Four of Pentacles

Daily Draw: Four of Pentacles

First Impressions: Protecting parts of myself

Book: Grasping and being insecure does not buy security, what would it take to find something that fulfilled you?

Guidance: Look carefully at what you are clinging to and are you clinging in an unhealthy way?

Journaling

I know that most people view this card as negative, but I view it as a reminder to conserve my energy and protect what’s mine. This can and does raise the question as to whether I’m clinging to something that doesn’t work for me? Am I holding on to things that I should let go of? There is also a case of fear and potentially hanging on to something that is not right for me. These are questions I need to reflect on. I know I’m ready to let go of John and Charlene. And as an aside I’m very proud of myself for calling her Charlene and not honoring her by calling her mom. That is huge for me.

December 25, 2018

For me, this has always been a card about protecting what is mine and it has always been more about emotional protection than about protecting wealth. However, as I enter this year of vulnerability, I’m realizing that I need to open up and risk my heart getting broken. That being said, I don’t think that protecting my heart up until now was bad. I think I needed to protect my heart because I was not strong enough and fierce enough to allow myself to be vulnerable.

I’ve learned that before I can be strong enough to be vulnerable and open myself up to love, I have to know that I am fierce and strong and courageous. By knowing those things, I know that I am strong enough to protect myself if something goes wrong. That is an amazing realization.

Shadow Work–Day 28

The departing message from my shadow is…

Dreamer Princess gives me the gift of telling and of sharing what I know with others. She also is telling me that I do not need to be attached to whether or not they receive my message. All I need to do is speak from the heart. There is also a warning that I need to be straightforward with people and not use my gifts to manipulate.

Maker Four tells me to hold on to what is mine, but is also a precaution against being greedy. I need to build my own stability, but also find a way to let others in and contribute to the greater world.

Dancer Queen tells me to find and dance my own truth. I need to let go of all the bullshit in my life, including the lies I was told as a child about my own worth. I am brilliant, beautiful, and amazing and I am worthy of having friends and a lover. Unlike the messages that I continually got told as a child, my life is about more than other people. My life is my own and I get to choose who shares it and what I do for other people.

Shadow Work–Day 19

What part of my shadow do I need to use more?

Maker Four tells me I need to learn to say no to obligations, etc. that are not in my best interest. I shouldn’t say yes to things that mean I end up spending the entire weekend working with no down time. I need to learn to set better boundaries. It also means I need to stop using work to escape into and as an excuse to not meet people.

Dreamer Three tells me that I need to feel the heartbreak and let it go. I need to accept the cleansing relief that letting go of the pain can bring. I need to lean into the pain instead of running away from it.

Dreamer Queen tells me to think things through and to use my logic and not just my heart. Dreamer Queen is a stalker card as she has shown up multiple times.

Up until now my readings for this work have been spot on and have made a lot of sense. I struggled with this reading as the cards did not seem to make sense for the question. I’m going to continue to pray and meditate on it and the cards may make more sense later.

Four of Earth (Sphinx)

Four of Earth
Dark Goddess Lodge

First Impressions: This is a beautiful card and the essence of the four of pentacles is captured with the Sphinx sitting on the golden towers. All seeing, guarding treasure

Book: How you define your life limits your life, you are asked to define and claim your life, life is about more than one possesses, it is about what one leaves behind.

Guidance: Definitions work two ways, helping you understand reality and separating your perception from reality; find your own reality, define your own reality, honor what you have to work with.

Journaling:

I am intrigued by this card as the traditional four of earth (pentacles) is about being a miser and hoarding. I’m wondering if the wisdom of this card is that if in hoarding wealth or knowledge it doesn’t grow. When we nurture our wisdom and money without hoarding it, they can grow and change and become something else. I like the idea of redefining a position based on moving words around and challenging beliefs. I am finding that as I choose to do affirmations and open my heart and mind to new ways of thinking, life starts to change. It is also about being honest and being willing to ask for help and accept guidance

January 20, 2018

It is amazing how making a deliberate decision to change our lives, then doing the magickal and physical work to make that happens really helps. I’m choosing to let go of the past and doing affirmations and spells to make that happen. I’m also making deliberate decisions to not put myself in situations that will suck me back int my longings and old behavior. It’s really hard, but every time I make a decision to not do something, to not visit Chicago, to not make a phone call, to not text, etc., I feel better about myself and that makes it easier to make the right decision the next time.

