Fours – IsleVue

Four of Pentacles Feature Image series II

4 of Pentacles A One Page Guide, Series 2

June 21, 2021June 21, 2021 John Iacovelli Capricorn, Chesed, Fours, One Page Guide, Pentacles, Sun

Capricorn has multiple origin myths. One of them is the story of Pricus, a sea-goat deity, goat above, fish below. Pricus may show us that in the Four of Pentacles, rather than representing wealth and greed, the illustration may portray the succession of generations. The core of the Pricus story is the heritage that parents pass onto children, and the search by the children for differentiation. Each generation modifies, adds and wields the transformed heritage as their Earthly dominion… until the next generation. The Order of the Golden Dawn called this card “Earthly Power.” The repudiation of the parents fuels the metaphor’s pathos. The story of Pricus, the time traveling goat, may provide us with an insight into Éliphas Lévi’s famously insightful quote about tarot, that “an imprisoned person with no other book than the Tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequaled learning and inexhaustible eloquence.”

Tarot

4 of Wands A One Page Guide, Series 2

June 4, 2021June 4, 2021 John Iacovelli Aries, Fours, One Page Guide, Venus, Wands

The stage cards of the RWS deck. One would be justified in wondering whether they’re an editorial comment—All the tarot’s a stage, And all the majors and minors merely players; They have their suits and their sephiroth; And Adam Kadmon in his time plays many parts. There is one minor arcanum, the Four of Wands, in which the stage lacks all players. If no actors are on stage, either the curtain has just risen, and we await their entrance; or they just exited, and the curtain is about to fall. Sometimes you just have to ask what’s missing. Then there’s the story of Venus, Aries, Pluto, Persephone and a boozy Celtic interloper. John Barleycorn must hide.

Tarot

Tarot Reversals – The Fours

January 17, 2020February 7, 2020 John Iacovelli Fours, Reversals

To a certain extent the Fours of the RWS deck can be said to deal with the results of abundance. How best to celebrate abundance other than as part of the community? That is the question that is answered by the Four of Wands. Or how to deal with the ennui of non-stop abundance? That would be the Four of Cups; our wastrel appears to have been the Kardashian of his day. How to deal with the problem of keeping that abundance when you’re a miser? This we see in the case of the Four of Pentacles. The seeming outlier here is the Four of Swords. It’s important not to claim a rule or order when perhaps there is none, so I shall not claim that this card focuses on abundance, as the other three do. Although… we could look at the Four of Swords as an example of the man who has successfully dealt with an abundance of activity in life. He now rests in peace, fondly remembered by the community. Community appears to be the unifying “perspective” in the Fours’ reversals; for it seems to be the community’s view that applies to the reversed meaning in each. What goes around comes around, they say. We could even place the four figures on a mini-Karmic-Wheel-of-Fortune, which is as good an organizing principle as any.