The Five of Pentacles
Symbolism
Two figures walk past an ornate church window. There are five pentacles and two red roses depicted in the stained-glass. They are walking past a holy place, it seems.
It is snowing and one of the figures is hunched over and barefoot and the other is lame with crutches and the bell of a leper. They are homeless and poor, and they walk past the light of the church as if they do not deserve to enter out of the cold.
This is a card of unworthiness and poverty.
Keywords
Upright: Low self-esteem, self-doubt, suffering, trauma, illness, shame and guilt, blame, ‘poor me’, rejection, despair, helplessness, homeless, alienation, loss, hurt, outcast, rejection, victim.
Reversed: Suppressed shame and guilt, hidden fear, unrecognized victim, occult critic, overcoming fear, releasing trauma, faith, recovery, forgiveness, asking for help.
Upright meaning
Here we are introduced to the fives. The fives connect us to our senses and a very materialistic perspective. In this world, it is easy to see and feel lack. We may be good at one thing, but there are always five things we are not good at. There is always some proof that we are not strong, beautiful, healthy or wealthy enough. This is the card that shows us just how much we are focussing on that.
When we focus on unworthiness and lack, we will see more proof of it in the world. We will then be more convinced of our self-judgements and fall into patterns of pity and victimhood. These programs create illness, poverty, low self-esteem, and loss. And the vicious circle continues. This card calls for us to become aware of the programs that create these cycles of lack.
There will be past traumas which can be seen as a cause for our negative programming. But when we hold onto unworthiness, more traumas are created to reflect this program. If we have been rejected many times, we expect it, and we unconsciously reject ourselves. This card is a call to wake up to the programs and practice some self-love. We may have to drop some old friendships and ask for help from more positive sources.
If we can recognize this victim mentality inside ourselves, then we are halfway there. We need to own our negative programs in order to be aware of the voices in our heads that are perpetuating our misery. If there is guilt and shame that we subconsciously ignore, we end up suppressing our feelings. This, in turn, is a form of inner rejection and will only have self-destructive consequences. There is a big part of us that is looking to be accepted, cared for and loved. We have the power to turn our lives around. We can ask for help, but it is up to us to initiate the change.
Reversed meaning
If we avoid owning the victim mentality, this card represents, we end up attracting even darker experiences in our lives. Pretending that we are not holding onto deep-seated self-destructive programs, when we are, is a recipe for having those programs flare up in our faces in more intense ways. This can be sickness, poverty or accidents.
This denial will mean that we sit at the bottom of the pit in our own misery for longer. It will eventually lead to us being truly exhausted and low in vibration, and this means that there will only be one place left to go, upwards! The sadness is that we are already at the bottom, and maybe have been for a long time. When do we decide that we can change this?
This reversal will highlight how we blame the world for our lives. It is easy to see the law of cause and effect on a material level, and imagine the world is to blame for our misery. However, this attitude hides our shame and strengthens our self-doubt, disempowering our potential to change. It is time now to own our helplessness, and take back our ability to heal ourselves.
It has no doubt served us in the past to be in this victim mentality. Maybe we called in attention and love from others when we were ill or down. Maybe, hitting rock bottom was the only way we could justify asking for help and even giving to ourselves. Sometimes being worse off than others meant for us that we felt that we deserved attention. Now is the time to be aware of these programs, and how they block our growth.
The church in the card refers to the spiritual nature we feel disconnected from, and now is the time to call in a spiritual practice, and ask for help. It is not about expecting someone to fix our situation, but instead feeling worthy enough that we give ourselves importance. Others’ help will only be to empower us to make changes, not as some miracle cure. We are in the time to heal our ancestral patterns.