The Fives
Five is such a weird number, visually. It’s not neatly symmetrical, like four. If you had a five-legged chair or table, where would the extra leg go? How would you design and engineer a five-wheeled car? This refusal of symmetry gives us an idea of what the number five means in the tarot: five as rebelling against and refusing the safer, calmer, more comforting symmetry of four. What then is the opposite of safety, stability and symmetry? Constant change. Instability. Danger. A struggle with the unknown. If four is a stable and solid rock, five is the seismic shift that threatens to shake it to pieces. Five is the loss of stability.
The Five of Cups is a sad card: Its energy is so dour and depressing that in one place I once read, the author even goes so far as to say that it can cast a shadow over an entire spread (a fair assessment, I would say). Far from the safety and stability of the walled castle, the person in this illustration mourns over the loss of the three cups, their precious liquids wasted as they seep into the ground. This person has lost something of immense value to them. Potentially, it is something that they will never get back.
Many questions come to mind: What have they lost? What was in those three toppled cups, and who toppled them? The card wisely leaves such questions open to wide interpretation. I can imagine a lot of things things that could fill those cups for ace and aro people: the affection of friends and the acceptance of family and community, a sense of comfort, safety and confidence in their own gender or sexual identity, or a sense of certainty and solidity in who they were before, who they are now, and who they thought they would become in the future. And perhaps even the presence of a once-loving and supportive partner.
In broader terms, perhaps those cups held the promise of a life not lived alone, or an imagined life in a healthy and stable relationship. Or even a family. These are all aspects of the ace and aro experience that many can relate to, and connect with. While there is much to celebrate with being in the aro or ace community, there is no denying that at some point or another in their lives, the journey towards understanding one’s asexual or aromantic self has led them through times of mourning and grief. It could include the profound sense of grief experienced over relationships that could have been saved, if only both parties had known about asexuality and had the space and time to talk about it. It could be the grief over the trust shared with a friend, now turned into suspicion and fear.
The Five of Pentacles is also a sad card: it’s energy is incredibly bleak. To say that it’s a card that we’d rather not see is a massive understatement. The imagery of two homeless and poor lepers (and we know that they are lepers because of the bell visible around one of the necks) is one that hits hard; its impact is underscored all the more because they are passing by a brightly lit church. This imagery especially hits hard for those who identify as Exvangelicals, or Deconstructionists — people who socially grew up immersed in the culture around Evangelical Fundamentalism, and all of its highly toxic and extremely restrictive norms surrounding relationships, gender and sexuality. For these people, a key part of their spiritual life consisted of being once inside the church’s light and warmth, only to find themselves eventually kicked out into the snow and treated as the community pariah: The price paid for daring to express a sexuality completely at odds with Evangelical Purity Culture’s decidedly contradictory (and quinessentially amatonormative) vision of what sex and relationships should be.
Ace and aro people who didn’t grow up raised in western Christianity may also find this imagery deeply resonating with their own experiences. Aphobia is an endemic phenomenon in so many spaces, again thanks to amatonormativity and monosexism. Even just the prospect of gatekeeping from queer communities–because ace or aro people aren’t “queer enough”–is enough to deal a serious blow to someone’s own sense of self-worth or confidence in their identity. Within ace or aro spaces themselves comes the fear that one might not be “ace enough”, or “aro enough” to participate, especially if one identifies more within the asexual or aromantic spectrum, as opposed to being what’s been called by others a “Gold Star Asexual” — the community-venerated asexual who can brag to having never had sexual activity or attraction with anyone. In both cases it can strongly lead to feelings of internalized aphobia, or at the very least, feelings of mistrust and suspicion between asexuals.
I also wonder how aromantics and agender people must feel about the imagery and message of this card: In most discussions of asexuality, especially on social media and in popular culture, nary a mention is given to agender people, aromantics and the aromantic spectrum. Hashtags, reblogs, retweets and quote retweets on platforms like Tumblr and Twitter shout out about how “asexuals are valid”. However, there is very seldom a recognition that even though the “A” in LGBTQ2SIA+ is not for “Ally”, it also doesn’t exclusively mean “asexual” either; aromantic and agender people all have equal right to claim that A for themselves too. Even though the asexual community generally is taken to include the aromantic community, this usually glosses over the uniqueness of the aromantic experience and issues facing those on the aromantic spectrum, on top of distinct experiences of the agender community. Even if there isn’t a conscious or malicious intention to erase agender people and aromantics from the community or from the discussion, the effect is still the same.
From mournful and bleak, to angry and resentful: the Five of Wands is another card traditionally associated with conflict, disagreement and division. But while the Five of Pentacles is a more passive card, the Five of Wands is far more active and dynamic.
Much like many other cards in the tarot, the Five of Wands defies simple, superficial explanations. At first it seems like it is a depiction of five young men locked together in a violent struggle, but all is not quite what it seems. First, there doesn’t seem to be any real, genuine violence happening here. There are no dead bodies on the ground like in Death; no blood-stained piercings like on the Ten of Swords. Looking at the faces of the people involved, it almost looks more like they’re confused and bewildered. Yet there is no unity, stability, peace or harmony here. Despite the lack of gore and carnage, there is plenty of discord and disunity to go around. To my eye, it really doesn’t look like they’re fighting at all, even though many reinterpretations by other deck creators have pushed this particular vision of this card’s scene. It more resembles a scene perhaps familiar to those who’ve had to collaboratively put up a tent, or perhaps even a set of Ikea furniture. Everyone is going their own way, and trying to lead, assuming they know best. As a result, nothing is getting done; perhaps the only thing being built up are people’s egos and bloated senses of self-importance, as everyone tries in vain to direct what is being put together.
