Hello and welcome to my Tiny Tarot Practice. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and this podcast documents my journey learning the cards of the tarot, starting with the Minor Arcana and going

suit by suit through them all. This episode is about the King of Pentacles, and it's the final episode in our Pentacles series. If you're listening linearly, although if you've just popped in for for this one, welcome.

I love to listen like a little card pull at certain times or in certain days.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith edition of the Tarot, the King of Pentacles features a person seated on a throne.

They're kind of directly in front of us. So we're seeing the front of them. They have a scepter in one hand, a pentacle in the other. They're kind of holding it propped up on their knee, but looking elsewhere.

They're definitely in nature, but we see a castle behind them and they look pretty content, on my read at least.

Often the King of Pentacles is read as a card like a successful business person or like a professional.

Like you've come into professional success and you feel as if you've sort of like mastered your domain. And I think that can certainly be one reading of this card,

But as I was feeling into it, and to it for this episode, I was reminded of something that Rachel Pollock says in 78 Degrees of Wisdom in the introduction to all of the Pentacles.

And there she says, "'We ground ourselves not just in our work, "'but in a love for the world around us.'" And I think here, you know, the King of Pentacles isn't simply like that successful professional.

It's also someone who, through their own individuation, has come to have a deep love for the world around them. The natural world, the human world, not the humans are separate from the natural world, we're certainly a part of it.

And the material world, I guess more broadly, That's what I mean.

And so for me, the King of Pentacles is the final step on some of the journeys I've been talking about over the course of the Pentacles. We talked about the page of Pentacles as learning, the King,

the Knight of Pentacles as practice, the Queen of Pentacles as integration, and the King of Pentacles as being. That moment where I think the King can seem relaxed, content, restful,

in the sense that their values are so deeply integrated, they just are who they are now.

Their behavior is one with their values. The queen, I think it's still flowing, it's still integrating, it feels very active. With the king, we get more in that, in my mind,

is sort of passive state where something becomes second nature. Nature becomes second nature with.

The king, not through the process of indoctrination and dogmatism that we find in our culture where certain narratives are forced into us, but with the king, we see one's own self-selected values,

become second nature. And I'm aware that this kind of flips some more gendered readings of the cards on their head, right? Where queens are seen as passive and kings are seen as active. But I think that's very gendered. I'm not really interested in that. I think of, again, the queen is that.

That active moment of integration, where things are flowing through and around and among and between, and everything is finally starting.

The actions and the values are aligning. It's a very active moment. Everything's like kind of locking into place, and the king is where that nature has become second nature, that self-selected nature, those self-selected values have become second nature.

And I think it also represents this moment I talked about with the page of Pentacles, where if the 10 in our journey from the ace or the two to the 10, with the 10 we saw that wealth,

is always within the context of community.

And then I mentioned that the page is kind of perhaps a moment of stepping from that deep immersion in community into another level of individuation.

But here with the king, we see that we've gone back to community again, right? The king is immersed in nature and loves nature loves nature and is embedded in that communal context.

And so I love the way the tarot gives us these opportunities to.

Journey among and between self and community to see those as like separate boundary things and is really permeable overlapping integrated things. And this card, I think, is where we get to that moment that that sort of finishing of the suit. We've gone through multiple journeys of individuation and immersion and community.

And here we see that second nature becoming nature and what a blissful moment it can be.

I also really enjoy Rachel Pollock's reflection in 78 Degrees of Wisdom that I think's relevant to that moment, the finishing I just talked about.

She describes how if the fool is the first card of the minor arcana, the pentacles are often seen as kind of the final, the last suit of the,

sorry, the fool is the first card of the major arcana and the pentacles are seen as the last suit of the minor arcana.

And so the fool is the first card and the king of pentacles then would be the final card if we think of it linearly, but she points out, if you think of the tarot as a circle,

starting with the fool going all the way through the major arcana, all of the miners into the pentacles and all the way to the king, then the fool and the king of pentacles are actually touching as the two points of the circle, right?

Line wraps all the way into a circle. And so I think then there's this beautiful moment where the King of Pentacles has this bliss of like the integration of personal values with second nature an individual with community.

And that, once again, is the fool, right? The fool is both that sort of naiveté of the not knowledge and also, I think, the culmination of all of the knowing, spiritually, energetically,

emotionally, physically. I have other li's. We see both. I love the tarot for its bothness. I I love the way that the cards weave in and out,

and the edges make the center and the center makes the edges and it's just a really beautiful reminder.

Of the double sidedness, the multiple sidedness of life. If you happen to be listening to this episode on the day it comes out or the week it comes out, we are at the start of a brand new year.

And for me, I'm taking this as an invitation for the King of Pentacles to guide my year ahead.

Thank you so much for listening to my tiny tarot practice. As always, all of the books and thinkers I referenced here today, you can find their works in my bookshop, which is in the show notes.

I've also curated some really fantastic decks and journals and puzzles and all sorts of things there for tarot lovers and those of us looking to deepen our relationship to the tarot, the world,

spirit, the divine, whatever it is to you, a deeper, more examined life, perhaps. If, again, you're listening to this in real time, this episode will start a pause for the podcast as as we end the Pentacles season.

I can't promise when we'll be back for a new season, but I look forward to being in your earbuds now and in the future and exploring the tarot even further together.

Much love and many blessings. Bye for now.