This is a fantastic image of potential wealth. One large lump sum, which is enough to pay for landscape gardening (see the fertile lawn and plants) or perhaps an extension to the house or apartment, which we can’t see. Maybe the property needs to be purchased, rather than rented. There is also a gateway leading to a world of adventure, across the mountains, in the distance. A lump sum might just play for a first-class, round-world trip.
The thing to remember about this card is that it’s all there to be claimed and made real. The heavenly hand is offering something which is not yet part of your everyday world. It’s floating. You have to be believe in it, trust it, want it and get it!
Quantum Science and Tarot Cards – What Erwin Schrodinger Tells Us about the Ace of Pentacles
Erwin Schrodinger (who made his famous cat thought experiment known across the world) lived in the same street as W. B. Yeats. This is important to your understand of the Tarot which Yeats helped to birth. Yeats was a poet, author, playwright and Golden Dawn magician. He was also just a few doors away from Schrodinger, who moved there after Yeats’ death. What his notorious cat told us was – everything is in two states until you look. Reality; the universe; the world is neither here nor there. This is rather like the coin in the card. It’s not here with you yet. It’s ‘there’ in the unformed universe you need to pop into reality. This idea of ‘popping’ universes is part of multiverse theory, which was an offshoot of Schrodinger’s weird cat-in-a-box.
Bringing the Ace of Pentacles Into reality
When you draw the Ace of Pentacles (Coins) in a Tarot reading there is potentially a large single sum of money to save or make, but you have to make it real. When Pamela Colman Smith was illustrating this card, she was herself being paid very little for a great deal of work. In fact, she was producing a deck which would go on to sell many millions of copies.
The Ace of Pentacles is a reminder that everything is hypothetical until you believe in it and strive for it. You can see the pentacle (hereafter called coin, for convenience) floating in the air. It is held in a heavenly hand – this must be Pennies From Heaven, like the song – surely?
Pamela Colman Smith and Money
Pamela Colman Smith created her deck at a time when the earliest stages of enquiry into what would be called Quantum Mechanics were developing. By the 21st century, scientists would come to know this as the new, proven, uncertain nature of reality. Everything is hypothetical until you pop it into being.
We have no evidence at all that Pamela knew anything at all about this new way of seeing reality. She was a Bohemian artist and illustrator – a noted artist – but not in touch with those circles. Instead her friends were freelance creatives, like her, or part-time occultists, like her business partner, Arthur Waite, who had a full-time job at Horlicks.
What Pamela (who was a natural channel or psychic) seemed to be picking up in her Ace of Pentacles/Coins card was the indeterminate nature of reality. Until you make the money real and use it to fund proper care of the beautiful garden, below, nothing will thrive or grow. It’s all a puff of smoke or a quantum cloud of possibilities, until you have faith and also do the work.
This way of thinking about reality is tied to the acceptance of the multiverse – a huge sweep of possible universes, which are popped in and out of existence just by the choices we make!
The Before Tarot, The After Tarot and The Ace of Pentacles
The After Tarot and Before Tarot decks with artwork inspired by Pamela, created by Giulia F. Massaglia (After Tarot) and Eon and Simona Rossi (Before Tarot) published by Lo Scarabeo takes this idea and runs with it. I really love these decks, which I think will give you helpful clues about how the Ace of Coins can work for you.
Pamela was a theatre designer who was inspired by stage costumes and sets, as I saw when I visited the beautiful surroundings at Smallhythe where she worked on her cards. A theatre is still there today along with the Shakespearean costumes of her mentor and friend, the actress Ellen Terry.
See what you can do with the Ace of Pentacles/Coins to bring action on and off the ‘stage’ set Pamela created – the garden. What can you do to work the image, direct it, hire new cast members, put on props and the rest? Truly, this is how science tells us so-called reality works. It really is about what we can see, believe and imagine to be possible!
In one card you can see two hands carefully holding the gold coin – which may be an Australian dollar or a British pound – or a solid gold collectable. There is tremendous care being taken here and you can see how Massaglia has added roses to the garden.
