What does the Five of Pentacles mean?

It means hardship, with help nearby that nobody has noticed. Waite describes two beggars in a snowstorm passing a lighted window, and said the card foretells material trouble above all. It covers money trouble, illness, and exclusion. Struggle narrows attention, so asking gets harder the more you need to.

Is the Five of Pentacles only about money?

No. It covers illness, exclusion, and loneliness as much as poverty. One figure is on crutches and the other is barefoot. Waite also noted some readers took it as a card of lovers. If the hardship is real right now, practical help from people and services matters more than any card.

What is the window in the Five of Pentacles?

Help: warm, lit, and just above their line of sight. Waite calls it a lighted window. It is what makes the card useful. The help is close, and outside the direction they are looking. That describes hardship, and blames nobody.

Is the Five of Pentacles reversed positive?

In most modern readings, yes: a hard period ending, or help finally accepted. Waite read it the other way, as disorder, ruin, and reckless spending. The cards around it help show which. Also watch for scarcity habits that stay after things improve.

Five of Pentacles meaning (upright & reversed)

There is a window right above them, lit from inside, and neither of them looks up.

The card places no blame on them for that. It shows how difficulty arranges a person’s attention: down, forward, on the next few feet of snow. The warm room is close by, and entirely outside what they can see. Waite only calls them two beggars passing a lighted window. The rest is in the drawing.

Five of Pentacles upright meaning

Hardship, with help closer than it looks.

The Five of Pentacles is the deck's hardship card, and it covers more than money. Waite describes two beggars in a snowstorm passing a lighted window. One walks barefoot and one is on crutches, and neither looks up. Waite said the card foretells material trouble above all, destitution or otherwise. He also noted that some card readers took it as a card of love and lovers. He added that the two meanings cannot be made to agree. Modern readings mostly follow the first: money trouble, illness, and the experience of being outside while others are inside. The window is what makes the card useful. Help is present, close, and unseen. That describes how difficulty works. It is no criticism of the people in the picture. Hardship narrows attention to the next step. The more you need to ask, the harder asking gets. In readings it usually points to support that exists and has not been approached: a person, a service, a conversation. Its quiet advice is to look up. That is easy to say, and it is the real difficulty.

Five of Pentacles reversed meaning

Recovery beginning, or disorder getting worse.

Reversed, the Five of Pentacles reads two very different ways. Waite's reversed meanings were disorder, chaos, ruin, discord, and reckless spending, with troubles in love among his extras. That is the hardship deepening. Modern readers more often see improvement. The most common modern reading is a hard period ending: money easing, strength returning, or the situation loosening its hold. It tends to be gradual, and people often notice it only looking back. The second modern reading is help finally accepted. Someone asks, or lets a person in, and finds the help was there the whole time. The card does not scold anyone about the delay. Shame is usually what kept it going. A third reading is worth catching. The money comes back, and the habits formed during scarcity stay. That version is easy to mistake for full recovery.

A reversal is rarely the upright card's opposite. Reversed tarot cards covers the four conditions a reversal usually describes, and how to tell which one a spread is asking for. Every card's reversed meaning sits beside its upright one on reversed tarot card meanings.

Five of Pentacles in Waite's 1910 key

The meanings above are Reflecta's reading. These are the ones A. E. Waite gave in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the guide he wrote for the deck Pamela Colman Smith drew. He wrote them for fortune-telling, a use tarot took on centuries after it began as a card game in fifteenth-century Italy. Some of his words are blunt, and none of them can tell you what will happen.

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.

Symbolism in the card

The lighted window above them: Waite describes two beggars passing a lighted window. Warmth and shelter are right there, above their line of sight. The help is close, and outside the direction they are looking.
The figure walking through the snow with bare feet: The suffering is physical, visible, and ongoing. The card does not make hardship pretty, and does not treat it as a lesson.
The figure on crutches: Illness or injury, on top of poverty. The trouble here is social as much as material. That is why the card so often reads as being shut outside.

