My dearest friend is a financial boddhisatva, and it’s her inspiration in my life that prompted this Pentacle Power series on this blog.  Not only does financial prowess ooze from her every pore, she has this ability to make you believe that you, too, could become monetarily enlightened.  I’m not talking about stocks and bonds and futures here.  Then again, maybe I am.  Changing your financial strategy does require stocks, bonds and futures of a certain sort.

Take STOCK. Know your financial landscape.  What comes in.  What must go out.  What is going out faster than it’s coming in.  If your bank account is leaking, the first step to avert disaster is looking for the bubbles (how many times you eat out, spend over-budget, NSF charges and so forth) that show your fiscal vessel is in trouble.

Commit to taking control and remember your word is your BOND — in this case, to yourself! Finding the problem is all well and good, but if you do nothing to fix it, you’re playing Chicken Little with yourself.  Look!  My finances suck!  My finances suck!  Trust me when I say that sticking your head in the sand leaves your ass in the air to get kicked without warning.

Your FUTURE is ultimately at stake. You don’t have to look very far to realize that the economic situation in this country is not healthy.  Without going into too much detail on this post, it’s safe to say that you should not rely on the government to take care of you in your waning years.  Pro-activity in matters related to your own fiscal security is just downright witchy.

Welcome to the beginning of the Pentacle Power series.  I’m not a financial analyst so I’ll be refraining from offering you any of that kind of advice.  The purpose of this series of blog posts is to utilize the Tarot as a teaching tool to demonstrate the lessons of financial self-responsibility and how managing your physical assets is an important part of walking a balanced pagan path.

Each Pentacle Power post will be tagged with its corresponding Tarot card.  I’ll be utilizing the card to point out lessons about managing, attracting, cultivating, and preserving your assets.  I may refer to some esoteric history and traditional card meaning, however, a good bit of the insights I offer will be simple statements about the card and images itself.  I will be utilizing the Rider-Waite deck, as it is the forefather of so many current decks in use and will post its picture with each corresponding post.

I hope you will find this somewhat unusual series helpful and inspiring to you.  As I said, my goal isn’t to tell you precisely how to become financially successful and stable, but to demonstrate that attention to this area of life is a vital part of living in balance and to encourage you to take the steps to do so.

Read about the Ace of Pentacles…

Photo by Tasa_M (via Flickr).  About the pic (from Tasa M):  “This coin-studded tree trunk is on a footpath at Hardcastle Crags in West Yorkshire.  This is a tradition based on the saying “money doesn’t grow on trees” where people hammer coins into tree trunks for good luck.  It’s also known as a Wishing Tree as each coin represents a wish, like tossing a coin into a fountain.  Although the custom is said to date back to Roman times, most of these coins appear to be 2p pieces close up!  Other examples can be seen in the Lake District and North Yorkshire.”