Eight of Pentacles: The Comfort of the Ordinary

I most often read this card as a warning against succumbing to mindless drudgery. If that thing you’re doing has lost its passion, it’s time to take a step back and re-evaluate.

Today, though, as I meditated on the cards — also called ‘mulling it over’ — I had a different perspective. Though we often complain about them, routine, patterns, predictability are not bad things. Years ago, a friend, who was going through a difficult break-up, said, “I remember being bored. I remember complaining about being bored. I wish I could be bored now!!” She was experiencing the reality of the old curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

Does that ring true for you? I suspect so. Many of us, after this past year, are actively yearning for some routine and predictability.

The value of predictability, routine, pattern. That is the idea that came to me, as I considered the card this morning.

When I choose the card of the month, I use the RWS deck (far right in the picture). Then I rummage around my small collection of other decks to find other cards for the picture at the top of the post. When I saw the 8 of Pentacles of the Osho Zen Tarot (second from right), I knew I had to include it.

The Osho Zen is a very different deck than the typical RWS-based decks. While it has the same basic format as the RWS, it renames the suits, so in this case, Pentacles is now ‘Rainbow’, has strikingly different imagery, and it gives each card a name. The Eight of Rainbows is … “Ordinariness”.

Once upon a time, we might have seen ‘ordinary’ as second-rate. The ho-hum default, against which other things — spontaneity, excitement, new ideas — shine much more brightly. Those are the things we want and value in life! Who wants an ‘ordinary’ life?

I am thinking that these days, the answer to that question is All of Us. With vaccines rolling out at a great rate, ‘ordinary’ is within reach … even though it may not be exactly the old one. We see it approaching, and we’re impatient!

Extraordinary times highlight the value in the Ordinary. Here’s the encouragement: even in extraordinary times, we can achieve ‘ordinary’.

How? By attending to the tasks in front of us. Every day, we do certain things the same. We get up, we shower, we make our wake-up beverage of choice, we eat. That’s ordinary. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s important. We need it.

Some of us, in this time of uncertainty, have let the ordinary slip. Some aren’t getting dressed, some spend the day in pajamas, some have stopped exercising, begun eating more junk food, drinking a little more than before. Because they can’t get out with friends for a coffee, some stop contacting friends at all.

A little lounging about in your jammies and enjoying some solitude is a good thing. Months of it are not. A break in routine can be a relief. Utter lack of routine has us rootless.

The Eight of Pentacles is encouraging us to relish, and return to, all the ‘ordinary’ we can find. Savour it. Push your roots down into it. Immerse yourself in comforting, everyday, normal tasks, and see the healing there. We can’t control circumstances, but we can always control how we respond.

This month, let’s respond by grounding ourselves in the comfort of Ordinary.