PROJECTS • TAROT

King of Pentacles

Stability, dependability, confidence, intervention

Range of meanings

Light: Becoming debt-free. Having more than enough to get by. Making contributions to a savings plan. Taking a new job with an eye toward advancing your career. Buying life or health insurance. Being confident in the bedroom. Taking on the role of enforcer when called upon to do so.

Shadow: Becoming so conservative you resist all change on principle alone. Ignoring innovations in the name of preserving tradition. Being smug or cocky. Becoming ruthlessly dedicated to profit or pleasure. Being sexually selfish. Bossing others around, especially when you’re not empowered to do so.

Questions to ask

  1. How do you assign value to the objects around you? If you sense that physical things are becoming too important, what should you do?
  2. One way to control (King) the physical realm (Coins) is to restrict those actions that disturb the status quo. How might being physically or financially conservative be an advantage now? How might shattering that control lead to positive outcomes?
  3. How can you handle expenses with greater confidence and maturity?
  4. How dependable are you? How dependable would others say you are?

Advice

Personal Growth: Mature souls handle money and relationships responsibly. Before spending money, consider the consequences. Before becoming physical with someone, consider the potential outcome of your actions. Live in the moment, but cultivate an awareness of future events your present actions could call into being.

Work: This card points to a need for a conservative approach to making and spending money. Stay on budget. Find ways to reduce costs. These measures don’t have to choke innovation and fun; they just call on you to be more creative with the resources you do have.

Relationships: Money trouble can ruin romance; dedicate yourself to handling funds (especially mutual ones) responsibly. Planning for a future together can be exciting and even arousing. Express physical affection with boldness. When circumstances dictate, be prepared to speak up or take action in your partner’s defense.

Spirituality: Allow your spirituality to inspire financial and physical responsibility. Take great care to honor the money you’ve been given. Take special care of your body, and see it as an instrument of the Universal Will. Lend your resources to those who earnestly need your help.

Fortune-Telling: This card represents an older man with a financially, socially, and politically conservative spirit, likely born between August 12th and September 11th, who is known for putting his money where his mouth is.

Associations

Element: Fire

Planet: Earth

Fool's Journey: The main character must persuade conservative or traditional people to try a new approach, or must spurn tradition in order to succeed.

Coins: One of the four suits of the tarot. Also sometimes called pentacles or diskc. Coins suggest health, wealth, practicality and physicality. Their domain extends beyond money and finance to all physical things, including the human body. Coins explore your attitude toward resources of all kinds: what you’ve been given, and what you do with it. In RWS-influenced decks, Coins are often called Pentacles. A pentacle’s design (with the upright star in the middle that represents the human body) reminds us that physical blessings, from possessions to our bodies, are to be used for higher purposes. In your own life, how often do you focus on “the star in the coin”?

King: A King card in your reading makes things limited and certain but also delivers results that are more concrete, more absolute and of a longer lasting impact.

The Harvest Throne: The King of Coins frequently sits on a throne draped with vines and grapes—a reminder of his intimate connection with the forces that create abundance.

The Ram: The ram, absent in early versions of the card, suggests the Emperor’s ties to Aries. Traditionally, the ram symbolizes the fiery energy of Aries and, physically, the head of the body.