Sabbats, Seasons, and Tarot Spreads

Our weekly reading has asked us to pay attention, to focus on what’s important, to avoid petty distractions, and to understand that love and happiness are the reasons we come together to celebrate these winter holidays.

Today’s card speaks to us about how we can best live this advice. Tarot, you see, isn’t just metaphysical mumbo-jumbo and platitudes. It can offer straight-forward, practical guidance that we can put to good use.

What can we do? How can we make the most of the season?

In answer to that question, we have the 3 of Gifts. This card illustration is from the Yuletide Tarot. In other decks — such as the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot — it would be called the 3 of Pentacles.

First, what does this card traditionally mean? Standard interpretations are about teamwork, cooperation, the value of working together. Yet this card illustration shows none of those ideas. At a deeper level, the 3 of Pentacles can speak of craftsmanship, although it’s usually seen as an aspect of a shared endeavor.

Here, however, we have a woman who appears to be putting the final touches on a dollhouse. It is, no doubt, intended as a gift for some little girl. Obviously this particular card is more about craftsmanship than cooperation, so what are we to make of it?

This is a question I hear often: Am I supposed to interpret a card based on what it means? Or am I just supposed to look at what I see? Interesting questions and there are a lot of possible answers here. If we base our interpretations ONLY on “what we see”, then our understanding of any card will change depending upon what deck we might be using. And what of Tarot de Marseilles decks or other decks that have “pip cards” instead of fully-illustrated Minor Arcana cards? What can we possibly “see” in a simple image of 3 Pentacles?

The “right answer” to this interpretative question depends upon each reader. I choose to respond to what I see in a card, yet I then “filter” it through what I know about the card and its meaning. As a next step, I consider the context — the question I’m exploring, the information I’m looking for.

So, let’s look together at this 3 of Gifts, a woman crafting a special present for someone she must love dearly. And let’s consider the question we started with: What can we do to make the most of this holiday season?

The 3 of Gifts reminds us that there are people we love, people who love us in return, people who give meaning and purpose to our lives. To put it another way, much of what we do during these winter holidays isn’t about US — it’s about others.

Here we find ourselves gently being led back to those ideas of “working together” or at least “being together”. True enough, the 3 of Gifts is a card of shared experience, even though we don’t see that concept directly expressed in the illustration.

So as you go about your work and play through the rest of this week, keep this important point in mind. THE HOLIDAYS ARE ABOUT WHAT WE GIVE TO OTHERS. This doesn’t mean expensive gifts. It means gifts of time and love, gifts of affection and respect.

What do you have to give? What are you sharing with others? Give that a bit of thought, and you’ll find many meaningful ways to make the most of this beautiful time of year.