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's Key to the Tarot describes the design: "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
Italian packs call the suit danari, money; the British Museum's catalogue of 1876 lists it among the suit marks of the earliest cards. 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."
Read next
- Next in Tarot cardsQueen of PentaclesThe queen of pentacles in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a queen enthroned, contemplating the pentacle in her lap. A. E. Waite read it as opulence, generosity, security and liberty.
- 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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