3 Pentacles -- Doctorate

As noted previously, this is a chapter in a book about the Tarot aimed at Intermediate students of Tarot, not beginners or advanced students. It is particularly aimed at writers looking to learn World Building and Alien Character building.

Updated and expanded compilation of all these Tarot Just For Writers entries is now available on Kindle:

The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.

The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..

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And Remember: The meaning of a Tarot Minor Arcana resides in the placement on the Tree of Life (i.e. the number on the card) integrated with the "World" or Suit of the card.

For the Tree of Life and the Jacob's Ladder diagrams see:

http://web.onetel.net.uk/~maggyw/treeladder.html

I don't really go with the way this page explains the Tree, but it is worth thinking about. There are many other ways. For now, ponder the diagrams on this page or Google up some others.

I have been posting here since August 14th, every Tuesday, the 10 minor Arcana of the suit of Swords. The Ace of Pentacles was posted Oct 23, 2007.
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3 Pentacles

Look back over the Ace and Two of Pentacles and note how we are juggling more and more variables to arrive at a meaning for a particular Card.

Check out the Jacob's Ladder diagram again and note where the Pentacles begin to dangle down below the Swords repetition of the Tree, so for those Pentacles there is no underlying or overlapping Sepherah to resonate with.

When there is an overlap, both the overlapping Cards take their meaning from 4 variables -- the Suit and Number of the underlying Sepherah and the Suit and Number of the overlying one.

The 4 variables combine to manifest two separate but related processes or life experiences.

Mastering this kind of synthesis will help a lot in learning to figure out the meanings of the Major Arcana.
The thesis of this series on the Tarot is that "Minor" and "Major" are not appropriate tags for these segments of the Tarot deck.

That's why it's titled The Not-So Minor Arcana. The numbered cards are the fundamental source of the meanings. The "Major Arcana" are not-so Major because their meanings are derived from the two Minors they link.

There is only one set of Majors, not 4 different ones, so each one manifests as 4 different things as processes move down the Ladder.

Not only that, but as you've noted, at certain points where Sepheroth overlie each other, a single Major joins 4 Sepheroth each of which is composed of 2 variables -- so to figure the Major out you have to juggle 8 of these abstract variables at once. And then you've only figured out one of the 4 possible manifestations of the Major.

To grasp the essence of the Major, you must find how all 4 manifestations of that Major are the same -- even though they are demonstrably different.

If that sounds like screenwriting or even novel writing's primary demand "just like something famous but totally original" you got it!

I'm describing a mental exercise in abstract thinking worthy of a college degree.
That's why I think of the 3 of Pentacles as a Doctorate.

A doctorate is specialization. Short of being Spock of Vulcan or the Renaissance Woman, to be a Doctor of Medicine is to not-be a Doctor of Mathematics. All the 3's are about commitment, choices, crossing a threshold leading beyond the point of no return. The decision made at 3 is irrevocable.

So what does it mean to be a Doctor?

You get a Ph.D. for making an original contribution to the sum total of human knowledge. Once you've taken the lid off Pandora's box and let loose something new - you can't undo.

Pentacles is "Reality" or the realization of something, the materialization.

3 is specialization, the moment of birth leaving behind so much of the immortal soul in order to manifest as this particular person living this particular life.

3 is about a point of no return -- a commitment.

Recall from the 3 of Swords how 3 is a process of commitment, a "de"cision. You can get anything in life, provided you're willing to give up everything else. Your identity is defined (at the moment of birth represented by 3) not by what you are -- but more by what you are not.

To be anything, you must not-be everything else.

In other words, specialization.

So 3 Pentacles is an achievement "they" can't take away from you. An accolade. Education.

Skills and abilities. Once trained and educated, you are irrevocably changed and so is your environment.

But most of all the 3 Pentacles is a spiritual elevation, a hard-won maturity, such as results from the trials and tribulations we writers put our favorite characters through. It is the degree in the school of hard knocks.

Since we've been tracing the writer's experience producing a novel, we can think of the 3 of Pentacles as the dividing line between professional and amateur. That may take more than one sale. You have to prove it's not a fluke, that you can meet deadlines rather than just write when inspired, and that you can take editorial direction.

The "would-be" is dropped from your title of writer when you finally get that first sale, or second or third, whatever it takes to qualify for membership in a professional writer's group.

