Minor Arcana, the Pentacles
Knight of Pentacles
Pamela Colman Smith drew the Knight of Pentacles in 1909 as one of the four court cards of the suit of pentacles in A. E. Waite's deck. A knight in armour sits on a heavy black horse that stands still in front of ploughed fields, and he holds a coin out on his flat hand while looking past it.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Utility, serviceableness, interest, responsibility, rectitude—all on the normal and external plane.
- Reversed
inertia, idleness, repose of that kind, stagnation; also placidity, discouragement, carelessness.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 258. Read it in the chapter
He rides a slow, enduring, heavy horse, to which his own aspect corresponds. He exhibits his symbol, but does not look therein.
What's in the picture
- The leafy crest. A spray of green leaves sticks up from the back of his helmet like a plume.
- His face. The helmet is open at the front, and a grey guard covers his chin. His eyes look straight ahead, past the coin. Waite noticed this: he “exhibits his symbol, but does not look therein”.
- The coin. He holds the coin up on his flat hand in front of the horse's neck, as if to show it. It is drawn in outline, with no gold.
- The red glove. His glove is red and dotted on the back, with a wide cuff over the wrist.
- The black horse. The horse is black and broad, with a red bridle and reins. Its neck is arched and its feet are planted. Waite calls it a “slow, enduring, heavy horse”.
- Leaves on the horse. A sprig of green leaves, like the knight's crest, rises from the top of the horse's head, between its ears.
- The harness. A red strap studded with dots crosses the horse's hindquarters, with a tassel hanging from it at the back.
- The spur. His armoured foot sits in the stirrup with a spur at the heel. Behind his leg a fringed cloth hangs below the saddle.
- The fields. Behind them, ploughed fields roll away in red-brown furrows to a line of trees on the right, with green grass in front. The sky is a flat yellow, without a single cloud in it.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 76 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Pentacles
- Number
- Knight
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Earth
- Title in Book T
- The Lord of the Wide and Fertile Land: the King of the Spirits of Earth
- 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 Dark Winged Warrior with winged and crowned helmet: mounted on a light brown horse. Equipment as the Knight of Wands.
The winged head of a stag or antelope as a crest. Beneath the horse's feet is fertile land with ripened corn. In one hand he bears a sceptre surmounted by a hexagram: in the other a Pentacle like that of the Zelator Adeptus Minor.
Unless very well dignified he is heavy, dull, and material. Laborious, clever, and patient in material matters.
If ill dignified, he is avaricious, grasping, dull, jealous; not very courageous, unless assisted by other symbols.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 169. See the source Papus (1892)
A young, fair man. A stranger. An arrival.
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: a slow, enduring, heavy horse; he exhibits his symbol, but does not look therein.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Knight 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.