← Encyclopedia of Tarot · lesson 65/121
Ace of Pentacles
The Ace of Pentacles is the first, purest form of the suit of Pentacles: the element of Earth offered as a gift. It points to a beginning that can be touched and built on — an opening in work, a place to live, a gain in health or skill, a practical chance. Like every Ace, it is potential rather than result: the coin is held out, and what grows from it depends on what is planted.
The image
A hand comes out of a cloud holding up a single golden pentacle, a coin engraved with a five-pointed star. Below lies a flowering garden enclosed by a hedge of roses, with an arched gateway opening onto distant mountains. The garden is usually read as security and cultivation; the gateway as the path that leads from a safe beginning out into the wider world.
Upright
Upright, the card is read as prosperity in its widest sense: a sound footing, a good start, comfort, the means to make something real. Waite called it "the most favourable of all cards", and gave contentment, felicity and gold. In practice it often marks an offer worth taking seriously, or a moment when an idea becomes concrete.
Reversed
Waite's reversed meanings are the evil side of wealth and "bad intelligence", while still showing riches. Modern readers often take the reversal as an opportunity delayed or mishandled, money valued above wellbeing, or a plan that never gets out of the ground. Some readers do not use reversals at all.
Correspondences
A card of the Minor Arcana, the Ace of the suit of Pentacles, element Earth. In the Golden Dawn's attributions, which most English-language decks follow, it is the Root of the Powers of Earth and belongs to Kether, the first sephirah on the Tree of Life. The Aces are not given a decan; they stand for the element as a whole.
In a reading
As an outcome it is one of the most encouraging cards for anything practical; as advice it says to start, small and solid. In the past it can mark the beginning of what someone now owns or does. Beside the Eight of Pentacles it often reads as a skill or job worth committing to.
In astrology
The Golden Dawn's correspondences, which most English-language decks follow (French, Marseille-based tradition differs for some Major Arcana).
Element: Earth — the element of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn