King of Pentacles Tarot Card Meaning

King of Pentacles upright

This card shows a situation where you apply your energy to practical things: material well-being, and the usefulness and value of what you do. You may be involved in finance, markets, real estate or speculation. It speaks of ordinary activity, accomplishments, social position and success. You resemble a person who has succeeded in business or in a respected trade and who is satisfied with life. Your role as the one in charge does not frustrate you. At a younger stage, you may have known impatience or doubt, but your success has now justified your path, and you can relax and enjoy it. This card also speaks of closeness to nature: you love the garden, flowers and the gentle pleasures of living. You have an appetite for the good things in life, fine food, good wine, the pleasure of the senses, and you stress quality and reliability in what you spend on as in what you undertake. Sometimes there is a deep love of the land and a wish to look after what it yields. You are attached to traditional values and conservatism.

Your strengths

Whatever you touch tends to prosper and grow, as long as it stays in the material realm. You are skilled at managing money. You are energetic and enduring, a good manager, a steady and persevering worker. You look for new uses for common things and you adapt your situation to your goals through a slow, steady, well-thought-out plan. You are stable, reliable, and you make things concrete. You are generous and brave, and you have no particular taste for adventure.

What holds you back

You can see people as possessions or as things to bargain over, even when you help and protect them.
You can seem dull, insensitive or unemotional, because you do not try to understand ideas that lie beyond your field.
You can be irritated by more spiritual people.
You are slow to anger, but if you are pushed to the limit, you become relentless, even furious.
When this side of you degrades, you become selfish, materialistic and narrow-minded.
You risk becoming so absorbed in work and money that you forget anything else exists.

What helps

Keeping an inner freedom so you can enjoy your successes and build on them without being locked into a narrow view of the material. Staying connected to nature. Looking for new uses for ordinary things.

Careers

dealer, merchant, banker, stockbroker, accountant, speculator, real estate, finance, teacher or professor, mathematics and science.

King of Pentacles reversed

The upright King of Pentacles stands for success in the material domain: money, business, stability, practical sense. Reversed, it speaks of what goes wrong in your relationship to money, power and what you own. This card is made for success, and upside down it says failure or plain mediocrity. A lack of accomplishment brings dissatisfaction, a feeling of weakness and doubt.

You may be miserly and exploitative, or on the contrary flamboyant and showy. Everything becomes buying and selling, status included. You may be possessive or jealous of people and things, especially if you feel little recognized. Out of insecurity, you may also retreat behind an attitude of superiority where no one can reach you: for example, holding your ground and refusing to budge on a subject. The card can also show corrupt success: someone who uses any means to reach their goals. It can describe a corrupt leader or executive who manipulates things through power and money.

It can also signal the abusive exploitation of the land, of resources and of people, or on the contrary an active opposition to these abuses. You may want to overturn materialistic values by rejecting the signs of wealth: this is a time to reconsider what you value. Your life may look poor from the outside while it is going through a period of inner security, contentment and well-being.

You may feel heavy, melancholy or discouraged, without imagination, stuck in boring activities with no relief. You may be too blunt or insensitive toward someone else's more delicate feelings, or even deliberately show coarse behavior. Finances may be slow and your business sense off: money slips through your fingers, and you may be frustrated at not managing to balance your accounts or to understand finances and taxes. You may feel overwhelmed and uncertain in managing your house, your real estate, your insurance or other assets.

Another reading sees the reversed King as a break with the living connection to nature, a source of renewal: this break also brings dissatisfaction and weakness.

The traditional meanings of the reversed card point the same way: vice, greed, lack, defect, weakness, corruption, disorder, infidelity. When the card is badly placed, it describes someone selfish, materialistic and dull, slow to anger but furious once provoked.

Your strengths

What the sources name here lies in the reversal of the card: you can live a real inner security and contentment without outward signs of wealth. You can also question purely materialistic values.

