Pentacles · Minor Arcana
The figure calls for no special description the face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but somewhat lethargic in tendency.
The King sits on a throne draped in vines, pentacles carved at its base, the castle rising behind him. He has built what he has with his own hands and he gives from it freely. You are being shown what it looks like to be sovereign of your own material life: steady, generous, unhurried.
Element
Earth
Numerology
14— mastery of outer realm, authority, leadership, command
What the card says to you is truer than what anyone else says it means.
Cards often seen near this one
King of Pentacles by life area
The figure calls for no special description the face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but somewhat lethargic in tendency. The bull's head should be noted as a recurrent symbol on the throne. The sign of this suit is represented throughout as engraved or blazoned with the pentagram, typifying the correspondence of the four elements in human nature and that by which they may be governed. In many old Tarot packs this suit stood for current coin, money, deniers.
I have not invented the substitution of pentacles and I have no special cause to sustain in respect of the alternative. But the consensus of divinatory meanings is on the side of some change, because the cards do not happen to deal especially with questions of money.
Source: “The Pictorial Key to the Tarot” by A.E. Waite (1910). Public domain.
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