MINOR ARCANA · PENTACLES · EARTH
Two of Pentacles
Tarot card meaning · Lord of Harmonious Change
UPRIGHT
Juggling priorities, adaptability, balance.
REVERSED
Overwhelm, disorganisation, overcommitment.
The card
The Two of Pentacles is the second card of Pentacles, the suit of Earth: money, work and the body.
The Golden Dawn named it the Lord of Harmonious Change and gave it Jupiter in Capricorn, the decan of 0°–10° Capricorn, which the Sun passes through each year from about 21 to 31 December.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: Two 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 young man, in the act of dancing, has a pentacle in either hand, and they are joined by that endless cord which is like the number 8 reversed. DIVINATORY MEANINGS On the one hand it is represented as a card of gaiety, recreation and its connexions, which is the subject of the design; but it is read also as news and messages in writing, as obstacles, agitation, trouble, embroilment. REVERSED Enforced gaiety, simulated enjoyment, literal sense, handwriting, composition, letters of exchange.
FURTHER MEANINGS Troubles are more imaginary than real. REVERSED Bad omen, ignorance, injustice.
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
Its trumps
Wheel of Fortune: its planet, Jupiter · The Devil: its sign, Capricorn
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: Two 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.