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Six of Coins: Reciprocity and Hills

Above: Six of Coins, Tarot of Marseille by Jodorowsky/Camoin

The word ‘reciprocity’ resonates, for me, with the number six in Tarot. Community, give-and-take, fairness; an act of appreciation for something that has given so much to us. In the Marseille Tarot, it looks as if a mirror has been placed right in the centre-horizon of the card, reflecting the top half to the bottom, or vice versa. If I’m thinking about Nature – and really pushing my imagination – the smooth triangular shape that the top three coins create might represent a smooth hill or mountain. At the bottom of the card is the mirror of this formation.

What is in the mirror of a hill?

You are.

I am in awe of hills, but I don’t need to climb them very often. It is enough for me to see them from afar, to gaze into the uniqueness of each one, the way this one curves or that one spikes in the distance; wild bumpy platforms of the Earth itself.

From the back of my garden, I see one in the distance: Carnethy Hill. In the grand scheme of hills and mountains, she is a baby, just short of mountain status. Still, she is domineering enough to instruct the skyline despite being more than ten miles away. I watch the Sun set behind her in the summer: the sky turns white, blue or pink depending on the conditions, or sometimes it becomes a swirl of these colours, each one drifting into the other like a soft dream. A swallow or a bat might dash in front of my vision as I peep over the low wall, momentarily obscuring the hill from my vision, all sense of scale disappearing with the daylight. There are no other buildings to be seen over the wall, just small green hillocks, distant trees and … that hill, small and black in the vast universe.

Above: not the view from my garden, but from up the road on an Autumn day: the Pentland Hills with Carnethy Hill in the centre.

Carnethy Hill mesmerises me so much that I once had to camp next to it. I didn’t even climb it, I just wanted to be closer to its domineering yet friendly presence, to see how it felt close-up. I pitched a tent at its base and took some simple walks around it as the summer evening got darker. (One of the things I love about Scotland is the right to camp pretty much anywhere in public without permission.) I perched upon on low stone walls in the barren hills, reading Scottish folktales whilst sheep bleated and nightingales sang, occasionally bowing to the rising lump of earth without caring to step upon it. The famous Zen author D.T Suzuki once said that that mountains are not to be conquered, but to be befriended. I agree. And so I have made friends with Carnethy Hill.

I have no plans to be cremated – I want a natural burial with little energy spared – but if I did, I would want my ashes to be scattered on a hill. Perhaps Carnethy Hill would be the location, but to be honest, any of the locals ones would do, anything in the Southern Uplands. I sometimes see myself when I look at the hill, when I am being-not-thinking. I see the Earth, and I am the Earth. Truly, what are we if we are not the Earth? We are just the Earth moving about, surely, the Earth become animate, the Earth throwing one leg in front of another to stop itself from landing on its face. The hill may seem inanimate to our eyes, yet it is moving and changing, slowly, over millennia. Nothing stays still on Earth, absolutely nothing.

That formation of (almost-but-not-quite) mountains, the Pentland Hills, frames the west side of of Edinburgh like a friendly team of grown-ups watching over a nursery of children. Many people’s ashes are scattered up there, people who found peace and inspiration in those green heights, looking back down over the gothic city of Edinburgh or in the other direction, over the miles of hilly openness that makes up the Scottish Borders. I wonder how many people have given their bodies back to the Pentland Hills in this way? Just like the hills gave so much to them during their lifetime? How many ashes make up that soil there, as I watch Carnethy Hill my garden wall? How many of them watched it from afar during their lives, just as I do now as the Sun is setting? Hunters and gatherers, and scientists, too? The hills became people, and then the people become hills. Six coins may be depicted in this card, but perhaps they are just the same three coins mirrored back to each other.

Above: Six of Pentacles in the Waite-Smith Tarot

The RWS Tarot shows a man balancing a set of scales whilst dropping coins down to beggars on the street. The power disparity is grotesque. Perhaps, however, we can view the central human in the card as the Earth (Pentacles/Coins represent the suit of Earth, after all); we become the vulnerable begging folks who can only survive on what it is kind enough to offer. Looking at the card in this light, we might see another side to it altogether.

That’s all for now, friends. Thank you for being here – and please check out my Therapeutic Tarot Sessions 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, Stephen.

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