Discovering the suits: The Pentacles in tarot

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

Pentacles: The final step in the process of manifestation — bringing something into being in the physical world. Actually, the word ‘something’ is really an unnecessary one, because everything that we experience with our five senses makes up the realm of Pentacles.

Moreover, as I have written in previous weeks, we are not passive witnesses to the process of manifestation; we are active participants, whether we know it or not, whether we want to be or not. Our minds’ eyes move out into our physical eyes and we ‘see’ our world into life. Our hands move out and touch what is within reach and we know what we touch to have texture, even feeling the breeze through our fingers. Our ears give mental shape to those things that we cannot see, translating sound waves into images in our imaginations. Smell can transport us back to a single moment in time in a way that nothing else can. Taste has the ability to expand and round out our experiences of the physical, just as salt enhances the flavour of the food to which it is added.

So, to recap: Through the direction of libido (Wands) by our feelings (Cups) and our thoughts (Swords), so we are in a constant process of creation and interaction with what it is that we have created (Pentacles).

Pentacles are often associated primarily with material possessions, and, especially, with money. I feel this puts limitations on what it is that tarot is really about, which is life itself. Pentacles might show up as money, or as a means to money (work, for example), but money is also representative of a state of mind, of our beliefs about how the world operates and how we operate within it. Let me give you an example: For someone with boundary issues, money can take on an energy of its own. When they are single, they manage it pretty well. When in a relationship, they tend to lose control of it, in the same way that they have lost a sense of themselves. Frittering money away is a symptom of a tendency to eschew responsibility: They haven’t banked on themselves, nor invested in themselves. (Talking from personal experience? Who, me? Nooooo!) In this way, Pentacles can be expanded from their often limited sense to one that is holistic. Remember: We might be creating our world, but — by design or default — we are creating ourselves too.

Here are the fourteen Pentacles cards and possible corresponding meanings:

­Ace of Pentacles – Aces represent the full potential of each suit, and in this case we are looking at that potential in terms of what we bring into existence. The Ace is perfection; I’m not sure we can ever achieve it — but we can aim for it and we can achieve our own sense of perfection, in whichever way we choose to define it. That definition itself is an act of conscious creation.

Two of Pentacles – The Two is the cosmic juggling act made manifest – duality in concrete action. Looking at the figure of the juggler, it is as if he has caught what The Magician has been cooking up in his kitchen, with the words, “Here – catch!” When things come into physical being — the result of a delicate combination of two opposing forces — we take them and run with them, all the while participating in a dance of adjustment and re-adjustment to keep the momentum.

Three of Pentacles – Learning a skill — in other words, how to direct the process of manifesting in our lives — seems to me to be an important cornerstone. Apt words here. An apprentice is working in a church, in the company of an architect and a monk — material and spiritual assistance that he can draw from. It is clear that he is still learning, but he is being offered every opportunity to hone his craft. In Jungian analysis, buildings are often associated with one’s self. Perhaps here, too, this isn’t simply a physical building process, but a psychological one too.

Four of Pentacles – I so rarely draw this card in my readings, and yet there is something so compelling — quite humorous — about the figure at centre, holding so strongly on to what he has, not letting a thing get away from him. Thing is, he’s not going anywhere either! What’s the point of having all of that when you can’t move? The idea that ‘you can’t take it with you’ seems apropos.

Five of Pentacles – Poverty consciousness; looking for ‘wealth’ in the wrong place. The Five of Pentacles evokes some sympathy when I look at the couple in the snow. However, I think they might be used to evoking sympathy, and I’m not sure that’s what they need. It keeps them, and us, trapped in their plight. What I think this card is emphasising is the nourishing power of a connection both to a sense of community and to spirit. If they could only stop catching our attention — we who are also outside, I might add — then we could all turn our attention to what is inside the window behind them, shining through. Support is there; it may be us who need to look somewhere different.

Six of Pentacles – I’m ambivalent about this card, possibly because it seems to have two contrasting meanings depending on the readings I’ve given. Or perhaps the two meanings are the different sides of the same coin. <ahem!> On the one side, I see the generosity of a person who has more being able to pass that on to others who have less. On the other, I see a cycle of poverty perpetuated by hand-outs that are limited, carefully weighed out, and therefore controlling. There is a choice as to how one has a relationship with what one has, and how that relationship extends to others. That might offer a point of reconciliation between the two sides.

