Knight of Coins

My lifes theme, these last few months, has been bees. We had two hives, but one persnickety hive kept making little queens who would swarm at inopportune times, and now we have four. Some swarms ended up too far and too high to retrieve and I imagine we are gifting them to other gardens. when possible I would collect my 17 year old from their high school and together we would gather the gather-able swarms. I had to wait to know where the swarm would land before daring to leave the house. During this time I also had my first ever therapy appointment. How did I get to be 50 and never have therapy, you ask? Did I already mention I have been surrounded by psychologists my entire life? My mother, father, step father, and step mother all have PhDs in psychology, and my step sisters all have a scattering of therapy degrees. I know ALL the lingo. I grew up with Jung in my back pocket. So someone telling me how I feel is a bit...triggering. But it's been too challenging of late. I feel like I am trading out my two awesome children (one in college and one about to go) for the chaos of my dementia addled mother. Therapy sounded good, and I got a notice that I could get 8 free zoom sessions via my health plan. So that's how I found myself, sitting on my couch, looking out at the side yard bee hive while trying to explain all this to a too young psychologist looking at me quizzically from my laptop screen. After she explained all the stipulations and boundaries and confidentiality agreements, which i already knew, there wasn't much time left for deciding if we were a good match. And then the bees decided to swarm. The sky was eclipsed by bees. I told the psychologist "My bees are swarming" and she looked at me blank faced. I think she thought it metaphorical, and truly it was that as well! For the bees were swarming in my mind. Its like a level up from monkey brain! I could no longer hear a word she said. (On a side note, the first time the hive swarmed was when I was watching the eclipse and sitting outside drawing my last painting, temperance, which thus has a little extra eclipse orbiting it).

Researching the knight of coins, or pentacles, I listened to my usual slew of podcasts and their fascinating array of takes on each card. One of my favs is Amanda Yates Garcia's Between the Worlds podcast. In episode 60 she equates the knight of coins with bees! I couldn't bee-live it! She asks "what are you pollinating, what is pollinating you?" She gives a lovely historical account on the Melissi. In the book "When the drummers were women"- the author Layne Redmond writes "bees have an ancient reputation as the bringers of order. And their hives served as models for organizing temples in many Mediterranean cultures. Priestesses at Sibyl's temples, in Asia minor, Greece, and Rome were called Melissae or Melissa, the Greek and Latin word for bees.... these priestesses were often prophets or oracles who entered an ecstatic trance, induced by preparations that included ingesting honey. The Greek word for this state of transfigured consciousness is “enthousiasmos”, 'Within is a God', the root of our word, 'enthusiasm'." Garcia says, "So we can think then of the knight of pentacles. Or the priestess of the bee goddess as an enthusiastic being who has God within them." Thank you Amanda Yates Garcia. No other tarot expert else wrote or spoke of the knight of coins in this way, and it was so synchronous with my adventure of creating this card!

Bees, understandably, swarm throughout recorded human history. In ancient Egypt, the temple of the Goddess Neith (Great Mother of the Sun) was known as the “House of the Bee.” The Melissae were nymphs who emerged from the tears of Rhea - the Mother of all gods. Rhea cried because her son, Zeus, had to be hidden from his child eating monster of a father, Chronos. Later, in gratitude, Zeus turned these nymphs into bees. In another myth, a nymph named Melissa taught humans how to care for bees and importantly, how to make mead. In gratitude Zeus named all bees Mellisa.when I finish this deck I will do a painting of Rheas' tears turning into bees! And when I make mead again I will name the batch after Melisa.

As always I pulled a second tarot card to explain where in my life I needed to consider or have an intention for the knight of coins energy. I pulled the eight of coins. ha! work work work. But my bee themed take away is to work with intention and joy! Does the busy bee enjoy it's foraging through gorgeous gardens? I'm going to anthropomorphically say yes! And this painting was dripping with busy work. My eight of coins, eight hives, my many many rendered little bees and Dalias, the crazy to paint ball of honeycomb (if the pattern doesn't work out, put a bee on it!). But still, I enjoyed the work, the work of creation smells like a honey hive. To take breaks I went up on the roof to visit the one swarm I collected alone. Like me it is small but strong, but a bit janky. I sit beside it under my magnolia tree, smelling its heady honey perfume and listening to their gentle buzz resonate in my bones. Like the Victorians, I talk to my bees. I tell them my troubles and my secrets. I will still have my eight free sessions of therapy (mostly, stupidly, because of the synchronicity with the eight- I also pulled the eight of cups for this therapist). But, I will not be surprised, if I get more out of my time spent on the roof, in the shade of the magnolia, and the steady wise wisdom of my melissae.

Four Of Cups

Temperance