Minor Arcana, the Pentacles
Nine of Pentacles
The Nine of Pentacles comes ninth in the suit of pentacles, in the deck Pamela Colman Smith drew in 1909 for A. E. Waite. A woman in a long robe stands in a vineyard heavy with grapes, a hooded bird on her raised gloved hand and her other hand resting on one of nine gold coins.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Prudence, safety, success, accomplishment, certitude, discernment.
- Reversed
Roguery, deception, voided project, bad faith.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 264. Read it in the chapter
A woman, with a bird upon her wrist, stands amidst a great abundance of grapevines in the garden of a manorial house. It is a wide domain, suggesting plenty in all things. Possibly it is her own possession and testifies to material well-being.
What's in the picture
- The hooded bird. A bird of prey perches on her raised left hand. A red hood with a small plume covers its head and eyes.
- The glove. Her left hand is gloved in white and held up near her shoulder, so the bird sits higher than her head.
- Cap and earring. She wears a red cap over dark curls, and a small earring hangs at her ear. Her face is calm and her eyes are half closed.
- The robe. Her long pale robe is covered with small red flowers, each a ring on a short stem with two leaves. The wide sleeve is lined in red, and a striped collar shows at her neck.
- Her hand on a coin. Her right hand rests on the top coin of the pile on the left.
- The nine coins. Six coins stand on her right and three on her left, set among the vines, all lower than her waist.
- The grapes. Bunches of red grapes hang from the vines on both sides of her, and the leaves fill every gap behind the coins.
- The house. Beyond the vines on the right is a building with a red roof, and purple hills run along the horizon. Two small trees stand against the yellow sky. Waite calls the place “the garden of a manorial house”.
- The snail. At the bottom left, on the bare ground under the coins, a small snail is crawling. Besides the bird, it is the only animal on the card.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 73 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Pentacles
- Number
- Nine
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Earth
- Astrology (Golden Dawn)
- Venus in Virgo
- Title in Book T
- Lord of Material Gain
- 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 Radiating Angelic Hand, holding a rose branch with nine white roses, each of which touches a Pentacle. The Pentacles are arranged thus ⟨figure⟩: and there are rosebuds on the branches as well as flowers. ♀ and ♍︎ above and below.
Complete realization of material gain, good, riches; inheritance; covetous; treasuring of goods; and sometimes theft and knavery. The whole according to dignity.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 180. See the source Papus (1892)
Equilibrium of Equilibrium. A durable fortune.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 315. 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 woman with a bird upon her wrist, in the garden of a manorial house.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Nine 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.