The Page of Pentacles represents the emerging capability to use behavior in a way that is devotional. Once we know how to perform magic using the dense matter of our physical actions, we can do it anytime, anywhere, and in any way we choose. And then each new behavior becomes like an item placed on an altar. Carefully chosen, intentionally placed,

Behavior change is a way of setting up a kind of living altar that is not only in devotion to a new way of life but also in defiance of that within us which was previously automatic, unmagical, or unmiraculous.

The Page of Pentacles symbolizes the way in which such living altars—behavioral choices that sow the seeds of new norms, habits, and patterns—contain what Crowley called the “secret of the future.” An altar always has to do with the temporal; it is a space on which to perform rituals that re-create myth and give life to the past. They are also

Learning new behaviors is a way of erecting a living altar in the areas of our lives that have become dry, stiff, or barren.

“We must say of the universe that it is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”

Hoarding soul inside interiority, we feel justified in also hoarding resources; we take more than we need to avoid the terrifying sense of being “small, amidst many bits and pieces that do not seem to cohere.” We act out of self-interest rather than in the interest of the whole. Too afraid to relinquish our partitions, we relinquish our membership

On the modern understanding of soul as existing inside each individual, psychologist Mary Watkins has written that “the hoarding of soul within interiority has served a defensive function, protecting us from the tragedies and travesties in our midst.” Were we to throw ourselves from the tower of individualism and relinquish those protections, or,

all are connected and that because that is true, ideals like freedom and healing are inherently more than individual pursuits.

The idea of a world soul is an old one—said to come from the ancient Greeks, though likely not unique to them—that expresses an intrinsic web of connection between all life. It suggests that rather than understanding psyche or soul as something that exists inside the confines of the individual human body, soul is woven through every living thing