The Two of Pentacles – A One Page Guide

The Two of Pentacles presents questions. Why are there dramatic waves in the background when the elemental influence is not water but Earth? Why did Waite go out of his way not to call the figure eight of the string game the Ourobouros, as the Golden Dawn group described it? And finally, and oddly enough, most importantly—what’s with the hat? Since we’re in Capricorn, we’d better take the Goat of Fear, some aliens called the Anunnaki, and Noah’s Flood into consideration as we try to make sense of these seeming contradictions. And contradiction is what makes the Two of Pentacles a tour de force. It communicates Waite’s Christian mysticism by pulling it out from what should be its opposite: spirit from material, Christianity from pagan; first power promising its own replacement by the ultimate power.

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The Six of Wands – A One Page Guide

When we look at the Zodiac/Tarot Wheel for the Six of Wands, we immediately recognize a pattern: the king of the gods, the king of planets, and the king of beasts. Tiphareth also has “kingly” connotations. And though there’s no king on the RWS illustration, Waite goes out of his way to tell us the man on horseback might be the king’s courier in the divinatory meanings. Then, perhaps, we notice the divergence between the Golden Dawn group’s and Waite’s divinatory meanings is quite a bit wider than usual. When I traced how Waite treated the planetary component—the Sun— I recalled a piece in a magazine linking the victorious Christ of the Book of Revelations to the Sun card. Long story short, Waite appears to have turned the Six of Wands into a sublimal proselytizing piece for Christian mysticism. Waite adds one more king, namely, “The King of Kings,” Christus Invictus, to the mix. And the message his courier carries is the Gospel. We can trace practically all Waite’s divinatory meanings to this concept. The bottom line for modern readers, though, is not inconvenient. It’s a positive card that pleases pretty much everyone: but it’s not just an announcement of forthcoming victory, success, (or reversed, a warning about an enemy) anymore. For me, at least, I now see the Six of Wands as more about a victory of the spirit rather than a victory in the material world.

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