TAROTSeven of Pentacles
Upright
Looking ahead via planning and/or expectation of rewards for previous hard work
Planning for the future through hard work and plans carried out now.
Patience and diligence.
Investments and financial plans.
Forgoing luxury today for a better future tomorrow.
Intuition
The image denotes a rather complex set of beliefs associated with Egyptian myth centered on Isis and Osiris. It represents the trials and tasks performed by Isis in recovering the throne of the Kingdom from the forces of evil. She does this through diligence, patience, and perseverance in the face of setbacks and obstacles. She is sure that a positive outcome will emerge because it is the correct outcome.
Reversed
Impatience through lack of progress. Not looking ahead to the future and living for today.
Not seeing gains through either lack of planning or simply bad luck.
Giving up too soon or having a sense of entitlement.
Inflexibility in changing plans to suit a changing situation.
Being on the wrong path in life and a need to reconsider your aims.
Astrologia
Personal growth within a stable environment. Very strong work ethic, aimed at family and creating stable structures. Strong grip on finance. Can be slow to differentiate between problems caused by chance, and ones of their own making, instead always assuming the latter.
Seven of Pentacles
The Seven of Pentacles represents diligence and hard work that will pay off in the future.
Unless Lady Luck is on your side (and you should rarely rely on her, as she can be fickle), success is not something that just appears. Success is a seed you plant in advance. It is nourished by the water of hard work, vision, and good decisions.
Future success must take root before it can grow. Looking at the surface, it initially appears that nothing is happening, and you rush to judge it a failure. Yet down below, the embryo of future success takes shape.
The card asks us to remember that success takes time; we must be patient. It requires effort that goes unrewarded initially, demanding a vision of the future and the absolute confidence that it will happen. Ultimately, success takes hard work. We must be prepared to get down on our knees and get our hands dirty..
Isis and Osiris
The story of Isis and Osiris is fundamental to ancient Egyptian religion.
The myth of Isis and Osiris is fundamental to ancient Egyptian religion. The story involves a King with no heir (Osiris), his Queen (Isis), and a rival to the throne (Set, a force of chaos). Set kills Osiris (typically via a drowning in the Nile) and takes the throne in his place. The corpse is found by Isis and Gods friendly to her. Before she acts, Set realizes his error and snatches the corpse back, hacking Osiris into fourteen pieces and scattering them across the Kingdom.
Undaunted, Isis is fueled by the love of her husband and the righteousness of her cause. She ignores the impossibility of the task and sets to work.
Transforming into a falcon (a 'woman with the wings of a falcon' in ancient iconography), Isis flies high to find and recover the scattered pieces. She preserves them, pieces them together, and bandages them (establishing the mythic process replicated in funerary mummification). She resurrects Osiris with the healing skills and spells of Thoth (The Page of Wands).
She invokes further magic, becoming pregnant with the child Horus (born with the head of a falcon, reflecting the appearance of Isis at the moment of conception).
The resurrection magic is short-lived. Osiris must return into the ground as the spirit of growth, governing the fertility associated with the yearly Nile floods as the God of the Afterlife.
Horus grows to adulthood, defeating Set and reclaiming the throne.
The death and rebirth of Osiris led to the intricate funerary tradition defining Ancient Egypt. Isis wielded the power of resurrection, playing a major part in funerary rites and cementing her role as the mother of all future Pharaohs.
The card illustrates this myth. Each of Osiris’s corpse sections is represented by one side of a pentacle, giving seven pentacles for the fourteen pieces. Through the hard work of Isis, the parts join together to form future fertility in the desert (driven by the yearly flooding of the Nile), guaranteeing the future greatness of Ancient Egypt through a line of Pharaohs.
The myth of Isis and Osiris was intimately known to early Western civilization, recorded extensively by the Ancient Greeks. It serves as the root source for early Western cults focused on the afterlife (the Eleusinian Mysteries), the archetype of the 'twice-born' god (Dionysus), and some early Christian iconography.
Description and Symbology
We see a woman (possibly the original prehistoric Isis) planting crops in the otherwise barren desert. Under the ground, seven pentacles grow into a future of possibility that will return the hard work.
Beside the woman sits a jackal representing the god Anubis. Anubis guides the dead to the afterlife. He existed as an earlier form of Osiris (archaeology confirms he precedes the Isis and Osiris myth as the original god of the underworld).
The jackal points to a profoundly spiritual reading that transcends immediate reward. It points to the balance of good work done across an entire lifespan, and its reward in the afterlife. The developing child beneath the earth represents not just the future, but the soul, growing through the arduous work performed in this life.
The woman working the earth
A woman tends the ground of the desert. This may be the Goddess Isis or any woman from prehistory. Despite the inhospitable terrain, her patient work looks like it will bear fruit in the future.
The pentacles
Below ground, the seeds have formed a root system that transforms what was put into the ground into greater material rewards via the pentacles.
The vision of the future
The seeds do not only produce material gains over time, but also security and future generations. The developing child may also represent the effect of hard but fulfilling work; it grows the soul in readiness for the next life. Finally, the child may represent the growing potential and vision that will shape the future.
The earth as provider of the future
The balance of sky to earth weighs heavily towards the earth. This matches the ancient beliefs that placed more weight on the earth than the sky; they saw that all sustenance came from the ground. The earth was also where the afterlife occurred.
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
There will be a period of looking to the future and working together to make it happen. This may be a commitment to reach a milestone in your lives or put in the work to clear up previous mistakes and misconceptions. Whatever the reason, the card points to a growth of the relationship through increased wealth, security, and togetherness.