Five of Pentacles in love and relationships

Upright. Feeling shut out of a relationship, or a partnership strained by outside hardship. Waite noted some readers saw love and lovers here. It also covers loneliness that has become hard to admit.

Reversed. A relationship recovering after a hard stretch, or reconnecting after isolation. Waite listed troubles in love among the reversed meanings, so read it with the cards around it.

Five of Pentacles in career and work

Upright. Job loss, being passed over, or work that does not cover what you need. It also covers being left out of a circle you can see from outside.

Reversed. Work returning, a job found, or accepting career help from someone who offered it a while ago. The offer may still stand.

Five of Pentacles in money

Upright. Real financial hardship, and the card means it plainly. It also points to support that exists and has not been claimed. The card can help you reflect. A qualified advisor or support service can help with the numbers.

Reversed. Money improving, or debt easing, in the modern reading. Waite's reversal pointed to disorder and reckless spending. Watch for scarcity habits staying after things change.

Five of Pentacles as feelings

Upright. The card shows someone feeling shut out, or too worn down to reach out. What looks like coldness is often a person with nothing left to give right now.

Reversed. The card shows someone coming back toward connection after a hard period, or letting someone in for the first time. Room for the relationship may be returning.

Is Five of Pentacles a yes or a no?

Upright, it leans no. Reversed, it leans yes.

Upright it leans no, usually because the resources are not there right now. The thing itself may be fine. Reversed it leans yes in modern readings, since it tends to describe conditions improving, help arriving, or someone finally asking. Waite read the reversal more darkly, so let the cards around it decide.

Every card's leaning in one table, upright and reversed, is on yes or no tarot, along with what a maybe is asking you to do.

Five of Pentacles card combinations

+ Five of Pentacles and Six of Pentacles: Need next to giving, and the pair often answers the first. Together they point to help that is close to being offered or asked for.
+ Five of Pentacles and Ten of Pentacles: Scarcity next to security, often across time. It can point to a hard period ending in real stability, or a well-off family with someone still left outside.
+ Five of Pentacles and The Star: Hardship and restoration. One of the more hopeful combinations. It suggests the hard stretch is real, and that recovery from it is possible.
+ Five of Pentacles and The Hermit: Isolation twice, from different causes. It asks whether the aloneness is chosen or imposed, and that changes what would help.
+ Five of Pentacles and The Hierophant: The lighted stained-glass window in the Five is often read as a church, and the Hierophant as who is inside. The pair points to help held by an institution, where asking feels costly.
+ Five of Pentacles and Four of Pentacles: Having nothing, next to fearing having nothing. The two look alike from outside and need opposite advice. That is the whole use of this pair.

Every pairing on this site, Five of Pentacles's included, is collected on tarot card combinations.

Asking is open to me, and it is no failure.

Five of Pentacles: common questions

What does the Five of Pentacles mean?: It means hardship, with help nearby that nobody has noticed. Waite describes two beggars in a snowstorm passing a lighted window, and said the card foretells material trouble above all. It covers money trouble, illness, and exclusion. Struggle narrows attention, so asking gets harder the more you need to.
Is the Five of Pentacles only about money?: No. It covers illness, exclusion, and loneliness as much as poverty. One figure is on crutches and the other is barefoot. Waite also noted some readers took it as a card of lovers. If the hardship is real right now, practical help from people and services matters more than any card.
What is the window in the Five of Pentacles?: Help: warm, lit, and just above their line of sight. Waite calls it a lighted window. It is what makes the card useful. The help is close, and outside the direction they are looking. That describes hardship, and blames nobody.
Is the Five of Pentacles reversed positive?: In most modern readings, yes: a hard period ending, or help finally accepted. Waite read it the other way, as disorder, ruin, and reckless spending. The cards around it help show which. Also watch for scarcity habits that stay after things improve.