MINOR ARCANA

Five of Pentacles Tarot Meanings

With the Pentacles symbolising our external world and material spaces, the Five of Pentacles shows chaos within those areas. This chaos isn’t always factual though, often it’s our perspective that makes things seem 100% worse than it actually is. Your feelings and thoughts are valid of course, however, there may be better ways of expressing them and reacting to your situation.

The Five of Pentacles often represent our daily life worries, like paying bills, organising family get together, making time for all the chores and so on. Often when these things mount up they can feel completely catastrophic and that’s when we are most likely to see the Five of Pentacles.

Five of Pentacles Tarot Meanings Support Needed

Five of Pentacles Tarot Meanings Setback

Five of Pentacles Upright Meanings

In the upright position, the Five of Pentacles is all about our worries and concerns in regards to our daily lives and the events that happen to us. Some of the key meanings of the Five of Pentacles are:

Worries
Concerns
Wellbeing
Imbalance
Resistance

There is a feeling of needing to be kind to yourself with the Five of Pentacles, we can often be the ones throwing ourselves out into the cold, just like we see in the image on the Rider Waite-Smith deck. We need to be able to support ourselves and show ourselves the same dedication we do to others in order to be able to weather whatever life throws at us.

Five of Pentacles Reversed Meanings

In the reversed position, the Five of Pentacles flips that bad luck and worry on its head to give us a bit more positivity and optimism. Some of the main reversed meanings of the Five of Pentacles are:

Good Luck
Positive change
Recovery
Employment
Overcoming

The Five of Pentacles reversed can often be a sign that the worst has passed and that we are now able to start the healing process. As the pentacles can refer to health and physical wellbeing, the Five reversed can be a hopeful sign that you are finally starting to put your wellbeing before everything else.

Reading Five of Pentacles in a Tarot Spread

When the Five of Pentacles shows up in a spread, although it can look a little ominous, it’s important to remember that its energy is there to support and guide you, not to indicate that something is happening to you. The future is never written and the tarot only suggests things that could be, not what will be.

With that in mind, the Five of Pentacles is often a sign that you need to take a look at how you are reacting to your current situation, you need to adjust the mindsets and perspectives you have around any problems or challenges you are currently facing, in order to inject a little more optimism and hope.

Five of Pentacles as An Invitation

When the Five of Pentacles shows up as an invitation, it is usually an invitation to assess and review your reactions to certain things. You need to look at how you’re viewing your life and make adjustments to invite more positivity.

For Five of Pentacles, this invitation could be the following:

An invitation to start breaking down your biggest worries to try and find what the root cause of them are and start to treat them from the source
An invitation to put your wellbeing first in order to better your overall health
An invitation to readjust your money mindsets and start to create an abundance mindset instead of a lack mindset
An invitation to notice areas of resistance and explore why it’s there

Five of Pentacles as Sage Advice

If the Five of Pentacles pops up to offer some advice, it’s most likely going to be around matters of home, health, family and finances and the common concerns that often accompany them.

Some advice Five of Pentacles may offer is:

We can ease the stress and pressure from intense situations by shifting our focus and trying to find more optimism in dark situations
Don’t be your own enemy, listen to your gut, treat yourself with kindness and don’t be harder on yourself than you would be on others
Don’t allow worries to completely consume your life
Trust that all bad things must pass and there will be a lift in your situation soon after

Five of Pentacles as a Lesson

When the Five of Pentacles appears as a lesson we can often be taught how to effectively handle the ups and downs that come with living a normal life.

Some lessons that Five of Pentacles may offer you are:

A lesson in finding spaces in order to rest and recuperate
A lesson in knowing how to navigate worries and concerns so they don’t consume you
A lesson in overcoming internal resistance
A lesson in attracting positive change

Five of Pentacles as a Redirection

If the Five of Pentacles appears to try and redirect you on your path, it’s most likely because you are the curator of your own suffering. The Buddhist concept of wanting and desire often applies to this card, the idea being that the more we want things to be bigger and better, the least likely we are to be happy with what we have already (that’s a very basic breakdown, I highly recommend researching it more!).

As a redirection, Five of Pentacles could symbolise a need to:

Find a way to be grateful for what you have already, in order to start attracting more of it
Actively act with more positivity and optimism
Take a break in order to look after your well-being for a while
Fight for what you believe you deserve instead of accepting the lot you have been handed

Pentacles

The Pentacles are the suit of our material world and possessions. This isn’t just limited to financial matters, it also includes our home, health, relationships with family and even our hobbies.

With the Pentacles we are asked to focus on the more material or physical aspects of the situation. For example in a reading about love, the presence of Pentacles would ask you to look at things from a very practical point of view. Maybe it asks you to think about whether you have the time to give to someone else, or if a relationship will add value to your life.

Earth

All the Tarot suits correspond to one of the four elemental energies and the Pentacles corresponds with the element of earth. This can help us read the Pentacles cards when they appear in our readings. We simply think about the type of feeling, energy and unconscious understanding we have about what earth is and apply it to the card.

For the Five of Pentacles, we would look at how we can ground into a feeling of hardship in order to find a way through it. We can draw from the earth energy to better understand how this card’s energy is affecting us and find solutions from there.

Fives

Within numerology the number five can be both the number of chaos and the number of humanity. It represents the constant ebb and flow of being human and having to deal with both the good and bad in equal measure.

In the Five of Pentacles, we are dealing with chaos in the form of hardship, struggle or a need to seek out support. It is a card that likes to remind us that we are not an island and sometimes we have to be brave enough to put the ego and pride to one side and reach out to those who can help us back on our feet.