For those looking to a new partner, this card points to an eventual strong and successful relationship characterized by abundance. It will take some initial work to set this up from you both, although the eventual gains will be high.
Plans have been made, but they do not seem to be working out: the house still cannot be afforded, budgets do not allow that holiday, or money is simply tight. Most likely, there is impatience, or ideals that don’t match reality, or the chosen path is not one you will be travelling in this life. It may be time to revisit the plan, at least for now.
For those looking to a new partner, there may be problems with one partner wanting more than the other one. There may be a materialistic streak in one partner that is not a priority nor understood by the other, or a difference in work ethic. Whatever the cause, this needs to be resolved one way or another.
Work and experience carried out in the past will affect you positively in the near future.
This may be through recognition and promotion, or growing beyond your current position into a new role you previously only dreamed about.
The card asks that you carry on with your good work for a while longer, however, as patience is the keyword.
You are underappreciated or not fitting in with your current work environment.
This may be through your work not being noticed, taken for granted, or you are simply disillusioned or fed up with the job and given up trying.
Whatever the reason, the card suggests your current path will not give you the results you want, and it may be time to start looking elsewhere.
Any health problems you have will be best solved by long term changes that will take a while to show a difference, but if you are serious about change, this is the way to do it.
It will require patience and consistent effort over time.
Any health problem you have are caused by long term habits; poor diet, lack of exercise or other poor choices, all of which are now making themselves visible but have been a long time coming.
Take the card not as a criticism or a warning but advice; your problems took a long time to show themselves, and the cure – better living and healthy choices — will work to the same timescale, so patience is the key.
As a spiritual indicator, this card suggests patience will yield the best results.
You are on the right path, but you will not see results for a while, yet they are there under the surface.
The card also suggests stepping back to see how far you have come so far.
Although you may be constantly looking to the future, it is sometimes wise to also look at your current-self compared to the earlier you and see how far your journey so far has taken you.
You may be feeling frustration, slow changes, impatience, or simply that aspects of your life feel like a bad-fit. The core reason may be that the path you have chosen is not the one either you or the universe wants you to take.
It is important to know that your time now is not wasted – it is part of shaping the new you that will emerge later.
There is a better path out there for you, and it will make itself obvious when the time comes; when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
This is a highly positive card for investing for the future. It denotes good eventual results if you are diligent and patient.
You should not however aim for the quick wins and windfalls, as these will not come unless you are very lucky (and few people are!).
Instead, take a long term view and watch modest and realistic growth multiply through the forces of time and patience.
Investments may not be producing the returns you expected, or are failing.
This may be caused by following another exuberant bubble or other get-rich quick scheme.
It may be caused by expecting to see other people’s returns whilst not either having the same lucky timing they did, nor doing the same research they did.
Whatever the reason, the card suggests it is time to rethink your current strategy, or realize investment never gives you the short term gains you expect. It takes years and patience to see it through the low troughs as well as the high spikes.
Yes, because you have planned for future success.
No, because of delays, mistakes, or lack of planning and lack of putting in the early work towards success.
Reading the Card
The Upright Card
The Upright Seven of Pentacles places you in a position where hard work and dedication remain necessary to achieve success. Alternatively, it confirms you have already done the work, and should expect success from it.
Either way, the card suggests patience will be necessary to see a positive outcome. This patience will entail planning and a confidence in the work put in. This confidence ensures you change your plans only because of new opportunities, rather than an inpatient desire for quick wins or cashing in early through fear of failure.
Another issue the card often suggests is that work done well is never wasted. Luck comes and goes, but the trick is being ready to leap towards opportunities when they come your way, and nothing prepares you better than prior, useful work.
This work could be education, investment, experience gained, or simply a dogged belief in your eventual success. Having the security, skills, temperament, and resources to be able to leap when the chance appears multiplies your chances of victory.
Work done well is never wasted.
Without them, the stakes will be too high, and you might even skip the opportunity as too risky.
The Reversal
The Reversed Seven of Pentacles represents work failing to serve your future.
This stems from several distinct causes. You exhibit a complete lack of patience as the project runs too slow, failing to generate expected returns. A lack of belief in your plans, or a failure to lay the proper groundwork can derail the effort.
You refuse to do the work, expecting blind luck to win the day. The reversed card points to lack of planning or lack of investment of your time and money.
It may also suggest that you are simply wrong. It may be time to rethink your way forward.
Sometimes what you want is not what the universe has set aside for you, and there is something else out there that is your perfect fit. The hard work you do today will still be useful in shaping your future. This is because failure is the best teacher, and when the student is ready the teacher will appear, but there is another direction your future will take towards final success.
Card Design Process
Many Ancient Egyptian myths were lost to us for millennia until the rediscovery of hieroglyphics (hence their absence as common archetypes). Some myths survived through trade routes and cultural mixing. The story of Isis and Osiris is one of them.
The myth possesses many versions and characters, making simplification into a single, clear image a challenge. Distilling it back to its fundamental themes immediately highlighted the Seven of Pentacles as the perfect match.
Final Words
The Seven of Pentacles represents the hard work, planning, vision and self-belief that results in success. It notes that success is rarely immediate, and there is always a pause while your plan works itself through.
On the surface, it may look like nothing is happening, but significant changes in life are often slow. To fully benefit from them, you have to curb impatience, follow your plan, and wait.
