5 Pentacles -- Bad Reviews

As noted previously, this is a chapter in a book about the Tarot aimed at Intermediate students of Tarot, not beginners or advanced students. An updated and expanded version is now 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.

The 3 of Pentacles was accidentally posted dated Monday November 5th.

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5 Pentacles


We are now discussing the 2nd circle up from the bottom of the left hand column (your left, as you face the diagram) of Jacob's Ladder.

In 4 Pentacles we spent a long time building something.

The writer we've been following is building her career in 4 Pentacles, submitting outlines, getting contracts, delivering novels, doing galleys, juggling all this against family, health crises, and obligations. She is trying to resist all distractions. It rarely works.

In the 4 Pentacles processes, she's writing characters layer by layer, building one layer on top of another to create deep characters she can write long series of books about. She's creating intricate worlds, one layer at a time, one revelation at a time. All that is 4 Pentacles, the long apparently non-productive pause in the materialization of a project.

Now, in 5 Pentacles we come to a situation similar to what we found in 5 Swords.

Check Jacob's ladder again and note how both 4 and 5 Pentacles dangle out in space, without another layer of circles behind them. This section of the Ladder is fundamentally different from the top section of Wands, which also dangles out in space, and at the same time it is much more accessible to living people than the top. This is familiar territory.

So in 5 Swords, our writer presented her (overly long) novel to her critique group and felt their criticism as an attack. She fought back, defending her baby, and eventually felt their love and learned something (6 Swords). But the 5 Swords process was brutal.

So what happens to our writer now she's got it made, has a career, contracts, and can say proudly, "My editor told me . . .."

Her books start being published (Pentacles -- materialized) and her career hits the 5 process in Pentacles. What could be worse than a hostile critique group?

Now that she's self-confident and happy -- she gets a bad review, a scathing, scornful review that reveals loudly that the reviewer didn't even read the book!

Devastated, she can't write. She's lost self-confidence. She misses a deadline. Her editor is on her tail. Her family erupts in rebellion (You have to go to my recital! You can't miss my graduation! Some mother you are, nose in the computer while your kid has a fever!)

She emails pdf files to reviewers herself, but nobody has time to read her book. She asks for help on the book she can't finish, and nobody has time. Her editor won't return her calls.

On a fan listserv she has always relied on for support, she gets blasted by a newbie because, "That's easy for you to say. You're a professional writer!" And for the first time, nobody defends her. Her friends are gone.

She's in the 5 of Pentacles process.

This is actually a process we write so many novels about. This is the Initiation where you get sent into the desert alone, or dropped into a forest, or marooned on a desert island, all alone with nobody to depend on but yourself. It's a Teen Rite of Passage we repeat throughout life.

The lesson to be learned through this process is the one we harp on in so many Romance novels -- no man is an island. (yep, another Cliche) It's not about islands. Or men. It's about self-reliance. Not independence, but real self-reliance. 5 Pentacles is where you learn not to need help but to give help -- not to be dependent but to support others.

The 5's are associated with Mars, ruler of Aries, the natural first house.

It's all about ego, and ego strength. There's a difference between being strong and being a bully. There's a difference between being self-reliant or independent, and being isolated like a sociopath who can't make emotional contact with others.

Aries is the loner, the first-in scout, the explorer -- Daniel Boon or Captain Kirk. But a leader needs people to lead. And in 5 Pentacles, there's nobody following -- except others who are (cliche warning) "on the outside looking in."

Mars is the root of the meaning Martial Arts -- the arts of war. It is both defense and offense. It is the way of using force, power, position, tactics and strategy.

But Mars is also about sex. There is nothing more sexy to a woman than a powerful man in full possession and control of his manhood.

But what good is all that without the recipient?

And so love comes into the picture, and we see the lesson of 5 Pentacles is about the meeting and blending of two strong egos battered by isolation.

Think of all the fanfic about Star Trek's Spock! His time on the Enterprise was a 5 Pentacles period of isolation from his peers and estrangement from family. That loneliness made him seem intensely sexy to many women writers.

The first real "Alien Romance" novels may have been Star Trek fanfic about Spock.

In 4 Pentacles, our writer wrote and wrote, creating substance from her heart of hearts, sure her second novel would be accepted.

In 5 Pentacles she offers it to the world (Mars is the aggressive tendency that gets you out of procrastination and on the move.

Taking the initiative and contacting an agent or editor is a Mars function). But her new novel is ignored. Or maybe outright rejected. Or perhaps rewrite demands would distort it all out of shape. Or the ARC may get bad reviews. All of these events would be 5 Pentacles experiences.

She doesn't get the feedback she expected that indicates her heart is beating in tune with that of others.

So the loneliness of 5 of Pentacles is a lesson in Love -- the importance of it in our lives, the function of it even in the business world, the place of physical possessions or other material resources (such as time and heart) in Love. It is also about what lengths we would go to for social sanction.

Often we learn such lessons only by contrast, and 5 Pentacles is where the contrast is most stark.

As we learned in 9 of Swords, the whole physical world is a projection of our Ideas (9 Wands), Emotions (9 Cups) and Actions (9 Swords). All our material possessions, including our very life, are shaped on the Astral plane (the 9's) and are still rooted in that level of reality.

In a mystical sense, we are our possessions and our possessions are us. This is true not just of physical things (your grandmother's antique vanity mirror; your mother's sterling; your grandfather's Tefillin) but of all the things you've created. Your marriage, your children; your characters; your novels; your house decor; the critique group you founded.

Yes, there are things that pass through our hands without touching our hearts. But there are things we cherish in a very special way. Those things are imbued with our essence.

You know that romance has ripened to love when the things your lover cherishes become things you cherish -- even if you don't particularly like them. Because they have meaning for your relative, your S.O., your role model, your friend, they have a new, unique meaning for you.

Love cherishes the significant and defining creations and possessions of the Other, not for their intrinsic value, but because they are loved by the beloved.

Thus, when you offer something of yourself that is so significant to you, and it is spurned by those you expect it will delight, you experience a crushing blow akin to ramming into a brick wall (Pentacles; physical reality).

The spiritual lesson of 5 Pentacles comes after that crushing blow, when you are all alone, wounded and unable to get anyone to listen.

You throw a party and nobody comes.

You distribute a hundred review copies and get no reviews.

You win a contest and call everyone you know to tell them -- but nobody's home.

Here, in the total void, with all relationships absent, in the wake of your friends betraying you, your spouse leaving you, your children screaming out their hatred of you, you learn what a relationship really is.

What you have created with all your heart collides full force with what others have created with their heart. And there's no room in their hearts for yours.

Relationships belong to Pentacles. They are investments of a non-renewable resource. (Applicable cliche: "You only live once.")

In the 5 of Pentacles process you have to sort out what's important to you from what you can throw away (the baby from the bathwater) in order to make room inside you for what is important to others.

If you don't clear resources for what's important to others, nobody will have patience with what's important to you. But even if you do clear resources here, there is no guarantee others will treasure what is important to you.

Having space inside yourself for what others cherish is a necessary condition for building a Relationship, but it's not a sufficient condition.

Life is complicated in its sheer simplicity.

Martian energies often come on way too strong, so oddly enough the 5 of Pentacles Reversed (where there is less energy pouring into the 5 process) actually tends to work better.

In the 5 Pentacles Reversed, you get a few new chances or second chances to jump-start a new relationship. Maybe your editor didn't read and accept your manuscript because she was leaving the company rather than ignoring you. Now a new editor writes how she loved your book, but wants changes.

She says they're minor, but to you they're major.

Maybe instead of a new editor you only find a new hairdresser -- but that leads to meeting someone who knows someone, and you start to be included in a new network of relationships. Somebody will have time to read your newest book.

These little 5 Pentacles Reversed openings are caused by your discarding some irrelevant bits accumulated in 4 Pentacles to make room for something created by another person.

Once the vacant spot inside you is open and clear, very likely something will be attracted and fall into that hole. (not always a positive something, though, so be wary)

If you like being included, you may clear away more space inside yourself, and find you are able to attract more attention by paying attention to others. And this is a process that may take years -- 7 years or so is normal, as that is the interval Saturn spends in the "obscure" part of your chart where nobody notices you.

Again, as with the 9's, this is NOT a conscious process. Most of the work is done while you are asleep, out of body, visiting the astral plane, reshaping your life by re-imagining it.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

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

4 Pentacles - The Almighty Cliche

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Prepending a note about Linnea's post of Monday November 5th, 2007:

Let's consider HOW to achieve the effect Linnea is urging new writers to strive for. There is a mechanism for it and another motivation to master that mechanism besides winning contests.

Linnea pointed out something I've noticed in every workshop I've taught that was open to beginners.

The use of language.

Believe me, she's not shilling for this column!