Seven of Pentacles – The Seven is about the sweat and nurturing that goes into an act of devoted creation that one takes on by oneself, with little outside support. The vines that the man looks at, in a moment of rest, are growing, but the leaves are edged with brown in some places, recognising that this is a project that is going to ask for a fair amount of work and a careful eye on how things are proceeding. But there is fruit already — lying at the man’s feet. This feels promising to me; a sign of what is possible and what we can achieve when we set our hearts and minds to the task.

Eight of Pentacles – The apprentice in the Three and the labourer in the Seven lead to an artisan in the Eight. The figure has acquired a skill, is good at what he does, and is able to create something plentiful from it, witnessed in the completed Pentacles on the wooden post in front of him. The message of the Eight of Pentacles is that you’re on the right track; keep doing what you’re doing. Through your actions, which are the product of learning and application, you are bringing something beautiful into being. Now all you need to do is to make full use of it — to take it down, take it back, and embody it.

Nine of Pentacles – You might be rich, but are you truly wealthy? The Nine of Pentacles has all the outward show of fortune — but they don’t call them ‘trappings’ for nothing. Like the falcon that she holds in her hand, the woman is beautiful, but prevented from flying free by her circumstances. There is a wildness that has been tamed away for the sake of appearance — a price that has had to be paid. The snail is key for me here: Tiny creature that it is, it escapes the influence of its surroundings, allowed to travel unfettered. It carries everything that it needs with it, and seems to be none the poorer for its understated presence.

Ten of Pentacles – The Ten is the handing over of the guard from one generation to the next — the contemplation that comes with old age when we look back on what we have achieved and look forward to those who are moving up to take our place. For ‘taking our place’ is what they do. Do we, in turn, have the inner resources to accommodate this transition in addition to the outer resources to sustain us? All meanings of ‘wealth’ are considered here.

Page of Pentacles – “Oh – beautiful!” The Page of Pentacles looks a little in love to me. Or in awe. He has been given a gift, and he can’t take his eyes off it, holding it up so that he can drink it in. The Page stands in a landscape that is similar to that in the Ace, Queen and King, yet it only takes up about a quarter of the card’s background, and the field we can see is ploughed but bare, and postage-stamp small. Pages are potential, and the wonder that comes from the first taste of what a suit holds. As I said in the Wands post — kids with matches. That’s how we learn, and we can look back at all of the adventures and misadventures that lay before us as Pages, until we began to know, and to work, better and more effectively.

Knight of Pentacles – In the Knight, the field is still bare, but it is larger and more accessible than it was in the Page. This field represents the deep connection that man has with his environment, and how both depend on each other to create and sustain life. If we don’t look after and invest in ourselves, and therefore the world around us, then nothing will bear fruit. The Knight, like all the Knights, seeks out in the world what he eventually discovers has been inside him all along.

Queen of Pentacles – Co-creator and guardian of the physical world, the Queen holds her pentacle in her lap, egg-like, the seat of manifestation. She is not in awe of it, doesn’t grab it to her, nor does she have to search to find it. The landscape around her is abundant, and she seems an integral part of it, one feeding the other.

King of Pentacles – Masculine counterpoint to Queen’s feminine, the King of Pentacles holds both a pentacle and a sceptre, and he looks protectively at the pentacle, as if in acknowledgement of the power it holds and the duty he has towards it. The King is more closely associated with the man-made world than the Queen, and carries the natural world on his garments: Both have their place here. He might be engulfed by the vines and leaves around him, but his quiet dignity ensures that his presence is not only felt, but is necessary to his surroundings.

From the Ace of Wands to the Queen and King of Pentacles we bring the world and our experience of it into being; and, in every card between them, there is described every aspect of what it is to be human. Tarot is a story of life. More than that: It is a tool, one whose potential is powerful if we can recognise and work with it. The tarot helps us to understand how our lives take shape, and how we can move from a position of passivity to one of action and receptivity. It can be a challenging step to take — the full assumption of responsibility, the reclaiming of power from parental figures, both real and projected. But it is when we can take what the Aces offer us, gifts that they are, and work with them consciously, that we also accept the invitation to become Queens and Kings in our own right. Anyway, if we don’t step up, someone is going to take that space for us. And when we do step up, we realise that not only is there enough space for everyone there, but we open the way for others to do the same.