The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Nine of Pentacles

Pentacles, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

A woman, with a bird upon her wrist, stands amidst a great abundance of grapevines in the garden of a manorial house. It is a wide domain, suggesting plenty in all things. Possibly it is her own possession and testifies to material well-being.

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

In divination

Prudence, safety, success, accomplishment, certitude, discernment.

Reversed: Roguery, deception, voided project, bad faith.

The library's note

A woman stands with a bird on her wrist amid a vineyard's abundance, and Waite allows that the whole domain may well be her own, "testifies to material well-being" she holds without a companion in the frame. Prudence, safety, and certitude fill his compiled reading, the suit's material concern arriving here at ease and solitude both, plenty enjoyed by one figure standing alone in it rather than shared, distributed, or displayed for anyone else.

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/pktpe09.htm

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