How to Personalise Your Ace of Pentacles Reading
In another card, you can see the money has fallen to earth. The hand is now holding a beetle. The word ‘beetle’ has so many connotations and I will leave it to you to interpret what it means for you. For me, it is about one of The Beatles making it after the Apple business is brought down to earth after the collapse of its retail wing in the Sixties. That particular Beatle is Sir Paul McCartney.
This brings to mind Beatles songs, like Money, and Can’t Buy Me Love. That’s how I work with the Tarot – through thought association and connections. Pro psychics work this way all the time.
You will be reading the Ace of Pentacles quite a different way, but I do urge you to look at the brilliant alternative interpretations of the Ace of Pentacles in the Before Tarot and After Tarot. What you can see going on here is very true to the way we know quantum reality to work.
Just the thought of that huge gold coin landing in the garden and coming down to earth totally transforms the card.
As the original was dreamed up by a woman who (records show) did not care all that much about being rich, but was passionate about being true to her art – there are also associated questions about selling out, and selling yourself short, and what is (or is not) up for sale in your world. In other words, values!
Exact Timing – Using Your Personal Birth Chart With the Tarot
I work with astrology and Tarot as you may know and if this card appears in a single-card reading, you are being asked to look at transits in Taurus and Scorpio in your chart right now, in the Second House and Eighth House of your personal horoscope, respectively.
This card will come up over and over again, as we are seeing the long-term transit of Uranus (radical change and revolution) in Taurus (currency, the economy, banks) beyond 2020 and as this planet moved in, during May 2018, when money laundering hit the headlines – you may be feeling the ripples of this and the cryptocurrency wave, for some time to come.
You’ll either be directly affected or indirectly hit by the changes, when this card comes up. Isn’t it interesting how much Pamela’s old drawing from 1909 resembles Bitcoin?
That was her rare gift – to channel and create images which always resonate through the centuries. I am sure you can see the associations between the Ace of Pentacles and the following list items – many of which are buzz words for Taurus, Scorpio and the Second House and Eighth House of your chart. If you are a Premium Member you can see if you have factors here at a glance, and by using the front page of this website, you can also see if you have weather or traffic in those signs too!
Ideas to Work With – The Ace of Pentacles/Coins and Your Future
- Bitcoin
- Cash
- Currency Exchange Rates
- Banking
- Wall Street
- Gold
- Property
- The Environment versus Development
- Savings
- Debt
- Credit Cards
- Salary
- Inheritance
- Lotteries
- Gambling
- Sales
- Shopping
- Value
- Valuables
- Values
Develop Your Reading by Seeing Life as Pamela Colman Smith Saw It!
Feel free to sketch, colour or add collage to a journal using this card. You can see how in the Before Tarot and After Tarot, Giulia F. Massaglia and Eon and Simona Rossi have breathed new life into Pamela’s old vision. What can you add as well?
As the answer to any question you have now, the answer is money. Not in your hand yet, or anybody else’s hand – but potentially, it can be made real. So much depends on how you feel about your finances, economics, capitalism, business, charity, philanthropy, debt and all the rest. This helps you drill down into what you will or will not permit into your world.
Pentacles, Coins, Numbers and Sums – How You Account For Your Life
The brilliant artist and psychic behind the cards, Pamela Colman Smith, was very likely laid to rest in the church in Bude, Cornwall where I photographed these hymn numbers. We just don’t know, because she was buried in what used to be known as a Pauper’s Grave. The woman who created the art for the most successful Tarot deck of the 20th and 21st centuries (big business indeed) passed away, with so little, that she was laid to rest in an unmarked place, occupied by another coffin.
Those were the rules of the life and times she inhabited. Yet, you could say the priceless gift of her art was to make her immortal – loved – respected – by the millions who use her cards, even though they may not always know her name.
These numbers are for hymns at a local Bude service. Yet they also bring to mind the digits of any large transaction. Dollars, pounds and euros. They could be numbers in a ledger book or bank statement. What do they say to you?
It’s by thinking around the subject of money, and numbers, and what is added, subtracted or divided in life, that you begin to dig more deeply into the meaning of the Ace of Pentacles and enrich your life.
