The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Seven of Pentacles

Pentacles, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

A young man, leaning on his staff, looks intently at seven pentacles attached to a clump of greenery on his right; one would say that these were his treasures and that his heart was there.

the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time

In divination

These are exceedingly contradictory; in the main, it is a card of money, business, barter; but one reading gives altercation, quarrels—and another innocence, ingenuity, purgation.

Reversed: Cause for anxiety regarding money which it may be proposed to lend.

The library's note

Seven pentacles hang fixed to a clump of greenery, and the figure studying them has, in Waite's words, "his heart was there," attention given fully to a harvest not yet gathered in. He calls the card's compiled meanings "exceedingly contradictory," money and barter on one side, "innocence, ingenuity, purgation" on the other, the suit's material concern here caught mid-assessment, neither spent nor secured.

a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come

Doors Onward

Sources & Further Reading

  1. Waite, A. E. (1911). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Card text quoted verbatim, his punctuation kept. (Public domain.)
  2. Card described at: http://sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pktpe07.htm

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