Contained within the Tarot are many esoteric and spiritual secrets. Most of these are hidden behind symbol and allegory within the 22 cards of the Major Arcana but there are themes woven into the Minor Arcana cards that hold many secrets of life.
By looking at the Minor Arcana card Four of Pentacles, it becomes possible to decipher esoteric secrets related to the manifestation of money and the process of creating financial security. In this article, I reveal the secrets behind this card and how you can use them to dramatically improve your life.
The Energy of Money
The right to become rich and materially secure is a birthright given to each and every one of us. It might not appear to be the case if you have led a life of hardship, poverty and restriction but natural law confirms this to be the case! Money is the expression of energies that play through us. During our lifetime, we can consciously choose the energies that we wish to express. Spiritual people tend to concentrate upon the realization of more altruistic endeavours which is great except that in doing so, their actions tend to filter them out of more earthy manifestations. The result is that many spiritual people are as materially impoverished as many material people are spiritually. Nevertheless, becoming rich still remains a very viable option for any of us once we understand the nature of money-power and how to we can utilise it to manifest all of our material dreams.
The Godfather of Tarot
When A. E. Waite initially crafted his universally popular Tarot deck he did so from a perspective drawn from his initiation into the mysteries of occultism. However, the deeper arcane aspects of his magickal philosophy are not evident in the pictorial imagery of the 78 cards he designed. For a number of reasons that are too complex to go into here he did end up creating a Tarot deck which as good as it is appears to be fairly superfluous in its context. The images are bold, the colours even bolder and much of the imagery appears to be somewhat overly simplistic.
Do not be fooled by this for despite the populist nature of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck there are secrets encoded into them which when understood properly can unlock within us a deeper understanding of the mysteries of life.
The Four of Pentacles is one such example of these hidden, spiritual gems.
In the case of this card, the secrets encased within it relate to money, the secrets of manifestation and the environments best suited for the creation of material security.
A. E. Waite and the Cabbala
Arthur Edward Waite (October 2, 1857 – May 19, 1942) was an expert in the field of the Jewish Cabbala. Indeed, he wrote one of the seminal treatises on the subject in 1929: The Holy Kabbalah. The foundations of the Kabbalah is the Tree of Life – a sacred glyph that unifies and underpins the Western Mystical Tradition of which Waite was an exponent and which formed a central tenet to his Tarot philosophy. The Tree of Life is centered around 10 spheres of energy and twenty-two paths that connect them. Both these numbers play pivotal roles in the structure of the Major Arcana (22 cards) and the Minor Arcana (10 cards per suit).
The Tree of Life determines the descent of power, or energy, from the highest spiritual planes down through a succession of increasingly dense spheres until that energy becomes manifest on the physical plane. This returns us to the subject of money, which is little more than the solidification of one particular type, or frequency of Universal energy. This particular dynamic is related to the Power of the Earth and in the Minor Arcana is represented by the suit of Pentacles, Coins or Disks.
The Stages of Manifestation
Now, in Qabbalistic philosophy, any energy emerging from the Godhead or Universal Source, does not even begin to appear to manifest until it has reached the fourth stage in its descent. In the Tree of Life this is commonly known as the Sphere of Chesed.
This brings us to the Four of Pentacles which is THE card to represent the manifestation of the energy of money. Whenever it appears in a Tarot Reading you can easily identify the issues, challenges or problems that surround your question about wealth.
Great! That’s fine as far as it goes.
What Waite has actually done though is to take this revelation about money a stage further. Wrapped up in the pictorial imagery on the four of Pentacles is the very process by which money can specifically be brought into physical manifestation by any spiritual student with the keys to unlock the understanding of this process.
A E Waite was such a member of those initiated into the arcane secrets of personal wealth wealth using Natural Law. Later when he came to develop his own Tarot cards; a deck that has become the most popular Tarot deck the world has ever known, he took the opportunity to encode some of these mysteries of money and wealth in one card in particular – namely, the Four of Pentacles.
Lord of Earthly Power
The Mystical Order of the Golden Dawn was a late-19th century occult society which A. E. Waite was initiated into in January 1891. The society was structured upon graded initiations that led the student up a ladder of personal magickal attainment. It was, and probably still is, the most important occult society of the past 150 years.
Tarot formed an important part of the Golden Dawn system for it was believed to be the most important divination system of its time.
As we know, Waite went on to become the most important figure in this movement making the Tarot popular to a wider, non-occult audience. The title that the Golden Dawn gave to the Four of Pentacles was ‘Lord of Earthly Power’ which very succinctly sums up its elemental attributes. In the images that Waite used for his interpretation of this card, he shows a man who is clearly of some financial standing in the community, who is seated and surrounded by four disks. In the background of this seated figure, there is a dense urban landscape which the viewer is led to believe forms the power-base for the man’s material wealth.
Many Tarot writers and commentators interpret this card purely upon its face value; however, it actually works on a much deeper level.
