Queen of Pentacles: a gaze beneath blossoms

The coin in her lap and the lowered gaze: looking in from the boughs

Waite describes this queen first by her look and then by her act. For the look, the face suggests that of a dark woman (period wording), whose qualities might be summed up as greatness of soul, with the serious cast of intelligence. The act is single: she contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein.

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Queen of Pentacles: a gaze beneath blossoms

In Pamela Colman Smith’s original drawing the queen wears a crown set with red ornaments, a red gown with white sleeves and a green mantle over her shoulders, and sits in a tall stone chair carved with ornate patterns; the coin rests in her lap and her head is bowed over it. Branches with red flowers hang from above to both sides, and blue hills lie far off. In the version BaZiFlow drew for this article she sits before the throne with the coin held out in both hands, the boughs bend into an arch overhead, and green hills rise behind her.

Read the picture from the outside in and the view narrows layer by layer until it stops on the coin in her hands:

What Waite lists: opulence, generosity, security, and “greatness of soul”

The list Waite gives runs to five words: opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty. By sense they fall into two groups: the first three speak of how much there is and how it is given, the last two of how safe and how unbound. That grouping is a reader’s tidying, not Waite’s arrangement.

Opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty.

“Greatness of soul” and “serious intelligence” sit in the description, as marks of her look, and are not part of the list. The additional meanings give three more: a dark woman; presents from a rich relative; a rich and happy marriage for a young man.

The gazed-at coin, the boughs, the throne: who said what

Three things in the picture merit a word: the coin, the boughs and the throne. Waite wrote about the first only.

Reading the coin as resources in hand and the boughs as the tended area are borrowings from teaching, and the stock-taking sheet below grows out of them.

Practice: a workshop kit counted three ways

The shape of the card is one person looking down at the coin in her lap, ringed by boughs. Applied to a real errand it yields three habits: take stock, trace the flow, keep a reserve.

1. 1

   Look into the coin: what is in it?

   Waite says she may see worlds there. Lay out what you hold as one coin: materials, space and helpers’ time, one line each, without yet asking whether it is enough.

2. 2

   Let it flow out: to whom, for what

   Generosity is in the list. Next to each item write who will use it and at which stage; where you cannot name a destination, mark it blank for now.

3. 3

   Keep a portion in the lap: the reserve

   Security and liberty are in the list too. From each item hold back a small part, not assigned in advance, so that you have room to adjust on the spot.

An example: you are leading a craft workshop on candle making for eight people and supplying everything yourself. Stock, flow and reserve for three items could be noted like this:

Reversed and neighboring cards: suspicion beside fear, and an old line about illness

Waite’s reversed reading is five words: evil, suspicion, suspense, fear, mistrust. The additional meanings give only one short phrase for the reversed card: an illness, which is another reader’s old wording, set here for contrast and carrying no judgment on anyone’s health.

Evil, suspicion, suspense, fear, mistrust.

The upright five speak of having and giving. In the reversed five, “evil” carries a judgment, while the other four read more like attitudes toward what one holds and toward the people nearby: suspicion, suspense, fear, mistrust.