Tarot thoughts: the 8 of Pentacles and COVID-19

Generally speaking, my basic interpretation of the 8 of Pentacles is about undergoing a slow process of transformation that is based upon an embodied experience of learning, growth and change of time. It's the opposite of a movie montage, where you get to just breeze your way through to the end. This is about moving through every second of your 10,000 hours, before you become a master. Much of this interpretation stems from Pamela Coleman-Smith's illustration, which shows a figure hard and work, hammering out their pentacles. And this is a beautiful interpretation that has a lot of to offer. But when we start to think about 8 of Pentacles at the macro-level, a whole new perspective opens up.

Let's break the card down into its component parts.

Eight is the number of transformation. It closely resembles an infinitely loop 8, the continuous cycle of life, death and rebirth. It's a magical number, representing our connection to the divine. In the minor arcana, 8s represent the final transformation you undergo in order to step into the full magic and potential of the suit. If 9s are the culmination, 8s are the step across the threshold. Lindsay Mack talks about how we never leave an 8 the same way we went in. We transformed by them. This can be an internal transformation or an external transformation, but it is always a transformation.

My interpretation of the Pentacles is heavily influenced by Lindsay Mack's teaching of the Pentacles as being the work our soul is meant to do in this world. We are eternal beings who incarnate into specific lived, embodied realities, and whose souls are meant to do specific work during their lifetimes. This "work" doesn't need to be career or jobs. Your work can be to be an amazing listen who is always there to support your friends, or someone who knows just the right meal to cook to make someone feel better.

The Pentacles represent all forms of the physical, embodied, material world. Sure, they can represent money, resources, material goods, homes and structures. But mostly they represent the interaction between spirit and material.

And so, when I think about the 8 of Pentacles in the context of COVID-19, I see how we are being asked to radically transform our relationship to everything about how we live our lives: how we make our money, how we care for our bodies, how we live in our homes, and how we live out our soul's purpose while we are alive and in this material world.

So many people are facing huge physical, emotional and financial stress and uncertainty. This pandemic is revealing the cracks and fissures that are deeply embedded in our society: the structural inequality that values certain lives (able-bodied, "productive", wealthy, white, cis) over other lives (people with disabilities and chronic illness, the working class, people of colour and queer & trans folks). People are dying because of chronically underfunded public services, and private health care, and corporate lobbyists. If we are going to make it through this, we must transform every single thing about how we live our lives. And while we are radically transforming how we live and work, why not transform the structures that create those inequalities in the first place?

The 8 of Pentacles is so much more than just about our own mastery of a craft, our own personal achievement. It's a card of revolution. It's a card of changing fucking everything, because it's not working anymore and we need to do something else. It's a card about being resourceful and innovative out of sheer necessity and will power.

Right now, we all have a choice. The 8 of Pentacle is happening around us. We can't escape; it's already started. So how are you going to react? What are you going to allow to be transformed? What opportunities does this open up for you to step forward and take up beautiful, aligned space?