Minor arcana
Pentacles
Fourteen cards — ace to ten, then Page, Knight, Queen and King. Attributed to earth, and the counterpart of diamonds in an ordinary playing-card pack.
- Element
- EarthAttributed by the Golden Dawn, which Waite's deck follows.
- Taken to cover
- money, craft and the bodyReported from tradition, not asserted.
- Playing-card suit
- DiamondsThe tarot pack and the 52-card pack share an ancestor.
- Cards
- 14Ten numbered, four court.
The ten numbered cards
Smith's number cards were the innovation of this deck. The court cards had always shown figures, but the packs in ordinary use printed the Five of Pentacles as five pentacles set out in a pattern, and Smith drew a scene on every one of the forty. A few older packs had pictures on their number cards too, the Sola Busca of about 1490 among them, but this was the one that made it usual, and it is the main reason this deck, rather than any older one, is the deck most people picture.
The court
Waite's meanings, all fourteen
| Card | Upright |
|---|---|
| Ace | Perfect contentment, felicity, ecstasy; also speedy intelligence; gold. |
| Two | On the one hand it is represented as a card of gaiety, recreation and its connexions, which is the subject of the design; but it is read also as news and messages in writing, as obstacles, agitation, trouble, embroilment. |
| Three | Métier, trade, skilled labour; usually, however, regarded as a card of nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory. |
| Four | The surety of possessions, cleaving to that which one has, gift, legacy, inheritance. |
| Five | The card foretells material trouble above all, whether in the form illustrated—that is, destitution—or otherwise. For some cartomancists, it is a card of love and lovers—wife, husband, friend, mistress; also concordance, affinities. These alternatives cannot be harmonized. |
| Six | Presents, gifts, gratification; another account says attention, vigilance; now is the accepted time, present prosperity, etc. |
| Seven | These are exceedingly contradictory; in the main, it is a card of money, business, barter; but one reading gives altercation, quarrel—and another innocence, ingenuity, purgation. |
| Eight | Work, employment, commission, craftsmanship, skill in craft and business, perhaps in the preparatory stage. |
| Nine | Prudence, safety, success, accomplishment, certitude, discernment. |
| Ten | Gain, riches; family matters, archives, extraction, the abode of a family. |
| Page | Application, study, scholarship, reflection; another reading says news, messages and the bringer thereof; also rule, management. |
| Knight | Utility, serviceableness, interest, responsibility, rectitude—all on the normal and external plane. |
| Queen | Opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty. |
| King | Valour, realizing intelligence, business and normal intellectual aptitude, sometimes mathematical gifts and attainments of this kind; success in these paths. |
Quoted, not summarised. Nothing here is a claim that a card means anything.