TAROTFive of Pentacles
Upright
Hardship and feelings of being alone. Disconnection from your inner beliefs.
A rough patch in an area of your life.
Loss of faith or having to make difficult decisions because of your circumstances.
An important need to realize that any setback is temporary.
Intuition
This card was significantly changed from the standard Rider-Waite-Smith image, as its meaning is often not clear to beginners.
The image shown in this card is much more stark; a poor mother having to abandon her child, with the shadowy Goddess Oizys (literally meaning Misery) looking on.
Reversed
Recovery and return to faith after a setback.
Renewal of hope or a return to faith in yourself or your situation.
Overcoming problems you have faced in the recent past.
A better appreciation of your life. Realizing temporary problems have been obscuring a good life.
Astrologia
Straightforward in communication, practical and realistic. A patient listener, with a focus on stability. Mercury in Taurus gives an impetus to face any fears that may break this stability. Can be inflexible, slow, and materialistic.
Five of Pentacles
The Five of Pentacles primarily represents a challenge to your material security that knocks your faith. This used to refer to religious faith, but means ‘faith in yourself’ today.
In extreme situations, the card points to separation and the breaking of close bonds through the adversity, arguments, and a falling out.
When you stop believing in yourself, separating from those who could help you, you hit absolute rock bottom. The name for this feeling is misery, and the ancients had a Goddess for it. We know of her far less today than most deities, but she still watches us silently.
Oizys
Oizys is the personification of misery, suffering, and distress. Her Roman counterpart, Miseria, provides the root for the English word 'misery'.
Like most personification deities, Oizys has no mythology of her own. Theren are no images nor statues of her appearance. She is simply the anthropomorphism of the emotions of misery and distress.
The card depicts her as a ghostly woman wrapped in a dirty white dress. It would resemble a modern wedding dress, were it not for the thorns wrapping around her. The deeper the misery she witnesses, the more the thorns twist and tighten, inflicting agonizing pain.
Oizys stood as a silent witness whenever misery occurred. Here, she watches a devastating event: a woman leaving her baby behind. The child raises a hand to the mother, shocked by the abandonment. The mother remains blind to this, her head bent in sorrow as she leaves.
Yet, the five pentacles on this card are arranged around the Torch symbol (the same Torch the Fool leaps toward, and the High Priestess holds). This symbol links directly to the Eleusinian Mysteries. Its secrets revealed the path to redemption and the afterlife for the ancients, provided you kept your faith.
Keeping faith and working together despite adversity plays a crucial role in the original Rider-Waite-Smith design, which depicts a blind and a lame man walking through the snow. This references Matthew 21:14, alongside the older (1st century BCE) parable of the Blind Man and the Lame: if the lame man sits on the shoulders of the blind man, they overcome their individual adversities by helping each other. The RWS card probably refers to both.
If the mother could have kept her faith, there would be a less bitter ending. Like the parable of the blind man and the lame, the baby has kept the mother alive for this long by giving her a reason to carry on. The separation may unfortunately mean the end of both of them, and Oizys knows this.
Yet she must, as ever, remain silent, bearing the tightening of the thorns.
Description and Symbology
The card shows the Goddess of misery, Oizys acting as the silent witness to a devastating event: a mother abandons her child in a dark, misty forest, far from any help.
Oizys must watch, absorbing the pain of the mother and child via the tightening thorns across her own body. She stands with us all at some point in our lives, silently witnessing and sharing our pain.
The card warns of an impending event that will test your faith, causing you to pull away from those you love, argue, or blame others.
This is the wrong response. The card illuminates a better way via the symbol of the Torch: the ultimate symbol of faith. We should always have faith in something larger than us, and if we can’t do that, then we must at least have faith in ourselves.
Remember who you are in the good times, and stay the same in the bad times. This means staying together and working together. Do this, and you will emerge from adversity stronger than when you entered it.
Adversity is a test. If you pass, the prize is becoming a better person.
Adversity is a test, and if we pass, the prize is becoming a better person
It is also important to remember that this is a Minor Arcana card, meaning that it suggests a short period of adversity. This is a temporary setback and you will recover.
Faith and misery
Oizys is the Goddess of misery, standing as silent witness to our suffering. Behind her, we see the symbol of the Torch; a symbol of faith. This helps us to bear our burdens by giving us purpose. This faith can be in a deity, ourselves, or a wider group.
Mother and child
We see the abandonment of a child. The child looks to be well-fed, whereas the mother is thin and has dirty bare feet. She has been a good mother so far. The child has been the mother’s reason to carry on, and now they are separated, both child and mother will die.
Tips for Readings
The following table shows the upright and reverse meanings for general questions. The last row ('Yes/No') is useful when you are picking a single card to decide a yes or no decision.
Upright
Reversed
You or your partner has problems of a financial nature, and it is pretty easy to know which one it is (if it isn’t you, then…). There may be a need to bring things into the open and work on the issues together, as problems left alone in the dark tend to get bigger and scarier.
If you are single, then there may be problems outside the relationship that are causing problems for one of you. A supportive shoulder and a listening ear cost nothing, but be wary of what you are getting in to if you want to help further.
In either case, remember that periods of financial insecurity don’t last that long, and the longest lasting repercussion is showing you who you and others really are.
There is a new hope in the relationship caused by a period of insecurity ending.
Before you go out and celebrate, it is wise to understand what went wrong and what went right. More importantly, this is a good time to consider your life together and how you stand.
