Taurus III: I Am the One Who Slogs

a Decan of labor, bewilderment, and embracing

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This isn’t the decan of glamour. It’s the decan of the slog. The third face of Taurus asks not what you dream—but how long you’re willing to keep tending the soil when the harvest looks strange. As a talisman-maker, I’ve come face to face with the Seven of Pentacles more times than I’d like to admit. This essay is what happens when I finally stop resisting that gaze and let the bewildered gardener speak.

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Taurus III: May 11 to 20 | Ruled by Saturn | Tarot: Seven of Pentacles

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I walk the third decan of Taurus like someone moving through thick soil—slow, deliberate, sensing that each step sinks into something ancient and alive beneath the surface. Saturn rules this space, and I feel him not as a distant god, but as a weight in my chest, a bone-deep presence I cannot ignore. He does not rush me. He does not cheer me on. He simply watches—measuring my persistence, not my perfection.

This decan is a field of time.
And I am its gardener.

In my work as a talisman-maker, I fear becoming that puzzled gardener—standing amidst the unexpected fruits of my labor, staring in bewilderment at what has come to life. This is not what I envisioned, not what I intended. And yet, there it is.

Will I trust the process, even when it diverges from the path I intended

I string together stones and symbols, each talisman a spell I whisper with my hands. I begin with intention, with vision. But by the time the piece is complete, something strange often happens: the result feels foreign, uncanny, even unsettling. I ask myself—Did I make this? Or did it emerge in spite of me? The Seven of Pentacles haunts me with that same question.

No matter the deck, no matter the imagery, this card arrives like a shadow—reminding me that effort does not guarantee alignment with desire. Saturn in Taurus teaches this lesson through repetition: what you craft will live its own life. The harvest may not reflect the seed you planted. It may grow crooked, wild, sublime—or silent.

I hesitate before the unknown. I stall before beginning again. What if the next creation also defies my will? What if I pour myself into something that walks away with a name of its own?

This decan teaches me the hardest truth of making: that the act of creation demands surrender. Not passive submission—but sacred allowance. A willingness to say, Even this—yes, even this—has value. I must learn to make without grasping, to let go without regret.

Sometimes I wonder if Saturn placed this card in my path not as punishment, but as a kind of mirror. It forces me to ask: Will I keep tending the field, even when the fruit confuses me? Will I find meaning in the mystery, not just the result?

When I return to routine—laying out beads, reading cards, whispering prayers to stone—I find a rhythm that holds me. This is my anchor, my quiet defiance against doubt. Not every talisman needs to resemble the vision I began with. Not every creation needs to obey. Some are meant to speak back. To awaken me.

And perhaps even this Decan Walk, the path I’ve carved across zodiacal time and space, is a form of the Seven of Pentacles. In March 2026, I may look back at the body of work and find myself wearing that same furrowed expression as the figure in the card. Who did this? Me? It was supposed to be a map… a structure… a chronicle of the stars.
And yet—there it is.
A harvest of thoughts and revelations I never meant to grow, but did.
A garden of self seeded by the cosmos, tended by my persistence, and shaped by forces I could not foresee.

And so I keep working. I return to the soil. To the Saturnian stillness.
I am not only the gardener.
I am the soil, the seed, the bewildered one—and the one who slogs.