And then the monkeys took over the Pentacles

Three of Pentacles--Material Works (Monkey Tarot 2012 MDE)

Welcome to the Tarot Blog Hop for Lammas 2012. These readers who are doing the blog hop probably came from Jera Babylon Rootweaver's Tarot Taxi blog. My regular readers...well, let's just say that the Golden Dawn lounge in the Lunar Insanity Ward is quite lovely this time of year.

The theme of this particular Tarot Blog Hop is Pentacles: The Fruits of Harvest.

Lately for me, the fruits of harvest involves a lot of monkeys. First of all, the Sun card from the last Tarot Blog Hop caused a friend of mine to suggest that every Tarot card needed a monkey in it. Second of all, I am helping to illustrate a set of children stories...with monkeys.

The particular card for this post, the Three of Pentacles (Material Works), sums up some of my thoughts about work. The AE Waite/Pixie Smith version of the card shows a craftsman working while a monk and a hooded man look on. I always felt that they were supervising the craftsman.

One of my on-going questions about the Three of Pentacles is how the craftsman is getting any work done at all.

The invasion of monkeys into the Tarot that I am sketching finally gave me the answer. The bosses are too busy fighting among themselves to supervise the laborer.

This may seem strange to some of you, but it makes sense to me. Then again, I am one of those artistic types. A few years ago, I was a member of a crafter co-op. I remember one meeting where instead of discussing how to get business in the door, the discussion descended into how not to upset the customers. (Some of the artists were considering displaying some racy art.)

Let me be clear--they were worried about upsetting customers that they did not have yet. And that they were not going to get because they were more concerned with matters other than getting people into the craft show.

Let's be honest, there are a lot of people who get upset with artists: business-people, religious and spiritual leaders, lawyers, the poor who believe that artists make too much money, etc. And they all want to censor the artist and creative types...for the good of other people.

(No one ever thinks about what is best for the artist. And everyone always know more about what art is supposed to be like than the artist does. Seriously?!)

Even worse is when the artist starts to censor themselves because they fear that they might upset someone. A form of artist (writer) block occurs when a creative person starts to censor their work before it is even created to please the angry masses. And you cannot please everyone.

In the end, the only person an artist can make happy is themselves. One has to let one's critics fight among themselves on what elements of one's art is the most offensive. One should not censor one's work for the sake of one's critics, who are probably going to be unhappy, no matter what one does. And it goes without saying, do not read what your critics have to say...it will just make you feel bad.

So yeah, monkeys are invading my work and telling me that my critics are just unhappy poo-flingers. Who am I to argue with imaginary monkeys?! Needless to say, it is a rather strange harvest this season.

Next up on the Tarot Blog Hop is Andrew McGregor talking about patience and the suit of Pentacles. If there are any broken links in this blog hop, please click here for the master list.

[Update: July 2013: Due to differences in sales expectations and business philosophy, in early July 2013, I ceased to be involved in the Turtle Monkey project.]