The problem may have brought you together, or shown where the cracks lie, and it is important to resolve or understand them for the future.
You may also be realizing the problem makes you cherish what you have rather than concentrate on what you did not have (or lost). We often focus on the problems but ignore the good luck we have, particularly when that good luck is the person standing next to us.
There is a financial or status loss coming towards you, and it may be related to work. A lack of opportunity that you thought was a dead certainty, a pay-cut, or a job loss.
This is never good news, but the worst thing you can lose is none of the above — real loss is losing faith in yourself or taking it out on blameless loved ones.
Look to what you have rather than what you do not, as this storm will soon blow itself out, and you will sail far better with a full crew on board and working with you.
You have gone through a period of trial or discomfort and the worst is over, and you can expect things to get better at work, or opportunities to move to better will present themselves to you.
For those stuck in a dead end job, the path is clear to bettering yourself, either by an improvement in your current position, or a new one elsewhere. The card does however suggest a bold move is the best one, as luck is finally on your side.
If you are out of work, expect the chance of a new start.
It is important to learn from the past, however, and take steps to ensure the next time you have problems you are better prepared.
Be careful of your health as there is a chance that a health issue could cause a lack of security in your life.
Forewarned is forewarned, so lay off the martial arts or contact sport for a while, and don’t take chances as you might suffer more than a sore body.
On the plus side, the card denotes a temporary situation, and the bigger problem will be how much faith you have for recovery rather than any injury itself, so if you find yourself on the injury bench, have hope!
A period of illness or low spirits will soon end.
More importantly, it is important to learn from the experience.
The sky rarely falls down, the sun always rises, and the wolf at the door has no key.
Patience and faith are often your two most reliable assets!
This is one of the biggest spiritual cards in the deck. Although it brings bad news in material terms, it also brings a message that you need to hear.
You may be going through a tough time at the moment, and losing financial security. Instead, dwell on what you have rather than on what you are losing, because your solution lies there. Help and support, close communication within relationships, and perhaps even a change of lifestyle that requires less.
The problems will be short-lived, but if you do everything right, the positive repercussions and understanding you gain may last a lifetime.
You have passed through a difficult financial or material change in your life. It may have been small or large, but you are now through it.
As well as celebrating, now is a good time to consider your faith in yourself and those close to you.
If it has gone up, all well and good, and something to recall next time you have problems.
If it has gone down, now is the time to think about the issues and start fixing them once the celebrating is over.
Money will be tight for a period, and this may affect your plans or cause anxiety.
It might be caused by a financial loss, unexpected bills, an accident, or repair, or a drop in income
It is important to focus on what you have rather than what you don’t have, because you have more than you realize.
Make changes, communicate the problem, so there are no surprises, and realize this will not last forever.
Financial problems that you have lived through in the recent past are coming to an end.
As well as thinking yourself lucky, now is a good time to plan ahead.
Put money away to make sure the lights stay on, and the roof stays intact for a while when the worst happens. Cut some of your most indulgent excesses for a while so you fully recover, or realize you can’t invest absolutely everything in stocks or property. You also have to eat and pay the bills at times when neither are paying out!
No, because of material losses and worry caused by them.
Yes, through recovery from material losses and lessons learned from them.
Reading the Card
The Upright Card
The Upright Five of Pentacles predicts a challenge resulting in a loss of material security: financial losses, mounting bills, job loss, an expensive accident, or a sudden change to your everyday life.
Although the imagery depicts devastation, few things in life are truly that bad, even if they initially feel insurmountable. Fixing these problems requires a straightforward approach:
- Have faith in yourself and things turning out right if you take the time to do things properly.
- Stick together through adversity in the exact same way you stick together in the good times. Never walk away from loved ones; pick them up and carry them, because they will carry you in return.
- Anything that will not matter in a couple of years should not matter by tomorrow either, unless you have trained yourself to create more drama and misery when anything happens.
Adversity will still happen, but you will be stronger and ready for the challenge.
The Reversal
The Reversed Five of Pentacles denotes a return of hope. Your material losses or asset problems have resolved, one way or another.
A more important change is that the situation in your eyes has got better. It probably has got better, but the more significant change is that your faith has returned.
It is sometimes critical to look at what you still have rather than what you have lost. Perhaps you now have a better understanding of how things work, what part you played in the issue, and how to avoid it in the future.
The situation may have brought you closer to loved ones, or showed potential problems and fractures that you can now resolve and mend.
You may now have a better appreciation of people you certainly cannot rely on when the chips are down. This may have initially been a cause of anger and panic, but now the dust has settled, you have knowledge, and that is power for the future.
Card Design Process
The original Rider-Waite-Smith card is notoriously hard to decipher. The reference to the blind and lame man is neither modern nor well-known. Many cannot easily trace it back to the biblical passage it comes from, let alone the ancient Greek parable.
The design utilizes Oizys as the personification of misery, forcing a devastating event to play out.
There are no vases, friezes, or statues depicting Oizys (a common issue, as minor deities were described via lost oral traditions). This provided a perfect opportunity to build her appearance from scratch.
Oizys acts as a silent witness to misery. This idea was expanded via a visual way to show Oizys feeling the same pain as those she watches.
Final Words
The Five of Pentacles denotes a period of hardship. Having faith, retaining hope, and coming together with others to solve the problem is the only way forward.
Once you are past the problem, the knowledge gained from the hardship will make you better able to weather future storms, and have a better understanding of how or why the problem occurred in the first place.
If you learn from the event, it will give you more faith in yourself.