Underlying the 3 Pentacles is the 8 Swords, the trial by fear, confusion, and knowing or not-knowing too much about risks. 8 Swords is "thinking too much" before acting. (8 is thinking, or Mercury, and Swords is action, also Mercury). And remember, 8 Swords is the process of editorial direction -- a maturing lesson.

What do you get when you combine the 3 Pentacles and the 8 Swords? How about Over-specialization? Or, "I'm sorry, but you're over-qualified for this job."

The 3 Pentacles is a degree, or accolade (writing contest won?) which distinguishes you, which bespeaks your professionalism and character to the world -- it tells the world what you have done and therefore what you can do -- but it also tells the world more loudly what you therefore can NOT do.

The very same achievement which is an accolade can be a stigma in another context.

If you submit your new novel to a contest which is known for giving awards to low-quality work, work so shoddy it shouldn't be published in that draft, and you win with a well-structured, clean manuscript -- you have made a 3 of Pentacles moment, but it's an accolade that is a stigma.

And it's a point of no return. You've made your bed, now you must lie in it. (if you haven't figured it out yet, I LOVE cliche's!)

Remember the 3 of Swords and the discussion of 3 as the Gates of Life and Death.

3 is about "who" you are, defined by who you are-not. It is the moment at which you are specified.

Pentacles are about manifest reality.

3 Pentacles then is about your purpose in taking this incarnation, your personal reason for existing as the individual you are.

Very often a writer's whole purpose for living is to produce a certain novel -- which takes a lot of practice producing novels before that one important one can be even conceived, never mind actually written.

Some people, when they finally achieve that life's goal, find they no longer have any reason to live, and they don't survive very long. Or they subconsciously recreate the struggle because they can't stop struggling.

3 Pentacles can represent that well-known situation where someone has been wronged (a lover murdered before the wedding, an inheritance pre-empted, being left for dead by a trusted partner) -- and they then dedicate their existence to revenge.

Revenge achieved is a 3 of Pentacles moment -- a moment which forever defines the individual.
It is a threshold to the 4 of Pentacles leading onwards through life, but often is a trap.
Think of the actress showered with Oscars for her beauty, grown old and trying to make a "come back."

Often the obsessive (think Pluto in the natal chart), focused energies necessary to achieve revenge or a comeback leave the person unable to let go of that focus. Such a person will then set up their lives so they are constantly recreating and reliving that revenge, over and over and over again. An embittered, narrow life of misery results.

That's great fodder for novels, but no way to live.

Megalomania can be a twisted sort of 3 of Pentacles process -- the obsession with one's own status, dominance, and imaginary (remember 8 Swords, imagination usually focused on fears, but it can be anything) anointed royalty.

The 3 of Wands has more to do with the mind while the 3 of Pentacles has to do with the manifestation of the mind, the brain.

The 3 Pentacles Reversed can represent an imbalance -- see 2 Pentacles -- where something is lacking. That lack might be the amount of effort, the discipline to acquire the prerequisites, the determination to read and follow all the directions submitting to the contest, neglecting to check the building code when renovating and flipping the house bought as a project, or spending too much time partying during your senior year and ruining your grade point average.

That pull-back, an inner psychological leash on your output effort, can be psychologically the result of the underlying 8 Swords process of facing fears, developing the ability to accept damage as part of the process of achieving goals, the ability to discipline the imagination, and apply the mind.

The solution to 8 Swords reversed is 3 Pentacles -- making your achievement public, putting your money where your mouth is, taking a stand on the issues.

The solution to 3 Pentacles Reversed is often going straight through the 8 Swords process.

For example, if you have written a great novel -- you must somehow find the courage to stop imagining (8 Swords) and just submit (point of no return, 3 Pentacles) the thing to an agent or editor!

And remember, 8 Swords is the "yes-but" process of responding to editorial direction. "Yes-but" loops are often hit when friends give advice. When you get caught in a "yes-but" loop, you can't get to 3 Pentacles directly.

The 3 Pentacles Reversed is the condition of being stuck, striving for a goal and failing, then repeating the same striving without re-evaluating, without the thinking process of 8 Swords.
Think of 3 Pentacles in terms of the SF-Romance plot.

The female Hero stands on the stage getting a Medal for bravery pinned on her uniform and a promotion in rank. She's got it made. She's got something they can't take away, an achievement.

Our male Hero stands in the audience and salutes her.

The Commander announces the male Hero is now under her command and their mission is to go where no one has gone before -- the Outer Ring beyond Antares, to make First Contact with some aliens.

