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 tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
The Knight of Pentacles, jaw set and resolute, looks to a place beyond the right-hand edge of the card. His horse is at rest, its ears turned backwards, waiting for a command from its master. In the Knight’s gloved right hand sits a pentacle. Is the Knight extending it to someone? Or is he simply holding it up for examination? I can’t quite decide whether the movement of his hand is enough to suggest an offering; or… something else.
The Knight’s expression is purposeful and serious, and while his arm is held forward, the rest of his body is tilted slightly backwards, away from the point on which he is focusing. Do you feel a tension between the extension of the arm, and the way he is set back in the saddle? What is it suggesting to us? This, perhaps:
Whereas the Page in the previous card of the suit is a romantic soul, his pentacle the all-consuming object of his desire (he holds it aloft, and it seems that nothing can draw his attention away from it), the Knight is learning that the desire of the lover can get you into all kinds of trouble. He is a warrior. He has almost certainly waged war over his pentacle — the conquest of ‘things’ and the need for power that have justified so many of our human battles. Sometimes a warrior such as he comes to a point where it is worth asking a few questions:
What does power over something mean? What rights can he claim over something that was ultimately divinely given (in the Ace)? What is the responsibility of the possessor?
Perhaps the Knight is beginning to understand the notion of acting in service to something greater than he is. From the need to possess of the new lover (the Page), the Knight has reached the point of detachment. He doesn’t seem to be entirely comfortable with the notion yet — I get the impression there is an air of “What? I’ve fought this hard to find out that it wasn’t really mine to begin with!” about him. But there is a sense of a transition into that understanding.
The Knight is richly clothed, as is his horse. A red cloak almost covers the armour on his upper body. That cloak is seen again — this time without armour — on the Queen in the next card. Red is the colour of blood, of life; and of authority. The Knight is donning the mantle of authority. But it is an authority that puts the need to fight in its proper place: battle as a necessity, not a hot-headed pursuit into the ‘rights of ownership’. The King wears armour, but it is almost wholly covered by a gown that is covered in grapes. He will fight if he needs to… but only if he needs to. He is a protector, not an aggressor. The Knight is showing signs of that shift in power and attitude.