Minor Arcana · Five of Pentacles
Five of Pentacles
Upright
- hardship
- exclusion
- scarcity
- feeling left out in the cold
- help unseen
Reversed
- recovery
- help accepted
- finding shelter
- the end of a hard stretch
- a shift in luck
Your notes on Five of Pentacles
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The image
Two ragged figures struggle through falling snow at night, one on crutches with a bandaged foot, the other barefoot in a thin shawl. Above them glows a stained-glass window showing five pentacles arranged like a tree. They pass beneath the lit window without looking up at it.
Upright meaning
The Five of Pentacles is being out in the cold while the warmth is a few feet away. The two figures have material trouble, poor health, and each other, and they do not see the door beneath the window. In a reading it shows hardship, financial strain, illness, exclusion from a community or a comfort, and the spiritual poverty of believing there is no help. The card is honest about the snow. It is also insistent about the window.
Reversed meaning
Reversed, one of the figures looks up. The card shows the end of a hard stretch, help accepted at last, shelter found, recovery from illness or debt, or a change of fortune that was there all along once someone asked. It can also mark the deeper version of exclusion, a person who has stopped believing the door was ever meant for them. Mostly it means the worst is passing. Knock.
Five of Pentacles: yes or no?
- Upright
- No
- Five of Pentacles is a clear no for now: it points to hardship and exclusion, and pressing ahead would cost more than it gives.
- Reversed
- Maybe
- Five of Pentacles reversed softens a hard card into a maybe: recovery and help accepted. The outcome depends on what you do next.
Five of Pentacles with other cards
- Five of Pentacles and Six of PentaclesThe Five and Six of Pentacles together describe hardship meeting help.
Five of Pentacles by topic
How the card reads when the question is about a particular part of life. Choose a topic on any spread and these appear beside each card’s position reading.
love and relationships
Upright. Feeling shut out in the cold: loneliness inside or outside a relationship, hard times straining a bond, a sense that love is for other people. The lit window is closer than it looks. Knock.
Reversed. Support found: a hand held out, hard times easing, someone letting you in from the cold. Recovery starts when you accept help. Let it be offered.
work and career
Upright. Hard times: unemployment, money worries, feeling shut out of the industry. The lit window is closer than it looks. Ask for help; the card's mistake is walking past the door.
Reversed. Support found: a job after a dry spell, a hand held out, hard times easing. Recovery starts when you accept the help. Let it be offered.
money
Upright. Hard times: scarcity, debt, feeling shut out in the cold while others seem warm. The lit window is closer than it looks. Ask for help; the mistake is walking past the door.
Reversed. Support found: hard times easing, a hand held out, recovery beginning. It starts when you accept the help. Let it be offered.
health and wellbeing
Upright. Hard times for the body: illness, scarcity, feeling shut out in the cold. The lit window is closer than it looks. The mistake this card warns against is walking past the door.
Reversed. Support found: help accepted, hard times easing, a way in from the cold. Recovery starts when you let the hand be held out.
family and home
Upright. Hard times for the household: money short, a family left out in the cold, loneliness inside a home. The lit window is closer than it looks. Knock.
Reversed. Support found: a relative's hand held out, hard times easing, a family let in from the cold. Recovery starts when you accept help.
personal growth
Upright. Hard times: scarcity, loneliness, feeling shut out in the cold. The lit window is closer than it looks. The mistake this card warns against is walking past the door.
Reversed. Support found: help accepted, hard times easing, a way in from the cold. Recovery starts when you let the hand be held out. Let it.
the spiritual path
Upright. The dark passage outside the lit window: scarcity, loneliness, feeling shut out of grace. The window is closer than it looks. The mistake is walking past the door.
Reversed. Support found: help accepted, a way in from the cold, grace let in. Recovery starts when you let the hand be held out.
a decision
Upright. Deciding from scarcity, out in the cold. The lit window is an option you keep walking past. Ask for help before you choose.
Reversed. Support found: help accepted, the choice made with other people's hands held out to you. Let it be offered, and let it count in the deciding.
Waite’s divinatory meanings
Quoted from A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), public domain.
Upright: “The card foretells material trouble above all, whether in the form illustrated--that is, destitution--or otherwise. For some cartomancists, it is a card of love and lovers-wife, husband, friend, mistress; also concordance, affinities. These alternatives cannot be harmonized.”
Reversed: “Disorder, chaos, ruin, discord, profligacy.”
From The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
Waite’s full description of the card, Part II of the 1911 text, public domain.
Two mendicants in a snow-storm pass a lighted casement.
Five of Pentacles in a spread
How the card reads in each position. The first ten are the Celtic Cross; the rest are used by the Horseshoe, Relationship and Two Paths spreads. The smaller spreads reuse these positions.
The Significator
What is at the heart of the matter right now?