At the halfway point in this adventure, she discovers the male Hero (by now they've really got the hots for each other) actually has not only the medal she just won but several she hasn't, and the only reason she is in command is that he got busted for insubordination. Twice.

Now the aliens turn out to be a monstrous threat instead of the pussycats they first seemed, and the fate of the whole human species depends on her ability to get him to follow her orders.

These are two people who have their Identity tied up with their accolades or kudus won as status symbols in a situation where status decides all matters (the military command structure).

Both of them have, as their purpose in life, the confrontation with these aliens.

It isn't what the ARE that makes the story -- but rather it is what they are-not that fires the possibilities.

So, they arrive home with the first Ambassador of the aliens to Earth and more accolades shower upon them. Once they have, as a team, become the Kirk/Spock of Space, fulfilling the impossible missions, they will get more such assignments. There is no going back from success, so ponder the results well before you even start.

Next we have to discuss the 4 of Pentacles, so you might want to review the 4 of Swords first.

Also note that with the 4 of Pentacles, we enter new territory -- there is no Swords Card underlying it.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Six of Swords - Love Conquers All

As noted previously, this is a chapter in a book about the Tarot aimed at Intermediate students, not beginners or advanced students. It is particularly aimed at writers.
The Series is: The Not So Minor Arcana by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, now on Kindle.

Updated and expanded compilation of all these Tarot Just For Writers entries is now available on Kindle:
The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.
The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..

----------------
The principle of discovering the real meaning of a Minor Arcana Tarot card is based on the blend of the numerological meaning of the number of the card combined with its Suit.

The quality of Six-ness can be discovered from its location on the Tree of Life diagram - right in the center balance point, Tipheret.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(Kabbalah)

The image on the Waite-Rider deck 6-Swords is of a man in a boat poling across a river with ragged refugees in the boat -- choppy water on one side, calm on the other, approaching a distant shore. Tradition has it, this is the crossing of the River Stix with the Boatman.

That's a beginning at finding the meaning, but it doesn't even scratch the surface of the process of Six of Swords.

Six is Tipheret -- Beauty or the beautifying adornment.

It is at the center of the Tree, the balance point, the heart and thus Soul.

One of the purely human gifts of perception is the ability to discern beauty. One of the components of beauty acknowledged across all cultures is composition -- the harmonious relationship of shapes, masses, colors, textures -- how things go together and relate to each other in harmony.

The very concept "harmony" isn't something you're going to be able to teach your dog even if he "sings" (cats, well, all bets are off). Harmony is a very human sort of perception.

Perceiving your own place in the scheme of things is an experience in perceiving the beauty of the universe, its overall composition as one whole, unity.

Swords are thoughts, words, deeds, and even opinions.

Six Swords is the result of the process described in 5 Swords -- in 5 Swords Egos met, in 6 Swords Egos have blended into a composition, and that composition is beautiful. That composition is a Relationship.

If 3 Swords is the wedding, 4 Swords the Honeymoon, and 5 Swords the first fight, 6 Swords is the settled, routinized relationship (image of the breakfast table, he reads the news, she packs the kids' lunches).

The days are routinized, the arguments are scripted ("Where the H did you put my keys!") every behavior is predictable including the complaint about dropping used towels on the bathroom floor. The cliches of life are an artistic composition.

But steady state is not a story, so writers listen up!

6 is love. Swords is Action. The 6 of Swords is LOVE IN ACTION. It is the action of love.

This process is the heart and soul expressing itself.

Swords are about Action -- and when a soul's action is thwarted, resisted, put off or denied, then the Action will burst out somehow.

People who have fallen into a routine will want change. That's the nature of life and the nature of the Suit of Swords. Change.

If the family has fallen into failure, in Six Swords they will move to another town, looking for other jobs, other schools, new opportunities.

If the family has been wildly successful, Six Swords becomes the TV Show Dallas -- the corrosion that wealth inflicts to sober people up and make them reach into their souls for something worth while.

We say we "fall" in love -- to indicate a change.

These processes we've been tracing from Ace to 6 of Swords are in the order of the "Lightening Flash" path down the Tree of Life from highest abstraction to concrete manifestation. It is a "fall" -- a decreasing of potential energy by actualizing it.

In 5 Swords we might see an encounter with a Best Enemy, combat, whacking off parts of the ego that don't fit, whipping the relationship into shape, and from the 5 of Swords you FALL (look at the Tree of Life diagram, it's DOWN to the 6) into love.

