Ace of Pentacles
The ace of pentacles in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a hand from a cloud holding up a pentacle. A. E. Waite read it as perfect contentment, felicity and gold.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "A hand—issuing, as usual, from a cloud—holds up a pentacle."
What does the Ace of Pentacles mean?
Waite's meanings are "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". His list of additional meanings adds "the most favourable of all cards", and reversed, "A share in the finding of treasure".
In older decks
In Italian packs the suit is danari, money: the earliest suit marks, the British Museum's catalogue of 1876 records, were coppe, danari, bastoni and spade, "cups, money, clubs, and swords". Waite noted that "in many old Tarot packs this suit stood for current coin, money, deniers". Papus reads it as "commencement of fortune; inheritance".
See also
The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant.
Sources
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A. E. Waite, William Rider & Son, London, 1910 (the sacred-texts.com transcription, on the Internet Archive), The Lesser Arcana; Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana
- The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, Chapman & Hall, London, 1896, translated by A. P. Morton (scan on the Internet Archive), The Divining Tarot, second lesson: the minor arcana
- A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, by W. H. Willshire, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1876 (scan on the Internet Archive), General history: the marks of the suits
Last reviewed September 28, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research