What this deck does differently
Fully illustrated, which is what makes this deck matter: every suit card carries a scene. No other fifteenth-century pack does, and no printed pack would again until 1909.
pentacles
Six
Sei di Denari
Suit: Denari Minor Arcana Element: Earth
Also known as Six of Coins, Six of Disks, and Six of Denaries.
Core interpretation
Six of Pentacles: resources circulating through generosity, dependence and measured power. The card joins the earth nature of Pentacles to its place in the numbered sequence.
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 Sola Busca deck
Its trumps are Roman and biblical figures with their own names and no evident relation to the allegories the other decks share. They are filed here beside the standard trumps because they occupy the same numbered slots, which is a statement about position and nothing else.
This deck calls the card Sei di Denari; it is filed here as Six of Pentacles.
This deck's book publishes no upright and reversed lists, so none are shown. Its account of the card is cited below rather than reproduced.
Unknown engraver, hand-coloured, Sola Busca — British Museum, Sola-Busca tarot.
The same card in the Rider–Waite–Smith deck
Six of Pentacles
What the card shows
ModernA prosperous figure weighs coins and distributes them to two kneeling people, making the scales as important as the gift.
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 card with gifts, gratification, attention and present prosperity. Reversed, it can indicate desire, envy, jealousy, cupidity or illusion.
Waite treats these as historical divinatory allocations and explicitly warns that they vary by context and are not a universal symbolic canon.
Tree of Life number
In the Golden Dawn system, all four Sixes share a numerical relationship with one Hermetic Sephirah.
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 Material Success
Book T's formal decan-card title.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — Titles of the decan cards, pp. 4–5; Six of Pentacles, pp. 28–46
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
Tiphareth · Beauty
The Sixes bring the work into a clear, coherent accomplishment. What was contested in the Five has carried through to a result.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — General meanings of the small cards under the Sephiroth, p. 27
Moon in Taurus
Book T assigns each pip card from Two through Ten to one ten-degree decan of the zodiac.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — Of the Thirty-Six Decans, pp. 23–27; Six of Pentacles, pp. 28–46
Material success circulates through gain, giving and receiving, with fairness determined by how power is used.
A concise paraphrase of Book T. Its dignity method modifies every decan card through the cards surrounding it.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Lord of Material Success, Six of Pentacles, pp. 28–46
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