~ Discovering The Wild Unknown: Mother of Pentacles ~
Today’s card draw in the Discovering the Wild Unknown series is the Wild Unknown Mother of Pentacles.
I want to start off by providing an important notice, which will be included in all of this series. However, other things that will be included that you can skip to are:
- Card Description
- Considering the Card, where I look at how I would interpret certain imagery used
- Traditional Rider-Waite definition
I only include the latter as a comparison, to show how wandering down your own understanding of images and symbols can bring you to a similar meaning, though along a different path with different experiences. This is to help expand knowledge of the card.
I will not, however, be including the definitions from the guidebook, as that is not the point of this. Also, I don’t have rights to that material.
Important Note
I started this series because I had read that people struggled with the deck purely because the definitions in the Little White Book were very Rider-Waite-based, and that there wasn’t much wisdom regarding the animals and symbolism chosen.
This series is to help you to decipher the meanings yourselves. I am by no means saying what I have to say about the cards are correct for anyone outside myself. However, I am providing my daily journal entries regarding the deck to act as a guide so that you can begin your own journey.
When I started tarot, I had no idea what to write in my journal, and thus didn’t. Instead I obsessively read and re-read the Little White Book belonging to the Spiral Tarot (which is why today I can completely quote the book). I didn’t trust myself to know the cards, even when I could recite the definitions. I was afraid to put the book down.
To this fear of lack of knowledge, Kim Krans, creator of The Wild Unknown, writes:
You do know enough. You’ve been a person on earth every day since you were born. You’ve experienced all the emotions and situations these cards depict. Quiet the naysayer…don’t let it prevent you from sitting down with a friend (or yourself) and using these cards to help talk about what’s going on in your life. It will be positive. It will be radical. You’ll find things start to reveal themselves through the cards that have been hidden away, covered with dust.
pp. 10-11, The Wild Unknown Guidebook
Description of the Wild Unknown Mother of Pentacles
The Wild Unknown Mother of Pentacles shows a doe, laying with her sleeping fawn. The fawn is curled up and snuggled against her. Despite her being her baby’s resting place, she is alert, and looks straight at the reader, her ears up. The background is purple at the bottom, with horizontal lines, and fades to blue, then green, then to yellow as it moves up the card.
Above the deer’s head is a white pentacle with a white background. The lines creating the star are white and the circle is white. The Lines creating the star are not connected, but rather, individual lines coming together, crossing over each other to create the star.
Traditional Card Meaning
The Queen of Pentacles is the card of down to steadiness, though feminine steadiness. By feminine, I mean internal and/or passive rather than external and active. She knows herself and knows how to keep herself steady, though still welcomes intuitive guidance. She can keep the balance between emotional reaction and practicality. However, if she becomes too saturated with emotion, she can be prone to depression as the earth becomes soggy, muddy, and difficult to work with. She could sink too far into it.
What I derive from the Wild Unknown Mother of Pentacles
The Wild Unknown Mother of Pentacles is calm to look at, but she’s protective like the other mothers in the Wild Unknown Tarot. She must be still and calm so that the fawn can sleep, but she must also be alert at all times. As she looks at the reader, she’s assessing. Are you dangerous, or are you just passing by? Before she’s acting and waking her baby, she’s deciding whether or not the situation calls for action. Thus, she is steady, thoughtful, grounded.
The Pentacle above her head isn’t made of a continuous white line, but instead of crossing different lines, as if they were made of sticks. This gives me the idea of nature, and creating Pentacles out of brush in the woods, which makes me think of hedge witchcraft—very old, very mindful, and simplistic.
The element of the Pentacles is Earth, and the element of the Mothers is Water. When we consider Water being poured on the Earth, we know that it nourishes all that grows there. It’s enriching. Water represents emotions, intuition and the subconscious. By applying these attributes to Earth, which has to do with the physical world, we get the essence of healing, nurturing physical growth. This can also be applied to wealth, but I feel as though this has to do more with the physical body than it does coins.
The Mother of Pentacles is a card for gardeners, healers, and Mothers, I feel.
About the Deck
The Wild Unknown Tarot is a 2016 Harper One publication, created by Kim Krans. The deck is widely available at most bookstores who carry Tarot cards, but also on Amazon. Kim Krans always wrote The Wild Unknown Guidebook.
