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 describes the card: "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
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, who calls it the Knave of Pentacles, reads it as "a fair child, a messenger, a letter".
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