Ace and aro people might find this energy resonating with many situations in their day-to-day lives and relationships, but those involved in advocacy and activist work may find this especially holds true for situations where they’ve had to organize with other ace and aro people, or with others in the greater queer community. It’s quite possible, and very easy for even simple planning and coordinating meetings or discussions to devolve into a tangled ball of hurt feelings, shouting matches and verbal sparring, as people’s differing needs, visions and passions wind up clashing in a battle of egos. This is especially true for ace and aro people advocating for those on the intersection of asexuality/aromanticism and other axes of oppression — groups including BIPOC asexuals and aromantics, or disabled and neurodivergent aces and aros, or aces and aros contending with poverty.
With intersectionality becoming an increasingly visible issue among advocates and activists in the greater queer community, people are more and more aware of how important it is to be as inclusive and as accommodating as possible to those outside of our immediate circles, be they black ace and aro people, masculine ace and aro people (including those assigned male at birth or those who are masculine-presenting) or ace and aro people who are on the autistic spectrum. However, with the asexual and aromantic community still very much publicly perceived to be middle-class, white, able-bodied, neurotypical and cis-gendered female, it looks very clear that marginalized ace and aro people still find themselves, like aromantics, often left behind in the pop culture discussion about asexuality.
The Five of Swords gives us a clue about what may happen as a result of the divisions and separations we see in the Five of Pentacles and the Five of Wands: The three figures in this card may very well have been allies or close friends in the past (again, Pamela Coleman-Smith’s artwork is delightfully cryptic and open-ended about this). This is a victory, sure, but the insufferably smug expression on the foreground figure’s face and the jagged grey clouds across the otherwise blue sky (looking almost as if the sky was a ripped piece of paper), and the lack of a symbol of triumph like a red banner, the sun, or a victory wreath (such as the ones seen in The World and in the Six of Wands) suggest that this is not a clean, or a “proper” victory. This a victory without violence (again note the lack of blood or swords piercing the body), but with the other two figures hanging their heads in shame it is certainly a humiliation.
The smiling figure in green has won the day, to be sure. But if this fight didn’t involve bloodshed, then surely the stakes weren’t that high, were they? The victorious party of this fight didn’t slay their enemies, so there was likely no clear morally unambiguous “good” side and “evil” side. Why did the other two even walk away to begin with? Even if the person in green were not carrying two extra swords, the other two in yellow could have potentially teamed up together to take them down.
Instead, the other two people have been sent away in shame. I can only guess that the reason the person in green is collecting the other two swords is that they will need them in the future (again, logically, for a coming battle). If so, wouldn’t he need the other two people, too? The victory has come at the cost of two potentially important allies in the coming fight. Perhaps the victor in this image has won the battle, only to ultimately lose the war: a textbook pyrrhic victory.
Bringing it back to ace and aro people, all this is to say that that when communities engage in erasure — whether it be purposeful, or accidental — or in gatekeeping against others seen as different from the accepted norm, everyone suffers. The rejected suffer a loss of social connection, friendship, and community with others; the rejectors, while enjoying an ideologically “pure” community space, nevertheless have a community that is left socially and politically fragmented and weakened. This is especially true for queer community groups excluding ace and aro people, or ace groups not being consciously inclusive of marginalized groups, such as disabled or BIPOC aces.
Sure, the group may have purged itself of individuals seen as problematic because they identify with a group seen as oppressive (such as aces or aros who identify with a religion like Christianity or Islam). Or the group may have successfully maintained it’s self-perceived vision of what “queerness” or “aceness” is. But do such victories truly achieve anything useful in the face of the rising tide of queerphobia and transphobia? Maybe the group’s energy would have been better spent in places other than attempting to drive off aces and aros seen as outliers.
Fives then represent constant change and instability. But maybe there are points in our lives where disruptive change isn’t just a theoretical benefit, but a necessity.
In the Five of Cups, people often talk about the two untouched cups behind the figure in black, the point being that they are so immersed in their mourning that they don’t see the two upright cups behind them. But what if those three toppled cups contained something that we didn’t know was poisonous or toxic, or just plain better off not drinking? Maybe the things over which we mourn were actually worth losing.
In the Five of Pentacles, we find ourselves cast out of the safety, stability and warmth of our community. But if that community was itself abusive and toxic, at what point do we choose to continue to endure the toxicity and abuse, before we start feeling that being out in the cold would be much more preferable? We may be out in the cold, but at least we have escaped the toxicity that would have slowly killed us. At least now, we are free, and have a fighting chance to survive.
The Five of Wands is often metaphorically taken to mean the melding and disputes of disparate perspectives and backgrounds as they come together. But with diversity comes strength. Once all of the five different people in this figure eventually learn to work together — and they will — what they will build will be clearly stronger, more robust, and built quicker than if any one of them were to work alone.
The two retreating figures in the Five of Swords are clearly suffering from the disruption of shame and humiliation. But the important thing is that they have left this battle with their lives. If we find ourselves in their place, we are down, but not out. We have lived to fight another day, a little bit older, and a little bit wiser and more experienced. And what if we identify more with the victor in green? Our head and body are turned (or are turning?) back to the other two. It isn’t too late to go them, to make amends and invite them back into the fold, to where they should belong: to fight alongside us in the upcoming battle, side by side.
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