Okay so let me see, if I want to be happy and celebrate my gifts today I need to let go and move on and not lose my head about things?  That sounds about right.

Lisa Hunt illustrated the 5 of Pentacles using the story of the Unquiet Grave in which a man’s inability to stop mourning his lose love prevents her from moving on.  Yesterday I addressed how the lingering ghosts of Christmases Past have often undermined my own ability to move on.  I think this card is reinforcing the message that it’s time to release that negative energy and find a way to manifest new memories and new joys in my life.

The Headless Horseman shown on the King of Swords reminds me to use my brain and stop torturing myself.  It’s also symbolic of the power of illusion.  In Washington Irving’s original tale the Horseman’s legend used to scare off a superstitious Ichabod Crane.  Brom is described as looking “exceedingly knowing’ whenever the tale is told implying he impersonated the Horseman to rid the village of Crane, his rival for Katrina’s hand.  That in no way diminishes the power of the legend.  Indeed it might even strengthen it because it adds the power of belief.

How often have people sabotaged themselves because they believed in something negative about themselves?  We often created self-fulfilling prophecies and then point to them as proof that we didn’t deserve any better.  It’s difficult enough when others see us through the lenses of their perceptions of us.  How much worse is the damage we cause ourselves when we begin to believe these perceptions and manifest them in our lives?

If I want to stop making my life about the past and an ability to let go then I will be creating a scary and haunted future.  If I use my head and change my mindset, then I can become the master of my own future and not allow the legends of others or my own past to hold me back.

My affirmation:  I let go of the sadness of the past and what is lost, putting my mind towards created a limitless future.