Four of Pentacles Tarot Card Meaning

Four of Pentacles upright

The Four of Pentacles speaks of material security and mastery over what you own. It consolidates the work built with the Three in the form of possessions and power. It touches the control and protection of your resources, the stabilizing of your situation and the limits you set. You hold on to what you have and you want to be sure of keeping it.

You may put your energy into accumulating possessions, power and wealth, and making sure you keep them: savings, retirement, investments, starting a business. Security comes before everything. The card announces an assured material gain: success, rank, authority, power on the earthly plane. This success is complete, but it leads to nothing beyond itself.

In its most solid version, the card represents a fortress: law and order are maintained there by constant authority and vigilance. This power stabilizes everything, but it acts through negotiation and peaceful means rather than through self-assertion. There is nothing aggressive in it.

The card also speaks of protection. The figure holds a shield in front of his heart to defend against attack, and he marks his territory. His coins cover the top of the head, the heart, the throat and the feet: he closes himself off from the outside world. His back is still unprotected, though, and you remain vulnerable to life, even while centering on yourself.

You can also value this card as a refuge. It then shows protection, comfort, stability, security and an inner strength that comes from a center of power in your body. When your life has fallen into disorder, it asks you to rebuild a structure, with material things or by turning your emotional and mental energy inward. Selfishness is then what you need. In a reading, it can show that you hold to your needs and your understanding of the situation despite pressure from the people around you. It can also mark a halt: a project held back by circumstances.

Your strengths

You build stability and security, and you know how to protect what you have built. You settle your affairs by negotiation rather than by force.

What holds you back

You are covetous, mistrustful and suspicious, and you stay unsatisfied despite what you have.
You lack initiative and originality.
You accumulate and hoard out of fear of losing, and you lack compassion.
The need to collect possesses you more than you possess it.
You cannot relax or let go.
You may hold back your affection in your relationships.
You close yourself off from the outside world to protect yourself.
Your generosity may be self-serving.

What helps

Setting clear limits and stabilizing your situation. Rebuilding a structure when everything has come undone. Defending your power by negotiating rather than imposing yourself. Keeping in mind that you remain vulnerable even when protected. Giving and being generous.

Money

You look to accumulate and secure: savings, retirement, investments. A money gain is assured, in the form of a material gain or a gift.

Four of Pentacles reversed

The upright Four of Pentacles speaks of keeping and protecting what you have: your possessions, your power, your boundaries. Reversed, it speaks of loosening, taking a risk and changing, which neither Pentacles nor Fours accept easily. You may react in two opposite ways: becoming even more afraid, clinging harder and defending yourself, or letting go of your power and possessions. Depending on the reading, the card also says that energy is being released: this can be generosity and freedom, where the upright card shows stinginess or withdrawal into yourself.

It can also say that you can no longer hold your life together and give it structure. In the traditional sense, it indicates a constraint that does not come from you and that produces obstacles, delays and blockages: you feel blocked at every step or shut in by limits. You are probably dissatisfied with your material or financial situation, whatever the reason. If you project this onto others, you see them as people who want to control everything and who cling desperately to what is theirs.

When other cards support it, it means relaxation and the end of a tension. You part with investments or responsibilities that took all your attention. Or you drop your defenses and protections, and you begin to express your feelings. You may also resist a concentration of power or overturn it. This is the time to ask yourself what you need to feel safe and where your center of strength lies.

Your strengths

You can free yourself from what was taking up your attention and take down the protections you had put up, in order to talk about what you feel.

What holds you back

You react to change with more fear, more greed and more defensiveness.
You feel blocked, delayed or limited, and you see obstacles everywhere.
You spend carelessly, speculate or gamble, and you make decisions without being grounded or practical.
You have trouble holding your life together and giving it structure.
You see others as people who control and cling to their possessions.

What helps

Asking yourself what you need to feel safe and where your strength is. Reading the card together with the other cards in the spread: the exact meaning depends on the influences around it. Let go of what you hold on to out of fear, or on the contrary rebuild a structure when your life is going in all directions.

Money

You are probably dissatisfied with your financial situation; you are tempted by quick spending, speculation or gambling, and you cannot count on this card for investments.

Work

You may feel a glass ceiling keeping you from moving forward. You may also shed shares or responsibilities that took too much of your attention.

What the card shows

Another pentacle rests on his crown and two others are under his feet. He holds on to what he owns. The image shows a miser, someone who clings to the safety of his possessions. The four pentacles cover the top of the head, the heart, the throat and the soles of the feet, which gives a deeper meaning than simple greed.

The figure uses them to shut himself off from the outside world. The crown on his head protects the link with the spirit, and the heart and throat protect the link with others. Covering the feet amounts to cutting himself off from his surroundings. Yet he cannot protect his back: however you withdraw into yourself, you remain vulnerable to life.

This card speaks of possessions and power: it extends the work built before it and consolidates it. It speaks of control and protection of your resources, of stability and of limits you set. You may focus your energy on accumulating goods, power or money, and making sure you keep them: savings, retirement, investments, starting a business. Security comes before everything. This card is also called the miser's card.

In some decks, the card shows a square fortress surrounded by a moat, with walls and towers at the four corners. The discs there are large, solid and square, and this image evokes order and law maintained by constant authority and vigilance. This fortress protects fields whose security is thus ensured. It is linked to the Sun in Capricorn, the moment when the Sun is reborn and heads north again. A defense is worth something only if it stays active: a solid disc spins despite its motionless look. In these decks, the other versions of the card show a hand holding a branch of a rosebush with no flowers or buds, with a single white rose in full bloom at the center, and four coins arranged at the four corners of a square.

The general meaning of the card is secure possession: material gain, success, rank, earthly power, what has been acquired and protects. A gift, an inheritance or a bequest may come with it. On a deeper level, the card shows how the human mind gives structure and meaning to the chaos of the material world.

Your strengths

You have stability, security and an inner strength that comes from a solid center in yourself. You are careful, painstaking and orderly. You know how to protect what you have built and set limits. You can also be kind and generous. When your life goes in all directions, you know how to create structure, with concrete things or by turning your mental and emotional energy inward.

What holds you back

You cling to what you have and fear losing it.
You can accumulate and hold on to the point that the need to possess owns you more than you own your things.
You find it hard to relax and let go.
You can hold back your affection in your relationships and lack compassion.
You close yourself off from others and the world to protect yourself.
You can be wary, envious and dissatisfied, with little initiative and originality.

What helps

Recognizing that withdrawing into yourself can be useful when your life is in disorder: centering on yourself is sometimes exactly what you need. Closing your protection again, the way you seal your energy points after a meditation, to avoid losing your energy and being overrun by what comes from outside. Remembering that your protection never covers everything and that you remain vulnerable, like anyone.