Pentacles: The Fruits of Harvest

Welcome to the Lammas Tarot Blog Hop.

Perhaps you are joining me from Koneta's New Paths Tarot site.

After you finish here, please hop over to Melanie Howard's Wayward Tarot.

If you find breaks in the links, please visit the master list.

If you are joining me directly, you may be wondering what the Tarot Bog Hop is! Eight times a year, tarot bloggers agree to post at the same time on the same topic. This time we have thirty-seven tarot bloggers all blogging on the topic of the tarot suit of Pentacles, in honor of the harvest theme of Lammas. Thanks to our wrangler, Kareena Narwani, for coming up with such a great topic, and for doing all the work it takes to make this happen!

On the Pagan Wheel of the Year, August First is celebrated as Lughnassad, or Lammas. This is the cross-quarter day between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. Many people celebrate it as the first of three harvest festivals. The second harvest is Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox, and the final harvest is Samhain, known secularly as Halloween.

Especially exciting this year is that on August First the moon is coming into its fullness. And, this August brings us a blue moon on the 31^st. My fellow Grateful Dead devotees know August 1 as the beginning of “Jerry Week.” August First is Jerry Garcia’s birthday. This year would have been his seventieth. This Lughnassad there is a great deal to celebrate and commemorate. Normally, I would want to conduct a very special ritual today.

Instead, what I am doing is finishing up the move that takes us from a condo in a city into a tiny home in a South Florida campground. The home was in serious disrepair when we bought it. We have spent the past few months repairing and replacing, putting up walls and ceilings, choosing colors and treatments and imagining what our home will be like when it’s finished. It is a harvest of a different sort; not of food but of home.

Campground living was why we moved to Florida in the first place. Finding the right campground turned out to be a bit tricky. Nonetheless, here we are, on Full-Moon-Lughnassad-Lammas, moving into a home that we have practically crafted with our own hands. What could be more fitting for a full moon harvest celebration than this?

The assignment for the Lammas Tarot Blog Hop is for each of us to consider the suit of Pentacles, and find the card that we connect with most as this time.

I love to think about the suit of Pentacles in terms of its Earth energy. I am often dismayed when tarotists describe the “Earth” tarot suit as simply being all about the money. For me, the suit of Pentacles is about resources of all kinds, and about our sacred connection to the Earth that sustains us.

Within the suit of Pentacles, we see lessons about sharing resources in cards four, five and six. We see career lessons of hard work, study and creativity in cards two, three, seven and eight. We honor our ancestry in cards nine and ten. The suit of Pentacles contains everything we need to wisely manage our resources.

The Pentacles card I am focusing on today is the Ten of Pentacles. This is the card that speaks to me most clearly of “home.”  Traditionally, this is the “castle” card. In modern times we see it as the card of real estate.

It’s funny how one person’s castle is another person’s shack. Many people would prefer a luxury condo, or a large house in a gated community. We are happier living in a more sustainable way, using fewer of the Earth’s resources and spending more time in nature. For me, sustainability is one of the essential lessons of the suit of Pentacles.

In the RWS depiction, the ten pentacles are arranged to form the Kabalistic Tree of Life. In that, we see our spiritual heritage, and perhaps, the spiritual heritage of tarot.

The Ten of Pentacles is about ancestry, heritage and legacy. It is about the security of home and family. The Ten of Pentacles teaches us to honor what has come before, and to consider what we will leave to the next generation. It assures us we will have all the resources we need.

Today, I will use the Ten of Pentacles to perform some tarot magick for our new home.

May the energy of the Ten of Pentacles bestow to our home a welcoming environment for our grown-up children, beckoning them to visit for family gatherings. May it be a place for us to nurture our health, our business and our creativity. May we have all the resources we need to maintain this home. May it provide us a sense of security. May we dwell here in peace, happiness, health and prosperity.

Happy Lammas, Lughnassad, Jerry Week and full moon to all. May the blessings of the Ten of Pentacles be yours, now and always.

Now follow the blog hop over to Melanie Howard's site, and see what she has to say about Pentacles: The Fruits of Harvest!