Shapeshifting with the Two of Pentacles
As we welcome the autumnal equinox on September 22, 2024, we are also poised between two eclipses, the lunar eclipse in Pisces that happened on September 17 and the solar eclipse in Libra coming up on October 2. Last eclipse season we looked at The Hanged Man, and the period of waiting and stillness in between eclipses. This time around, I’m drawn to the Two of Pentacles and the sense of perpetual motion.
In this card, a figure holds two pentacle coins, loosely bound together in a lemniscate, or infinity loop. Is the person awkwardly attempting to balance the coins, or are they gracefully juggling them in a dance? Either way, the figure is intuiting a rhythm needed to keep everything in motion as it materializes in the physical world (Pentacles). The Two of Pentacles is an instructive metaphor for the wobbly time between eclipses, when nothing feels quite settled, the coins behaving like two phases of the moon. But what I find most intriguing about this card is the water beyond, its waves crested with ships. This brings a message of fluidity to the Earth element, a sense that something is being formed and kneaded into shape, perhaps drawn to the surface by the eclipse energy. Change is inherent to this process.
The waves we see in the card have no obvious beginning or end point and exist timelessly. Just as rivers, streams, and brooks do not worry about reaching the ocean, all bodies of water simply move, knowing they are part of a continuum. They do not worry about running off and seeping into another terrain, or evaporating along the way. The are always part of the same totality of water that has ever and will ever exist on Earth. A thrumming simultaneity of being. And yet when water shape shifts into ice, to flakes of snow, we see how individual, how utterly one of a kind is each drop.
All changes the Earth makes— in land formation, weather, water distribution— are intuited. A shift here, more heat and pressure there. It intuits when to give and when to take back, when to shelter and when to protect itself. People are no different. We intuit our surroundings and translate them into behavior, like the Two of Pentacles translates the energetic potential of the Ace of Pentacles into tangible form. When we are conscious of how the internalization of our surroundings affects our behaviors—that deeply personal, intricate process—then we are in control, whether it be an awkward balancing act, or a well rehearsed dance.
“The Elements
In my fantasy
water will make way for the earth
that will listen
as I conjure collapse,
the landslide
of air between my fingers.”
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