I really had no idea she'd post that right before I posted this 4 of Pentacles (written 2 weeks ago, and she didn't see it!) and focused this essay around the Cliche, and an in-depth discussion of the way a living language is wildly abused by spin-doctors (labeling progressive behavior as conservative; creating odious associations with words that actually are uplifting in their original meaning, i.e. jerking you around.)

Since the universe was Created with words, as noted in the series on the Suit of Swords, we must guard our usage of words carefully. Even words spoken without forethought have an effect on the universe as a whole, no matter how insignificant you may think you are.

Words written and read by others have a magnified effect. Our usage of language is one of our tools for soul growth. Abuse can lead to disaster because words are power. Remember this when reading my post later on the 6 of Pentacles.

Spin doctors re-label and twist the meanings of words using SEMANTIC LOADING. By changing the semantic loading, they can change your behavior. So can any fiction writer.

All new writers should google up "semantic loading." And read up on "General Semantics" -- it is an objective method of studying (an entire science) how words create emotional effects.

It is the science behind advertising -- and political campaign "talking points." How you say a thing determines how most (not you and me, because we're writers, but MOST) people will react emotionally to words and thus subsequently behave.

Yes, it's the science of how to jerk people around.

It's also the science behind storytelling in all forms, acting -- everything. It's how to cast an illusion.

There's another study which can replace a lot of the adjectives and adverbs that spoil a narrative -- BODY LANGUAGE. Learn that science.

In acting, that's called "business" -- such as when a scriptwriter specifies that the actor should twitch her nose in order to activate a magic spell. Or the "tell" as gamblers call it -- when a character is lying, he pulls his earlobe every time.

OK, those examples are way too broad. You have to be original and subtle when using these techniques -- semantic loading and business. There are many more techniques that can be learned handily by studying some basic screenwriting books.

Characters, like people, have unconscious habits that bespeak their emotional pitch. Use those habitual actions to SHOW the reader what the character feels (that the character may not even be aware of) without TELLING the reader with florid adjectives and overused unusual verbs.

To implement these techniques in your writing, you must ask yourself what you really meant by using a particular word, then try replacing that word in various ways. Eventually, the choice of word becomes second nature -- habitual (Suit of Swords), but to start out, there's a tried and true way to teach yourself to do this.

There are perhaps 10 or more language-control techniques (some involving sentence syntax) that a writer can use to paint an emotional picture behind the characters, so dialogue can carry the impact without explanations of what each person is thinking (creating the "heads" problem Linnea mentioned.)

Exactly how do you create a manuscript using these word-control techniques after you've gone and looked them up on the web?

You leverage the fact that you're using a computer not pen and ink. You don't have to make it read well in first draft, condemning yourself to months of copy-typing the manuscript every time you edit.

You can lay down each layer of the story, going over the text again and again, adding more and more color each time - deleting bits, tightening, wordsmithing, and actually spend less time producing final copy than ever was possible in prior generations.

So, FIRST you write the story in very plain English, no decoration, no sensory context, no depth of emotion. Plot-plot-plot.

Once it's laid out and you can see how long it has to be, you spot the points where your (ahem) climaxes must be placed. Then you go over the whole manuscript working the emotional tension up to those climax points subtly using those techniques -- and then use word-management techniques, syntax and vocabulary to REDUCE the tension dramatically at the climax points.

You add and trim back wordage so each emotional beat falls on the correct printed page.

Your finished product should have a succession of emotional peaks on precise pages (depending on your market), but in every case the peaks should march in a straight line UP to the final climax at the end when you pull out all the language stops and reach for the sky.

Stagecraft principle is "Less is more."

This diagram of marching climaxes managed by changing language-techniques holds across all genres, even Literature and especially Best Sellers, and in screenwriting. If you can discover the exact pacing of climax points most admired by your particular market, you will be a best seller within that market.

This part of the writing craft really is objective, cut and dried, pure science, and anyone who can craft an English sentence can learn to do this.

What can't be taught is the art of what story to tell in order to say what important thing about Life, The Universe, and Everything.

OK, now to today's work - the 4 of Pentacles and the use of language.

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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.

It should eventually be titled: The Biblical Tarot: The Not So Minor Arcana by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, but who knows? It has no publisher yet.
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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. By accident, the 3 of Pentacles was posted on MONDAY NOV 5, 2007. Look for posts in this series on Tuesdays.

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ASIDE: Rowena posted on Sunday Nov 4th about "Uncivilized Behavior" -- well, here in 4 Pentacles we'll think a bit about what civilization is and what it requires of us. We aren't collaborating on these posts -- truly we're not.
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4 Pentacles

We're now discussing the second circle up from the bottom of the right hand column of Jacob's Ladder. It does not overlay a Swords card.

Words get redefined continuously -- that's the nature of a "living" language, and it's a good thing. But it sometimes makes it hard to communicate across generations.

The slippery word to grapple with under 4 Pentacles is probably "conservative."

Politics and religion have ladled layers of non-meaning on top of the core concept there. It may take some thinking to strip away the negative semantic loading (the emotional content of the word) and begin thinking within the 4 Pentacles domain of definition.

Remember the 4's are all associated with the astrological meaning of the planet Jupiter which rules Sagittarius (ever so much about truth and honesty, painful blurt-it-out honesty).

Jupiter is about growth, expansion, reaching out to include (Saturn being about exclusion), and thus the Law (or legal courts system) and social order and organization.

Jupiter is about how things go your way when you "go with the flow" -- and thus about "luck," which is the result of being in the right place at the right time.

So what's Luck to do with "conservative?"

Ah, well it's hard to grow if everything you add gets thrown away before you add the next thing.

"Conservative" means to conserve, preserve, or keep. It doesn't mean to not-change. It means to BUILD, GROW, systematically improve toward a goal.

Even the dictionary says "conservative" means opposed to change -- but it doesn't. It can't.

You can't preserve something if you try to freeze it in place and refuse change.

Change is life -- life is change! Growth is an essential life process.

"Conservative" doesn't mean death -- it means systematic, targeted, purposive, true-to-the-origin growth.

But, as you know that's not what the modern English language uses it for.

Consider that you can't progress without conserving.

If you have a savings account and put money in to increase your savings -- what happens if you take out as much as you put in? Or more? You have to keep what you've got in order to grow your savings.

Pentacles are about material reality, the concrete level of existence.

4's are about the long, quiet, growth period between commitment and challenge. (see 4 Swords).

The 4 of Pentacles is about the long, quiet accumulation of material resources.

Saving for the vacation of a lifetime is 4 Pentacles. Taking the vacation might be 6 Pentacles.

5 Pentacles would be the part of the saving process where you make excuses to take out of your savings account for other things, or it might be where other people tell you what a miser you are and you believe they are justified in vilifying and rejecting you.

But having a savings goal isn't being a miser.

4 Pentacles is about building infrastructure. 4 Pentacles is investment of capital in growth.

What is capital?

Capital is not money, but it is perfectly represented by Pentacles.

Capital is accumulated (conserved) profit from prior operations.

It doesn't have to be material profit.

For example, your time (time is a Pentacles manifestation) can be capital.

You rush through your work day, gobble dinner, sit down at the computer and invest your saved capital of time by installing and configuring a new program. Your joy knows no bounds. You're now out of time, and have to go to bed to get up and save more time tomorrow, but for the moment you have invested your capital in future joy with this new program you haven't used yet.

Your computer should conserve that install-configure nicely until you get back to enjoy it.

What if it doesn't? What if someone just erases the program leaving your operating system messed up and crashing?

What if that person erased your time investment because they wanted to upgrade your operating system for you and they're mad at you for being so conservative you bull-headedly resist change?

When the expensive, irreplaceable accumulated infrastructure of your life is attacked, you will resist "change" too won't you?

The applicable cliche is, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." Don't discard a huge investment in order to get rid of the dross.

Now take another scenario. Suppose you installed the program, configured it, and then got to use it until it was obsolete (all too soon these days) and now you want to do things that this old program can't do?

Now you will uninstall it, and install and configure the upgrade. Maybe even upgrade your operating system, or even get a new computer.

You made an investment of capital (time) in your program, reaped more from it than you invested by using the program until it became obsolete, and now you are ready to invest more capital.

Conserving isn't anti-change. It is the fastest and most powerful change there is.

Take a longer, more impersonal perspective.

Knowledge (not ideas which is Wands, or feelings which is Cups, or actions which is Swords) knowledge is a manifestation of Pentacles. Knowledge is a concrete thing created from ideas, dedication, and actions.

Knowledge can be accumulated, and in fact it is said we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Civilization isn't just the business of living together in cities rather than following herds as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Civilization is vertically integrated through time.