What holds you back

You can become miserly, or on the contrary showy.
You are possessive or jealous when you feel underestimated.
You retreat behind a superior attitude and refuse to yield.
You are sometimes abrupt or insensitive to other people's feelings.
You feel heavy, discouraged, without imagination.
You find it hard to manage your money and your possessions.
You doubt yourself when success is missing.

What helps

Reconsidering what you truly value.
Reconnecting with nature, since the break from it feeds dissatisfaction.
Looking first at what you most need to see in your life right now, with the general question: what do I most need to examine?

Family

As a parent, the figure can be weak, cold and without tenderness: it neither provides nor protects, or it dominates harshly.

What the card shows

What the image shows

The king sits on his throne in a relaxed way and looks with affection at the pentacle he holds. This pentacle stands for his abilities and achievements. His attitude shows that he is satisfied with his life. Behind him rises a castle, which stands for his dominant place in society. Yet he sits in his garden: flowers adorn his crown and bunches of grapes decorate his robe, the grapes standing for the sweetness of life. Leaves and flowers blend into his robe. A bull's head recurs as a symbol on the throne. His face expresses courage, with a certain slowness of temperament. The sign of the suit is the pentagram, which stands for the harmony of the four elements in human nature and for what makes it possible to govern them.

What it means

The King of Pentacles stands for social responsibility and the success of a person established in business or in a trade. He is generous and brave, without being drawn to adventure. The role of king does not frustrate him, unlike the Kings of Wands and Cups. At an earlier stage of his life and career he may have known impatience or doubt; his success now justifies his life and lets him relax and enjoy it. Enjoying life also comes through closeness to nature. In the suit of Pentacles, the beauty of nature and the joy of satisfying work make up the value of ordinary creation.

The card stands for ordinary activity, accomplishments, social position and success. It resembles the Fool in its colors, and the Fool stands for the inner freedom that lets you enjoy these successes and lean on them without being shut into a narrow materialist outlook. Two people can have the same outward life, successful, respected and comfortable, while one stays tense, frustrated or worried and the other stays cheerful and at peace. The King of Pentacles is the last of the minor cards and the Fool the first of the major cards; they are at opposite ends in a line, but meet if you place them in a circle.

In the material realm, everything he touches prospers and grows. He is jovial, conservative, practical and stable, and he is skilled at handling money. His energy goes toward practical matters and material and physical well-being. He likes the good things in life, a good meal, good wine, the pleasures of the senses. When he spends money and effort, he aims for quality and reliability. He sometimes loves the land deeply and wants to look after it. He feels loved when he is told that he is comfortable, that he has value and that he is secure. He offers a solid structure to a lasting relationship or project. He holds to traditional values, and as a father he seeks to protect his family and provide security and comfort. He increases matter, makes things stable and applies them in practice. The card evokes courage, an intelligence that puts itself into practice, business sense, a normal intellectual aptitude and sometimes gifts for mathematics. In the old decks, this suit stood for coinage and money; the word pentacles was chosen because these cards are not mainly about money.

Your strengths

You are practical, stable and steady, and you count on quality and reliability. You have business sense and manage money well. You may have an aptitude for mathematics. Your success lets you relax and enjoy life.

What holds you back

You can look at people as possessions or goods.
You can be stingy and grasping, or on the contrary lavish and ostentatious; everything becomes buying and selling, status included.
You can become possessive or jealous, especially if you feel underestimated.
Out of insecurity, you can fall back on a superior attitude or dig in and refuse to give way on a point.
You can feel heavy and slow, melancholy, unimaginative, stuck in boring activities, or too blunt with other people's sensitivity.
When success is missing, you feel dissatisfaction, weakness and doubt; when it becomes corrupted, you are ready to use any means to reach your goals.
You can cut yourself off from the connection with nature that restores you, if that connection matters to you.
You risk becoming so involved in money and work that you forget everything else exists.

What helps

Keeping an inner freedom, so that you enjoy your success without being shut into a narrow materialist outlook. Looking at what you truly value and reconsidering it.