I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, focused on launching a writing and advisory business around personal finance for GenXers. I’m blogging here daily to track my progress. In Thursday Thinker, I share a smart idea or theory.
Yesterday I did a Tarot reading and drew one of my favorite cards for my course of action: the Nine of Pentacles.
From Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack, on the Nine of Pentacles:
As material cards Pentacles deal with success and what it means in a person’s life…. Her hand rests on the Pentacles, her thumb hooks on a grapevine. Awareness is one of the card’s basic meanings, especially self-awareness and the ability to distinguish what matters in life, what goals truly demand our best efforts. The card signifies success—but not simply the material benefits; it means as well the sense of certainty that comes with knowing one has made the right choices and followed them with the necessary actions. The pentacles growing on the bushes symbolize a life that is productive and alive.
‘Success’ here means not so much wordly achievement as success in ‘creating’ ourselves out of the material given us by the circumstances and conditions of our life. And ‘certainty’, in its strongest sense, means more than looking back and seeing that we have done the right thing. It also means the ability to know where others can only guess….
The woman stands alone in her garden. To achieve what she has, she has had to give up normal companionship. In readings, this symbolism does not mean that the card inevitably advises giving up a relationship; but it does call for self-reliance and a certain loneliness in pursuit of goals.
I used ChatGPT to interpret the cards I pulled as well. Here’s what it said about the Nine of Pentacles as course of action:
The Nine of Pentacles encourages you to trust your accumulated wisdom and resources—and to lean into a lifestyle and livelihood that is autonomous, cultivated, and richly self-directed. This isn’t the card of someone clocking in at a corporate job. It’s the card of someone who has built a beautiful garden and now lives within it. That garden might be literal (your home), creative (your art, podcast, books), or financial (your investments, eventual inheritance).
The advice here is:
- Own your independence. You’ve built something solid already—financially, intellectually, creatively.
- Focus on creative, deliberate cultivation. The Nine isn’t about hustle, it’s about aligned effort in a well-chosen domain.
- You don’t need to panic or scramble. Instead of reacting to fear (e.g., rushing into another tech job), respond to confidence and purpose.
If you want to build a financial business or write a book—this card says: yes, but do it elegantly, intentionally, and with trust in your vision.
This is the same message I’ve been hearing from the universe again and again: no need to rush, prioritize alignment over productivity, work from interest don’t constrain your attention out of a sense of deprivation.