Eight of Pentacles
The pentacles speak, at one level, of what can be touched and seen, heard and smelled. The Earth and all that lay visible upon it. Now, see your body? See it as a thing that belongs to you if nothing else. And see that as a metaphor for any project you might undertake with it. The running of a marathon, the writing of a book, the careful beading of a long and resplendent gown.
The figure in the Eight is an artisan working out at the edge of the town. Six of his coins already chiseled into shape. One on his bench and another another at his feet, discarded as inadequate, as requiring a few more steady-handed hours. To the untrained eye, each coin is identical, but, for the craftsman himself, each must be its own novel, its own ark, its own story and trust that he found a dozen wise lessons taking it from blank to symbol.
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In Africa, there were once men—slow and vulnerable, without fang or claw—who would kill a single antelope over the course of hours. They’d spook the creature from its herd and one hunter would give chase across the flats. An antelope, of course, can out-run a man in any foot-race except, here we learn, the longest. And so the antelope will sprint to safety and the man will follow behind, pacing himself for anticipated miles. The antelope will tire and rest on the ground until the man comes near and then run again in an efflorescence of adrenaline, the ground covered a little shorter than the last. Rest again until the man approaches spear in hand. Repeated: the man ceaseless, barely out of breath, the antelope ebbing and grinding away until it lies down and cannot summon the energy to stand again. The killing then, the final punctuation, is no more difficult than plunging a shovel into the dirt.
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After an interruption of several years to drink too much and carry-on with friends into the wee hours, I have worked my body into fitness on more days than I have not. Fifteen years now. Maybe more. A half-million pull-ups, at least. Countless moments finding my grip in the knurling. Until my default posture has come to be either crouched above the keyboard or bent over my knees catching my breath.
And in all of this, there was no one dragging, sweating routine in the gym that made any difference you could see or measure. There was no day in which I looked any different from the day before. And so the enterprise carried-out on the faith that if submitted to today—and tomorrow and a month from now still, a year—the discomfort and time would be worth it. That you could chip away at the stone one flaking gouge at a time—and some day you would sit before a sculpture you could scarcely imagine when you began.
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It’s within your birthright to do one impossible thing. Perhaps your father let his own expire. And his father before him. But if you were to find your project and lean into it—Sisyphus, smiling—you might, over years, top your summit. There is only one way to find out. We’ve filled the Earth with examples. Every memorable book you’ve read, every great album and film and invention. In each of these, the creator spent the time. They chipped away, a sliver closer at nightfall than they were at dawn countless times over.
Pentacles are knowledge, too, skills that can be honed from the crudest talent. And they are Money, says the RenFest psychic. And money grows, tended to correctly, laid open to the almost biological processes we’ve created for them—a mirror or something we feel about the workings of the world. Think of the stacking mathematics of an interest-bearing account, on it compounding every day and slipping a little in those that go by idle. Every day a little more and the next day’s push on that rock from a higher fulcrum, the weight a little closer to it. Where will you be a year hence. A decade from now you’ll be interplanetary, sending images of dimly-known planets back to your former self on earth. For now, sit on the bench. Feel the cutting weight of the chisel, test the heft of the hammer, see how clear and vulnerable is that blank and how long must you chase until it submits.
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I wanted to be cut like Mr. Universe and as famous as Stephen King. I put in nowhere near the work necessary for the first and enough but in the wrong direction for the latter. It’s all okay. The Earth is the safest of the four. Look at the craftsman’s face. Not smug and not simply bearing the work, nor grim, nor suffering. He looks not at the work he’s done but at that in the doing. This is what we learn from the Earth: what glory is to be found—a glory of the hardest knock, the lowest center-of-gravity—is in the fraction of a percent between a second ago and right now. In the slowly swelling mastery that you can feel like gravel under your boots, like calluses on your hands. Perhaps one day there will be time to pause and reflect, to cash in and see what lucre or fame might be awarded. But they’ve little to do with right now.
You carve the line deep and true. And when it’s reach reached its vertex, you turn the tablet and you set the chisel. You squint your eyes and you purse your lips and with that hammer, the handle worn smooth in your practiced hand, you give a little whack. You watch the first flake curl and fall to the ground.