Nine of Pentacles
The 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.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "A woman, with a bird upon her wrist, stands amidst a great abundance of grapevines in the garden of a manorial house. It is a wide domain, suggesting plenty in all things. Possibly it is her own possession and testifies to material well-being."
What does the Nine of Pentacles mean?
Waite's meanings are "prudence, safety, success, accomplishment, certitude, discernment"; reversed, "roguery, deception, voided project, bad faith". His list of additional meanings adds "prompt fulfilment of what is presaged by neighbouring cards", and reversed, "vain hopes".
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 durable fortune."
Read next
- Next in Tarot cardsTen of PentaclesThe ten of pentacles in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a family beneath an archway, an old man seated in front with two dogs. A. E. Waite read it as gain, riches and family matters.
- 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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