Write Your Life with Tarot: Page of Pentacles
The mystical gardener, the curious world-builder, the questioner of all matters earthly and unseen!
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This post is a bit overdue, and I hope you’ll forgive me.
But I think now is a perfect time for the Page of Pentacles to appear — this earthy page lost in reverie, standing amidst open green fields (with one patch ready for planting). This rather serious-looking chap gazes into their pentacle like it’s some kind of crystal ball, seeking answers there, seeking guidance, seeking purpose before continuing their work and education in the fields of potential abundance.
It’s a perfect time for this page, first, because Pentacles are earth — the soil we plant in, the three-dimensional life, what we make and build, how we work, our commitment and consistency over longer timelines. Fitting because early tomorrow morning, in just a few hours, we’ll experience a lunar eclipse and full moon in the earth sign of Virgo, a sign that cares about building and how things are built and how they work (just like this page).
It’s also a ideal time to commune with such a grounded figure since the world, day by day, becomes ever more chaotic, with institutional rugs being ripped out from under us, societal sure-things suddenly revoked and revised, or public institutions being smashed and thrown to the ground.
To converse with such a curious figure as the Page of Pentacles at a time when there’s so much division around who’s right and who’s wrong… to witness this gardener beholding visions when we could all do more to support nonhuman life… perhaps could do us a bit of good.
So, let’s dance with this page. Then I’ll share some autobiographical writing prompts inspired by this card.
This post is free for all to read, as is every fifth post in the “Write Your Life” series. The rest are shared with paid subscribers — to whom I offer big thanks for supporting this work with your hard-earned dollars. This time, behind the paywall, there’s a spread for the full moon / lunar eclipse in Virgo. Paid subscribers are invited to share results from their Tarot spreads and ask questions in the comments — I’ll offer my Tarot-reader insights, if you ask for them.
The Page of Pentacles
Perhaps it’s helpful to start with the entire cohort of pages... First, the Page of Swords (air), who’s making a commitment to a learning path (though, this is true of all pages, in a sense). But Page of Swords is choosing to work with a particular idea, theory, or line of inquiry; they want an academic education, or an apprenticeship with a knowledgable elder; they’re ready to study, and they understand there will be homework required.
The Page of Wands (fire) is launching some creative pursuit, or ready to leap into the world, like The Fool, to spark something, be sparked, or simply sparkle.
The Page of Cups (water) is getting curious about what lives in the depths of their emotional ocean. They’re finally sitting down to tea with some of the creatures that swim in the faraway reaches of the fluid, intuitive psyche. They’re on a quest for emotional maturity and sobriety.
Our Page of Pentacles is concerned with earthly matters — how the flowers grow, how to forecast the weather in advance, the mechanics of the material world, but also the mysterious mechanisms of the unseen that animate this material realm.
It’s as if the Page of Pentacles has just learned they’ll someday be the one to inherit the family farm, so they’re tuning in to how things work, studying what’s connected to what, keenly observing the magic and the mystery of life, and asking big, existential questions along the way. Including: What kind of farmer do I want to be?
This page reminds me of the time my dad explained how the moon moves the tides, or the time he showed me how you can still see the whole moon — it’s still there! — even when it’s partly darkened.
It’s the first time I read Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan (now known to be of dubious origin!), or Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar — books that awakened a new philosopher inside of me.
The Page of Pentacles is that feeling during a road trip when you’re looking out the window, watching the world go by — the natural and constructed world — wondering, How did this all get here? What’s my place in it? How does my life fit in with all the others that populate this world? How do I want it to?
The Page of Pentacles makes me think of moments when I’ve deeply felt the pulse of life coursing through me because of place — standing atop a Swiss Alp with clouds amassing around me, or in the middle of the West Texas desert that was once the bottom of a vast ocean. The air in these spaces felt charged with life, mystery, and power, and I felt as though the Earth itself was that incredible power-source (a feeling that’s much harder to locate in my urban, paved-over homeland). I wanted to know everything about it — the history, the creator, the changes over time — yet I understood the explanation was well beyond my capacity to know.