Civilization means conserving all the knowledge so hard-won in the past by our ancestors, adding to that database, always investing and investing more and more of our intellectual capital for future generations. And so we grow.

High School students often feel that being dragged through old experiments that prove that something is true -- but today we know it's not true -- is a futile waste of time. But it's not. By walking through, hands-on, the experiments that led to new knowledge, subsequently proved false, we come to understand that today's truth is tomorrow's falsehood. What we have is theory which can be overturned at any time by new facts. And we learn how to explore the world to add to human knowledge.

Some people call the defenders of an overturned theory "conservative" -- but they're not "conservative" if the old theory really has been overturned.

The true conservative will grab for the new theory with both hands because it represents growth, just as the satisfied computer user above would gladly install the upgrade to his wonderful program once he's garnered his profit.

So we pass down our accumulated knowledge (our intellectual capital) from generation to generation, and that is the hallmark of civilization and the essence of 4 Pentacles.

We also pass down accumulated wisdom, techniques for managing human emotion, methods of living productive lives, procedures for developing sound relationships.

As science is still a work-in-progress, so is our wisdom. In fact, science used to be "Natural Philosophy" and Jupiter is Philosophy (ruler of the natural 9th House). All 4 of the 4's are represented by Jupiter.

As in both science and wisdom, what we have accumulated should not be discarded when something new is added, or you will have only the new tidbit and have to start the infrastructure build over from scratch, perpetually reinventing the wheel.

The body of wisdom can be enlarged (Jupiter - 4) to include the new, even when the new contradicts the old. We hold those two contradictory truths until a new one comes along to resolve them. If we forget the old untruth, then someone will ask if it's actually true and repeat the entire experimental research procedure, wasting capital that could be invested in progress.

So how do we pass down wisdom?

For the last thirty years or more, book editors and Hollywood film makers have forbidden the "cliche" from stories of all kinds.

As a result, few young people have even heard some of them.

Why are they cliches? Because they got repeated until people couldn't stand the sound of them any more. (me, too)

Why did they get repeated so often?

Because they are hard won, expensive lessons encapsulated for easy transmission. Learning the cliches is as unpleasant as learning the original lesson someone suffered through because they will be recited at you every time you make that old mistake. Repetition is the only way humans learn this kind of thing. So cliches are a treasure trove we have discarded.

That inventory of cliches is Wisdom Capital deleted from our astral plane hard drive.

Repeated cliches feel just as futile as the High School science lesson about a lab experiment that proves something is true -- when we know it's false.

In fact, cliches do sound false to those who have not learned the lesson by living through it.

A stitch in time saves nine.

But we don't mend things anymore. We throw them away and get new.

Think again. That cliche isn't about sewing or mending. It's about doing what you don't want to do NOW before your neglect causes you to have to do even more of what you don't want to do later.

That is, it's about procrastination -- which unfortunately will never be vanquished from human nature.

Featured on recent commercials: The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. (Be the hammer!)

That's not about nails or hammers. It's about the wisdom of conformity -- or seeming to conform -- or imposing conformity upon reluctant others. It's about individuality, the foundation of the philosophy of the U. S. A. pioneers. Note this one surfaces as a commercial when China is rising to ascendancy.

There are thousands of these wisdoms that have been banned from our media, with a few daring exceptions, and some uses in comedy.

Is it any wonder that younger people don't have the mastery of these techniques of life at the same age that their grandparents mastered them?

The capital of thousands of years of experience has been discarded, leaving only the one new thing in hand, and abandoning all these young people to reinventing the wheel instead of adding to human accomplishments.

4 Pentacles also describes the situation where you are building a business relationship.

Building relationships is badly disrupted today as people change jobs fast. Today's postman is gone next week. The clerk at the hardware store is gone. The hairdresser you like is gone.

Your doctor is gone. Your dentist is gone. Your editor or her assistant is gone. Your agent is gone. You spend thousands of hours developing relationships with them so they understand who you are and what you need so that when an emergency strikes, you get efficient responses without friction.

All that time-capital is wasted when the person moves on to another job or location. Or when you move. Capital is destroyed and you must start again from scratch.

Small wonder people today are not enthusiastic about building long-term relationships. But of course it's irrational to resist change. Change is good -- the ultimate good, progress! Right?

So 4 Pentacles is about the long, quiet accumulation of knowledge, wisdom, money, relationships, time -- the accumulation of capital which you will (in the future) profit from investing.

To accumulate, you must hold on to what you have while you get more. The cardinal rule of Wall Street is "don't lose money," more than it is "always make money."

The Waite Rider deck depicts 4 Pentacles as a figure with two coins under his feet, one in hand, and one over his head. Old, well built, solid capital under his feet, plans for new innovations over head, and a project in progress in his hands.

We know, from the second oldest profession (cliche!), accounting, that your liabilities (debts) are part of what you have. So 4 Pentacles is also about debt. Just as in business, in the rest of your life, you must borrow in order to grow, and then pay back.

Growth and real change is a long, systematic process. Once begun it can't be changed until completion. You must use the borrowed capital to make a profit, then return the capital paying off your debt. Then you can move on to the next process. Not before then.

In writing a novel, you have to finish it and polish it before you take it to your critique group (5 Swords).

Cliche: Don't change horses in mid-stream.

It's not about horseback riding or the nature of rivers. It's about commitment (the 3's).

Commitment is about the situation your project is in after the 3's processes have been passed through. It's about how change costs capital and sometimes isn't worth it, even if you made a wrong choice in 3 Pentacles.

Karmicly, you took this lifetime to be you for a while, wearing this personality, working through these life-events in this order. You can't become someone else or change your life into someone else's. You want to, though, because you almost remember being so many other people.

If you blow away this life, all the work of those prior lives is destroyed and has to be done over from scratch. You can't make progress going round and round, doing things over.

So Conservatives are about progress and progressives are about destruction to the extent they throw the baby out with the bathwater. To make progress you must build on what has been accumulated. (The 5's & 6's are about judging when you should clear everything away and start over.)

4 of Pentacles is about the accumulation of capital and debt, but remember Pentacles is the end-result, the materialization, of all the ideas, emotions, and actions that have gone before. Without what went before, (WRITERS: "backstory" goes here) there would be no value in these Pentacles.

And 'before' is not just this one lifetime -- but all prior lifetimes.

So 4 Pentacles includes your karmic credit and your karmic debt. 4 Pentacles is what you have been building at the soul level for lifetimes.

Thus when you find yourself in a position where what you are doing is costing more than it seems to be worth, it's possible you are in a 4 Pentacles Reversed situation of paying off a karmic debt.

4 Pentacles Reversed can be about procrastination (that's how you get karmic debts, you know, by not paying them off in the lifetime where you accrue them), or it can be about a failure to conserve, a failure to build on what has gone before. You may be discarding the wisdom contained in cliches just because it annoys you.

Psychologically, the 4 Pentacles Reversed can be the subconscious defending against a minor pain by using a major crippling tactic, keeping you trapped doing the same thing over and over.

In Astrology, Jupiter represents a happy, expansive, lucky, magnanimous and generous force for growth. Jupiter is all about accepting and including, and growing thereby.

Jupiter builds civilization both by enlarging it in the current day, and integrating vertically through time, binding past to future through the present. (Jupiter rules the natural 9th House which includes "higher education.")

Jupiter can expend wantonly, but Jupiter is never a miser. So though the Waite Rider deck's picture makes some sense, the typical interpretation clashes with the ingredients in the meaning, 4's and End-Result Pentacles.

Take our writer who started selling her work in the Suit of Swords. Now she's FOUNDED A CAREER (despite the lousy packaging of her first novel) with her second work started in Ace of Pentacles, worked down through 2 and 3 of Pentacles and now in 4 Pentacles she has contracts for two years of work ahead, -- because (note that because) she is building on the success of her first book which was built on years of struggle to master the craft.

Here in 4 Pentacles, she will be writing sequels, and thus capitalizing on her prior work. She will be incorporating the hard-won lessons learned in 8 Swords and 9 Swords, and she will be avoiding mistakes that cost grief before.

She will be investing in a professional relationship with an editor and publishing company. She will take pride in delivering product on time and in good condition. (Yeah, she has to upgrade her word processor, *sigh*).

She will be conserving her prior work, translating it to the new word processor, building on it, expanding on it, capitalizing on it. Even unpublishable things she wrote that are penny-dreadful (cliche!) can be mined for kernels of wisdom.

If someone came along and told her to change her byline and abandon all her prior work because change is progress, she'd probably punch his lights out.

And then she'd stand accused of being against change. But she's not. She's changing as fast as she can write, faster maybe than the world can keep up with her.

How many characters have we written who defend civilization against the forces of destruction?

How many times a year do our characters save the world, the universe, humankind, alienkind, etc.?

