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.
the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time
In divination
Métier, trade, skilled labour; usually, however, regarded as a card of nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory.
Reversed:Mediocrity, in work and otherwise, puerility, pettiness, weakness.
The library's note
A sculptor works inside a monastery, and Waite sends the reader sideways rather than forward, "compare the design which illustrates the Eight of Pentacles," his only such cross-reference within a single suit's run. Here the figure has "received his reward" already and works now "in earnest," craft recognized rather than merely attempted. Nobility and skilled labor fill his compiled reading, the suit's material concern turning, this early, toward work that has begun to matter to someone beyond the worker.
a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come