Welcome to this week’s edition of The Astral Correspondent! This week’s card is the Page of Pentacles. Read more about what this newsletter is about here.
One morning I entered the kitchen to a pile of suspiciously angular potatoes. They were all snipped, shaved, chopped, and pruned to various degrees of mutilation. Some resembled small ovals. Others, like swollen Tylenol or the ghosts of baby carrots.
My brother had just begun culinary school. And his knife skills practice was both his homework and my starchy bounty. He was to master 10 foundational knife skills, ranging from coarse chopping to fine julienne. As it goes with any craft or skill, mastery means attempting actions repeatedly. Here, it was upon whatever poor produce he could get his claw grip on.
There’s no other way around it: repetition is the path. Over and over, until it’s in your bones.
The skill he was honing, at daybreak for whatever reason, is the most difficult: the tournée cut. The word itself refers not to the fodder’s final form but instead the “turn” motion the cook must perform when carving it. This is accomplished with a sharp, beaklike paring knife.
A chef making a lumpy potato into a chic, svelte little rugby ball. Source: Online Culinary School
A proper tournée has seven sides. Its neat oblong shape, like a barrel, is two inches long and one inch around the middle. One must, essentially, whittle a girthy tuber into a petite rugby ball for elves, wasting as little as possible while maintaining the lightspeed alacrity required in professional kitchens. Oh, and they all have to be the same size — which not only looks elegant a la haute cuisine but also enables even cooking times.
This is much easier to explain than it is to execute. I attempted one and guffawed at the sudden rubberiness of my limbs. And the immediacy with which I almost granted my thumb independence.
I watched my brother, shearing his latest sacrificial potato, labor to make mind and muscle connect. He had seen seasoned chefs do it dozens of times. He knew the theory of what he had to do. He had a deep, devoted determination for it, too. But training his body to obey, through shaky hands, was different. He was only just starting. It wasn’t in his bones yet.
This process and this stage reminds me of the Page of Pentacles. This page is the quiet, focused student of the tarot. They embody the early stages of manifesting a tangible dream, often a career path or vocation. This card is all about planting a seed and approaching it with a meticulous, open-minded desire to learn. They are passionate, yet patient and practical. Tarot scholar and author Mary K. Greer describes, “They feel earnest curiosity — a wish to understand and prove themselves. Emotion is sincere and careful.”
The Page of Pentacles in the Rider-Waite tarot deck, by Pamela Colman Smith
Pages are at the start of a learning journey. Beginner’s mind. Student. And pentacles represent the material realm — not merely money and finance, but more the physical world we touch, the earth, and the tangible qualities of our own bodies. This means their bodies and physical existence are where learning takes place.
You might recognize Page of Pentacles energy in your own life. The yearning for being accomplished at a skill, while still being very much at the amateur stage.
Other things that remind me of Page of Pentacles
Day 1 of an apprenticeship: The Karate Kid, for instance, when he is just told to “wax on wax off” without quite understanding why (we later find that he needed the movements in his muscle memory)
New massage therapy students who don’t yet have a feel for where muscles lie under the skin or med students who don’t yet have a feel for where to find a vein
Sprouted seeds, bursting with potential, their roots seeking establishment in the bed around them
Ricky Evangelista in Pose first learning how to vogue
Back-to-school supplies; crisp parchment; full inkwells
And, this person at the beginning of their journey
Reply and let me know: what skills are you in the learning process with — particularly skills where you are learning with, through, and for your body? Where are you taking practical steps towards pursuing something, especially if it’s in a career or abundance-earning space? What’s feeling hard about being a learner right now? And, most importantly: What’s your favorite way to eat a potato? 🥔
Thanks for reading,
Cristina
Thanks for reading my second newsletter! I’m experimenting with length; this one is a novel by email standards.
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