The Two of Wands is a card of decisions, dilemmas, and action. It represents a balancing act, triggered by a choice and/or by taking action. The Four of Pentacles is the card of possessions, but also of possessiveness. When it comes up in a reading, we may feel a strong desire to hold on to what we have, be it money, objects, people or situations. The combination of the Two of Wands and the Four of Pentacles is a decision to maintain the status quo.  

• Having power/influence over a situation
• Being the decision maker
• Maintaining the status quo
• Being possessive
• Deciding against change
• Holding on to someone/something
• Inflexible options
• Resisting the flow
• Unwilling to take a risk
• Stifling creativity
• Avoiding to confront a situation
• Following the trodden path
• Adopting a traditional approach
• Choosing traditional methods
• Trying to avoid making a choice
• Power struggles
• Fighting for dominion
• Declaring ownership
• Setting limits
• Blocking change
• Resisting impulsiveness
• Slow changes
• Trying to maintain control
• A stalemate
                   

  To understand the elemental relationships between the cards, we should always take into account their actual meanings, especially when the interaction of the elements seems to have neutral effects. What we have here is a combination of Fire (Two of Wands) and Earth (Four of Pentacles) and in this case, Fire tries to energize Earth, to get it to move somehow. However, the Earth card (Four of Pentacles) with its gravity, is blocking the attempt of the Fire card to kick-start a process of change. For that reason, when this combination appears, in most cases, change is blocked.