Minor Arcana, the Pentacles
Queen of Pentacles
The Queen of Pentacles is the queen of the suit of pentacles in the deck Pamela Colman Smith drew in 1909 for Arthur Edward Waite. She sits on a carved stone throne in a garden, under a frame of roses, and looks down at the coin she holds in her lap, with a rabbit in the grass nearby.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty.
- Reversed
Evil, suspicion, suspense, fear, mistrust.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 256. Read it in the chapter
The face suggests that of a dark woman, whose qualities might be summed up in the idea of greatness of soul; she has also the serious cast of intelligence; she contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein.
What's in the picture
- The roses. Red roses on dark leaves hang across the top of the card and down the right side, a bower around her and the throne.
- The crown. Her gold crown has a small red ornament on top, and her dark hair falls to her shoulders.
- The green veil. A long green veil hangs from the crown down her back and spills onto the ground beside the throne, where it curls in an S.
- The coin. She holds the coin on her knees with both hands, cupping it from below. It is drawn as an outline, with no gold fill, so it looks pale against her red dress.
- Her bowed head. Her head is bent toward the coin, her eyes lowered. Waite wrote that she “contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein”.
- The throne. The tall back of the throne is grey stone, rounded at the top and carved all over with shapes that are hard to make out at this size.
- The carved head. On the arm of the throne, under her elbow, sits a carved head with horns, perhaps a goat.
- The rabbit. Low in the right corner a brown rabbit crouches in the grass, half hidden because it is the same colour as the ground around it.
- Mountains and river. Behind her on the left are blue mountains and a river, with red flowers and tall grasses along the bank. The ground at her feet is rough and orange, and the sky is gold.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 77 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Pentacles
- Number
- Queen
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Earth
- Title in Book T
- The Queen of the Thrones 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 Woman of beautiful face with dark hair; seated upon a throne, beneath which is dark sandy earth. One side of her face is light, the other dark; and her symbolism is best represented in profile. Her attire is similar to that of the Queen of Wands: but she bears a winged goat's head as a crest. A goat is by her side. In one hand she bears a sceptre surmounted by a cube, and in the other an orb of gold.
She is impetuous, kind; timid, rather charming; greathearted; intelligent, melancholy; truthful, yet of many moods.
If ill dignified she is undecided, capricious, changeable, foolish.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), pp. 169–170. See the source Papus (1892)
A fair woman, indifferent, or inimical.
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: she contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Queen 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.