The Fives

The Fives are the fifth card of each suit of the Minor Arcana, and they are often the hardest card in their suit. Four is a square that stands still; add one more and the balance tips. So the Fives are cards of disruption: conflict, loss, struggle or a challenge that will not let things stay as they were. They are uncomfortable, but they are also where a story starts moving again.

What the number means

Every Five shows the stable thing disturbed, each in its own suit's territory:

• The Five of Wands is a scuffle: five young men sparring with staves, conflict that is half competition.
• The Five of Cups is grief: a cloaked figure mourning three spilled cups, not yet turning to the two still standing.
• The Five of Swords is a hollow victory: one man gathering swords while the beaten walk away, a quarrel "won" at a cost.
• The Five of Pentacles is hardship: two figures in the snow passing a lit window, left out in the cold.

The lesson on the numbers uses this example to show the method: Five means the stable thing is disturbed, the suit says where. Five of Pentacles, material hardship; Five of Cups, a loss that is felt. Many readers also point to the hope inside each Five — the two standing cups, the lit window, the fact that a contest can be practice. The cards describe a hard passage, not a verdict. (Where a Five touches on money or health, it is a symbol to reflect on, not advice; a professional is the person to ask.)

In the Golden Dawn

The Golden Dawn placed the Fives in Geburah, Severity (also called Strength or Might), the fifth sephirah of the Tree of Life, the sphere of Mars. Book T reads the Fives as "opposition, strife and struggle; war, obstacle to the thing in hand", and adds that "ultimate success or failure is otherwise shown" — the Five names the struggle, not how it ends.

With the Fives the decans move from the cardinal signs to the fixed ones: each Five takes the first ten degrees of the fixed sign of its element. Book T in fact begins its list of the thirty-six decan cards here, with the Five of Wands at the start of Leo — a decan that, in Book T's words, "hath its beginning from the Royal Star of Leo", Regulus — where the planetary order of the decans begins with Saturn.

Crowley's Thoth deck calls them Strife, Disappointment, Defeat and Worry.

The Major Arcana of the same number

By number the Fives echo V, The Hierophant — tradition, teaching, the established way. Readers who add the digits of larger numbers also link them with XIV, Temperance. The pairing is a modern numerological one, not part of the Golden Dawn system, but it offers a thought: the Fives disturb what is settled, and Temperance is the art of finding the measure again.

Several Fives in one spread

The traditions gave each count its own meaning:

• Waite: four Fives mean "regularity", three "determination", two "vigils". Reversed, four mean "order", three "hesitation", two "reverse".
• The Golden Dawn's Book T: four Fives are "order, regularity", three "quarrels, fights".

Here, unusually, the two lists agree about four Fives — perhaps because a whole set of a number reads as complete in itself, however troubled each card is alone. More generally, several Fives suggest a turbulent period, with friction in more than one area of life; readers often look to the cards around them, and to any Sixes, for the way through.

In a reading here

When a spread is interpreted here, two, three or four numbered cards of the same rank are picked out as a pattern and given Waite's meaning for that number and count. A pair is noted only in a spread of seven cards or fewer, where it is rarer and says more.

Related

• Numbered cards (pips)
• The Fours
• The Sixes
• The Hierophant
• Five of Cups
• Tree of Life