The Five of Disks, Worry, first decan of Taurus, from Telos Tarot of 777.

Magical image of the decan in 777

A woman with long and beautiful hair, clad in flame-coloured robes.

The Sun just entered the first decan of Taurus (April 20th this year).

True to form, for me the first decan of Taurus, the Five of Disks, is all about planning and preparing for planting, plus other planning type scenarios unrelated to planting. We are tilling and weeding garden beds today, deciding what goes where, and worrying about previously planted seeds and seedlings started. Are they thriving, or declining? Do we already need to replant while there is still time? Etc.

I’m a big gardener, so maybe this metaphor does not apply to you literally, But it still might figuratively. The spring is progressing, and in the next decan we hit a crucial point, the cross-quarter holiday Beltane. This decan is in preparation for that. But I also see how I am having to worry and plan for metaphorical seeds as well as literal ones.

My mandrake seeds came up – a notoriously finicky plant I now have to learn how to grow successfully in this climate, which is right on the edge of a zone it can overwinter in, so it will be tricky. I can worry about deciding whether to grow them in pots or risk it outside.

It has been very busy, tilling, transplanting, planting more seeds, replanting previously planted seedlings that were struggling into new pots, planning the garden. But it has also been about continuing writing the book, planning the formatting and deciding when the book will come out.

…and I got a request to design an album cover, or really a design for a song single as people don’t do full albums now as much. I don’t normally take requests and commissions like that but I want to do that one, for reasons. All at once I have a ton of things to Worry about, or at least to consider and plan for. Doing the art is another type of planning and dividing a space.

Picatrix image and significations	A woman with curly hair, who has one son wearing clothing looking like flame, and she is wearing garments of the same sort. Plowing, working on the land, sciences, geometry, sowing, building
Henry Cornelius Agrippa image and significations (Three Books of Occult Philosophy)	A naked man, an archer, harvester or husbandman. To sow, plough, build, people, and divide the earth, according to the rules of geometry
Giordano Bruno image (De Umbris Idearum)	Someone naked, ploughing, wearing a hat of woven straw, of dark complexion, followed by a rustic or a woman sowing seed.
Varahamihira Vedic image  (Brihat Jataka)	A woman with torn ringlets, pot bellied, with fiery clothes, hungry and thirsty, with a penchant for gold and food.
Raphael image and significations	A book, a young man tilling of the ground. Plowing, sowing, building, peopling houses of learning and wisdom in the Earth, and so learning in Geometry.
Ibn Ezra image (The Beginning of Wisdom)	A woman with hair, who has a son, and who wears clothes partly burnt.
Liber Hermetis	It has the whole body of the buried Osiris, adorned with gold and dark tie-strings. It has the head of a bull and a queen’s crown and two elephants’ trunks. In the middle of the horns stands the goddess herself. This rules the climate of the Medes.

The Five of Disks, first decan of Taurus, is known as the Lord of Material Trouble, or Worry. The sign is Venus-ruled Taurus, the decan ruler is Mercury, and Fives are associated with Geburah, corresponding to Mars.

In the RWS, two barefoot vagrants in raggedy clothes trudge through a snowstorm past a church window. In the Thoth deck, five leaden gears grind against each other, sparking in an inverse pentacle formation. In Tabula Mundi Tarot, the turntable set up of the Magus (Mercury) is locked up by the Hierophant’s (Taurus) lock and key. The electronics are smoking, with five broken records on rotation.

In my Rosetta deck, five gauges show a mercurial machine on the brink of implosion.

Here is another take, a new image for the Five of Pentacles or Disks in the Telos Tarot of 777.

In the Northern Hemisphere, this decan is when we begin to till our gardens and plan and seed our first plantings. We see this agricultural theme in the decan descriptions. Note how many of them mention planting and plowing, as well as dividing the land via geometry.

We wonder: will our seeds bear fruit? We worry: will the weather be conducive or destructive for our harvest? Will there be enough to eat?

