This is a card of…

Hardship

Pessimism

Exile

Fatigue

Discouragement

“Don’t know how I kept going. You just do. You have to, so you do.”

-Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

As the material element moves through time, impermanence is recognized as disaster. The wealth and health we thought we had such a handle on will go through ups and downs that are beyond our control. In much the way we see the ground beneath our feet as unmoving, not seeing its hidden dynamism; so we feel times of material hardship or ill-health will go on forever. The problem of this Five is as much about that catastrophic mindset as it is about the lack of material resources. Meditate on the Wheel of Fortune. No circumstance lasts forever.

This low point can also have to do with Disks’ deeper meaning of the magic in the everyday. The pair in the traditional illustration are trudging in misery right past a well-lit church. We might be losing touch with our faith and confidence, bemoaning our fate while blind to the miraculous and the magical right next to us (or within us.)

The Five of Disks can also evoke the feeling of being ‘left out in the cold’, feeling excluded, rejected, and wounded. This could be the experience of an individual or of a part of ourselves or aspect of our lives. Have you been neglecting the care of your body? Of your mental health? Of a close relationship?

Whatever the issue or hardship signified, it won’t go on forever.