The motive of those characters is the 4 of Pentacles -- what has been invested can not be retrieved until the profit has materialized.

Perhaps a better image for the 4 of Pentacles would be the hen sitting on a nest of four eggs.

The hen's not against change, is she?

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

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..

---------------
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.
-----------------

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/

2 Pentacles - Affairs of Wizards

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..

Linnea Sinclair in her October 29, 2007 post, noted how the appeal of Alien Romance lies in the Romance itself when the female lead does not share our cultural expectations of gender roles.

The study of Tarot via the Jacob's Ladder model should give writers a leg up on this difficult task as it delineates the raw experiences of life that would be common among all creatures in all galaxies -- the shared background upon which Romance can be built.

For an example, see my duology, Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends, available on Amazon.com. The alien culture is built on the Tree of Life "Lower Face."

---------------

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.

----------------
2 Pentacles

If the Aces are origins, the condition before anything happens, the point where the entirety of the elemental substance exists as a point, the 2's are the very next moment when differentiation begins to appear.

The 2 of Swords was the moment when the writer who had decided in the Ace of Swords to write a story first sees her words before her eyes. She has externalized something that had formerly been formless and internal.

The 2 of Pentacles is the moment when the writer first feels the impact of the materialization of that idea. (Wands are Ideas.)

Think about what happens when you've sold your first story or novel. Or what happens when someone reads and likes your story.

Think about how that is a moment when your story has become "real" to you on a level you never knew existed before.

This is a moment when what you have created splashes back and changes you. The 6 of Swords which underlies the 2 of Pentacles is the action of striving for change on a soul level.

The change that is striven for was instigated by criticism in 5 Swords and sought in 6 Swords as a new start impelled by Love. In 7 Swords the perception of the values of others, the beauty other people see, impacts and motivates actions anywhere from stealing what others have to copycatting their actions. (think HS girls adopting the dominant girl's dress and accent to don her popularity) And in 8 Swords the results scare you stiff.

Pentacles are Reality, the substance from which all our world is molded and crystallized.

2 is a moment of perception of a division, a dichotomy. The single thing that was so complex you couldn't explain it is now two things.

Yes, that's what happens when you get positive feedback, validation, from another person about something which previously only existed inside your mind. You see your creation through the eyes of another person and it's not the same! (try the feeling when a fan writes a story in a universe you created! Eeerie!)

That vision through the eyes of another sparks your creativity, and suddenly, you get another idea, desire to present that idea, swift decision to do it, and presto you are now juggling two projects.

The Waite Rider deck nailed this one too. It uses a figure juggling two pentacles in an infinity sign. The two projects are related, bound together, but require extreme discipline to balance them against each other.

This is the point in the process where things get really complicated because as you do things that materialize, those things change you -- and you hardly know "who" you are anymore on the ladder of success. It's easy to lose discipline then.

Projects beget projects, complications mount, you get involved in other people's affairs, office politics, messy divorces and even messier marriages, and you find yourself dancing as if in a fairy circle (where they make you dance to death).

This is the quintessence of Multi-Tasking where you may try to be all things to all people and (2 Pentacles Reversed) lose yourself.

The novel plot structure based on this is used in The Dresden Files novels (and TV Series) and is most clearly exemplified in the TV series BURN NOTICE. You also may have seen a more tame version in the TV series THE WALTONS.

Two or more plots going on simultaneously, side by side, each a plot by itself but each also a complication to the other plot. Each simultaneous plot is a sub-plot of the other plot.

Think of the story where a guy has dates with two different girls at the same time on the same night. That's a Two Pentacles moment where the tinge of duplicity from 7 Swords shows through into the materialization (actually getting the dates) of the desire for popularity.

That's what the 2 of Pentacles is about -- complications vying with each other to become main plots. You have a tiger by the tail and there's nothing to do but swarm aboard and ride it.

Thus I call 2 Pentacles getting caught up in the Affairs of Wizards.

And there is an element of magic behind it, an esoteric connection among the plots. That connection is the Theme of the novel or story.

The "theme" of a piece of fiction is what the story is about, what the story says about "life, the universe, and everything." About matters of ultimate concern (i.e. death, immortality, the meaning of life.)

Why do stories have themes?

Ever thought about that? Why do we want to read stories that say something, especially if we might not always agree with what the story says?

Isn't action enough? Isn't character and relationship enough? Why does a story have to say something?

Well. The only reason I can think of is that life itself "says" something, so a story wouldn't seem realistic if it didn't "say" something too.

Each of us lives our life to a purpose, whether we know it or not (as discussed in Wands and Cups). We sometimes look at the lives of others (read biographies of famous people or just talk to people sitting on the benches in the park) and feel they have a purpose and a shape to their lives but "I don't."

Well, from the inside, it's very hard sometimes to see one's own life as purposeful.

I've known writers who struggled to write biographies and were astonished to learn that in order to sell a biography, you not only had to have a famous subject to write about, but you had to have a theme you had found in their lives.

That's right -- biographies get written about people whose lives actually do (or can be made to seem to) exemplify some theme.

That's why you usually see biographies about older people - those who have lived long enough that you can see a pattern in their lives that repeats or moves to a goal. You need a long sample to see the poetry, a whole stanza to hear the music.

But we write novels about young people, and we spend most of our lives as young people! Really! Old age doesn't set in until you stop learning and that's usually only a few years before you leave this world.

So we learn the patterns that life tends to follow from talking to other people, from watching TV and movies, reading books, but usually it isn't obvious what those life patterns are, how they change through life, and what they mean.

Tarot and Astrology chart and follow the change and meaning of life patterns. That's why it seems they can tell you "the future" -- but they can't, not really. They can only tell you the average person's experience with the issues you are dealing with because both techniques are based on empirical research summarized over thousands of case files.

Are YOU an average person? If you're reading this, you probably aren't.

In 2 Pentacles, we first come to grips with a change in our life-pattern that has happened because of the project started in Ace of Wands and brought all the way down.

Remember, in 5 of Swords we confronted criticism, internalized it and either fled or embraced it in 6 Swords, then came to 7 Swords and entered the process of real change.

As noted above 7 Swords underlies the 2 of Pentacles. Check the Jacob's Ladder diagram.

2 Pentacles is the way out of the difficulties of 7 Swords.

2 Pentacles can be thought of as Responsibility, personal responsibility for the concrete results of your own actions and decisions.

Thus 2 Pentacles is the function of taking charge of a matter, issue, affair, deal, project. Or all of the above. That's why it's a juggle.

Why are the 2 Pentacles bound by an infinity symbol though? I'm sure you'll read many explanations, but try this idea out and see if it takes you anywhere.

If the Pentacle is the symbol for crystallized Godshine energy, crystallized Divine Will, and 2 is the awareness of the factoring of a single thing into two things, then perhaps the infinity sign binds the 2 things so we will remember that they are of the infinite and not actually separate from it.

The Universe was Created in balance and always defaults to the balanced condition - "good" balances "evil." The 2 Pentacles is the effort to mix and match our affairs to balance them against each other (playing both ends against the middle; one woman dating two men on the same night when one of the men she's dating is dating two women on the same night) in such a way that we can travel our own path.

That underlying 7 of Swords holds the clue. Venus, the planet of Relationships, of Love, is associated with the 7's. The lesson of the 7 of Swords is all about what is mine and what is yours, about what I may or may not copy or take from you, what you teach me, what I learn, and how it changes me. It's about Relationships and Values. And so is 2 Pentacles.

Which brings us back to the Character Arc -- how characters are changed by the events in their story.

In story as in real life, it's not just people doing things. It's the effect the things people do have on themselves and others. Every thought, word or deed etches its permanent effect on all reality. You are changed by your choices, just as your choices change your world.

That Character Arc of change bespeaks the Theme most closely, most artistically. A novel will stand or fall on whether the Characters change in believable ways.

And so does your life.

However, we learn from watching others live that there are very real limitations on who can change into what, how fast. Thus novels fail if the characters change too fast.

We learn from Astrology that people can become a better (or worse) version of themselves, but they will always be the same Self.

As we age, we don't become different -- we become more-so.

If this is true of humans, I'm betting its true of any aliens we might meet, too.

So in 7 Swords we begin to act on what we learned of love in 5 and 6 of Swords. We let change ripen within us, we try to re-model ourselves after the habits and values of others. We steal, or copycat, actions of others.

Those efforts in 7 Swords can produce a proliferation of affairs, a multiplying of concrete effects in 2 Pentacles.

For example, you set out to write a book on deadline, renovate a house and flip it, or finish a degree in college to get a raise -- you take on a project appropriate to the New You that will improve you and your life.

And as a result you meet someone who needs help moving because he can't afford to hire Two Guys And A Truck, so you help. That strains your back, so you can't work on your project.

So the person you helped brings you groceries and stays to help on your project. "You dictate; I'll type it for you."

Leaving, your new friend can't get his car started. Helping him, you accidentally set his car on fire. You tell him you'll pay for the uninsured part of the damage if he'll help you get your book to the publisher on time, or fix the house to sell it, or finish your degree work so you can get the raise.

That's a 2-Pentacles situation where you get deeper and deeper into juggling the affairs of others as you take personal responsibility for the changes in the world wrought by the New You.

Because of the change inside you, you attract people who take responsibility for the changes they make in your life.

That reciprocity is represented by the 2-Pentacles bound by infinity. Reciprocity balances the world's affairs.

2 Pentacles Reversed will be very familiar to most who have been members of organizations -- a garden club, a dance troop, a choir, a critique group.

There is always the newcomer who arrives and volunteers for everything, works up a furious storm producing wonders for the organization, then poops out, drops out, disappears leaving responsibilities unfulfilled in an organization that is now larger than the available workforce can handle.

That over-loaded volunteer suffered a 2 Pentacles Reversed when things happened in life that should have been budgeted for in time and energy, but weren't. Very often, in a 2 Pentacles Reversed moment, all responsibilities get dropped instead of just the excess ones.

2 Pentacles Reversed happens because of too many irons in the fire, an unrealistic (Pentacles is reality) assessment of the extent of resources to cover obligations. A lack of BALANCE between commitments and resources.

If the person hasn't internalized the changes from 6 of Swords, and hits 7 Swords with the same habits in place, a side-step into 2 Pentacles will result in this sort of disaster.

The remedy is in the 8 of Swords -- facing fears, assessing hazards realistically, learning to take damage to achieve an objective, working the equation of ambition vs. ability so it balances and can stabilize you through the 9 of Swords.

Sometimes that damage you have to take is simply saying "no" when someone asks you to volunteer for one more thing than you can handle. The damage is to your self-image.

The test of 2-Pentacles is of your ability to assess the changes wrought via 6 of Swords (which is also the Ace of Pentacles - a new start) -- and realistically measure your ability to take on responsibilities in the material world.

If you fail the test (we all have; don't be embarrassed), take your project back to the 7 Swords process and move it through 8 Swords and on into 9.

Of course, at 8 Swords you have the option of skipping over to 3 Pentacles, if you're brave enough, strong enough, committed enough.

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

Ace of Pentacles - Setting up Housekeeping

I am prepending here a comment to Linnea Sinclair's post just prior to this one, so this post is huge.

She Wrote in response to my statement in my April 2008 review column (I sent her a copy because her book is in it) "Reading SF Romance is a good exercise for learning to judge character."---But doesn't reading any kind of fiction accomplish that? you ask.

Good question. My goodness, you're bright. Yes, it does. Reading fiction puts you in the driver's seat of someone else's feelings and experiences and—if you've half a brain and even a quarter of a heart—builds empathy and compassion.

I just think SFR—because of its very otherness—does it better.
---
And Linnea's correct, of course -- fiction per se is for me one of the necessities of life, along with air, water, and food. Fiction is food for sanity.

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..

Fictionalizing is a form of hypothesizing which is the higher cognitive function that distinguishes "us" from animals. It is how we will identify humans from other planets who aren't even remotely anthropoid.

And she's right that the secret of SF is that it, like Fantasy, allows the "lesson" to angle into our eyes from a distance. Psychologists and Literary Analysts call that "distancing."

However, SFR, as a cross-genre hybrid, has unique properties that make my statement significant in even more far reaching ways.

The essence of SF is "meeting the unknown, possibly unknowable" -- SF depicts a human attitude of fearlessness in the face of the unknown, and how you acquire that attitude.

The essence of Romance is embracing the alien (all men are alien to women; women alien to men). We can embrace at the intersection point where we have things in common, like an overlapping Venn diagram.

The essence of SFR is FEARLESSLY EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN/UNKNOWABLE.

Where does that kind of fearless embracing attitude come from? How do you acquire it rather than just admire it from afar?

Well, that is precisely what this series on the Swords and Pentacles of Tarot is actually all about.

For writers, grasping the underlying patterning of the kind of thinking I am demonstrating here (NOT, G-d Forbid! MY ANSWERS, mind you -- but the process of generating these outrageous thoughts) will imbue your novels with a sense of philosophical adventure into the unknown, mapping the edges of the unknowable and finding the fearlessness within your own core of fear.

It is not any one Card that will help us communicate SFR's charisma to non-initiates. It is the underlying pattern, the relationships among all the components and how those components synthesize into specific meaning.

Specifically with regard to SFR, the study of this pattern is vital because the pattern reveals how the whole of creation is held together BY LOVE! And knowing that Love is what dispels fear and allows adventuring.

For readers, learning these patterns will allow you to fully benefit from walking a novel's pathways within the head of a person who is nothing like you -- but has everything in common with you.

Writers communicate with specific readers best when the writer shares a perception of the shape of reality or the universe with the reader -- shares a philosophy.

The secret behind all ART is that kind of philosophical shared communication.

It's like the sounding of one guitar string that by resonance transfers energy to another string an octave higher -- and MUSIC HAPPENS.

One fundamental of human nature is that we all have a "philosphy" -- but we keep it in our subconscious minds.

To broaden the reader-base of SFR, we as writers must embrace the philosophy in our readers' subconscious and communicate with it via art.

No two people are alike. We are each unique. But we are embedded in the same universe, and that universe does indeed have an underlying pattern which we all percieve and use. These 20 articles on the Tarot may provide writers and readers a "universe of discourse" in common, and allow writers to hit the right notes to resonate with readers on a more abstract level than the usual novel allows.

So the "magic" that SFR has over all other genres or types of literature lies at the intersection of SF and R. No other hybrid genre has that intersection -- though many others have different kinds of very beneficial intersections.

What has this all to do with the Suit of Pentacles at the ACE level?

It's all very abstract, and that's what the 4 Aces of the Tarot represent -- a notion that is so collapsed in on itself (like a neutron star or black hole or white hole), that everything is packed into it, and therefore it is what people call "abstract" which usually means difficult to understand.

So, put another way, the point of writing this sequence of 20 explorations of the Sword and Pentacle Minor Arcana is to discover how to use the master keys of the universe to empower SFR to reach and energize more readers, to connect at levels most people aren't aware exist, and to empower love through that channel.

OK, my objective also includes finishing the book I started 10 years ago! But I wouldn't be doing this if Rowena hadn't started this blog. So blame or thank HER for all this abstraction.
-----------------------------

ACE OF PENTACLES

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.

It should eventually be titled: The Biblical Tarot: The Not So Minor Arcana by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, but who knows? It has no publisher yet.
---------------
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.

Each person must find a synthesis of those 2 components of meaning for themselves. These essays are mine, not yours. Watch the methodology, do it for yourself, and find your meaning.

You will have to re-do this periodically through life -- because you change, things change, and your ability to synthesize multiple parameters changes. What is true for you today, may or may not be true for you tomorrow. This underlying pattern, though, never changes.

I have been posting here since August 14th, every Tuesday, the 10 minor Arcana of the suit of Swords. Here we start again with the Ace of Pentacles.
----------------
Ace of Pentacles

Or the 1 of Pentacles.

So what is 1?

We covered some aspects of 1 in Ace of Swords, which you should review.

The Aces are beginnings, origins, the number ONE -- the unity behind all reality.

Let's call the Pentacles "Reality" -- the material existence we live in.

Aces exist at the level of reality where all things are just one thing, and haven't yet been divided into many things.

The esssence of One is "unity" -- or the fact that nothing can really be distinguished from anything else. There really ultimately is only ONE thing.

But let's look at it a different way. In this Intermediate level of Tarot we have to explore different models of the universe to discover what model works best for us today.

The model of the universe behind the structure of the classic Tarot deck is Jacob's Ladder from the Torah, and so a good place to start is with the story of Creation in Genesis.

Most all of Kaballah is the study of the moment of Creation in Genesis and the current mortal world implications of how our mortal world was Created.

Jacob's Ladder is the symbolic diagram of the "Ladder" that Jacob saw when he slept with his head on a stone. Angels went up and down the Ladder from Heaven to Earth, bearing messages.

To figure out how (and why) the Tarot works, and therefore what it's good for and what it's not good for, we have to try to build a model in our minds of what Creation is and what that has to do with us and our lives. I mean who cares?

That "Who Cares" level of abstraction is just what the 1's or Aces are all about.

Once again, remember that what you're reading here is your misunderstanding of my misunderstanding of dozens of Kaballistic Sources (hence I don't generally attribute my sources because I know I'm not faithfully representing them and there are literally hundreds.)

