Minor Arcana, the Pentacles
Five of Pentacles
The Five of Pentacles, fifth card of the suit of pentacles, was drawn by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909 for Arthur Edward Waite. Two poor figures, one of them on crutches and one wrapped in a shawl, walk through falling snow at night past a high window of coloured glass with five gold coins set in it.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
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.
- Reversed
Disorder, chaos, ruin, discord, profligacy.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 272. Read it in the chapter
Two mendicants in a snow-storm pass a lighted casement.
What's in the picture
- The window. High in a dark stone wall is a window of coloured glass. Its five gold coins sit one at the top and two pairs below, among green leaves, with red and blue panes down the sides. Waite called it “a lighted casement”.
- The snow. White flecks cover the black wall and the night sky around the window. The snow is falling thick.
- The bandaged head. The man on the left has a white band tied around his head. His face is turned up.
- The bell. A small bell seems to hang from a cord around his neck, on the front of his blue tunic.
- The crutches. He leans on two wooden crutches, in a pale blue tunic that reaches his knees. One leg is lifted off the ground behind him, and he moves on the other.
- The shawl. The second figure walks ahead with head bowed, wrapped in an orange shawl dotted with white that covers the head and most of the body.
- The bare feet. Below a green skirt spotted with black, the feet look bare against the snow.
- The stone frame. The window sits deep in a thick grey frame of stone, with a broad sill below it, well above the heads of the two people.
- The snowy ground. The ground is white, with dark marks near their feet that look like footprints. The two keep to the bottom of the card, and the lit window stays above them, out of reach.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 69 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Pentacles
- Number
- Five
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Earth
- Astrology (Golden Dawn)
- Mercury in Taurus
- Title in Book T
- Lord of Material Trouble
- Drawn by
- Pamela Colman Smith
- Planned by
- Arthur Edward Waite
- Published
- London, William Rider & Son, 1909
- Scan
- Pam-A printing, c. 1910, Wikimedia Commons
In the old books
Book T (1912)
A White Radiant Angelic Hand issuing from clouds, and holding a branch of the white rose tree, but from which the roses are falling, and leaving no buds behind. Five Pentacles similar to the Ace. Above and below are ☿ and ♉︎.
Loss of money or position. Trouble about material things. Labour, toil, land cultivation; building, knowledge and acuteness of earthly things, poverty, carefulness, kindness; sometimes money regained after severe toil and labour. Unimaginative, harsh , stern, determined, obstinate.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 196. See the source Papus (1892)
Opposition to this opposition. A success coming which will balance the loss.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 314. See the source
Before 1909
The older cards and pictures behind this one will be shown here once their licences are checked.
The film
No film for this card yet.
Sources
- Waite: two mendicants in a snow-storm pass a lighted casement.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Five of Pentacles
Around this card
Before and after it in the deck
The same number in the other suits
All the cards of the Pentacles, or the whole deck.