The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Six of Pentacles

Pentacles, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

A person in the guise of a merchant weighs money in a pair of scales and distributes it to the needy and distressed. It is a testimony to his own success in life, as well as to his goodness of heart.

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

In divination

Presents, gifts, gratification; another account says attention, vigilance; now is the accepted time, present prosperity, etc.

Reversed: Desire, cupidity, envy, jealousy, illusion.

The library's note

A merchant weighs coin on a pair of scales and hands it to figures in need nearby, and Waite reads the gesture as its own testimony, "to his own success in life, as well as to his goodness of heart." Presents, attention, and present prosperity fill his compiled reading, the suit's material concern turned outward for the first time in its run, wealth measured here by what it distributes rather than what it merely holds, as the Four one card back preferred.

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/pktpe06.htm

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