My knowledge of complex machinery isn't so great, and I suppose when you get right down to it, you can't even really describe a laundry-wringer as "complex". I took a shot at drawing one without looking at any photos and I suppose mine gets the message across, in addition to having magical antigravity properties. You'll just have to assume that all the actual mechanical parts are carefully hidden just out of sight, behind the rollers.
The Eight of Coins speaks to us about making the best of things, and seeing projects through to their completion regardless of the inevitable hard times and disappointments that arrive along the way. This card also encourages us to seek innovative solutions, new ways of organizing our labor so that we're happier with the outcome.
I don't know why this image popped into my head. Perhaps it's the idiom of being "put through the wringer", in which we are forced to endure some sort of ordeal. Or maybe it has something to do with the many hours of work that simple mechanical inventions were supposed to transform into leisure time. People claim that we spend just as much time at our chores as we did before, but in many ways this complaint doesn't hold water. Regardless, I couldn't help thinking of the eight "coins" as rollers that could somehow wring me out, effectively preparing me for the next cycle.
In Crowley's Thoth deck, this card is labeled "Prudence". In that spirit, I'd also like to share this anecdote from my aunt Judy's book Breaking Clean, one of many misadventures from her childhood in rural Montana:
"And I recall one day shortly after the power came, when I carefully latched the bathroom door and climbed up on a chair next to the old washing machine. The washer had two tubs, with a powerful wringer mounted between them. The wringer looked like two wide white rolling pins pressed tightly together, and it worked just like that, too. Shirts had to be fed through carefully so the wringer didn't pop off the buttons, and heavy items like towels or jeans were sent through more than once to squeeze all the water out. As a safety feature, a stop-bar ran along the bottom of the wringer, and when something got jammed up, a blow to the bar would pop the jaws of the wringer apart and stop them from turning.
I soon had the wringer running, and was mesmerized by the hum of the rollers and the splash and trickle of water. I fed dripping socks and washcloths in with my left hand and caught them with my right as they emerged from the rollers flat and damp-dry. I did this with a feeling of great maturity, for while I'd been allowed to feed socks and smaller items into the wringer before, I was not allowed to reach around the wringer as my mother did, and catch them. I was set to surprise her with my proficiency, when one of the socks stuck to the roller, as they sometimes did, going around and around instead of exiting the other side. When this happened to Mom, she loosened it with a flick of her fingers, and I reached to do the same, not thinking which side I was reaching toward, which side ate the socks, and which side spit them out.
The rollers caught my fingertips and steadily, mindlessly ate their way up my hand, squeezing my flesh flat as I hung back with all my strength, trying to pull free. Though I'd been shown how to use it, I never once thought to hit the stop-bar. And though I didn't think to call for help either, by the time the rollers were grinding past my wrist and up my arm I managed to produce a guttural squawk, the sort of noise that lifts the hair on a mother's neck two rooms away. The door seemed to explode before my eyes. The hook-and-eye latch flew apart, and my mother charged through, and in one leap had hit the bar with the feel of her hand and dragged me back from the jaws of the wringer. While my pride suffered a devastating blow, my arm did not, Mom held me on her lap as I sniffled, and within a few minutes my poor flat, white arm had gotten back its blood and the feeling in its fingers, and was none the worse for wear."
