This is the first text I have written in the first person. In the The Mirror of Sienna, the voice usually comes from elsewhere, more distant, veiled, impersonal. I prefer the tone of the third person, which allows the symbol to breathe on its own, without the author weighing upon its body. But there are moments when the path demands tracing my own footprints, following the living line of experience.
Thus begins this new section: Tracking the Tarot. A journal of passage, where the Tarot ceases to be only a mirror and becomes a map. I intend to follow the cards as they appear in daily life, through readings, repetitions, coincidences, and to trace their movements as one may pursue a shifting constellation.
Lately, the Two of Pentacles has been appearing frequently in my daily readings. Curiously, a few days ago, while tidying a cupboard, an old deck of cards slipped from the shelf and fell to the floor. And the only card facing upwards was, once again, the Two of Pentacles. Such accidents, which at first may seem trivial, are often the most delicate ways in which the symbol insists on being seen.
To begin, a brief reflection on numerology. The number two is always the passive expression (He) of the Ace, the primordial one (Yod). It is the reflection of the spark of action in the mirror of matter, where the active principle divides itself in two to create polarity: emission and reception, expansion and containment, heaven and earth. In the Two of Pentacles, this division manifests in the material plane of Assiah.
It is also worth considering the decan of this card, one of the most fascinating in the zodiac: the first decan of Capricorn, between December 22 and December 30. It marks the moment when the Christ is born and when the Sun is reborn in the northern hemisphere, with daylight beginning to grow again and the cycle restarting. Its ruler is Jupiter in Capricorn, which means the luminous, generous principle confined within the dense, cardinal earth of the saturnine sign. The expanding planet, so fond of mutable water and fire, locked in the densest constellation of all. Indeed, the two great lords, Zeus and Chronos, standing face to face: one in zodiacal fall, the other domiciled and comfortable. It is the point at which matter begins once more to move, slowly but inexorably, towards the light.
What makes this even more curious is that the same celestial confrontation is now active in my own chart. Jupiter is transiting Cancer, my tenth house, having touched the Midheaven at the very time this site was born. Since then, it has formed a direct opposition to my natal Saturn, fierce and out of sect in Capricorn in the fourth house, only making it harsher and taciturn in the most intimate point of the chart, the Nadir. With Jupiter’s now retrograde motion, that opposition has only deepened, turning inward, imposing a thorough, harsh revision of the foundations of my faith, work, and purpose.
It has been a demanding period, marked by spiritual dryness, fewer articles, not that much reading, as though Jupiter himself were meeting resistance on the cold mountain of Saturn. The Two of Pentacles seems to mirror precisely that clash between expansion and limit, between hope and form. Soon, when the planet resumes its direct motion, the opposition will happen for a third time. The synthesis that follows thesis and antithesis, because the cosmic architecture always works in ternaries, right?
I can only hope that this severe transit teaches me the lesson of this card: the silent art of balancing matter in motion, sustaining faith even when the gold grows heavy in one’s hands.
Kύριε ελέησον