Murder

And the Page of Pentacles

Today I encountered the following quote from Gilbert Arenas that certainly seems appropriate to this moment:

“When I hear about people murdering, I wonder, What has to go through your brain to say, I don't want him breathing anymore? What makes you get that angry? How can you take someone's breath away? That just blows my mind.”

I shuffled my Tarot deck while contemplating the quote, and drew the Page of Pentacles.

Page of Pentacles

Two things immediately jump out at me as I contemplate this Page. The first of course that he is the Page of Pentacles, the Suit of Earth. The material world, material things. Money and all that money implies.

Secondly, that the Pages are immature. Unseasoned. Lacking in experience of life.

Undoubtedly we all know people who live badly unbalanced lives, particularly unbalanced lives with a complete or nearly complete focus on money and the acquisition of material things.

There is of course nothing wrong with financial success, it is one of the ways that we can take care of ourselves, our loved ones, and indeed others around us. But the drive towards the material has to be balanced with all of the other important aspects of life. For if we focus only on the material, we lack proper perspective and come to believe that what we experience here on earth is all that there is, all that we are. That in turn makes us believe that those we see in opposition to us are much more important to our full experience of existence than they truly are. We magnify what we see as their slights of us.

If we are unable to recognize that we are all a part of a much larger whole, that there is much more to us than what we experience in this mundane world each day, well then clearly that makes it easier for us to see others as some sort of enemy.

Experience and maturity certainly play roles as well. As we age we begin to see slights or insults that may have felt extremely personal and hurtful to us when we were young as meaningless in actuality.

We begin to see our own faults and failings with more clarity, and this in turn helps us to better understand the faults of others. We learn the power of forgiveness.

And I think, if we truly take the time and expend the effort to explore our inner worlds, we begin to see that there is much more to our existence than meets the eye. We begin to recognize the importance of balance, and the overriding importance of spirit.

We learn to, hopefully, moderate our extremes, and allow our higher selves, our spiritual selves, to come to rule our baser instincts.

But our Page of Pentacles is young. Immature. Perhaps overly focused on the material.