Page of Pentacles
The page of pentacles in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a youth gazing at a pentacle held up in his hands. A. E. Waite read it as study, scholarship and reflection, or news.
Meaning
Waite's description of the picture: "A youthful figure, looking intently at the pentacle which hovers over his raised hands. He moves slowly, insensible of that which is about him."
What does the Page of Pentacles mean?
Waite's meanings are "application, study, scholarship, reflection"; another reading says "news, messages and the bringer thereof; also rule, management"; reversed, "prodigality, dissipation, liberality, luxury; unfavourable news". His list of additional meanings adds "A dark youth; a young officer or soldier; a child", and reversed, "sometimes degradation and sometimes pillage".
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, who calls it the Knave of Pentacles, reads it as "A fair child. A messenger. A letter."
Read next
- Next in Tarot cardsKnight of PentaclesThe 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.
- 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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