Seven of Coins: Growing
Above: Seven of Coins from the Metanoia Marseille Tarot.
One of my earliest memories of awe comes from childhood. At school, we had been asked to grow beans in a jar; I can’t remember what kind of beans they were (kidney, I think) but the memory of their growth spurts pressing against the side of the jar stays with me for life. How was that happening? What was causing the beans to grow? Did I help this amazing process along? It was simple awe of life itself as I peered with tiny hands over the kitchen workshop at the jar on that windowsill. I’m grateful to my teachers for that lovely task.
Seven of Coins in the Tarot de Marseille is one of my favourite cards in the entire deck. Such classy simplicity. A seed sprouts and grows upwards between four coins. It finds a target coin and wraps its leaves around it, singling it out, making a choice. When this card appears, we might consider what we are growing in life. What are we singling out as important? But on a literal, Nature-connection level (which, of course, is what this blog is all about), perhaps we are being asked to watch the slow growth of something young, to take time to allow the awe that I discovered as a child, watching the kidney beans sprouting, back into our lives.
Above: Seven of Pentacles from the Waite-Smith Tarot.
This is one of the rare cards in the Marseille pips that seems to have a similar energy to its Waite-Smith equivalent – usually they divert so much that they become entirely different Tarot systems. But here was have growth, plant life, green.
As I wrote in an earlier post, I am coming to recognise the genius 1990s Osho Zen Tarot as a Tarot system in its own right, up there with the Marseille, Waite-Smith and Thoth. Interestingly, the image for the Seven of Rainbows (Coins/Pentacles equivalent) once again holds a similar energy to both the Marseille and the Waite-Smith.
In the Osho Zen, a pregnant woman sits beneath the changing moon phases. Look at her face … she is in bliss as she grows her own human seed, holding her body gently, oozing love for the child she has been growing inside of herself. Her hair becomes colourful flowers, as if reminding us of our similarities with saplings, with plant life, with the other-than-human.
As I stood in awe peering up at the kitchen ledge, where my kidney beans grew, perhaps this is what my awe was all about. I was just a sapling myself, really. I couldn’t have been older than seven. I knew nothing about life other than that I loved it, that animals were magical, majestic beings, and that this little kidney bean sprouting was a miracle. But perhaps deep down I was in awe of the miracle of myself, too.
Above: Seven of Rainbows from the Osho Zen Tarot.
And so I come back to these three images now – the Marseille, the Waite-Smith and the Osho Zen – and marvel at how three decks which usually tell three very different stories (at least in the pip cards) remind me of this miracle of young growth. In their own ways, they all remind me to take this connection to the literal level. Grow something precious, or help something vulnerable to live. Yes, right now I see a plant of wild grasses growing in front of me, in a little pot on my Buddha altar, and I remember why it is there; a reminder when I meditate that a miracle is always here, now, with every breath that I take. Perhaps I will sit and meditate quietly with the plant later, giving it all of my focus.
Perhaps you can do the same, with the inspiring Seven of Coins/Pentacles/Rainbows in mind.
That’s all for now, friends. Thank you for being here – and please check out my Therapeutic Tarot Sessions and my courses embracing Tarot and Nature if you’d like us to work together. You can also sign up for the Tarot Blog newsletter (different to my main newsletter) below to receive occasional email updates (roughly monthly) with the latest posts.
Smiles from Scotland,
Stephen
