My experience of the Three of Disks this week was creating with my children. Families in our city were busy making versions of the Mission San Diego De Alcala for Social Studies this month. Under our roof, the youngest son was in the hot seat foraging around the house for materials. He rounded up a tiny deer and a plastic green tree, empty miniature salsa tubs as planter pots for each side of the Mission entrance and a pizza box as his cardboard base. With my daughter’s help, he fashioned the tiered bell tower. With my help, he dismantled an old pair of rusting red bell earrings and painted the bells grey. He vetoed our trip to a craft store for more bells in favor of making the remaining bells out of paper. Who knew it would work: one 3D bell on top, and the rest spinning on their tan thread anchors.

As a writer, the Three of Disks manifests as the energy and synergy that fills my inspirational well when I write daily and interact regularly with other writers. The “art for all” expression of the Three of Disks from last week’s writing prompt came in the form of dropping my own work to offer my creative love and attention to my son–not doing his project for him–but encouraging him to keep going. And to allow him his artistic methods and rhythms (keeping my mouth shut despite the Leviathan dollops of paint oozing on palette, despite the way he kept trimming the Mission walls til they were barely flanking wings). And to invite his sister in to help us, to see their two heads bent over the same table, laughing and concentrating intermittently.

Tarot Tuesday’s Prompt: The Four of Disks

The Rider Waite Smith deck depicts the Four of Disks as the miser, clutching fortune to her chest. Rachel Pollack (Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom) walks us through the placement of the four disks, noting that the figure attempts here to shield himself or herself from life. The figure’s back, however, remains vulnerable; no amount of fortune can protect us from life itself and its ups and downs.  In a softer interpretation (a bit kinder than Eden Gray’s take) Rachel Pollack states, “The card remains an image of selfishness but sometimes selfishness may be precisely what is needed.”

Fours are about stability and structure. The Thoth depiction shows an aerial view of a fortress, ringed by a moat with a sun paved road bridging over the moat and assigns the Sun in Capricorn. Angeles Arrien indicates that moat and fortress imply power within structure, boundaries; you can intepreret the four towers as four elements and how one may draw on them in relation to power.

Write about your relationship to personal power; define power and the ways in which you have experienced yourself as powerful or wishing to be powerful. In which circumstances and situations do you feel the Sun of your personal form of power coming through?

Which structures have you created or are within your power to create that would facilitate your sense of agency and potency? Make a list of events or situations in your past or in your family’s pasts you feel greater financial stability would have helped.

What fears carry forward into your management now of your finances? Address the fears singly, simply acknowledging them and giving them their due on the page. Can you call a truce with them, find a way to be at peace in the moment?

Make a list of family members or mentors you admire or respect for their manifestations of power.

Feel free to respond in comments here or to join the conversation at Tarot Tuesday’s Facebook page to share your word or image response.

Photo at top of this post is by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie. The clay houses were also made by her.