Minor Arcana, the Pentacles
Page of Pentacles
The Page of Pentacles is the page, first of the four court cards, in the suit of pentacles of the deck Pamela Colman Smith drew in 1909 for A. E. Waite. A young man in a green tunic and red hat stands in a field of flowers and holds a coin up at eye level with both hands, looking hard at it.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Application, study, scholarship, reflection; another reading says news, messages and the bringer thereof; also rule, management.
- Reversed
Prodigality, dissipation, liberality. luxury; unfavourable news.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 260. Read it in the chapter
A youthful figure, looking intently at the pentacle which hovers over his raised hands. He moves slowly, insensible of that which is about him.
What's in the picture
- The coin. The coin is drawn only in outline, the same yellow as the sky, with a black star inside, one point up.
- The raised hands. Both hands are lifted, open and palm up, under the coin. It touches his fingertips or floats just above them. Waite wrote that it “hovers over his raised hands”.
- His gaze. His head tips back a little and he looks up at the coin, lips closed.
- The red hat. A red hat with a soft, ruffled crown sits on his dark hair, tipped back from his face.
- The scarf. A long red scarf hangs from the hat over his shoulder and down his back, to below his waist.
- The tunic. His green tunic is pleated below a tan sash, with a high collar. His legs are bare to the knee, above loose tan boots.
- The meadow. He stands in a meadow with small red and yellow flowers, and a clump of round, dark trees grows on the left.
- The step. One foot is planted and the other trails behind, so he seems to have stopped mid-step. Waite has him moving slowly, “insensible of that which is about him”.
- Mountain and field. A single pale blue mountain rises on the right, with a ploughed field in front of it, its furrows drawn in red-brown lines. The yellow sky fills most of the card, and against it the page and his coin stand out clearly.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 75 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Pentacles
- Number
- Page
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Earth
- Title in Book T
- The Princess of the Echoing Hills: the Rose of the Palace 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 Strong and beautiful Amazon figure with rich brown hair, standing on grass or flowers. A grove of trees near her. Her form suggests Hebe, Ceres, and Proserpine. She bears a winged ram's head as a crest: and wears a mantle of sheepskin. In one hand she carries a sceptre with a circular disk: in the other a Pentacle similar to that of the Ace of Pentacles.
She is generous, kind, diligent, benevolent, careful, courageous, persevering, pitiful.
If ill dignified she is wasteful and prodigal.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 171. See the source Papus (1892)
A fair child. A messenger. A letter.
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: the pentacle hovers over his raised hands; he moves slowly, insensible of what is about him.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Page 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.