The figure calls for no special description; the face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but somewhat lethargic in tendency. The bull's head should be noted as a recurrent symbol on the throne. The sign of this suit is represented throughout as engraved or blazoned with the pentagram, typifying the correspondence of the four elements in human nature and that by which they may be governed. In many old Tarot packs this suit stood for current coin, money, deniers. I have not invented the substitution of pentacles and I have no special cause to sustain in respect of the alternative. But the consensus of divinatory meanings is on the side of some change, because the cards do not happen to deal especially with questions of money.
the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time
In divination
Valour, realizing intelligence, business and normal intellectual aptitude, sometimes mathematical gifts and attainments of this kind; success in these paths.
A bull's head recurs on his throne, and the pentagram is blazoned across the suit's own sign throughout its court, "typifying," Waite writes, "the correspondence of the four elements in human nature." He adds a rare admission of editorial history here: older packs used this suit simply for "coin, money, deniers," and he "did not invent the substitution of pentacles," only inherited it because the compiled meanings rarely concerned money as such. The King himself he calls dark and capable but "somewhat lethargic," the suit's material concern settled, by its last rank, into simple weight.
a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come