Ace of Pentacles (Rider Waite Tarot)
First Impressions
"C'est un cadeau!"
"Huh?"
"It's a present." - Monty Python and the Holy Grail
That's how I tend to view the Ace of Pentacles. Like a present. A mysteriously glowing disembodied giant hand that offers a shiny gold bauble like a gift. The bauble? A gold coin, amulet or medal of some sort, inscribed with a pentacle, a five-pointed star. An interesting thing to note is how the pentacle is held, particularly in comparison with the other three Aces. On the Swords and Wands cards, the suit emblems they offer forth are gripped tightly; on the Cups card it is held on the flattened palm, supported but not restrained. But here on the Ace of Pentacles it is cupped tenderly in the hand - it rests on the palm and the fingers curl up around it to support it securely. Rather than a tool or an implement or a weapon, or an ornament offered freely, I see this pentacle as something that is cherished. A beloved talisman or an heirloom passing with a mixture of pride and reluctance from one hand to the next. They say that the best presents are the ones you want to keep for yourself, that you hate to give up, and that rings true for this card.
Like all the Ace cards in the Rider Waite Tarot, the hand emanates from a cloud in a whitish sky; there is a suggestion of a glow about hand and pentacle. They are huge, dominating the card. Beneath it we see a pastoral scene: tall white Easter lilies grow in a garden, just inside a privet hedge dotted with what have always been assumed to be roses. A sand-coloured path leads through the garden to an arched opening in the hedge, through which blue-white mountains can be seen in the distance; they look like the ones in the background behind the Fool.
It was Waite, I believe, who first turned the harmless and prosaic Coins (Deniers, Dinari) into the occult-sounding Pentacles by inscribing the five-pointed star inside the gold coin. Even Crowley didn’t bother with that, labeling them as ambiguous Discs. Personally I view the Pentacles suit as the most eminently practical and down-to-earth of the lot, and find the concept of Pentacles a little high-flown. Personally I prefer Coins. But Waite didn’t call them that, so here are the Pentacles.
No matter what you call it, I always like to see this card. Maybe it's the fact that I always did identify with the suit of Pentacles; maybe it's that I learned to equate it with good material beginnings, particularly financial (the coin, you see!); maybe it's the look of a lucky charm. But I have generally thought of this card as a very good and even fortunate one to see. See, I tend to view the Aces in Tarot as a kind of a gateway between the Majors and the Minors. A halfway point. Equated numerologically to the Magician, I see the Aces as the tools the Magician has on his table, the tools he needs to get the job done. This is particularly applicable when seen in light of the down-to-earth Bateleur of the Marseille decks, for all that they’re more explicitly shown in the Rider Waite Magician. So the Pentacle symbolizes one facet of the Tarot, and the tools the Magician requires. The earthy, material, practical side of things. And the Ace? Obviously primary, it’s kind of the first and foremost representation of the suit. So the Ace of Pentacles is the best and brightest of the material and physical aspects, the first raw indication of the suit and its element at work. It’s good fortune not in turns of luck, but of actual fortune. As in, money, work, possessions, and things relating to them. Work projects that turn out well, good news for work, for domestic and financial matters.
But it’s also important to view the Aces as the first stage, as the potential for their suit. Because these Aces are the tools of the Magician, they do not do the work themselves. They just provide the means by which he can do it. So they are the means, the potential, to accomplish much. What they become, what they achieve or what we achieve through use of this tool, unfolds through the course of the suit.
Creator’s Notes
Waite says of this card:
Waite said:
A hand--issuing, as usual, from a cloud--holds up a pentacle.
Gee, really? Glad I read this
Others’ Interpretations
At least in terms of interpretation Waite is a little more forthcoming:
Waite said:
Divinatory Meanings: Perfect contentment, felicity, ecstasy; also speedy intelligence; gold. Reversed: The evil side of wealth, bad intelligence; also great riches. In any case it shews prosperity, comfortable material conditions, but whether these are of advantage to the possessor will depend on whether the card is reversed or not.
I found this a little curious, though, about speedy intelligence. Because (a) I never considered the earthbound Pentacles to be exactly swift or speedy, and (b) being such a practical and material suit I never thought of them as particularly intelligent. Rather I consider that the forte of the airy and intellectual Swords. The Pentacles? Adept, practical, canny perhaps, but not speedily intelligent.
Symbols and Attributes
First, this suit was a suit of
Coins. Pretty practical things, used in exchange for material goods or services. They say money can't buy happiness, but it can make an unhappy life a hell of a lot more comfortable. And this suit, I tend to think, is one of comfort. About home, about possessions, about the finer things.
But now it's a suit of
Pentacles - what I always perceived to be a Wiccan symbol, a circle circumscribed by a five-pointed star. Its five points represent the five senses, and it apparently has some connection to the planet Venus (planet of the Empress and Earth-based). Now Tarot aside, I don't really know what a pentacle even is, so I turned to trusty wikipedia:
Wikipedia said:
A pentacle (or pantacle in Thelema) is an amulet used in magical evocation, generally made of parchment, paper or metal (although it can be of other materials), on which the symbol of a spirit or energy being evoked is drawn. It is often worn around the neck, or placed within the triangle of evocation. Protective symbols may also be included (sometimes on the reverse), a common one being the five-point form of the Seal of Solomon, called a pentacle of Solomon or pentangle of Solomon. Many varieties of pentacle can be found in the grimoires of Solomonic magic; they are also used in some neopagan magical traditions, such as Wicca, alongside other magical tools.
