What the card shows
A youthful figure, looking intently at the pentacle which hovers over his raised hands. He moves slowly, insensible of that which is about him.
pentacles
Page
Page of Pentacles
Suit: Pentacles Minor Arcana Element: Earth
Also known as Page of Coins, Page of Disks, and Page of Denaries.
Core interpretation
Page of Pentacles: study and practical attention directed toward material possibility. 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
- Application, study, scholarship, reflection another reading says news, messages and the bringer thereof; also rule, management.
- Reversed
- Prodigality, dissipation, liberality, luxury; unfavourable news.
A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, Rider–Waite–Smith — Part III, §2, The Lesser Arcana — Page of Pentacles.
The same card in the Thoth deck
Princess of Disks · The Princess of the Echoing Hills; the Rose of the Palace of Earth
What the card shows
ModernA youth holds a pentacle at eye level in a fertile landscape, absorbed in the object and the work it may require.
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 Page with application, study, scholarship, reflection, management and useful news. Reversed, it can indicate prodigality, dissipation, luxury or unfavourable news.
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 Princess of the Echoing Hills; the Rose of the Palace 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
Princess / final Heh · Earth 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 Princess of the Echoing Hills; the Rose of the Palace of Earth, pp. 12–21
One polar quadrant above the earth sign Taurus
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
Generosity, diligence and perseverance establish material force, with wastefulness as the contrary tendency.
A concise paraphrase of Book T's well- and ill-dignified characteristics.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Princess of the Echoing Hills; the Rose of the Palace 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 |