Eight of Disks (Tarot Triptych)
Name: Eight of Disks, Prudence
Number: 8
Astrology: Sun in Virgo
Qabalah: Hod of He ה
Chris Gabriel June 22, 2024
The Eight of Disks is a card of establishment, regarding both the process of establishing and the well established. It is about “finishing touches” and maintenance. This is a card of material well being, and the investment it takes to keep it growing.
In Rider, we see a wooden wall adorned with five pentacles, and a craftsman sitting on his bench, working on two more. He is engraving one of the pentacles with a hammer and chisel. In the distance we see a town.
In Thoth, we see a plant. Twisting and full of leaves, it has eight flowers as the eight disks. It is the Sun in Virgo, consciousness applied to growth. There is the golden sky of the Sun, and the earth tones of Virgo.
In Marseilles, we see two columns of four coins with flowers between them. Qabalah gives us the numerical key to its significance, eight is Hod, the intellect or Mind of God, and He ה is the Princess, or the Earth. Thus, we have the Mind of the Princess. Prudence is the Mind of the Princess.
This is the image of caring for one's belongings and maintaining things rather than letting them decay. We can look at this energy as Investment. This is the sort of investment we make by planting a seed, watering it, and giving it time to grow.
Many people who seek the wisdom of the tarot are curious about their financial situation, they want to know if they’ll come into money, lose money, find a new job, etc. Few cards indicate wealth, as wealth itself is a fickle concept that has drastically different meanings to just about everyone. Rather, this card indicates the process of growing wealth. It reminds me of a proverb, in which an old man plants seeds for trees which he will not live to see the fruit of.
The efforts that this card indicates are not swift, and may not pay off for years, but they are the very flow of the Earth. Slow, driven, and direct. This is the great vegetable intelligence.
This card offers a warning against our all too human desire for speed and effortless gain . “Get rich quick” schemes will not produce lasting wealth, and the nice things we have which we do not maintain will spoil.
Consider the idiom, a stitch in time saves nine stitches. This card is the stitch that saves.
This saying has fallen out of fashion in a society so fixated upon ease of consumption. We’d rather purchase something new than fix something old, piling up endless piles of trash rather than maintaining and developing what we possess.
When we pull this card, we are being asked to invest our time and energy into the development of our goal, whether it be as small as a stitch in our pants, polishing our boots, or as large as purchasing a house. We are meant to act with care for the things in our life. Be prudent!
