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 describes the card: "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
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 "great loss of money at the moment of apparently securing the fortune".
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