← Encyclopedia of Tarot · lesson 78/121
King of Pentacles
The King of Pentacles is the suit at its most accomplished: someone who has built something solid and now looks after it well. As a person the card describes a capable, generous and steady figure — a provider, a mentor, someone at ease with responsibility. As a situation, it points to stability, sound management and the rewards of long effort.
The image
A king in a robe embroidered with grapevines sits on a throne carved with bulls' heads, a sceptre in one hand and a pentacle in the other. A castle rises behind him, and his garden overflows with vines and flowers. Waite asked that the bull's head be noted as "a recurrent symbol on the throne". The bull is usually read as endurance and fertility; the vines as abundance that has been tended.
Upright
Upright, the card is read as security, competence, reliability and practical wisdom. Waite gave "valour, realizing intelligence, business and normal intellectual aptitude", sometimes mathematical gifts. Waite also remarked that the suit's cards "do not happen to deal especially with questions of money" — the King describes how something is managed, not what to do with it.
Reversed
Waite's reversed meanings were stark: vice, weakness, corruption, peril. Modern readers usually soften this to stubbornness, materialism, rigidity, or success held onto at the expense of people. Some readers do not use reversals.
Correspondences
One of the court cards of Pentacles, element Earth. In the Golden Dawn's scheme, which most English-language decks follow, the seated King is the suit's "Prince": the Prince of the Chariot of Earth, paired as Air of Earth. Book T gives him the zodiac from 20° Aries to 20° Taurus.
In a reading
As an outcome it describes a secure, well-founded result; as advice, to act with patience and responsibility. As a person it often describes someone who can be relied on. Beside The Emperor it reinforces structure and authority; beside the Ten of Pentacles, lasting provision for a family.
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