Forgiveness in the Fours

I’ve been working on forgiving my abusive ex since the day he walked out the door seven years ago. I was holding on to anger over his using me, abusing me, and then throwing me away. Like many abused women, I stayed because I didn’t know how to survive without him. However, unlike many abused women I was perfectly capable of supporting myself. I stayed because I’d been brought up to believe a woman was nothing without a man. While praying and choosing to forgive were the actions, it was a journey through the fours that helped me to truly find the path to peace and forgiveness.

It seemed odd to me that it would be the fours that would take me on my journey of forgiveness because they are the cards of stability, of resting, of practicality, of achievement, and of humility. As I meditated on how the fours relate to forgiveness, the words practicality and humility were flashing at me in neon letters and I realized that forgiving is the practical action because forgiving frees my heart from the anger and resentment I’ve been lugging around and lets me move on and be happy.

Humility is the state of being humble and without pride, which for me means accepting that it’s not all about me. Over the last week, I’d gone on an emotional road trip through my past inspired by the Page of Cups and I realized that so many of the things I was holding on to had affected me, but really weren’t about me. My married best friend choosing g to spend less time with me was about choosing to put his family first, my ex-husband’s abuse and choosing to leave after 22 years of marriage was about his emotional issues and wasn’t about me at all. My mother raising me the way she did was about her skill set as a parent and not about me at all. None of these things that were weighing me down were not really my baggage to carry.

Once I’d accepted the practicality of forgiving and gotten off my high horse (six of wands if anyone is keeping score), I turned to the tarot to help plot my course to forgiveness and it was the fours that provided the roadmap.

Death (XIII=4)

The Death card is all about change and when it started showing up in my readings, I knew that I had to embrace change and be willing to move on, which would require forgiving and letting go of the past. That wasn’t something I really wanted to do because there was a part of me that really wanted my ex to pay for what he’d done.

As I delved deeper into Death, I realized that I had known the relationship was over (dead) long before he walked out the door, but I had been holding on to something that wasn’t healthy for me. As I was reading the meanings of the death card, a line from Psychic-Revelation struck me, “Not all relationships are fixable. Don’t beat your head against a wall for very long. You’ll know when it’s “long enough.” I had to smile as I recognized my own behavior.

As I got mired in the anger, resentment, and self-blame, Death Reversed began making appearances in my readings telling me that I was reluctant to change and that to heal I had to let go of things I knew were not healthy for me.

Four of Pentacles

Death was not the only card showing up to tell me I wasn’t accepting change. Over and over again in readings related to emotional health and growth I pulled the Four of Pentacles. As the greedy little miser looked out at me from multiple decks, I felt the anger and resentment course through my veins as I was hoarding these emotions and refusing to let go. All of those negative emotions were being hoarded in my body and were slowly strangling me.

The cards often have a sense of humor and when I asked how to heal emotionally, the four of pentacles reversed showed up to tell me that in order to heal I had to release all the anger, resentment, and negativity. In short, I had to forgive.

Four of Swords

The Four of Swords is about taking a break and letting your soul heal. When the four of swords turned up, I knew I needed to step back and quit fighting life so hard. I had to stop trying to control the world and I had to let go. I could no longer hold on to all the anger (swords) I was carrying in my heart. I had to take a break from the pain I was carrying.

For someone who has carried a lot of pain around for a lot of years, taking a break from the pain was really difficult. The Four of Swords was telling me to just STOP. Stop being angry, stop being resentful, stop driving yourself crazy thinking about where he was, what he was doing, and why did he get to be happy when I wasn’t. I started by consciously redirecting my thoughts every time I thought about him, every time I started to get jealous and ask why he had love and I didn’t, and every time I was angry about him not helping support the kids. Redirecting your thoughts is often not an easy process and there were days I had to stop, breathe, and redirect multiple times, but eventually I stopped obsessing.

Four of Cups

The Four of Cups served as a reminder that I was choosing to live in poverty consciousness. I was so concerned about what other people had “done to me” that I wasn’t accepting the wonders and blessings that were right in front of my face. Instead of focusing on the fact that I have people who love me, I have a beautiful house, I’m healthy, and all of those blessings, I was wasting my life in anger and resentment over something that was never going to change.

The universe was literally holding out a cup of wonderful stuff and I was saying no because I was focused on the past. The realization that I was choosing to live in poverty consciousness was a cold wet slap in the face as pulling this card made me realize that I was deliberately choosing to be a victim.

Emperor (IV)

The role of victim is not one I’ve ever aspired to and when I asked the cards how to get out of the victim role and move on, the Emperor started showing up. At first, I wasn’t exactly sure what the Emperor was trying to tell me because I’ve relate the emperor to a male authority figure. However, a little bit of reading soon revealed that the Emperor was telling me to take control of my own life. I could choose to be a victim or I could choose to move on and let go. The Emperor is all about structure and rules and one of his specialties is making order out of chaos.

The chaos in this case was my unruly ego telling me that in order for me to forgive people, they had to grovel and be worthy of my forgiveness. As long as I was caught up in believing that, I would stay mired in misery and pain. I had to make a conscious decision to choose the logical choice of forgiving over my heart’s choice of resentment.

Four of Wands

Following the twisting and winding path of the fours has led me to the happy and harmonious Four of Wands. As Biddy Tarot says, “This card indicates a sense of harmony and balance as well as completion, and thus symbolises a time of peace and joy in life that come as the result of often difficult and challenging effort. The Four of Wands is one of the most positive cards in the Tarot deck and indicates general good fortune, satisfaction, and fulfillment.”

I feel after all the heartache and pain of the last few years, I have finally found the serenity and peace that true forgiveness offers thanks to the help of the Fours.

Daily Draw: Four of Pentacles

First Impressions: Open up, be generous

Book: Letting go, sharing, releasing what has been hoarded

Guidance: Open your heart, let go of all the anger

Journaling

I love this image of the four of pentacles with all of the pentacles held over his heart. To me the message from this card is to let go of all the hurt I’m holding there. I’m still holding on to anger and hurt from childhood and it’s time to let all of that go. There is no value in holding on to those hurts. I understand now how they’e negatively impacted me.

I need to hold on to all the lessons and let go of the pain and anger. The same is true for my marriage. I need to learn the lessons and let go. There is nothing to be gained by holding on to the pain,

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God and Goddess, Dearly Beloveds

Please help me to let go of the anger and pain I feel over incidents that happened so long ago. Help me to let go of shame, anger, guilt and all of those emotions that have no place in my life today. In place of these emotions, please help me to embrace loving kindness. Help me to realize that all of these slights and pain were more about the person who inflicted them than about me.

Help me to open my heart to love and goodness . Let me know that opening my heart to love and goodness does not mean putting up with abuse.

Blessings,
Raine

I’m realizing now how screwed up my idea of love, especially unconditional love is. From my mother, I learned that loving someone meant letting them abuse you and walk all over you, but you still had to be there for them. I cannot remember how many times Grandma was horrid to her, and she kept going back for more.

I don’t know why, but it is something we all do to a certain extent. There is this hunger for and desire for family and we all have it. We all want want families to love us even when they are incapable of unconditional love.

July 1, 2018

I needed to hear this today and remember that we all want to be loved. I’m also starting to have more compassion for my mother as I realize that all she wanted was the same unconditional love from her mother that I wanted. Maybe she thought that she could get it by giving more and loving more. Maybe she was like me when I first went to Al Anon and thought it could change me into someone that John would love. Maybe she thought that if she kept going back eventually her mother would change and would love her.

Maybe all of what I’ve viewed as her being controlling and manipulative was about her trying to help me avoid some of the pain she faced. I don’t know the answer to any of that, but I do know that I can’t live being half a person. I have to be my full self and not go after my dreams and wants because of someone else.

Four of Pentacles
Hanson-Roberts

First Impressions: The man is clearly hoarding his wealth and holding on to it so tightly that he has no room/capacity to pick up anything else. By holding so tightly, he cannot embrace someone, enjoy a painting, or anything else. It is almost as if his wealth is holding him prisoner. This card is definitely someone who is holding his money and being stingy.

Book: Building wealth, rootedness, using money to protect from feelings of inner loss, holding back, can be protective.

Guidance: Hold back energy at work

Journaling:

I am so incredibly happy to be home.I’m still not positive of what the lessons of this card are. On the one hand, I see the cautions against being a miser, but I also see the wisdom of not being completely open and giving. There is nothing wrong with holding something back for ourselves. As I say a lot, my life cannot just be for other people, there has to be something in it for me as well.

December 23, 2017

This is a loaded card for me, especially lately. One of my most hated lessons from my mother was that my life was all about everyone else. Anytime I wanted to do something, she always asked how John or the kids felt about it. I was supposed to give everything I had to other people until there was nothing left for me. John continued this lesson because even though he was home all day with the kids and I worked, I was supposed to come home and clean house and cook dinner until I had nothing for me. Because of the lessons I had learned from my mother, I accepted this and didn’t push back.

I’ve learned a lot about balance over the last seven years and I’ve gotten a lot better of taking care of myself. I no longer care if people call me selfish or think I’m making life all about me, I know that I need to take care of myself first. If I do not take care of myself, there will be nothing left to give to anyone else.