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Four of Pentacles

pentacles · 4

Four of Pentacles

Lord of Earthly Power

The Four of Pentacles tarot card meaning runs through both orientations: upright, security, control, savings; reversed, greed, miserliness, loosening grip. Below, its imagery across the Rider–Waite–Smith, Thoth, and Marseille decks, and what the tradition’s writers said about it.

Element
Earth
Planet
Sun
Zodiac
Capricorn
Numerology
4
Timing
Capricorn season; long-term holding patterns.

Upright

  • security
  • control
  • savings
  • holding onto
  • stability through grip

Reversed

  • greed
  • miserliness
  • loosening grip
  • generosity returning
  • letting go of control

Four of Pentacles Tarot Card Meaning

Upright

[object Object]

Reversed

[object Object]

The image, three ways

Rider–Waite–Smith

A figure sits crowned, holding one pentacle tight to his chest, with one under each foot and one balanced atop his crown. The city is behind him. He looks closed, possessive.

Four ways a reversal speaks

After Mary K. Greer, Tarot Reversals (2002)

  1. 01 · excessive

    Hoarding; security crossed into miserliness; the grip past serving.

  2. 02 · shadow

    Greed; the wealth that has eaten the wealthy.

  3. 03 · blocked

    Releasing refused; the open hand impossible because of remembered scarcity.

  4. 04 · karmic

    Inherited scarcity-mind; the family's grip continuing in this body.

What the tradition says

  • Aleister Crowley · 1944

    The Book of Thoth

    Power — Sun in Capricorn; radiance organized into authority; stability that may calcify.

  • Rachel Pollack · 1980

    Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom

    Pollack reads the Four of Pentacles as the grip that has crossed from prudent into possessive — the figure holds his coins so tightly nothing new can come in. Stability is real but stability without circulation is hoarding.

  • Mary K. Greer · 1984

    Tarot for Your Self

    Greer's question for the Four: what are you holding because you need it, and what are you holding because you fear losing it? The two grips look the same but feel different. The card asks for the honest distinction.

  • Eden Gray · 1960

    The Tarot Revealed

    Gray reads the Four as the miser, the grasping for material security, sometimes literal hoarding. The card warns against confusing wealth with the protection it cannot actually provide.

Shadow

The miser; the controller; the one whose security has become cage.

More from the suit of Pentacles

Four of Pentacles combinations

Bring this card into a question

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