Welcome to another installment of “Your Week in Tarot!” So glad to have you here, sharing this space with me!
This week’s reading was conducted using the Robin Wood Tarot by Robin Wood.
Taking the deck and shuffling it, I pulled three cards: the first would be a card to show us what our Overall Experience of the week might be like; the second would be Guidance/Advice Tarot is offering us for our consideration, and as empowerment to move through the week; and the third card would show us a Possible Outcome of our efforts by the week’s end.
This week’s video reveals the cards for our reading:
If you prefer to read the post, here it is:
Our cards for this week are:
- Overall Experience: 8 of Pentacles
- Guidance/Advice: Judgement
- Possible Outcome: 7 of Pentacles
Your Week in Tarot: 8 of Pentacles, Judgement, and 7 of Pentacles, from the Robin Wood Tarot by Robin Wood.
The card for our Overall Experience this week, the 8 of Pentacles, is a card of self-improvement.
This is known as the “apprentice” card; an apprentice is someone who studies under the tutelage of a master, learning to perfect his or her skill(s).
Life is how we learn about ourselves. In some circles, it is said that Life is the curriculum of the “Earth School,” and we are students enrolled in its various courses. In this vein, Life is helping us learn “self-mastery.”
This week, we are being encouraged to pay close attention (the young boy is attentive in his work) to the work we are doing on ourselves. What have we learned about ourselves throughout our life experiences—and how can we practically apply (Pentacles being the suit of practical application) that knowledge going forward?
What resources (Pentacles being a suit of material resources) do we have around us that might be of use to us in our personal work?
The 8 of Pentacles can also be about the work we perform in the world to make money. This card, for some of us, might be an encouragement to take a closer look at our talents, skills, and abilities connected to our working lives. This may be a time to consider any additional training (courses, seminars, or books) in your profession that will help you further your career—and increase your earning potential.
Being a card about making money, the 8 of Pentacles can also be encouraging you to master wise money management.
Whichever side of the coin—or pentacle—you choose to look at, be it the external or the internal, the 8 of Pentacles is asking us to do the work that will be sure to increase our sense of worth and value (the extrinsic and the intrinsic).
In the position of Guidance/Advice Tarot is offering us this week is Judgement.
Judgement, being a Major Arcana card, carries the weight in the reading this week, as the Majors are cards that speak of our spiritual and psychological influences, and how those factors impact us and play out through our situations and circumstances.
Going with the learning lessons and school analogy of the 8 of Pentacles, Judgement is encouraging us to do a life review, and to see what we’ve learned.
It’s like going to school, in the sense of having to take a test or exam to see how much you’ve retained (learned) from all that material you’ve taken in all semester.
The Judgement card is test time.
But life’s tests are different than the tests in school.
In school, most of the time you get only one attempt at the test; either you pass, or, as they say these days, you have an epic fail.
Here’s how Life’s tests differ: You see, we get the same test again and again until we pass it. The class and the instructor (our circumstances) may be different, but trust me, the test is the same.
I have first-hand, real-world experience with this meaning of the card. I had taken my comprehensive exam for my Master of Arts in Psychology degree, as was waiting to be notified as to whether I passed or failed (that’s all I would be told). While waiting, I did a reading asking Tarot if I had passed the exam. Judgement was the final card in the reading—and shortly afterward, I was notified by phone with the news I had passed (Judgement is also about news, messages, and announcements).
The woman on the card is naked, which symbolizes being true to oneself and standing in one’s authenticity. Being naked says, “I have nothing to hide–what you see is what you get.”
Authenticity is moving toward self-mastery, which I mentioned with the 8 of Pentacles (both cards being about self-improvement). The 8, in this sense, is a number of personal power, and the Phoenix rising behind the woman represents our ability to “rise from the ashes” stronger and more powerful than before—or ever, in some cases. In the words of spiritual teacher Gary Zukav, this is “authentic power.”
Keeping with the school analogy (because it’s working so well), this is a form of graduation, as Judgement can mean adopting a new lease on life. This could be the week you reach a milestone in your development.
And, that is the perfect segue to the card in the position of a Possible Outcome this week, the 7 of Pentacles.
The 7 of Pentacles, another card of personal growth and development, is a card that suggests our hard work pays off, that we see tangible results for our efforts.
If you’re following these weekly readings closely (you are, right?), then you will notice that this card was in the position of the Overall Experience last week. Like I said then, the message of the 7 of Pentacles is to take time and evaluate your life.
This will be important to consider in light of Judgement being about possibly adopting a new lease on life. This can only be done as the result of a period honest self-evaluation of our lives. When the 7 of Pentacles appears, we are being asked to consider taking a step back and asking, “Am I getting what I want out of my life?”
If the answer is no, then ask yourself what energy have you been putting into it—because it’s that energy that has helped to produce the result you have. Along with Judgement, we are being asked to be decisive and take courses of action that correspond to the new intentions we are setting.
Keep this thought in mind, though: The 7 of Pentacles illustrates the spiritual principle of sowing and reaping. When we explore this idea of sowing and reaping, we can sometimes go looking for the harvest immediately after the seeds (those new intentions) have been planted. There is a space of time in between that also has to be allowed for.
True and lasting growth is never an overnight process.
And, on that note, another weekly reading comes to a close.
I look forward to sharing this space here with you again next week! Until then…have a Tarot-tastic week!
life of HIMM 