Tell My Tarot
Tell My Tarot
Suit of Pentacles meaning
The suit of Pentacles, Coins, or Discs is associated with materiality but also with prudence. It evolved from the clover suit from the French Marseille tarot deck (despite the fact that Wikipedia claims it’s linked to Diamonds… ). You can see the connection because some tarot decks place the clover insignia, rather than a pentacle, on each coin face. A pentacle is a five-pointed unicursal star often used to decorate an amulet or talisman; however, the word can also refer to any talisman, even those without the star symbol.
To explore the suit of Pentacles in detail
The characteristics of Pentacles cards
Coins are linked to the element earth and represent body or matter as well as money and physical health. Coins are what we use to assign value to matter; while money is an absraction of the thing itself, it is a vessel by which people trade and communicate to shape a shared planet. That is why coins are associated with the cardinal virtue of prudence which means acting with cautiousness or wisdom espeically in planning for the future. Coins can be easily gambled away or used carelessly; rather, it is important to use foresight and consideration. Of course, coins are a metaphor for all things material. Another way of looking at it would be to think of using all matter with foresight, for example, the environment or your own body.
While materiality has a bad wrap and is linked to superficiality, the material world is an essential and profound aspect of the human experience. The famous psychologist, Jung, linked the tarot suit Coins to sensory perception. We interact with earth’s materials, getting dirty or cleaning up, rearranging things - we have fulfilling and daunting physical interactions from which life takes meaning and we accumulate knowledge. That is why this suit is also linked to reflection and memory. The material world leads us back into ourselves and we learn to assign value to earth’s objects. Additionlly, we learn which objects are especially powerful or magical to us. That is why coins also represent transendant, magical power.
The element earth is associated with female, nurturing traits as well as groundedness and kindness. It is used as a symbol of peace and coherence despite differences. It is also a symbol of bounty and harvest, fullness and sensuality. According to Chinese Medicine, when a person is deficient in the earthliness category, they can be overcome by anxiety and neuroticism, becoming flighty and meddlesome. They may also be out of touch with their own physical existence, pushing to extremes causing them to be overtired and overworked, eventually leading them to illness which, if not corrected, could become chronic and long-lasting. Because of this ungrounded drive, even though they are striving to get a lot done, they will be stifled by a clouded mind and inability to exercise prudence.
Overall, the coin or pentacles suit represents the physical manifestations of our humanity and our ability to use our mental capacity to interact thoughtfully and carefully with the world around us, including plants and animals as well as other human beings. When we abstract the material world we have the capacity to lose touch with the essential things it represents causing us to act coldly or cruelly and to make decisions without considering the real world impact.