Ace of Pentacles
Minor Arcana · Pentacles · number 1 · Asso di Denari
Upright
The Ace of Pentacles is a hand emerging from the clouds offering a gold coin above a flowering garden: perfect contentment, felicity, ecstasy, speedy news, gold. It is the most concrete card in the deck: it speaks of money arriving, of a solid job opportunity, of a material base that finally holds. If these days you receive a proposal, an offer, an expected payment, it is no accident: the seed is good. It applies to health and a home too. The practical advice: accept the gift, but plant it. Set a share aside, invest in something that grows, and do not spend it all at once.
Source: Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) · read the original passage
Reversed
Reversed, the Ace of Pentacles shows the evil side of wealth: bad news, and at the same time great riches. Waite is clear: the card still points to prosperity, but whether that is an advantage to the possessor depends on whether the card is reversed or not, that is, for you, on how you use it. If these days the money is there but does you no good, an inheritance dividing the family, a gain tying you to people you do not respect, it is no accident. Beware of greed, your own and others’. It is not a sentence: it is a question. The practical advice: before accepting money, ask yourself what it will ask of you in return.