All this is my understanding at this moment in time, and I keep changing. What I'm showing you here is not "the" answer -- but how to blend all these symbols into your own personal answer which will then evolve as you evolve. You can't use my answer any more than I can use your answer -- but all of us can use the process of figuring out.

At the level of the Ace of Pentacles then, we need to figure out what "reality" is -- what's a Pentacle, where it came from, where it's going, and what it has to do with us.

So what happened that ended up creating "reality"?

According to the text, G-d SPOKE, and it was so.

It was a WORD that instigated Creation.

It wasn't a written word, but a SPOKEN one. It was a vibration.

The emission of a vibration created reality.

Hmmm.

The Kaballists also say that G-d "creates" AND "sustains" the Universe, present progressive tense. That G-d recreates all reality continuously in every instant. The Divine Will causes all this to continue to be. Existence itself is a miracle that re-occurs every instant.

I think of it a little differently. Suppose the Word G-d Spoke is still being spoken?

Physicists know now that physical reality is made up of particles that vibrate -- everything down to the smallest particle vibrates if it's above 0 Degrees Kelvin. It can be argued that it isn't "vibration" when a particle's location is statistical.

And at a certain level, those particles actually aren't anything but energy which is vibrating. There's no such thing as solidity. There is only vibration at different rates. There isn't even a "thing" that vibrates -- but only the vibration itself. (physics is incredible)

So the whole of our mundane reality is nothing more than a Word the Creator is Speaking. The vibration of that Word is "hot" and therefore emits brightness which we call Good.

Yes, you remember there were several utterances that projected our world into being and it took 6 days, and a 7th to rest and observe.

Kaballists say that when G-d gave the 10 Commandments, all the words in them were co-vocalized, all collapsed into one single Word. We couldn't understand it, so we sent Moses up to get it straight.

Well, suppose (who knows if it's true?) that Creation is actually a single utterance, the co-vocalized version of all those Words that begin Genesis. Maybe that's not true, but it's a "model." Physicists routinely create "Models" of processes they want to study -- the "Model" is a mathematical fiction that works like the process and by using it, you can learn things you wouldn't learn from the actual process.

So let's use this model to study Pentacles.

From our mortal point of view, we can clap our hands, or sit on a chair -- reality is solid, not vibrating. This is the macro point of view -- we know it's not true, but it's a useful model.

Let's say Reality and the material in it consist of crystalized vibration.

If you study crystals, you see that chemical bonds hold atoms in a structured relationship to each other. In some crystals, electrons can break loose and flow between the latticework.

The latticework of a crystal is hollow, and everything forming it vibrates -- all the particles simply have a certain probability of being where they are, and sometimes they aren't there. It really makes no sense to talk of particles -- actually they're waves. Well, maybe not.

That's what the Pentacle in the Suit of Pentacles represents -- Reality as a Crystalized Latticework of Vibration where everything is "hmmm well, maybe not" probable.

That means that Pentacles are the Words and Thoughts and Deeds of Swords brought into a STRUCTURE, or solidified. Constructed.

The Pentacles represent the universe as a housing for the abstraction of Ideas, Emotions, Thoughts, Words and Deeds. Thus the Universe is a house and we are builders and housekeepers.

Or put another way, Pentacles are Structured Thought, Constructed Words, Deeds Done.

The Ace of Pentacles on Jacob's Ladder overlays the 6 of Swords.

Remember (or refer to) the 6 of Swords discussion.

We've been tracing the project of writing a book down from a beginning moment in Ace of Swords through creating a First Draft in 4 Swords, to showing it to a beta reader in 5 Swords and getting whacked with criticisms, to rewrite in 6 Swords.

The 6 Swords is a journey to another place. It is a leaving of where you are -- and a seeking of someplace to START NEW.

One essence of 6 is venturing into the foreign, the UNKNOWN, battered maybe but fearless (either because your adrenals are burned out from terror and you're fleeing, or because you finally understand what you did wrong and you're going to start over.)

Either way, it is the essence of both SF and Romance, the meeting place where Love is given, sought, and found, and started anew.

That place where you START NEW is the Ace of Pentacles.

Aces are Beginnings.

But by the time you've pulled your project down from Ace of Wands (the beginning of an Idea) through Ace of Cups (the budding desire to write the thing), then all the way through the tedium of Swords, the project is well-worked, rich with ideas and artistic potential. You have many versions, much rewriting.

The Ace of Pentacles contains within it all those false starts, complete but unusable drafts, and all the material you never put into the novel -- the character's backstories, the history of the World you've built, the tons of research you've done. It's all there compressed into the Unity of the Ace of Pentacles.

The world you've created has become real to you. You know it all, from start to finish, just as the Creator of this universe knows it all.

Have you ever tried to explain a novel you're writing to someone? You get tongue-tied not knowing what to put first, and you try to say everything at once along with all the details about what happened before the story starts. You LOVE that novel -- 6 of Swords, Love.

You KNOW that novel, but you can't SAY it in a way that conveys it to your listener in one sentence.

That KNOW is the Ace condition.

Now you turn your idea every which way looking for a new way to get into the idea, a new entry point, a new avenue to explore in your Universe.

If you haven't taken your old habits with you from 5 of Swords, you will be able to move from 6 Swords into this new beginning and not repeat the mistakes that drew criticism before.

Think of it this way. If you finished the novel started in Ace of Swords -- bringing it through all the way to 10 Swords -- then now in Ace of Pentacles you can start writing ANOTHER novel, one that won't contain those same mistakes and require rewriting (don't worry, you can always invent some new mistakes, and chances are you will.)

If, however, you have taken your old habits with you through 5 Swords, this new beginning will start to look very much like the old treadmill very quickly.

Being human, when we make "new starts" we usually just recreate the world as we knew it.

Sometimes that's OK because we're just not ready to change because we haven't finished what we're doing yet. But the result is depicted usually by the Ace of Pentacles reversed -- a process that is an attempted beginning without enough energy behind it to produce results.

You can be stuck in the "I'm going to write another book," process for a very long time.

Trying to break free too soon will only result in more partial drafts and failed attempts.

Where does the energy come from that gets you through the Ace of Pentacles reversed?

Again, remember it overlays the 6 of Swords, and 6 is Love. The beginning, the origin of everything (thing=Pentacles) is love.

The way I look at it, this whole universe we call reality is a love song. All we have to do is hear it.

Once you hear your song, you'll be able to sing it for us.
But this is a folk song. It changes constantly, gets new verses, new grace notes, new arrangements, new instruments.

And that's what a character-arc is -- the changes within a character because of the story that's happening. The character adds a new stanza to the love song of the universe.

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

10 Swords - Your Chickens Come Home To Roost

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.

It should eventually be titled: The Biblical Tarot: The Not So Minor Arcana by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, but who knows? It has no publisher yet.

---------------

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.

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..

------------- 10 Swords -------------
Each person must find a synthesis of those 2 components of meaning for themselves. These essays are mine, not yours. Watch the methodology, do it for yourself, and find your meaning.

You will have to re-do this periodically through life -- because you change, things change, and your ability to synthesize multiple parameters changes. What is true for you today, may or may not be true for you tomorrow.


----------------

10 Swords:

Whee-ha! Whoopie! Yippie! Huzza! GO!GO!GO!

The first copy of your printed book has arrived in the snailmail. You rip the cardboard packing, break a nail, run around in circles screaming for a scissors, jump up and down until the downstairs neighbor yells -- and finally get the package open.

You know there has been no publisher publicity and won't be. You can't afford to do it yourself. But you hoped and prayed and imagined and dreamed through 9 Swords. It's going to turn out fine!

OH GAWD!!!!

"They spelled my name WRONG on the cover!!! We fixed that last month!" or "They changed the cover! There's no naked, chained up woman in MY book!" or "Why-oh-why did they put that wimpish quote on the back cover. I never wrote that!" But checking the printed text, there's the wimpish quote -- checking the manuscript, it's written powerfully. Someone changed the words!

And you're scheduled to do a local access TV appearance tonight with the book in hand and smile evident.

AAAAHHHHGGGGG!

We are now focused on the 3rd circle up from the bottom of the middle pillar of Jacob's Ladder.

It is the 10 of Swords.

Note it overlays the 6 of Pentacles.

Remember, there are no bad Cards.

The Waite Rider deck depicts the 10 of Swords as a figure prone on the muddy ground with 10 Swords piercing the body. It really looks like disaster and death and a lot of people do read it that way -- but that isn't really what this one is about.

10's are about culminations, consequences, results. Finality. Completion.

Swords are thoughts, actions, deeds, plans, and words.

The culmination of your deeds, how exactly your project comes out in the end, depends on several independent variables plus the imponderable of Divine Will.

Now remember, this is mysticism. In the world of magic and mysticism, the outcome of any action depends (after the Divine has a sayso) more on who you are than on what you do.

In the world of science, two different people doing the exact identical thing get the same result, which proves a theory. But in the world of Mysticism, two different people doing the exact identical thing get different results, which also proves a theory.

For example: a guy may have an important job interview, and remember to put gas in his car, get a new suit, a haircut, research the company to a fair-thee-well, and still miss the interview appointment because he had a flat tire (which happens when you've been out of work for a while). He's done every action he can to assure success -- but he misses the interview.

A different guy out of gas by the side of the road would get picked up by a friend and whisked to the interview on time, get the job on the spot -- then put a new tire on the credit card and pay the fine for abandoning the car, and never look back.

It is not possible, from our everyday perspective, to chart the direct cause-effect connections in events like this. If both job applicants have as many friends with cars, why does one get picked up and the other stand alone?

The reasons for that (other than Divine Will) are detailed in the first book in this series, Never Cross A Palm With Silver.

http://www.amazon.com/Never-Cross-Silver-Bible-Tarot/dp/0963749854/rereadablebooksr/

But remember, there are no bad cards. In 7 Swords we learned how to make amends for what we've done wrong, and in the process actually change ourselves on the soul level, which changes how things happen around us. You can argue with the Supreme Being, and Apparently you can win one.

And maybe more crucial, we should think about the two guys above: which outcome is "good" and which "bad?"

Even a very psychic Tarot reader can't tell you exactly what will happen when you pull your latest project through the 10 Swords process. An astrologer might tell you when the crisis will come; a Tarot reader might tell you how it will FEEL to you personally -- but nobody can tell you what will happen or what, ultimately, it will mean for you, good or bad.

That's because there is always the imponderable of Divine Will, and the even more inscrutable issue of human Free Will (yours and others')

Off the top of your head, which job applicant above would you say has a soul at a higher level of development? Which has better karma from good deeds in past lives?

Think about that really hard before you answer.

Now let's look again.

Applicant 1 gets stuck by the side of the road all dressed up, misses the interview. A cop car stops. A beautiful woman in an officer's uniform gets out, calls the tow truck, chats while they're waiting, sparks fly but professionalism is maintained, then she drives away.

At the church social hour the next week, he spots that same woman out of uniform and six months later, he has an even better paying job and they're married.

Applicant 2 who made it to his interview, finds he's now trapped in a dead-end job under the boss from hell, is in debt to his eyebrows and can't quit. His girl left him because his temper is in shreds. Now he's drinking himself to death.

Which one of them did a better job shaping the astral plane foundation of their lives during the 9 of Swords part of this process? Can you even tell from the evidence presented here?

Now back to the writer with a totally screwed up book packaging.

She pastes on a brave smile and presents her book on local access go-nowhere talk show on cable, instantly adopting the misspelled name as her new byline, her pen name as if it were done that way on purpose.

She called her editor and was told the story of the changed cover. The artist who submitted the sketches she had seen didn't deliver (maybe she suddenly got married to the guy she rescued at the side of the road during her day job as a cop). So the publisher had a cover left over from a book that wasn't delivered and they used that cover on her book. Sorry about the overprinting typo, but stuff happens when done at the last minute.

The writer tells this whole horror tale on TV with a chuckle, then exuberantly sketches what her book is REALLY about. Dozens of women log onto Amazon and order the book. (It doesn't take much to send a book to the top of Amazon for a few hours, if all the sales are simultaneous.)

The story of the raunchy cover gets picked up by the big networks. Oprah uses it as a "What's Wrong With Publishing Today" piece. A TV Network exec wants to base a TV series on the novel for Lifetime. The publisher offers six figures for her next book.

Later, she finds out the misspelled byline actually has a numerological advantage over her real name, in addition to attracting attention.

Apparenty, during the 9 of Swords process, this author shaped the "Foundation" of this project on the Astral plane for publicity, and she got it (which may or may not be a "good" thing). How was she able to do this (other than Divine assistance)?

Because in 6 Swords, love opened her to change, in 7 Swords she did what Kaballah calls tshuvah, returning to the connection to the benevolent power behind the Universe by doing good deeds, amending bad habits, cleaning up the messes you have made. In 8 Swords she behaved in a substantially improved way, proving she had changed, and in 9 Swords she was therefore able to shape the Astral in a way very different from what she had done before in other projects in life.

She probably did all that in both the text of the novel itself and in her own life and attitude toward the world in order to get such explosive results.

And don't ever forget the imponderable intervention of the Divine Finger that stirs lives. Her writing career boost might have little to do with rewarding her, little to do with her own skills on the Astral, and everything to do with reaching out to some soul she's harmed in a past life with a healing message of love.

Or perhaps she is merely the vehicle carrying a message to someone who needs to hear it.

The thing to remember through all these processes is that you, yourself, don't control these energies. You don't work the energies to your will. You're not helpless, but you're not in charge of the whole universe, either. You're only in charge of you, and you are very complex.

How any project begun in the Ace of Swords turns out in the 10 of Swords also depends on what your subconscious and your SOUL does during each of the other 9 processes.

Now here's the real problem with this ticklish and difficult 10 Swords process.

Evil.

I did say there are no "bad" Cards. And that's still true.

I did say that you have a choice between living in a zero-sum universe and an abundant universe. And that's still true.

However - there is sticky-nasty stuff out there, and the abundant universe does, (when manifesting on our everyday material level), obey the laws of Conservation (as in thermodynamics).

Conservation of mass and energy, conservation of momentum, all the conservation laws of physics describe a zero-sum universe at least "down here" where we live, the only universe "science" studies.

We can't just dismiss the zero-sum model of the universe if we operate entirely within physical reality. Thankfully, though, we don't have to operate entirely and only within the confines of material reality because we have souls.

You can draw abundance down into physical reality, yes, but you can't have everything you want as long as you live. The rule is you can have anything you want -- provided you're willing to give up everything else for it.

But there are other rules that govern the importing of abundant energies into material reality.

We're going to touch on them here, but they really belong in the advanced level of discussion.

So let's reconstruct our model of the universe to include the interface between our material reality that science studies, which contains all the 10 processes of the Tree of Life, and the much larger reality that is the whole of creation, which is depicted by Jacob's Ladder and the higher levels above the Ladder.

In 10 Swords we come to the level of existence, above the universe science studies, where our actions produce consequences. So far as I know, nobody has ever figured a way to look at an action and determine what consequences it will cause.

There is a postulate about the structure of creation that explains why cause-effect doesn't work above the material world. And that's a postulate about Evil.

What most people mean by the English word Evil isn't exactly what is referred to in this postulate. And this is just my best understanding of the situation at this time. I too am always growing, changing my mind, and gaining new perspectives. I may not have understood what I've been taught; I may not articulate it in a way that you understand it either as what I mean or as what I was taught.

Language is just not the tool to use to convey these ideas. A life of practical actions is the only way I know of to propagate this view of the universe from one mind to another.

OK, so here's the postulate, which by no means belongs to the Intermediate level of study, explained in my own pitifully inadequate words.

In the Beginning, G-d created creation -- the first time He generated the Jacob's Ladder structure, He filled the Sepheroth, also known as Vessels, with Divine Light. And filled and filled to abundance and more.

And the "Vessels" shattered from the pressure.

This produced a kind of amorphous plasma, a roiling boiling fog, a heaving sea consisting of shards of shattered Vessel walls, all dark, dead and sticky dross, plus gazillions of tiny bitty little glowing sparks of pure, glorious, bright (too bright) blazing, stunning Goodness of what I term "Godshine."

All the dross and the Goodness were seethed and boiled and mixed up together.

The Nature of the dross is to "contain" Goodness. These shreds are bits of the Vessel walls.

They are naturally attracted to bits of Goodness. So every bit of Goodness gets plastered with this opaque, sticky mess.

Then G-d created a second Jacob's Ladder structure, the Creation we're in now, plopped right in the midst of the mess. The second one held together and here we are.

In this view of reality, the purpose of human life is to uncover the sparks of Goodness, separate out the dross, and elevate the Goodness back into contact with the Source.

The more goodness we free up to rise and shine down on us, the "brighter" our environment becomes, the easier it is for people with dim sight to see right from wrong, good from bad.

It is our job to find the Good within everything around us, but most especially within ourselves.

Meanwhile, because of the simple nature of the dross, every time we uncover some Good, all the dross in the neighborhood plasters itself around the Good, making our job harder.

Another principle of Reality in this postulate is like the Laws of Conservation in Physics. The Creator made Creation in balance. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction, right? For every Goodness, there's an equal amount of yucky.

The goodness inside a person is likewise balanced by bad tendencies. The "better" a person is at being a person, the stronger the temptations and opportunities to do bad.