Christopher Marmolejo writes in Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy: “The Page of Pentacles keeps us from going morally bankrupt because their insatiable Why? is a constant confrontation about the source of our motivations, behaviors, and beliefs. They bring forth a value for life that enables us to live differently, beyond the order of domination. … With as much respect as the page holds up the pentacle, they can read each being as a relative, as an innate relation. Their psychic prodigy is an instinctive vision of the orchard from just a single seed. They communicate with the Earth seeking consent, guidance, and growth. Knowing that they have so much yet to harvest, they take the initiative to begin tending their dreams.”
Charlie Claire Burgess in Radical Tarot: Queer the Cards, Liberate Your Practice, and Create the Future, writes: “The Pages or Students are all about the process of becoming in their various ways, but the Page of Pentacles handles perhaps the most tangible becoming of them all because their work is in the material realm. Whether this card references the beginning of a business or the exploration of a gender identity, rearranging the furniture or crafting something beautiful with your hands, the Student of Earth says to do it with a sense of wonder and possibility, because you’re making something real.”
Alejandro Jodorowsky in The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, writes (in the voice of the Page of Pentacles): “I identify with the Earth, the entire planet. … I am raising toward the heights of the best of myself, which is nothing other than the best of matter: the gold that is the essence of Being. The riches that I lift toward Consciousness promise the transformation of matter into spirit. You could say that the alchemical work begins in me with its two simultaneous processes: materialization of the spirit and spiritualization of matter. I am the dawn of action, but not the act itself.”
Write-Your-Life Prompts for Page of Pentacles
If you’re inclined to let this card inspire some life-writing, here are a few prompts to choose from. FWIW, this Page would absolutely endorse the kind of legacy-leaving that life-writing offers to people of the future. As the inheritor of his family farm, this page carries immeasurable gratitude for Grandfather and Grandmother’s records — the farmer’s almanac that tracks planting times and rainfall outlooks, the recipe collections that instruct how to preserve fruits and vegetables to help survive leaner months… Perhaps whatever you write in response can be a way-finder for someone else one day, or simply a souvenir from your own long, winding, wonderful path. Or simply use these questions with a friend / partner and GET CURIOUS, like this page, about one another and see where the conversation leads.
What are the books, essays, writers, thinkers, or encounters that began to open your mind to a wider world, to more thoughts and ideas, to more possibilities and realms as you were “coming of age”? And how do you think they influenced you?
Do you have a relationship with plants and gardens? Or do you associate people close to you with plants and gardens? Write about your experience as a gardener, what you’ve learned and tried, what you’ve failed at, or what you know about the most avid gardener in your life.
If there was ever a time in your life when you were an “apprentice to the earth,” write about that. Interpret that phrase broadly and creatively… Maybe just think on it phrase for a while and see if anything arises naturally. Consider anything connected to building, materials, hands-on work, animals, plants, or soil, earth’s gravity and seasons, earth’s climate and weather.
Write about a time you “planted an unlikely seed,” and later came to see it blossom into something resplendent or impressive or lasting. This could be a business or project you started, a wish you sent out into the Universe, a desire you said out loud that later came true. What did you learn about what it takes to transform a seed into an orchard?
Feel free to share in the comments if you choose a prompt. I’d love to hear where this takes you!
Our next card for Write Your Life with Tarot is another page — the Page of Wands!
Okay, friends. Thanks for reading! Take it easy on this lunar eclipse! Sending you lots of love and care!
Tarot Spread for the Full Moon / Lunar Eclipse in Virgo
On this full moon / lunar eclipse, think about letting go, letting something release, noticing systems that aren’t working anymore and allowing them to change and fall away.
This Tarot spread can help you identify what might be shifting and releasing for you at this time…
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