Queen of Pentacles

The queen of pentacles, just finished, shines in the springs gold sunlight on the easel. It's mother's day and the one year anniversary of the death of my mother. I'm writing in the garden. Spring is a mad energy of life. Flowers in outrageous colors are pushing head spinning perfumes into the breeze. Birds are singing love songs. A pair of house finches are deciding if the basket I stuck in the rafters is trustworthy enough for their future. Crows are laughing with the sunshine. I think I get the joke. The queen of pentacles, of discs, and coins, is like The Empress ‘light’. I was so happy to delve into her spirit after a year of working with the Empress archetype, the Mother, Nature, Death, Rebirth, Cycles. In fact, when pulling the next card to paint I first got the 9 of swords (mom, get out of my head!), then - the World, the Empress, and then finally this lovely queen.

Now that my sons have moved out and my mothers are gone, either to the grave or to a friendly senior home, I have a bit more free time. I’ve been taking a ceramics class at the junior college for frivolous fun, for the joy of making art that is not for sale. A student was throwing a round vessel on the potter's wheel and I realized she was a perfect queen of pentacles. The queen of pents is water and earth combined, aka…clay. She has harvested the wild clay from the riverbank. She creates a vessel and she is the vessel. The hands of her experiences form its shape and fill it with her life- beautiful moments, memories, traumas, regrets, pleasures. Spinning, centering, on the wheel of life. Constant creation.

This queen is the caregiver. She may mother her own children, or her aging parents, her friends, her business, or her project, her art. What she creates and nurtures eventually is no longer hers, moving like the seeds of the detoxifying dandelion out into the world. Michael Auger says she has “immense funds of kindness”. She looks to the left, to the past and tradition, for inspiration. Like this medieval potter's wheel. Like gardens planted with roses and golden apples, the apple of myth that grows in the gods garden. The queen is wearing her wedding veil and gorgeous green dress just for fun, for activities inappropriate to do in velvet dresses, just cause.

When I chose this lovely old frame I wasn’t planning a breakaway painting. This queen is quite contained. But I have this tarot card size ratio to contend with. (Oh how I miss painting my long Chinese scroll sized paintings!). So I cut the frame to size and suddenly had these two break-out areas for possible other meanings. Should I have the roses transform into something? Researching the queen of pentacles I came across this quote from Rachael Pollack’s famous book 78 Degrees of Wisdom: "Where the magician manipulates the forces hidden in the world, the queen of pentacles joins herself to those forces, allowing them to flow through her into her daily life." And so a chaos of color came through the opening forming into the material and tangible. Just as we, creators, take our clay or paint or words or body movements or five employees, desks and spaces, wrap our dreams around them and turn them into our imaginings, our future. As for the other opening: how lovely to paint a baby cottontail in the spring! He nibbles and is nourished by the dandelion in his mothers garden. Soon he will turn and hop through the opening she leaves in her life, out the open door, into his own frame of existence. I do hope he will come back to visit me soon. Hopefully he will tell me first so I can fill the fridge with his favorite treats.

Now don’t be fooled, the rabbit head on this queen doesn't make her a victim. This card is all abundance and fertility, the obvious symbol of the rabbit. And in many cultures the rabbit is good luck. She counts her many blessings. She delights in her roses and golden apples. She loves the feel of the clay of creation beneath her hands forming into her next vessel.

We are mud from the river bank The primordial alchemy of creation Handfuls of chaos, trauma, beautiful moments, memories, Wedged to a smooth clay. We are a vessel shaped and formed by the hands of our experiences. On the wheel; Grounded, spun, centered. We are here in this moment, Mothers giving birth to our own lives.

5 of Cups