The Six of Swords is that thing guaranteed in the USA Declaration of Independence -- THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit. That's where they're going in the boat -- someplace they hope/expect will be better.

When you finally get a glimmering of an idea of the composition of the world and where you fit into it (at this person's side, leading an army, planting trees), you begin to evaluate your life in terms of the rightness and beauty of it. And you make changes to improve the composition of your life.

The Six of Swords Reversed represents that long, steady state when nothing changes. It won't change until you start feeling stuck in a rut, stultified, trapped in a dead-end job or relationship, repeating habitual actions that go nowhere.

As you criticise every imperfection in your life, you build up a head of steam for change.

Eventually, you will make (actions = swords) a change.

You will make this change because you can see the composition of your life as a whole as it is now -- and as it could be.

Out of love, you will leave where you are to go somewhere else and make a new start, clean up your act, begin success, make it all new and better. It may, however, as the card image suggests, take horrendously deteriorating conditions where you are to blast you out of your rut and make you a refugee.

The Waite-Rider drawing illustrates what the person caught up in striving to change doesn't see.
Swords are actions, but more than that. By the time the project (writing a book, crafting a marriage, raising a kid, whatever) has reached the level of 6, these actions have become habits, coping strategies that become your "baggage" in life.

The astrological association of 6 on the Tree of Life is the Sun. The natal chart's Sun position describes how that individual uses energy.

The Six of Swords is thus how you, individually, habitually utilize your personal energy resources. And that characteristic methodology is behind your habitual actions.

Your habitual actions add up to the shape of your life.

"Every single time! Every time I get close to a promotion, I get fired." Or "Every time I get engaged, the girl dumps me." "Every time I clean up my desk, it's heaped again in two days!"

To utilize this insight into the "every time I" composition of your life, you have to be over a certain age -- usually 29 years old begins the process, and 36 reveals the shape of it -- sixty years and you really see it. (1 Saturn cycle; 3 Jupiter cycles; 2 Saturn cycles.)

Each of the Swords in that boat image represent a habitual action pattern -- the boat represents leaving, trying to flee the consequences of actions. And all actions have consequences.

Fleeing doesn't work. Never once, no matter how much love drives this process, will it work. Why? Because the action of love is to preserve and protect.

Move to another city for a job - your habits will reconstruct the life you had in the old city.

Divorce this dud and marry a nice new person - same fights all over again.

Why do people do that? Change everything but what's really bugging them?

Love.

It has so many facets, aspects, textures, components and manifestations the word is almost meaningless. Yet we all know exactly what it means. At core, it is perhaps the universal human affinity for the experience of perceiving beauty.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the saying goes. It is, however, also an attribute of our material surroundings. There is always beauty in our world, but we aren't always capable of perceiving it.

Once we have experienced that perception of beauty in conjunction with a thing, person, or action, we develop an affinity for the thing that becomes an attachment. We want that experience of beauty again and again, and cling to the circumstances or actions first associated with it.

If you have a vivid memory of a marvelous Thanksgiving family weekend, you will love Thanksgiving and try incessantly to recreate those special conditions. Failing at that endeavor produces what's known as the "Holiday Blues." And the blues can become a habit you take with you.

Humans early on in life develop coping strategies -- ways of succeeding, getting pleasure, being psychologically reinforced, methods of dealing with adversity. When a method works more than once, it is repeated -- and eventually becomes so ingrained the adult isn't aware of that habit.

That is one of the things the swords in the boat symbolize -- the unconscious coping strategy actions that we take with us when we think we are breaking free of a stultifying trap, or successfully fleeing an intolerable situation.

We love our actions, our companions, our opinions, the sound of our own voices, and ourselves. We resist change. We love the people in whose presence we see beauty. We will cling to those things with all the power of our Sun Sign. In Astrology, the Sun represents the Will and physically the heart of the body, the pump that powers our actions.

If the trap or the situation was the result of our habitual actions, we will recreate that same trap and mysteriously that battle will confront us anew.

The 6 of Swords represents that cliche scene in every horror movie where the menace is vanquished, the Hero turns away, and just as he thinks he's free, there is the menace again right in front of him.

That menace is actually inside himself.

If the image on the Waite-Rider deck is taken to be the River Stix -- then the card is telling us we can't even get away from our ingrained, habitual actions by dying and reincarnating. These habits are part of our Soul, and manifest in each personality we wear in successive incarnations.

These habits are old, familiar friends, what we perceive as our Identity, and thus beautiful to us.

So in 6, Swords manifests as the action of Soul Growth, or incarnation to perfect a particular Sword, a particular habit or way of thinking.

The attribute that lets us develop habits is not bad. The content of the habit might need adjusting to fit the composition. (writers: rewriting is the key to success.)

The 6 is about love - about giving one's whole self, about blending into a Unity (yeah, two hearts beat as one; two people, one soul -- there's a reason why cliches are cliches).

The 6 of Swords is telling us Love Conquers All.

Remember the 6 of Wands -- the man on the horse leading a Victory parade (as I said, the Waite-Rider pack is rooted in the zero-sum-game view of the universe). That man is a leader -- his men follow him for love of his vision, values, and objectives. But he is a conqueror driven by love of an idea. (Wands are Ideas). He is an idealist whose ideas are loved.

As Swords manifests through 6, Love becomes an actual action, not an emotion (that's 6 Cups). Love becomes an transitive verb, not passive or reflexive. (Yeah, I know, you can't do that in English.)

By finding and unifying with your Soul Mate you can unlock that white-knuckled death-grip on your old habits and let yourself grow to the next level. And of course, this has the same effect on your Soul Mate, who also grows.

The way love conquers all is through the changes wrought at the level of those unconsciously held coping strategies, the habits dragged with us from incarnation to incarnation and re-created to suit each of our new Natal Charts -- like the menace in the horror movie, appearing before us again and again until we stop doing whatever it is that projects that menace into our surroundings.

You (and only you) can change those habits you drag with you from life to life.

I said under 5 Swords:

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Thoughts are Swords.

Thoughts are weapons. Thoughts can hurt others. (this is mysticism, remember?) Merely thinking something nasty about someone can do actual damage to the universe, and it does not matter whether the thinker has a lot or a little magical power gained by Initiation. On this, everyone is equal. Every thought, word and deed no matter how small alters the universe.

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And that's the mechanism whereby you project your personal menace or nemesis or ideals of beauty and happiness into your surroundings. What you hold in your heart (Sun, Tiphereth) projects into your world, for good or ill.

The 5 of Swords will try to beat it out of you -- the 6 of Swords will succeed in loving it out of you.

Love is growth. Love spurs you to let go and give to others.

That isn't really "sacrifice" which has such negative and painful semantic nuances.

It isn't sacrifice when you don't actually give up anything of value.

When you love, your definition of Identity, of Self, expands to include the Other. So when you give to the Other, you haven't given up anything -- you still have it because your Self still includes it. You can give up your life for another, and it isn't a sacrifice at all. It doesn't hurt. It isn't a loss. If life is not a zero-sum-game, then there are no losses.

Understanding that concept is what lets people allow themselves to be loved -- to allow another to include them in the other's Identity.

To do this on an individual basis is what allows the soul to love God and be loved by God. That's a biggie and takes a lot of practice with smaller things.

The 6 of Swords Reversed represents the situation where there isn't enough energy to get out of the current habitual circumstance. That's not necessarily bad. It just means the way out of this trap has more than one step. And it means the objective can be achieved only by approaching it stepwise, with a lot of practice, by forging yourself some new swords.

That's all right because you have more than one life. If you're in a trap, find the beauty inside it and love your way out of it. Improve your habits; the trap will dissolve of its own accord.

There's one other property of 6 that we should notice here.

In the Jacob's Ladder diagram

(Google produced this URL
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~maggyw/treeladder.html )

On that web page, count up from the center bottom circle of the long Jacob's Ladder diagram -- 5 circles up, and that is the circle we've been discussing as the 6 of Swords. Its Tree (the Swords Tree) has the black background.

Note that 6-Swords is ALSO the 1 (or Ace) of Pentacles (the red background).

These two vibrations or processes are actually the SAME THING. Remember the guitar string analogy, two notes the same but an octave apart. That's why it's called the Music of the Spheres -- the universe is made out of vibration.

6 or LOVE is always the connection point between one of the 4 Trees and the next.

6 is always at the heart of something and also at the start of something.

At LOVE pure energy transforms from one level to another.

The whole of Creation is about LOVE.

Love holds everything together. Love connects everything to everything.

Think about that. Love doesn't really have to do any conquering because the universe is not a zero sum game where winning creates losers. Love doesn't conquer. Love is.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/