Queen of Pentacles
Reine of Coins (Deniers, Tarot de Marseille) · Queen of the Thrones of Earth (Golden Dawn) · Queen of Disks (Thoth)
The Queen of Pentacles sits in a flowering garden with a coin in her lap: a card of practical care, generosity and the ability to make a secure and comfortable home.
Upright nurturing · practicality · generosity · security · resourcefulness · comfort · groundedness
Reversed neglect of self · smothering care · financial insecurity · materialism · work-life imbalance · dependence
- Astrology
- 21° Sagittarius – 20° Capricorn
- Element
- Water of Earth
- Golden Dawn title
- Queen of the Thrones of Earth
- Yes or no
- Yes
Upright
Upright, the Queen of Pentacles represents nurturing that is practical. She is the person who makes sure everyone is fed, warm and provided for, and who manages resources wisely and generously. In the Waite–Smith tradition the Queen signifies opulence, generosity, magnificence, security and liberty, and Waite speaks of her greatness of soul and serious intelligence.
In love she describes a caring, sensual and reliable partner, or a relationship that flourishes through comfort, home-making and shared practical life. She may also suggest family or parenthood.
For work and money the Queen favours good management, a successful business, wise investment, and work in caring or practical fields. She combines competence with warmth.
Her advice is to care for yourself and others in tangible ways: tend your resources, enjoy the comforts of the body and the home, and share what you have.
Reversed
Reversed, the Queen of Pentacles is often read as care out of balance. A person may neglect their own needs while looking after everyone else, or become smothering and controlling. Some readers see financial insecurity, materialism, or work and home pulling against each other.
Many readers do not use reversals and interpret every card upright. When reversed, this Queen usually invites a look at how care, money and self-respect fit together, and suggests that looking after oneself is not selfishness but part of being able to look after others over time.
The image
Smith's Queen of Pentacles sits on an ornate stone throne set in a garden. She holds a large pentacle in her lap with both hands and looks down at it thoughtfully. The throne is carved with fruit, cherubs and a goat's head. Roses form an arch over her, flowers grow at her feet, and a rabbit sits in the lower right corner. In the background lie green fields and blue mountains under a yellow sky.
History
Queens have been part of the tarot's court since the fifteenth century, and the Tarot de Marseille Queen of Coins sits holding a large coin. Smith's garden setting and detailed symbolism are her own. Waite's 1910 Pictorial Key describes the queen as one whose qualities might be summed up in the idea of greatness of soul, who contemplates her symbol and may see worlds in it, and lists opulence, generosity, magnificence, security and liberty; reversed, evil, suspicion, suspense, fear and mistrust. Modern readers have tended to emphasise her nurturing qualities.
Symbolism
The rabbit is a traditional emblem of fertility and abundance. The goat on the throne points to Capricorn, the sign of the Queen's zodiac span. The roses and fruit stand for the beauty and fertility of the natural world, and the Queen's downward gaze at her pentacle has been read as care and attention to the practical.
In the Golden Dawn scheme the queens are the watery part of their suit, so the Queen of Pentacles is "Water of Earth": feeling and receptivity expressed through the physical world. She rules from 21° Sagittarius to 20° Capricorn and is attributed to Binah and to the first He of the divine name. Her title is "Queen of the Thrones of Earth". Crowley's Thoth Queen of Disks sits beside a goat on a globe in a desert being brought to fertility, echoing the same Capricornian theme; see Tarot and Qabalah in Thelema.
In a reading
As a person the Queen of Pentacles is often read as someone generous, practical and reliable, of any gender. With the Empress she emphasises fertility and abundance; with the Ten of Pentacles, family and home; with the Six of Pentacles, generosity. In an advice position she recommends grounded self-care and good management. For the elemental pairings of the court cards, see the minor arcana.
Sources and further reading
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite, 1910
- The Book of Thoth — Aleister Crowley, 1944
- The Golden Dawn — Israel Regardie, 1937
- Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom — Rachel Pollack, 1980
- The Qabalistic Tarot: A Textbook of Mystical Philosophy — Robert Wang, 1983