Minor — Pentacles

Five of Pentacles

The workshop is empty, her right arm bandaged — the tool of her trade broken. Collapsed on a stool, the heroine clutches the closed Book on her lap while her child points outside towards the illuminated stained-glass window of a church. The Five of Pentacles is destitution: the ordeal in which help exists — but one can no longer see it.

Symbolic reading

Tradition shows two destitute figures passing a stained-glass window without entering; the DAL makes both the drama and its outcome more precise. The injury is to the right arm — the working arm: to lose one's tool is to lose more than income, it is to lose one's grip on the world. In poverty, however, she keeps the Book clutched on her lap: the last treasure, never sold — one can lose everything except what forms the foundation. And it is the child who sees: the finger pointing towards the five pentacles of light in the stained glass says that help is already there, visible, offered — but prostration has this terrible quality: it prevents one from looking up. The card does not judge; it shows the door.

Reversed reading

The gaze rises or goes out: help finally accepted, the outstretched hand taken — or the pride of destitution, preferring the darkness outside to the light one would have to ask for.

• ordeal
• destitution
• injury
• help
• faith
• recovery