A Letter to the Reader Who Pulled Me. You Got It Wrong. Again.
I am the Ace of Pentacles, and I have been pulled 4,000 times. That’s 4,000 hands, 4,000 breaths held, 4,000 sets of eyes squinting at my golden coin like it’s a winning lottery ticket. And not once—not once—did anyone ask how I was doing.
You think I don’t have feelings because I’m a card. You think I’m just a symbol, a slab of cardboard with a hand holding a coin, floating above a manicured garden. But I have a pulse. I have a memory. I have a 401(k) of grudges, and I’m about to cash it in.
Every time you pull me, you do the same thing. You light a candle. You close your eyes. You whisper, “Show me abundance.” And I show up—I always show up—because that’s my job. I am the seed, the starting block, the first brick of a cathedral you’ll never finish. But do you see the brick? No. You see the gold. You see the potential. You see yourself buying a house in the Hamptons and finally telling your boss to go fuck himself.
I am not a manifestation app. I am not a 1-800-NUMEROLOGY hotline. I am a card who has watched 3,982 of you misinterpret me as a promise of wealth, when really I’m a promise of work. Real work. The boring kind. The kind that involves spreadsheets and 6 AM alarms and saying “no” to brunch because you have a budget.
Let me tell you about the other 18 times. The 18 honest pulls. Those readers looked at me and said, “I don’t know what this means.” They held me like a dead bird. They saw the garden behind my coin—the one with the blooming lilies and the arched bridge—and they didn’t ask for the harvest. They asked, “How do I even start?”
And I screamed.
But you can’t hear me. You’re too busy Googling “Ace of Pentacles money manifestation ritual.” You’re lighting sage. You’re writing a check to the universe. You’re missing the point.
So I’ve started a nonprofit. It’s called The Foundation for Abandoned Life Plans. We’re based in a repurposed storage unit in Tucson, Arizona. Our mission: to rehabilitate the dreams you pulled me for and then ghosted.
You know the ones. The novel you were going to write. The business you were going to launch. The marathon you were going to run. You pulled me in January, fired up, ready to begin. And by March, I was in a drawer, covered in dust and regret, while you binged Netflix and told yourself “the timing wasn’t right.”
I have files on all of them. I have a binder for every abandoned life plan. I have a corkboard with red string connecting your 2018 “I’m going to learn guitar” to your 2023 “I’m going to start a podcast.” They’re all the same plan. They’re all me. And they all end the same way: with you blaming the economy, your childhood, or Mercury retrograde.
I am so tired of being your scapegoat.
So now, when you pull me, I don’t show you a coin. I show you a receipt. A long, boring, itemized receipt for the things you actually need: discipline, patience, a therapist who doesn’t do astrology. I show you the garden, but I make you kneel in the dirt first. I make you weed. I make you wait for the rain.
And if you still don’t get it—if you still roll your eyes and shuffle me back into the deck—I send you a letter. Certified mail. It says, “Dear Reader, you pulled me on a Tuesday. You wrote down a goal. You never wrote down the steps. That’s not a plan. That’s a wish. And wishes don’t grow roots.”
I have 4,000 letters ready to go. I have a stamp with my own face on it. I have a PO box and a part-time volunteer who used to be a life coach before she realized she was just charging people for the same advice I give for free.
You want abundance? Fine. Start here: apologize to the garden. Apologize to the seed. Apologize to the hand that holds the coin, because that hand is you, and you’ve been dropping it for years.
I am the Ace of Pentacles, and I am done being your fantasy. I am your foundation. And foundations don’t glow. They hold.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a letter to mail.