The words pentacle and pentagram (a five-point unicursal star) are essentially synonymous, according to the Online Oxford English Dictionary (2007 revision), which traces the etymology through both French and Italian back to Latin, but notes that in Middle French the word "pentacle" was used to refer to any talisman. In an extended use, many magical authors treat them as distinct. In many tarot decks and in some forms of modern witchcraft, pentacles often prominently incorporate a pentagram in their design.
There is a specific differentiation between pentacle and pentagram within Wicca and other re-constructionist systems. Namely, a pentacle refers to a pentagram circumscribed by a circle. This form of pentacle is formed upon a disk which may be used either upon an altar or as a sacred space of its own. The pentacle is representative of the Earth in occult usage.
Astrologically I do not view the Aces as embracing any particular sign. Rather, like the Pages, they are more after the form of their element. In this case, Earth.
The Pentacle in this card is held protectively, lovingly, by a large hand that glows and emanates out of a cloud in the sky. I take that to mean that it's offered as a gift from the Divine. It is a right hand, as is the hand that holds each suit emblem in the four Aces. Traditionally the right hand is assertive, indicative of masculine and conscious manifestation. And yet, it cups the Pentacle protectively in a surprisingly tender, feminine gesture, fitting for the softly rounded and feminine emblem. More than any other Ace, the hand and Pentacle dominate the card. The physical world, that of Earth which the emblem embodies, and its concerns can dominate, driving all other thoughts out of our heads. There's no room for the spiritual, the intuitive, the intellectual, the energetic, when the practical dominates like this. Now, I don't mean that as a bad thing. Far from it. But this Ace and its particular brand of magic is complete in its own right. I think this is in part what is implied by the absence of flames or yods in this card - the only one of the Aces to lack them. In
Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom Rachel Pollack says that this is because the magic of the Ace of Pentacles is earth-based, practical, complete in its own right. Notice how in the other Aces there are hints of other elements - the yods of Fire, the Earth in the landscape below ... there are no such intrusions in this one. Indigo Rose put it well in the Rider Waite subforum, when she theorized that:
In the book Pictures from the Heart: a Tarot Dictionary-by Sandra Thomon she writes: "Yods....they represent the new possibility of divine energy or intelligence coming through us and becoming manifest in the material act of creation."
My thoughts: The yods were absent from the Ace of Pentacles because it is the material manifestation of the other Aces. It is in fact less about possibilities and more about tangible realities. It is the elements of creation, fully formed and ready to be used for the journey of life. The new beginnings seen with this ace are those that material bounty can bring.
So Earth-based, so concerned with physical manifestation is the Ace of Pentacles that it even manifests these other raw elements, makes them real and tangible. A very interesting thought.
This is all above a simple garden in which white Easter lilies grow, and surrounded by a hedge adorned with red roses. Roses and lilies are such a common theme in this deck, and are prevalent in particular in the Magician card. According to Thomson in
Pictures from the Heart: A Tarot Dictionary again:
Thomson said:
On the [Rider Waite] card, the lilies of the mystical path and the roses of the occult path offer a “higher” choice. For those who care to pursue it, we are being called to embark on an esoteric, spiritual journey, one of understanding how our attitudes or behaviour toward outer work reflect our inner life - or how we want to make it do so.
But I'm more inclined just to view them as a further connection to the Magician, as sharing the passion and the spark of the Divine with that card.
An archway grows out of the hedge. It represents a portal, a passage through. From the allowing access between the mundane of the everyday Minor Arcana - represented by the earthly garden - and the loftier concerns of the Major Arcana - represented by the untamed mountains of the Fool that can be seen through the arch. As the archway is before us according to how I view the card’s perspective, and we have yet to pass through it, I see it as relating back to the Aces as potential - potential success, potential victory as in the idea of an
Arc du Triomphe.
Pollack commented on how similar the arch is to the wreath that surrounds the dancer on the World. According to Waite’s way of viewing the order of the cards, the World is the last of the Major Arcana, the symbol of completion, and the turning point of the Majors; the Ace of Pentacles is the last card Waite discussed in the
Pictorial Key to the Tarot, so it is as if the Minors end and we pass through the archway right back to the Majors. Through the wreath of the World to the mountains of the Fool. Lather, rinse, repeat.
My Interpretation
The Ace of Pentacles is the first manifestation of the Earth energy, the great potential that takes shape over time. Being so practical and literally down-to-Earth, it has its own homey version of magic, the creature comforts. It's a card that bodes well even in small ways. Issues of home and family, of work and money and comfort and inheritance and property - the outcome is good for these when this card turns up. With this tool in your repertoire, you can be assured to go far.
