Six of Pentacles.
Charity weighed out, and one hand still empty.
Upright, then reversed, as Waite gave them in 1910.
The merchant is standing and the other two are kneeling. He holds a pair of scales level in one hand and drops coins into the palm of one kneeling man with the other, while the second kneels beside him with his hands out and gets nothing.
Charity, weighed. Somebody decided how much, and a choice is being made between them while you watch. Whichever of the three you are in your own arrangement, the scales are in one hand only, and it is worth being exact about whose.
Four things people go to on this card
- the scales
You went to the scales. He is holding them level in one hand while giving with the other.
This generosity is being measured, which is the honest version and not a criticism. He is weighing. Somebody has to, and the scales are level, so he is not cheating.
The card is not about kindness. It is about the person who decides how much, and about the fact that a decision was made at all. In your arrangement there is a person holding the scales, and if you cannot say who, the likeliest answer is that it is you and you have been calling it fairness.
Who decided how much, in the arrangement you are in?
- the other kneeling man
You went to the other kneeling figure. There are two of them and only one is getting anything.
This is the part of giving nobody puts in the story. Two people with their hands out, one merchant, and the choice being made in real time. The second man is not in the background. He is at the giver's knee.
Any allocation is also a refusal. That is uncomfortable and it is the truest thing in the card. Somebody is in the frame of your situation with their hands out whom you have quietly not chosen, and the quiet is the part they will remember.
Who is in this with their hands out that you have quietly not chosen?
- the merchant
The merchant, then: the only one on his feet, with both the others kneeling.
A relationship that cannot be equal while it is happening. The height difference is the subject of the picture, not an accident of composition, and the coins move in one direction only.
If you are the one standing at the moment, that is worth being awake to, because standing is pleasant and it does not feel like power from the inside. If you are kneeling, the question is what it would take to get up, and whether the giver has any interest in that happening. Usually less than they say.
In this arrangement, are you standing or kneeling, and what would change it?
- the coins in the air
Mid-fall, between his hand and the other man's, the coins belong to neither of them yet.
Nothing has landed. He could close his hand. The kneeling man could pull his back. The picture is holding the moment in which a gift is still reversible, and that moment is short.
The suit is pentacles, so this is about actual things: money, time, a job, a room. The moment before it lands is the moment worth being honest in about what you expect back. You expect something; everybody does; the question is whether the person receiving has been told, or will find out later.
What do you expect back for this, honestly, and has anybody been told?
Its ten degrees
The Golden Dawn gave the Six of Pentacles 10° to 20° of Taurus, ruled by the Moon, and Book T calls it the Lord of Material Success. The Sun is in it from 30 April to 10 May. The decan page for this card.
The wheel runs on from here. The decan before this one is Five of Pentacles, Mercury in Taurus, 20 April to 30 April. The one after is Seven of Pentacles, Saturn in Taurus, 10 May to 21 May. All thirty-six, in order.
On the Tree of Life, Book T puts the Six of Pentacles on Tiphareth, beauty, in Assiah, the world of earth: every six is Tiphareth, in its own suit's world. It is the sixth place in the Tree of Life spread.
Draw a card, and if this one turns, press whichever of these four you went to and the reading is written from there instead. Pulled it in a spread of your own? Read the whole spread here.
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