Minor Arcana, the Pentacles
Three of Pentacles
The Three of Pentacles is the third card of the suit of pentacles in the deck Pamela Colman Smith drew in 1909 for Arthur Edward Waite. Inside a stone church a young man stands on a bench to work on a pointed arch carved with three coins, while two people stand by with a large sheet of paper.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Métier, trade, skilled labour; usually, how-ever, regarded as a card of nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory.
- Reversed
Mediocrity, in work and otherwise, puerility, pettiness, weakness.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 276. Read it in the chapter
A sculptor at his work in a monastery. Compare the design which illustrates the Eight of Pentacles. The apprentice or amateur therein has received his reward and is now at work in earnest.
What's in the picture
- Three coins in stone. High in the arch, three coins are carved into the stone, set in a triangle with one at the top. A small round ornament sits between the lower two.
- The carving below. Under them, where the ribs of the arch meet, a smaller carving, perhaps a flower, fills a triangle of stone.
- The worker. A young man with fair hair stands half turned away from us. He wears a dark tunic with a yellow cloth hanging at his waist, and pale blue hose. Waite called him “a sculptor at his work in a monastery”.
- The mallet. He holds a tool up to the stone, a mallet with a round white head.
- The bench. He stands on a low wooden bench to reach his work, his feet planted on its top.
- The figure in black. Across the column a man in a dark robe with a frilled collar turns his face up toward the worker.
- The sheet. In front of him a pale sheet hangs open toward the worker, marked with lines and dots. It may be the plan of the work.
- The spotted cloak. The second figure is seen from the side, wrapped from head to foot in an orange cloak and a pink hood, both spotted with red.
- The column. A stone column runs down the middle of the card from the arch to the floor. The worker stands on one side of it and the two onlookers on the other, on grey stone.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 67 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Pentacles
- Number
- Three
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Earth
- Astrology (Golden Dawn)
- Mars in Capricorn
- Title in Book T
- Lord of Material Works
- 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-Winged Angelic Hand, as before, holding a branch of a rose tree, of which two white rosebuds touch and surmount the topmost Pentacle. The Pentacles are arranged in an equilateral triangle. Above and below the symbols ♂ and ♑︎.
Working and constructive force, building up, creation, erection; realization and increase of material things; gain in commercial transactions, rank; increase of substance, influence, cleverness in business, selfishness. Commencement of matters to be established later. Narrow and prejudiced. Keen in matters of gain; sometimes given to seeking after impossibilities.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 189. See the source Papus (1892)
Realization of this commencement of fortune. A small sum.
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 sculptor at his work in a monastery.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Three 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.