Four of Pentacles (Rider Waite Tarot)
First Impressions
This card came up once with the offspring, when she was about four. Not the Rider Waite one, I think it was her own deck (Hanson Roberts). Her first response was, “He’s not sharing the pentacles!” (pronounced PENN-tickles)
“No, he’s not,” I agreed. “Why isn’t he, do you think?”
Emphatically. “Because they’re
all his!”
In modern decks that follow the Rider Waite tradition, this card is depicted by a person, usually male, clutching a large pentacle to his chest. One rests at the top of his hat or crown, and two more are on the ground with his feet planted firmly on them as though to keep them from blowing away in the wind. Some of them look fairly impassive or even pleasant, like the Rider Waite; others such as the Robin Wood are wizened and downright miserly. I like some of the more interesting takes on this card, like the World Spirit (a woman retreats from the community gathering with a pentacle held tightly to her and a suspicious look on her face), the Alchemical (a man buries four pentacles in the ground like treasure) or the Sharman Caselli (a man holds one pentacle and sits jealously atop a locked chest adorned with three more). However you look at it, it’s a possessive card. The card of a child who holds their onto their toy for dear life stating “Mine!” The Four of Pentacles is a card of people who don’t share. Who have their worldly goods, and by God they’re going to keep them or die trying.
Now, that’s not to say there isn’t good cause. It may be an unflattering snapshot of a moment in time for a generous and open-handed individual who is hanging on protectively to the one thing that matters to him more than anything in the world. His prized possession. But that isn’t the vibe that usually comes across. It’s like that of a hoarder or a miser. Not someone who hugs something tightly to them for the enjoyment or love of the object itself, but one who grimly clings to it just to keep anyone else from having it.
In the Rider Waite version, the man’s face is actually open and reasonably pleasant, although there is a grimness about the mouth. He’s richly attired in a simple golden crown, a deep wine-red gown with blue trim at the hem, soft boots and a black cloak pulled partly around him as if to keep him warm without obscuring the robe beneath. He’s sitting on a gray cubic block of a seat at the very outermost edge of a flat gray surface - another stage card; the delineation is such that we aren’t sure if he’s just inside or just hovering at the edge of the stage. Behind him a flat expanse of featureless gray sky; a cityscape is below him as though the scene takes place from the roof of a very tall building. One pentacle balances neatly atop his crown, two are flat on the ground under his feet. The fourth is before his chest; he’s got his arms curled in a curious way to hold it, so that he cups or encircles it with both arms. Not quite as if hugging it, but as if he’s framing it. Showing it off.
Creator’s Notes
Waite says of this card:
Waite said:
A crowned figure, having a pentacle over his crown, clasps another with hands and arms; two pentacles are under his feet. He holds to that which he has.
Gee, doesn’t sound so bad at all when you look at it that way.
Others’ Interpretations
Waite offers the following interpretations for the Four of Pentacles:
Waite said:
Divinatory Meanings: The surety of possessions, cleaving to that which one has, gift, legacy, inheritance. Reversed: Suspense, delay, opposition.
Waite’s divinatory take on this card really views it in a much more neutral frame of mind. However, I prefer Thirteen’s more rounded take:
Thirteen said:
This is sometimes called the miser card, but that may be too harsh a judgment on it. There are times when it's good to hold onto what you have and this card can be read as advice that there are currently no good investments, so hold onto your money, or that this is not a time to change jobs or take on new projects. Just keep doing what you're doing. It may even suggest that you don't talk about your work. A non-disclosure agreement.
On the positive side, this tells the Querent that they're in a position of status, health, money, even comfort. Business is good and stable, work is steady, money is in the bank. There is, however, a negative to this card in that the Querent might be holding on too tight. They might be too afraid of to spend any money, too afraid to take on any new work.
In the most extreme negative, this is the card of hoarders and packrats. Also the card of jealous relationships where one person views the other as their property and won't let them leave the house. This can be the card of the shut-ins and agoraphobics.
So while this card can be good advice to the spendthrift or shopaholic that they need to hold onto their money, or to the workaholic to not take on more jobs, it can also be the opposite, advising the miser to be more generous with good luck and good fortune. It is a card that can be telling the querent to enjoy what they have because holding still leads to stagnation.
Symbols and Attributions
Astrologically this card is ruled by the final decan of Capricorn. Capricorn, again, is an Earthy sign, and is also tied to the Devil. I think this is an important point in this card, as materialism is a pretty obvious theme in each. But Capricorn is more than that. Sandra A. Thomson says:
Thomson said:
Cards attributed to the sign Capricorn partake of its organizing, structuring, disciplined, hierarchical and form-building qualities.
And this is something else I see in the Four of Pentacles. The man’s need for order and structure to protect himself.
Numerologically the Fours are related to the Emperor and represent stability and structure. Combine this with the plodding, earthbound practicality of Capricorn and the Pentacles, and we have stability taken perhaps a little too far. The need for stability is such that it does blinker him to all else, that all is sacrificed to security.
The man sits on a gray cubic throne. As we saw in the Emperor, cubes are shapes of the most extreme stability. He wears a rich gown and crown that illustrate the extent of his material comfort, his own physical security. The gown is a deep red-brown; red of determination, brown of Earth. It emphasizes the extent of his will, but only as far as it protects his own comfort, his own position. The bright blue edge of the gown shows that while emotional and spiritual concerns are pushed down, while he tries to suppress them and wall himself off from the rest of the world, they are still present. All of this he attempts to cover up by a black cloak. In this situation black can represent an absence of light, of insight, of receptivity. He wraps himself up, or tries to, to protect himself. But it’s still open. He’s not completely covered.
Likewise, look at the way he clutches the pentacles to him. Two are interposed between his feet and the ground, one is held to his chest like a shield, and one caps him off to cover the top of his head. It’s as though his pentacles - his wealth, his money, his belongings - can shield him from the world. But can they? His back is exposed, as far as we can see - he’s wide open and vulnerable from the back to anything that might come by from that direction, from the city. Money can’t protect you forever, no matter how hard you try.
Others say that the positioning of the pentacles - and the city in the background - have other meanings as well. The pentacles cover his head and heart, and also separate him from the ground. He is letting his obsession with material security distance him from intellectual matters, emotional matters and earthly matters. And meantime, he’s turned his back on the rest of the world.
His arms are awkwardly positioned as he holds the pentacle to his chest. It bears some semblance to an ouroboros - that alchemical symbol of a serpent or dragon or similar biting its own tail and hence forming a perfect circle. It is supposed to indicate unity, perfection, much like the lemniscate. To me it brings to mind the lemniscates over the heads of the Magician and the maiden in Strength. Both of these individuals are strong-willed and independent, and I see the man in the Four of Pentacles as an extension of this. Control over his world is very important to him, and perhaps the position of his arms is a reflection of his need for internal control. The need to be self-contained, enclosed, is reflected by the closed circle of his arms.
The city in the background is more than just a reflection of the “real world” that is trying to impose itself on the man’s well-ordered world of his own making. It’s also behind the line of the stage card, and so is something we need to examine. It fades to the background in this card, something that is less important, less
real than the here and now.
My Interpretation
I see this card as indicating someone whose need for material security and comfort is so great that it crowds out thought of all else. In his quest for security and stability, the man clings tightly to what he has, and works hard to insulate himself. He thinks he is complete within himself. The rest of the world fades to insignificance, pushed to the background. But try though he might to block it out, it can’t be ignored completely. Reality always finds a way to intervene.
