Knight of Pentacles
The knight of pentacles in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a rider on a slow, heavy horse, showing his pentacle. A. E. Waite read it as utility, serviceableness and responsibility.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "He rides a slow, enduring, heavy horse, to which his own aspect corresponds. He exhibits his symbol, but does not look therein."
What does the Knight of Pentacles mean?
Waite's meanings are "utility, serviceableness, interest, responsibility, rectitude-all on the normal and external plane"; reversed, "inertia, idleness, repose of that kind, stagnation; also placidity, discouragement, carelessness". His list of additional meanings adds "an useful man; useful discoveries", and reversed, "A brave man out of employment".
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 "a young, fair man; a stranger; an arrival".
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