At the centre of your situation is hardship: money, health or belonging has failed you and you are walking in the snow. The reading takes the cold seriously and will keep pointing at the window.
You are at the point where a hard stretch begins to lift. Help is becoming visible and you are starting to let yourself see it. The matter is about going in.
Crossing Card
What crosses, challenges or shapes it?
What meets your situation is scarcity or exclusion, a material or social cold that makes everything harder. It is real and it is not the whole picture. Look for the door you are passing.
The force across your path is help you find hard to accept, or a recovery that asks you to stop walking and go inside. Pride is the obstacle here. Set it down.
Foundation
What is the root of this?
This grew from a period of hardship, poverty, illness or exclusion that shaped how you see security and belonging. The present matter still carries the memory of the snow.
At the root is a time when you were helped out of hardship and learned that doors do open. That remembered shelter is the ground beneath the present.
Recent Past
What is passing out of the picture?
A hard stretch of want or isolation is receding. The snow is behind you even if you are still cold. What you walked through is becoming history rather than weather.
A period of recovery and accepted help is settling into the past. You came in from the cold. Do not go back out to prove you could survive it.
Crown
What are you consciously aiming for, and what could this become?
What you consciously hope for is simply to be warm and safe, to have enough and to belong. That is a reasonable aim and it is nearer than it feels. The window is lit.
You consciously want to recover and to accept the help that is there. That aim is right. Make it concrete: one ask, one door, one appointment.
Future
What is coming next?
A hard stretch is ahead, a time of material strain or feeling shut out. It will not last. Decide now whom you will ask for help, so that you do not walk past the door when it comes.
Relief is coming: help offered, a situation easing, health or money improving. Say yes to it without checking whether you deserve it.
Emotions
How are you meeting this, inside?
Inwardly, you feel poor, excluded and unseen, and you may have stopped looking for help because you expect none. That expectation is doing half the damage. Look up.
Part of you is ready to accept support and part is ashamed to need it. The shame is older than the situation. Let the first part knock.
External Forces
What are others, and the wider setting, bringing to it?
The people around you are struggling too, or you are in a setting that excludes you. The atmosphere is cold. Someone nearby is also in the snow; you may be each other's shelter.
Your surroundings are warming: a door is opening, a community is making room, help is being arranged. The environment now favours recovery. Go toward the light.
Hopes & Desires
What do you hope for, and what do you fear?
You fear being left out in the cold with nothing, and you hope, almost without believing it, for shelter. The card says the shelter exists. Hope harder and ask.
You hope the hard time is ending and may fear that accepting help makes you a burden. Part of you may prefer the snow to the asking. Choose the asking.
Outcome
Where does all of this lead?
Left as it is, this ends in continued hardship: a cold stretch endured alone while help goes unasked. The spread shows the door you keep passing. Knock on it and the ending changes.
This resolves in recovery: help accepted, shelter found, a hard stretch ending. Keep walking toward the window and the result holds.
Hidden Influences
What is at work here that you cannot see yet?
Hardship is shaping this from underneath: a scarcity of money, health or belonging that has become a way of seeing. The hidden influence is the snow, and the belief that there is no door. There is a door.
Beneath the surface help is nearer than you have let yourself notice, or a hard stretch is ending. The hidden influence is a lit window you have been walking past. Look up.
Advice
What should you do about it?
Ask for help, specifically, from someone who can give it. The cold is real and so is the window. Pride is the one thing in this picture you can set down tonight.
Accept the help that is offered without first checking whether you deserve it. The advice is to go in, warm up, and let the recovery begin; survival outside was never the point.
The Other Person
What are they bringing to this?
They are struggling, materially or in spirit, and may feel shut out and unseen. Expect hardship that has become a worldview. Be the lit window, and point to the door.
They are coming in from the cold, accepting help or finding their footing after a hard stretch. Expect tentative relief and some shame about needing it. Make the asking easy.
What Joins You
What holds the two of you together?
What joins you is hardship endured together, two figures in the same snow. That is a real bond, and it is the bond of the cold. Find the door together so the relationship is not only survival.
You are joined by recovery, by having found shelter together or by one of you bringing the other in from the cold. The window is warm. Stay inside long enough to become something other than survivors.
What Divides You
What pulls the two of you apart?
Scarcity divides you: one is in the snow and the other is inside, or both are cold and blaming each other for the weather. Need reads as burden; comfort reads as indifference. Open the door from whichever side you are on.
Help refused has opened the gap: one of you offered shelter and the other walked past out of pride, or accepted and resented it. The division is about asking. Ask plainly; give plainly.
A Path
What happens if you take this road?
This road walks on through the cold: endure the hardship, trust your own two feet, pass the window. It leads to survival and not much warmth. Take it only once you have checked for the door.
This road knocks: accept help, come in, recover. It leads to warmth and asks you to let someone see you cold. It is the road through the lit door.
See where it falls for you
Deal a spread and read every card in its position.