I’ve decided it’s time to revisit my beloved Nine of Pentacles and see what’s going on with my relationship to this card. If you would like to learn more about why I am working with this card (as well as how), please visit this post. To do the exercise this time, I am going to use the Rider Waite Smith deck.
The Visualization
To my surprise, when I entered the card this time, I inhabited the body of the snail at the bottom of the card. I could not see well because I was so small. I knew the woman was there, but I could only see the yellow pebbles and sand on which I stood. I wanted to back up and try to get a view of the woman, but I knew it would take too long. I complained that I could not see her and she put her face down to mine. It was very large and I could only make out bits and pieces at a time; mostly I only saw her left eye and her nose. Her size was overwhelming compared to my own and I was very disoriented.
“I want to see you,” I complained.
“You will have to inhabit a different body if you want to be able to see all of me,” she replied.
I tried for a moment, feeling that I must be able to it… this wasn’t the real world, afterall. But, surprisingly, in the snail I remained. ”How do I do it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she picked me up and placed me on a plant next to her shoulder, but off a little distance so I could see her better. Her demeanor reminded me of Snow White or Cinderella; she was very calm and in touch with the world around her, especially the plants and animals. I asked where her bird was and she explained that he was out flying.
While we might have discussed something more to the point, I was pretty much fixated on the fact that I was stuck in a snail’s body, unable to see more than a scrap of the world around me and feeling very overwhelmed. Compared to both her grand size and demeanor, my small size made me angry. I was deeply disappointed. I found her suggestion that I move into a new body unfair since it ended up being impossible. When I brought it up again, she shrugged her shoulders and I took this to mean that she didn’t know all the rules of her world, either.
“Listen, you know the way the world around you should look, right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Well, then just close your eyes and imagine that you can see everything.”
It was a simple idea, but it made sense. When I tried it, I felt an immediate relief. I was able to see the whole scene, just like it is in the card, only with me (the snail) sitting on a leaf next to her and the bird soaring in the sky. I was no longer overwhelmed or even angry. I could make everything out just the way I needed.
“I can’t see everything all of the time either,” she explained, “but I know that I’m connected to everything around me. So, I just imagine it in my head and bring all of those elements together. Things tend to work out better that way.”
As she told me about this, I imagined her visualizing the world and everything went sort of electric. I could see her pulling things into her life just with her imagination. At the same time, I also felt my body change. Suddenly, I was a turtle standing with two feet on the ground, instead of a snail.. and I was wearing a sailor’s uniform (I decided to add a little doodle of what I looked like for anyone interested–and for my own amusement!).
Feeling the message of my visualization complete, I asked the woman if she could help me with anything else. She said I had all that I needed for now, which was no surprise. I thanked her and came out of the visualization.
What I Learned
If you’ve read my first post in this series, you know that I am working with the Nine of Pentacles to learn about cultivating abundance, confidence and success in my life. I think I expected, when entering the RWS card, that I would simply learn about how the woman in the Nine of Pentacles lives or something like that. I was surprised to find myself thrown into a snail’s body with a warped perspective and, consequently, a bad attitude.
But, in retrospect, that’s pretty accurate! This unexpected circumstance captured so clearly my own feelings about being successful. First of all, I feel I am too small, too insignificant to have such things. Secondly, I believe they are so out of reach that I’d have to be an altogether different person in order to clearly comprehend what success looks like. These beliefs create a huge mental (and emotional) divide between myself and who I want to be, which is all so clearly captured in the difference between the snail and the woman. This perceived divide angers me, just as the snail me became angry when he couldn’t see clearly.
The fact that this goal of mine is so much larger than what I’ve achieved so far, makes the distance seem that much greater and I feel even more upset and overwhelmed when I realize this. Working towards the goal, I can only achieve bits and pieces here and there, which is never enough to satisfy my impatience. The snail, who could only make out the sand in front of him and then the woman’s eyeand nose, was frustrated, too. He wanted to change, instantly–just like I do.
It’s worth noting, too, that the snail felt like a victim.. and I have to admit, I feel that way a lot in regards to where I am in my life. The snail was born into his body; it wasn’t his choice to be so little. I was also born into some tricky circumstances (weren’t we all!?) and my life took unexpected turns that have limited me more than I’d like. The visualization represented this challenge as a matter of nature and not of choice, which is important to me. It means that, in some ways, yeah, I was a victim of circumstances but it also means that I can change despite these limitations. The way I change, however, is not by willing it to happen or wishing or complaining, as both me and my snail-self tend to do.
I believe this visualization’s gift to me is the notion that change will come through intuition and imagination. When I can’t see how I am going to make it work, I can close my eyes and run through the scenarios. I can sense the world around me and call upon the things I need for help. I can allow myself to daydream about being successful and this will help me grow from a snail to a turtle–and not just any turtle, but a seafaring, get-up-and-go turtle. I do find the distinction significant. First of all, it is interesting that I stay a slow-moving creature in the next incarnation, and also that I still carry my home on my back; but I have grown larger and I do move a bit faster. This certainly hints that I won’t change completely, all at once, patience will be required and I’ll probably still have a few personality challenges; but progress is progress. And, the sailor part is just plain neat. When I think of the symbolism of someone who navigates in the water and a fighter, no less, I think of a person comfortable with emotions and working in the unconscious, which I like very much. I also think of a brave person who is willing to defend others in emotional realms, which is also very cool.
So, right now, it is a matter of believing in myself and the world around me and using my imagination to help dreams come true. I must also remember that even the woman in the Nine of Pentacles doesn’t know how everything works, but she knows how to connect with the world which is far more powerful than knowledge.
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Have you received insight through visualizing with a card that you’d like to share? Or, perhaps, you saw another bit of symbolism in my own visualization that I missed? Feel free to share!