Cards for the Day: Queen of Cups/7 of Pentacles: Emotional Balance Helps Lead to Physical Balance

The Queen of Cups has been showing up lately — and we are always delighted to see her. She shows us that emotional depths don’t have to be stormy or troubled, no matter what they contain — even an ocean of emotion can be calm, still, and present — even meditative. Civilized. Like a cup of tea!

Along with the Queen, we have the Seven of Pentacles, in a posture of physical balance: yoga’s Scorpion pose. The Seven of Pentacles is traditionally represented by a farmer leaning on a hoe and gazing at his garden, and tends to symbolize reaping a harvest after months of long work, or considering how best to nurture the garden for the future. Or, sometimes, a crossroad, reached after long hard work, and an assessment of how it’s gone.

Together, these two cards show us that emotional balance can bring us physical balance and can improve our physical health. This isn’t so hard to understand. When we are emotionally balanced, we eat right and exercise, take care of ourselves, keep healthy routines going. When we are emotionally unbalanced, we become disorganized and play a day-to-day game of emotional catch-up, eating junk food or fast food mostly, or not eating at all, and letting exercise fall out of our schedule as we try to make more time to get things done. Emotional balance also helps us to work on spiritual balance (notice the purple, crown chakra-colored background of the Seven of Pentacles?). And it helps us to achieve balanced communication (see the blue, throat chakra-colored background on the Queen of Cups card?), even in the midst of an impending Mercury retrograde. Moreover, it helps us work through blocks in the second chakra (notice where the color orange appears on both cards): emotional issues connected with creativity, relationships, sexuality, and with physical challenges associated with the second chakra area: digestion, reproduction, the kidneys and adrenals, the lower back.

Of course, you’re thinking, emotional balance is great, but it’s easier said than accomplished. How are we supposed to get there? There is an answer on each of these cards: the Queen of Cups advises meditation, while the Seven of Pentacles advises thoughtful perseverance and commitment. In other words, it’s not easy and it takes time. But there is a whole spiritual technology dedicated to making this easier for us. Think about the most spiritual people you know. What tools do these people use to stay in balance? What tools do you use? Please comment below, and stay tuned, as I’m planning a post or two on spiritual technology for staying in balance.

Meanwhile, there is also another, more prosaic interpretation for these cards. Are you just finishing several months of hard work on something? Are you considering the next steps to take, and what direction you want to go in for the future? Get some advice from your mother, or if not her, from your spiritual mothers — the older woman or women in your life who have stood by you and supported you, and who are usually pretty shrewd when it comes to assessing matters at a crossroads. You don’t have to do what they tell you, but at least ask them what they think.