Eight of Pentacles
The eight of pentacles in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a craftsman carving pentacles and displaying them like trophies. A. E. Waite read it as work, employment and craftsmanship.
Meaning
Waite's Key to the Tarot describes the design: "An artist in stone at his work, which he exhibits in the form of trophies."
What does the Eight of Pentacles mean?
Waite's meanings are "work, employment, commission, craftsmanship, skill in craft and business, perhaps in the preparatory stage"; reversed, "voided ambition, vanity, cupidity, exaction, usury. It may also signify the possession of skill, in the sense of the ingenious mind turned to cunning and intrigue". His list of additional meanings adds "A young man in business who has relations with the Querent; a dark girl", and reversed, "the Querent will be compromised in a matter of money-lending".
In older decks
The Italian suit is danari, money, among the marks of the earliest cards in the British Museum's catalogue of 1876. Waite noted that "in many old Tarot packs this suit stood for current coin, money, deniers". Papus reads it as "Great loss of money at the moment apparently of definitely securing the fortune."
Read next
- Next in Tarot cardsNine of PentaclesThe nine of pentacles in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a woman with a bird on her wrist among grapevines in a manor garden. A. E. Waite read it as prudence, safety, success and accomplishment.
- The same shape in Historical flagsBennington flagA flag of thirteen stripes, white at the top and bottom, with “76” under an arch of stars in the blue canton, long said to have flown at the Battle of Bennington in 1777. The Bennington Museum, which owns it, dates it to between 1812 and 1830, because it is made entirely of cotton.
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
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles, letters and numbers, squares and rectangles or stars.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 30, 2026. How we research
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