Look at Jacob's Ladder again and you will see that the three pillars are in balance -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis in the middle. Creation is Symmetric. Likewise in Physics we find the material universe likewise has laws of symmetry. As Below: So Above.

We are awash, floating in a plasma of Good and Bad, mixed to neutrality.

Now, here's the trick of surviving and functioning in this mixture.

Move slowly, easily, gracefully, gently, just like when swimming. Don't disturb the plasma and it won't slosh back in your face and overwhelm the Good and drown you in sludge.

That dross sludge is what this model of the universe uses for Evil. The dross is not conscious, doesn't have an agenda, and can't initiate anything. It's just a heaving, sticky, mess you are swimming in, and there's a part of you inside you that has an affinity for it.

The whole trick is balance. (that's why we love Circus acts -- they are "life" in a nutshell).

So what happens when you start a project in Ace of Swords, bring the energies down and down, and finally get to 10 Swords? Why is 10 Swords so often experienced as a traumatic and horrible event if it's just "your chickens coming home to roost?"

10 Swords is just the consequences of your actions. But what if your soul took a quantum leap upward because of this project, (as the writer we've been talking about did). Suppose you strove and grew and improved and you deserve a REWARD -- but you get "this!" (bad book packaging as above; or worse)

Why do bad things happen to good people???? Or to a not-so-great person who finally did something magnificent and gets smacked down for it.

Does that negative consequence necessarily indicate that you aren't a "good enough" person, you didn't take a lesson of Love in 6, pay the piper in 7, learn your lesson in 8, and reshape your reality in 9? Is that failure why this nasty thing happened to you instead of success?

Why does no Good Deed go unpunished? Why? Why? Why????

There's the beauty of this postulate about "Evil" being just a sludgy sea of dross we swim in.

It explains in graphic terms exactly what happens when you strive magnificently, actually exceed your personal design specs, achieve something totally heroic, and get sandbagged.

When you make some soul-level progress by pulling a project down through the Swords processes, you are, in the language of this postulate, uncovering a spark of Divine Light within yourself, or those around you.

That newly exposed Spark instantly attracts a new coating of dross.

The Event that sandbags you in 10 Swords is the speeding dross smashing into the Spark you uncovered. SPLAT! And down you go.

It's part of the natural structure of the Universe -- dross splats.

So how do you avoid getting flattened by the dross your Good Deeds and totally warranted Successes attract?

Don't make waves. Don't stir the plasma. Don't splash. Swim.

Think of a little kid jumping feet first into a swimming pool that's sitting there smooth as glass.

Then the kid leaps and dives and sprays water, and gyrates -- eventually, the waves he's made reach the far wall and come back. If he's energetic enough, he can make a wave big enough to drown himself.

Now consider an adult who slices into that glassy smooth swimming pool, surfaces and sidestrokes across with clean, coordinated strokes and kicks that don't break the surface. There are waves, yes, but they don't impede him.

We are in a closed container - the Material Universe. The more energetically we splash, the more the dross splashes back. When you've splashed all your life, your first Good Deed designed to change your course in life will immediately be awash in waves of dross created by your past deeds.

And always remember, you're not the only one splashing about.

Let's step sideways into another model of the universe.

It is well known in Magickal circles that the way to tell whether a Candidate's first Initiation "took" is to watch the Candidate's life for the next year or so. Very often when a major Initiation takes hold in a life you will see divorce, job changes, change of residence, ill health (or sometimes amazing health recovery), job promotions, and all kinds of improbable things going wrong or swerving into uncharted territory. It usually makes a good soap opera plot.

These Initiates are observing the splash back of sticky clinging dross long stirred by the actions of the Initiate who was formerly operating on a much lower level of understanding.

The mark of the highest Initiates is that they move through the world without leaving a trace, not a ripple, in their passage. They are not famous. Nobody knows or remembers their names.

They make no effort at secrecy - but nobody notices them. Yet goodness and Light spreads everywhere they touch.

So back to our dross vs. Light model.

This dross vs. Light model of the universe is what those Highest Initiates finally get a handle on.

Remember the TV Show Kung Fu? That test of walking the rice paper runner to get out the door without leaving a trace? That's what we're trying to learn.

You can now see what happened to our Writer with the messed up packaging, and the two job applicants when their projects came down to the process of 10 Swords.

The writer had done quite a lot of splashing on the way to 10 Swords, but the bits of dross that smacked into her got "elevated" to become bits of light and goodness. She might have managed the trick a bit more smoothly, with better balance, so that every "bad" thing that happened turned out to help materialize her astral plane vision in 9 Swords. (and don't forget Divine Assistance) But she did an incredible job for a first try.

Job Applicant 1 got a tire flattened by a tidbit of dross, but again because his 9 Swords work (getting a new suit, doing his homework etc) aimed him toward success -- he got the love of his life and a much better job.

Job Applicant 2 got the job he thought he wanted, but it's a disaster. He didn't do his astral plane work well, quietly, smoothly. He splashed too much and waves of dross flowed back over him. Every good thing he did got plastered with sticky-yucky mess and he's overwhelmed by the side effects of his actions, even though he didn't do anything wrong and really isn't a bad sort of person.

At least it looks, at the point where we left them, that Applicant 1 has it made and Applicant 2 is lost forever. Just wait 20 years and look again.

These are processes not static situations.

Wherever you are in life, whatever your level of soul growth, and in your mastery of swimming in muck without splashing yourself and everyone around you with dross, there is always an opportunity to change, to improve, to fix your life.

So how do you do that? How do you quiet down the heaving ocean of dross, peel the stuff off the Good and send it on up the Ladder, and get your life in order so you can really do some heavy lifting?

What is the secret of dodging the tsunami of sticky-yuck heading toward you?

Suppose you really get it now, suppose you know what you did wrong and why and you really REALLY find yourself changing deep down inside. What can you do to climb out of the way of the consequences of your actions?

And if you do manage to avoid the consequences of your actions, isn't that dishonorable and only the source of more trouble?

Wellll -- there is a way, and it's so simple most people just don't comprehend the power of it.

Remember, the 10 Swords overlays the 6 of Pentacles. We haven't walked down the Ladder of Pentacles yet, so we don't quite grasp the entirety of what 6 of Pentacles is about, but we did learn 6 of Swords.

The 6's are about Love and Beauty and the love of beauty, and how percieving beauty ignites love within us. Reread the 6 of Swords

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/09/six-of-swords-love-conquers-all-as.html

In 6 Swords, we encountered something through Love that jarred us out of an old rut and sent us packing for new shores. Love inspired real change, though we took our habits with us.

In 7 Swords we attempted to do tshuvah, to pay for our sins and make it right with the world, somehow to achieve inner peace.

This is the Path toward becoming a Tzadik, a wise person so at peace within that his steps through the world leave a wake of spreading peace.

In 8 Swords we had to get over the yes-buts, ammending thinking so that in 9 Swords the new attitudes bought so dearly in 6, 7, and 8 could now be applied to re-shaping our reality.

Now in 10 Swords comes the result of all that, the result of the good progress we've made along with all the dross stirred up and attracted to that good.

So how do we dodge the dross and cling to the Good?

We make the transition down to 6 Pentacles -- note the Waite Rider deck nails this one. It is a person giving away "Pentacles" in Charity.

And that's how you do it.

If you've realized where you were wrong, paid the price, braved the damage you had to sustain to get out of the trap of your own making, and transformed your nightmares to dreams, the way to slide right through 10 Swords is GIVE CHARITY.

Doing a Charitable Deed (not always giving money -- sometimes it's visiting the sick, opening up opportunities for others to do good, forgiving a bad driver for cutting in on you). Charity is the most powerful of all spiritual actions.

Even when your motive is not so pure, an act of charity can whisk you out of the path of the sticky-yuck tsumani.

Note in the example of the Writer whose packaging got messed up; what did she DO?

She took her misfortune and GAVE IT AWAY on TV, to explain to readers how these things happen, to entertain viewers with a truly amazingly silly story, to warn would-be writers of how things go in this business.

Putting her ego on a shelf, she took on the byline typo'd on her book. She gave herself. She exposed herself. She served others by not cancelling her appearance at the last minute. With those acts of Charity, she sidestepped all the dross splattered on her book.

She transformed the event down into Love (6 Pentacles) on the concrete level of reality. If you think that's easy, you just try it!

Now, of course, having skipped the Ace, Two, Three, Four, and Five of Pentacles, she will now find herself in more trouble than she knows how to deal with and will likely have to backtrack and scramble.

Marion Zimmer Bradley always quoted the saying, "Every ending is a new beginning," and that is so true in life and in Tarot.

When contemplating 10 Swords, think Frying Pan and Fire, and accept responsibility for the results of your actions.

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