Ace of Pentacles tarot card, Rider Waite Smith deck

Something real placed in your hand. A new start you can build on.

The picture

A hand reaches out of a cloud with a large golden pentacle resting on its open palm, and a soft glow around it. Below is a garden full of white lilies. A hedge grows up into an archway dotted with red flowers, and a path runs through the arch towards blue mountains in the distance.

Upright

An Ace is the suit at its very beginning, before anything has been built. In Pentacles, that beginning is something you can touch. A job offer, money arriving, a new home, a business idea with legs, a body ready to get well.

Look at the palm. It is open and flat, and the coin simply rests there. This is offered to you. Nobody is going to close your fingers around it.

Earth is the slowest of the four elements, and what starts here grows the way a garden grows, one season at a time. The path through the archway matters too. The offer is only the gate. The walking is yours.

Reversed

Reversed, the coin is still in the hand. I most often read this as delayed: the opportunity is real and the ground is not ready for it yet. The money comes later than hoped, the new role starts after a wait. It can also be blocked, a practical beginning you keep putting off because the first step looks too ordinary to bother with.

To tell which, look at what you are doing while you wait. If you are preparing the ground, it is delay, and time will do its work. If you are waiting for the perfect moment to start, you are the one standing in the gateway.

When it turns up

What would you plant today if you knew it had a full season to grow?

If you would like the cards read against your own chart, my readings are here.

Related pages
The Number 1

The 78 Cards

Every card in the deck, upright and reversed.

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