The Esoteric Process of Wealth Creation
Today, the idea that the universe is underpinned by an all-pervading power is becoming increasingly popular. This universal power is understood to be benevolent and that human consciousness can tap into it.
While it is true that through the advent of Quantum Physics this theory is becoming increasingly provable, the ancient mystics have know about this energy for thousands of years. The Golden Dawn also understood this to be a fact as indeed have all Qabbalists who established the Tree of Life glyph around the process of drawing down universal power into increasingly dense spheres of energy.
In the Qabbalistic teachings, the universal power enters the system through the first sphere, or Sephiroth. This sphere is commonly known as the ‘Crown‘.
Returning to our ‘man of means’ in Waite’s Tarot card, you will see that he is in fact wearing a headpiece that has all the form and structure of a regal crown. This is odd because he is clearly not a member of a royal house. It must, therefore, mean that this symbol is used to represent the Qabbalistic Sepiroth rather than acting as a symbol of inherited Kingship. The ‘Crown’ in this context also indicates this point of entry for the universal power.
It is also a location that resides within the aura, or electromagnetic, field of each one of us. Psychics position it at a point just inches above the top of our heads – which, as it so happens, is exactly the place where it appears in Waite’s Tarot card.
Waite clearly understood that the creation of material wealth is directly attributable to the establishment of a personal psychic connection to a Universal Power and is then in turn drawn directly down through our psycho-spiritual centres or chakras.
The Centres of Manifestation
The Crown centre might well be the point at which energy enters our lives but it is not the end of the process. In order to turn the potentially of wealth into a physical reality two more processes need to occur.
In the Four of Pentacles the figure of the man also has a circle of power below his crown. It is supported by the hands of the wealthy entrepreneur at a position central to his upper chest area. In exactly the same way that the Crown pentacle relates directly to a chakra so does this second one. The centre that it directly relates to is commonly called the Solar Plexus.
The Solar Plexus relates directly to our heart centre. It corresponds to our ability to love, create and nurture. It is generally attributed to the Sun and has close correspondences to Gold – the greatest symbol of material wealth known to man. What part does the heart centre play in creating wealth? Well, the power that enters our system via the Crown centre is little more than energy. It has no real characteristics and so we need to personalise its qualities. This is done through our heart centres and through the imposition upon the energy of our dearest hopes, dreams, desires, loves and emotional expectations.
In other words, the heart centre ‘colors’ the energy that enters our system and forces it to begin to solidify it the form that we choose. It’s a little like a potter who takes a piece of lifeless clay and through his or her creative imagination turns it into a useful or beautiful piece of work.
Final Stages of Manifestation
Once energy is drawn into our system from a Universal Source and moulded into shape according to the patterns love we choose to apply to it, the flow slowly condenses, or solidifies into a state that can manifest on the physical plane. The final stage in this process is the most important for without it little that we apply ourselves to in life can result in much tangible gain unless we actually connect ourselves deeply, and directly, to the physical plane.
Sadly, this is very often the problem with spiritually inclined people for all too many of us tend to focus our consciousnesses upon the higher at the expense of the practical. So, the final stage of the process of manifestation — according to the philosophy encoded within the Four of Pentacles — is the drawing down of the power into the ‘real world’.
This brings us to the final two pentacles placed upon the body of the figure within this card. They are positioned at a most strategic point, namely under the feet and in close connection to the ground. There are a huge number of books on the market at the moment about the chakra system. They do vary a great deal in everything from the number of chakras we have through to the function these point of power perform.
What has concerned me for many years is that next to none of them actually identify major chakras in the feet. I simply do not understand this for having done a great deal of chakra work as well as having spent some time with spiritual healing I have found not only that these centres exist but that they are both prominent and extremely important. I guess that their lack of inclusion in the writings of so many spiritual people is another example of how disconnected students of the mystical and spiritual arts actually are.
Anyway, within the context of the process of manifestation, it is so important that we remain strongly connected to the earth through either, or preferably both, of these two feet centres. They each form the final stage in the process of grounding Universal Power into our lives and into our physical realities.
Conclusion
Arthur Edward Waite did a wonderful job at encoding these wealth creation secrets into the Four of Pentacles. Through his understanding of the human aura and the knowledge that our bodies can act as conduits to modify and focus power, he revealed a most remarkable process which he wanted to share with the world … but only to those who would choose not to abuse this knowledge!
On a purely practical level, it is easy to integrate this four-chakra process of manifestation into any spiritual work. Use it in guided meditations by visualising the energy firstly being drawn into your Crown chakra, then down further into your heart before finally it drops into your feet and the earth. The process is strongly enhanced if you focus upon sending out strong feelings of material well-being via the channel of perusing the things you love in life.
The posibilities for work with the secrets of The Four of Pentacles are endless and we have just scratched the surface of their potential in this article. However, I hope this guide has given you inspiration to explore this card’s secrets for yourself.