Minor Arcana, Pentacles
King of Pentacles
competence, business, success, practicality
Upright
Bulls are carved into the throne where a crowned figure sits, surrounded by vines, one hand resting on a large coin. Waite names valor, realizing intelligence, business aptitude and sometimes mathematical gifts, with success along those paths.
Realizing intelligence means the ability to turn an idea into something that exists. When running a business or managing a team, trust the numbers and finish what you start. Results here come from competence over time, and the card makes no promise about any particular venture.
Reversed
Practical skill is used badly when this card turns. Waite lists vice, weakness, ugliness, perversity, corruption and peril.
A boss who bends the books, or your own temptation to cut an ethical corner for money, fits this card. Refuse to sign what you cannot defend and keep copies. Serious concerns belong with an accountant, lawyer or regulator, and the card predicts nothing about how they end.
A card is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
In Waite's words
Upright: Valour, realizing intelligence, business and normal intellectual aptitude, sometimes mathematical gifts and attainments of this kind; success in these paths.
Reversed: Vice, weakness, ugliness, perversity, corruption, peril.
From A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part 3, on Wikisource. The meanings above are by Cast & Chart.
Card art by Pamela Colman Smith, 1909, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.