Me again ;) and I have trouble with the 7 and 8 of Coins/Pentacles. They both seem very much the same: both about effort paying off, patience and taking the long view, getting rewards but there being still further to go, stick-at-it. I even muddle them at first glance and mistake which one has turned up!
Lately they are turning up quite often and of course when they both appear in a reading they need to be distinguished, each to convey its own message. They're cards I need to work on to get the concept(s!) clearer in my head anyway. Some people write about them as quite negative in meaning while others take them more positively: rewards, versus not there yet.
I've been working with the Universal Waite (as it was in the house anyway - from years ago) until today when the Gilded Tarot arrived that I ordered :) and these two are quite different in this deck. The Seven shows a woman by a tree bearing 'fruit' Pentacles, clearly about reaping the rewards of work, clearly about not-yet. The Eight looks like a student.
Makes me think of an idea - can't remember where I came across it - that the pip cards go up in threes, each group a beginning-middle-end of learning: material, social, spiritual (something like that). So the 7 Coins would be the start of a spiritual 'course of learning' and the 8 would be its peak, leading to the 9. Unless the groups are 2-3-4, 5-6-7, 8-9-10... I need to look that idea up again! The 7 certainly looks more like an end and the 8 a beginning, in the Gilded deck.
(Come to think of it that idea may have been on the Gaian Tarot website... don't take my word for it though!)
Still working on getting my sig working so I'll sign off:
MandMaud :D
Last edited by MandMaud; 05/14/12 09:57 AM.