MINOR ARCANA · PENTACLES · EARTH
Nine of Pentacles
Tarot card meaning · Lord of Material Gain
UPRIGHT
Self-sufficiency, luxury, earned reward.
REVERSED
Overwork, financial dependence, superficiality.
The card
The Nine of Pentacles is the ninth card of Pentacles, the suit of Earth: money, work and the body.
The Golden Dawn named it the Lord of Material Gain and gave it Venus in Virgo, the decan of 10°–20° Virgo, which the Sun passes through each year from about 2 to 12 September.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: Nine of Disks, with the title and the zodiac decan from the Golden Dawn, as shown above.
In Waite's words
Arthur Edward Waite designed the deck that Pamela Colman Smith drew, and explained it in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911). His text, with his spelling:
A woman, with a bird upon her wrist, stands amidst a great abundance of grapevines in the garden of a manorial house. It is a wide domain, suggesting plenty in all things. Possibly it is her own possession and testifies to material well-being. DIVINATORY MEANINGS Prudence, safety, success, accomplishment, certitude, discernment. REVERSED Roguery, deception, voided project, bad faith.
FURTHER MEANINGS Prompt fulfilment of what is presaged by neighbouring cards. REVERSED Vain hopes.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), Part III §§ 2 and 4. Public domain; text from the 1922 printing on Wikisource.
Related cards
The same card in the other suits
In three historical decks
The same card as it was painted in fifteenth-century Milan, printed in the French pattern of the Tarot de Marseille, and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider–Waite–Smith deck.
In the Tarot de Marseille: Nine of Deniers (coins). The numbered cards carry no scene, only the suit's symbols arranged as on a playing card, so they are read from the number and the pattern.
Learn more in the lessons
- The Tarot & the Stars — Decans, Pips & Courts · 16 min
- The Structure of the Tarot · 14 min · free
- Reading the Cards · 16 min
Images: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909 (public domain); the RWS1909 scans on Wikimedia Commons. Lequart, Paris, c. 1890 (public domain); scans from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica), via Wikimedia Commons. Attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, mid-15th century (public domain); scans by David Madore, via Wikimedia Commons.