sits on a throne cradling a pentacle as if it were her baby. Now looking at all the Pentacle court cards, you can't help but notice that each of the figures is deeply absorbed with their own pentacle to the exclusion of anything else going on. Here the flora around her is starting to grow a little wild...a precursor to the overgrown garden that exists on the King's card. This absorption with the material realm is a common thread and I wonder quite what this means for the court cards of the Pentacles suit.
I understand this to mean that these characters find it difficult to tear their attention away from their own material pursuits. They spend their time working on their careers, thinking about their belongings or homes and looking after their earthly concerns. But one thing to notice is that they really love their pentacles. It is not a damning indictment on materialism (for that see the four of pentacles), but speaks of the actual beauty of materialism.
The Queen has a deep pink robe on over a white blouse, which is indicative of her innocence and deep love for the world. She wears a green cloak which stretches from her head to her feet and shows her abiding love and compassion. This really is one sweet lady who really cares.
Her throne is adorned with fruit (apples, oranges and pears) symbolising the fruitful nature of the energy inherent in the card, you can also see several cherubs along with the head of a goat (Capricorn). The rabbit is a symbol of fecundity and abundance and links to both her outward timidity and her sexual nature.
There is little to connect her to fire or air and as a result this can lead to a somewhat limited awareness of situations outside her own material sphere. At worst this can manifest itself as stodginess and she may lack a spark or inner brightness. More vibrant expansive signs or characters may find her a little sedate for their tastes, but this suits her just fine. She really is happy within her world. The lack of fire does not mean a lack of passion or spirituality, it simply means she connects to it through her earthy nature and strongly emotional character.
What this card brings up for me is the question of materialism. The western culture has a heavy bias towards materialism, but has severed its ties to the earth. It has not reached the stage of the Queen of Pentacles, but is still languishing at the Knight. When people talk of materialism, there is often scorn in their voices and this is because of what it has come to mean to our common awareness.There is a deep wisdom in the Earth, this has been forgotten and has been replaced with a culture of convenience. Materialism for most people means losing touch with their inner nature, of being absorbed in their shallow lives and never looking beyond the next distraction. Of living for the paycheck or for the weekend.
The deep wisdom is embodied by that love of the Earth, of loving our lives here and now. It is okay to love our possessions and our homes, our careers and our bodies. It is that love that we have forgotten. there is no love for our possessions, everything is disposable and we have been told to not connect with our materiality...that it is somehow bad and unspiritual.
What is unspiritual is not loving our lives and all that is in them. When we love our possessions we treat them with honour, we live in an almost zen like state. Materialism is one of the ways we can express love in our lives and of course it stands to reason that it should not be the only way. Enjoying a new teapot is not equivalent to idolatry unless we recognise no other item or being as worthy of our love...and anyone who just loves their teapot is quite clearly not all there.
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