What the card shows
He rides a slow, enduring, heavy horse, to which his own aspect corresponds. He exhibits his symbol, but does not look therein.
pentacles
Knight
Knight of Pentacles
Suit: Pentacles Minor Arcana Element: Earth
Also known as Knight of Coins, Knight of Disks, and Knight of Denaries.
Core interpretation
Knight of Pentacles: patient responsibility and the dependable pace of material work. The card joins the earth nature of Pentacles to its courtly role.
The card's place in the historical Minor Arcana sits beside its Golden Dawn correspondences and Waite's account of Pamela Colman Smith's image. Each reading keeps the source and deck that gave it shape.
8 sourced claims: 5 traditional , 3 modern
In the Rider–Waite–Smith deck
The meanings are Waite's own words from The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. They belong to one influential school of reading and do not exhaust what the cards have meant in other hands.
Divinatory meaning
- Upright
- Utility, serviceableness, interest, responsibility, rectitude-all on the normal and external plane.
- Reversed
- inertia, idleness, repose of that kind, stagnation; also placidity, discouragement, carelessness.
A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, Rider–Waite–Smith — Part III, §2, The Lesser Arcana — Knight of Pentacles.
The same card in the Thoth deck
Knight of Disks · The Lord of the Wide and Fertile Land; the King of the Spirits of Earth
What the card shows
ModernA mounted knight holds a pentacle on a still, heavy horse while carefully cultivated fields stretch behind him.
A concise visual description of Pamela Colman Smith's 1910 design, checked against Waite's card entry and the public-domain scan.
Divinatory meaning
ModernUpright, Waite associates the Knight with usefulness, service, responsibility, interest and rectitude. Reversed, it can indicate inertia, idleness, stagnation, discouragement or carelessness.
Waite treats these as historical divinatory allocations and explicitly warns that they vary by context and are not a universal symbolic canon.
Court-card structure
Court cards are organised by rank, suit and elemental composition in Book T. They are listed separately because the source does not assign them to the numbered sephiroth in the way it assigns the pip cards.
Golden Dawn correspondences 5 sourced claims
Book T's formal title, Tree or elemental place, astrological attribution, and characteristic reading. This is the system used by the Hermetic Tree.
The Lord of the Wide and Fertile Land; the King of the Spirits of Earth
Book T's formal title for this court card.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — Titles of the Symbols, pp. 3–4; The Sixteen or Royal Cards, pp. 11–21
Earth · Pentacles
Pentacles express the powers of Earth: material conditions, labour, resources, embodiment and practical consequence.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — Titles and descriptions of the four suits, pp. 3–23
King / Yod · Fire of Earth
Book T uses King for the mounted figure now usually called Knight, Prince for the figure now usually called King, and Princess for the Page or Knave. The source's role is preserved here rather than silently modernised.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Sixteen or Royal Cards, pp. 11–12; The Lord of the Wide and Fertile Land; the King of the Spirits of Earth, pp. 12–21
20° Leo to 20° Virgo
The twelve King/Knight, Queen and Prince/King cards bridge zodiac signs; the four Princess/Page cards instead rule polar quadrants.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — Spheres of Influence of the Court Cards, pp. 12–21
Material force acts patiently and industriously, but can become dull, grasping or jealous.
A concise paraphrase of Book T's well- and ill-dignified characteristics.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Lord of the Wide and Fertile Land; the King of the Spirits of Earth, pp. 12–21
History and variants 1 sourced claim
Historical context and places where influential decks or occult systems differ.
One of the fifty-six suit cards in a standard Tarot pack: four suits of ten pip cards and four court cards.
The Met documents this structure in surviving fifteenth-century Tarot: Cups, Swords, Batons and Coins, each numbered from one to ten with king, queen, knight and knave. Occult correspondences developed later.
Sources (1)
- Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot Cards , Metropolitan Museum of Art online article, 2016 — paragraphs 2–4
Correspondences 1 sourced correspondence
| Relation | To | First attested |
|---|---|---|
| Suit and element | Earth | 1888 CE |