In this image the five disks bear the symbols of the five elemental Tattvas. In each is a particular potential elemental agricultural calamity. The triangle of Fire shows the hot sun and drought baking the earth. The circle of Air shows a cold and harsh wind blowing. The crescent of Water shows a flooded field. The square of Earth shows a devouring locust. The central dark egg of Spirit shows a cracked seed. The energy of the Five (Mars/Geburah) cracks open the land and the seed, but will this cracking mean it has successfully sprouted and will grow, or will it perish?

The decan is ruled by Mercury. Mercury is a mathematician. The disks surround a set of Golden Mean calipers, a geometric measuring gauge that divides according to the Golden Ratio. In Agrippa’s image, a husbandman, also known as a farmer or tiller, “goeth forth to sow, plough, build, people, and divide the earth, according to the rules of Geometry.” Many of the decan images speak similarly of related themes.

The image is first based on Crowley’s decan description in 777, but also incorporates ideas from other decan description texts. Per 777: A woman with long and beautiful hair, clad in flame-coloured robes. The Ibn Ezra description mentions a woman with clothes partly burnt, while Picatrix likens her clothes unto fire.

The woman here has long and beautiful hair (Venus) and wears the flame-like and singed garments (Geburah/Mars). The color for Geburah in Assiah is Red, flecked Black, which is appropriate both for her singed clothing, and for tilled earth. She is perched on a pillar that looks much like a rusted iron nail, emblematic of both Mars (iron) and Taurus, whose card the Hierophant corresponds to the Hebrew letter Vav, meaning nail. She looks down upon a pastoral scene where the earth has been geometrically divided, for Mercury, ruler of the decan. Men and women plow and plant.

36 Airs of the Zodiac gives the deity of the decan as Charis (“Charity”), representing the youngest of the Charities or Three Graces of mythology. Charis was also named Aglaea, and was an attendant of Aphrodite (Venus, ruler of Taurus). After Aphrodite’s husband, the blacksmith god Hephaestus, left her due to her infidelity with Ares (Mars), it is said Hephaestus married Aglaea. Perhaps this is why the woman of this image has clothes described as burnt.

The Ptolemaic deity per 777 is Serapis – more to come on him, but it certainly fits.

For Taurus I, Serapis, Gundel’s decan book Dekane und Dekansternilder (written in German, but I’m puzzling through it) has this entry: “Figure goading an ox and carrying a gnomon in his hand. The child will be a farmer, architect, mathematician.”  The gnomon, from ancient Greek word gnṓmōn, “one that examines” is the part of a sundial that casts the shadow. It is a term used in mathematics and fields involving measurements of time or distance. Interesting as the sundial is a disk with the gnomon being a pointer, sort of like a nail. The word gnomon is also so like gnome, from Greek *genomos “earth-dweller.”

Tabula Mundi Tarot has an image that combines the iconography of the Hierophant (Taurus) and the Magus (Mercury): a smoking turntable with cracked disks on the nail, and the Hierophant’s pillars under lock. The key is in view though…

Earth Day is April 22nd, so almost always in this decan or right at the start of it. I usually celebrate it by walking down the road with a bag picking up trash. Why people throw trash out of their cars is such a mystery, as it is easy enough to just throw it out at home. One year, I picked a back road nearby that has very few houses on it, so people feel free to throw their crap out. I got 13 large black trash bags filled in an area less than a mile long. So it goes…

Also, please take a moment to vote in the COVR 2025 Visionary Awards here as voting ends April 30th, right around when this decan ends and the next one begins.

Apologies to anyone who tried to vote at the link to the previous COVR blog post article – I just realized the voting link I was given by the organization was broken, or I messed something up as neither the guide nor the voting link were working, so I lost a lot of time I guess – so it goes… I’m not going to worry about it, as it is what it is.

The correct pdf guide on the entries and correct public voting links are below.

2025 COVR Visionary Awards Voter’s Guide

Voting link: 2025 COVR Visionary Awards

Voting link address: https://covr.surveysparrow.com/s/2025-cva/tt-JHWkt

Voting ends April 30th, which is around when this decan ends and the next one begins. Thanks for anyone who takes a few minutes to fill out a ballot, and thank you for considering Telos Tarot of 777.

Have a Happy Earth Day! More to come later…