Slow and Steady with the Knight of Pentacles

This is the two part transcript of The Knight of Pentacles from the Tarot Primer, written in August 2022 (week beginning 8th and 22nd)

Original Transmission

📣 All the Knights are messengers. The Knight of Pentacles (Earth) says: Go slow. And go well.

🧭The Knight is both cartographer and conscious adventurer.

👩🏼‍✈️They can map the journey between where you are now and where you want to go. They are strategic, practical and ever resourceful. They are the perfect guide and traveling companion.

🗺They value small, incremental change. Sometimes only going as far as they can see — which despite the map they carry — may only be a few steps ahead, especially when it’s more a cliff to climb, than a gentle path to wander.

🌹 They are the one who will constantly stop to savour the moment. To let you remember the delight of smelling the roses. Marvelling in the progress of a caterpillar. To watch the clouds chase a sunset.

👀 Although single-minded in their pursuit of a goal, they also respond to the ever-changing environment because they move slowly, taking care to observe as they go, and correct their path accordingly. It’s a slow considered adaption though.

🧐This slow moving knight is the space between desire and doing, where the pause is the difference between conscious choice and an unconscious reaction. Where the voice of the body comes first.

🧺The Knight asks you point blank — are you carrying exactly what you need? Do you have the resources to sustain you today, tomorrow, next month, next year?

🎒They’ll enthusiastically upend your baggage to take stock of what’s there: helping you decide what’s a yes, what’s a no, and what needs to be set aside for further consideration.

👟 After last week’s Queen of Fire, this is the perfect energy to take you forward with just enough grace, certainty, practicality and strategy to turn a spark into something more.

Redux

💨 The Knight says take a few slow belly breaths and remind yourself: Go slow. And go well.

⚡️ The Knight asks you: Do you know how to care for an overtaxed nervous system and how it distorts your experience of your body, its place in and movement through the world?

🎒 When did you start ignoring the fact your backpack is simultaneously on fire, leaking, weighed down and coming apart at the seams?

⏰ How long do you think/feel/expect to be able to continue in this fashion?

🩹 The Knight of Wands is here to help you triage the elemental distress you are carrying and calling it the every day ‘hustle’, ‘grind’, ‘stress’, ‘modern life’.

👉🏼 The Knight gently points to the promises you’ve made to yourself and broken because busyness has pushed you out of any conscious determination of the trajectory and joy of your life.

💨 The Knight says stop, just for one moment, one breath, and recognise yourself as a sovereign soul, separate and part of the ecosystem of life.

📖 Journal Prompts

Original

⁉️ Are you clear about the direction you are travelling/the path you’ve chosen? If you stop and tune into your internal compass, what do you discover?

🦶 The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. What first step do you commit to?

🥷 What impossible next step do you bravely take?

🛎 What’s chiming in from the periphery to distract you? Is it true what the voices say?

👤Which part of yourself did you give up on because they couldn’t keep up the pace? Go back and find them/ welcome them back to the trail. How does that change where you are now?

Extended prompts

⭕️ If you’re going around in circles, what’s the defining landmark that keeps catching your eye?

👀 Or what are you looking for beyond you that remains elusive.

🏎 Where have you slowed down? Where are you convinced you can’t slow down?

🎢 What’s the pay off for staying in motion at an unsustainable pace?

🗑 What have you let go in the last two weeks? How has that changed how you feel about yourself and your movement through the world?

😰 What have you been too afraid to let go?

🦶 What first step/s have you taken? Is anything difference as a consequence of that?

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