Ace of Pentacles in 6 decks
The same card as 6 decks draw it, five and a half centuries apart. What stays the same is the card’s core; what changes is where a reading can find something new. The meanings are written for the Rider–Waite–Smith picture; the descriptions here are of each deck’s own. Not in Oswald Wirth, which has no Ace of Pentacles card.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A hand emerges from a cloud holding a large golden coin stamped with a five-pointed star. Below lies a well-tended garden with a flowering hedge, and an arched gateway in the hedge opens onto a path toward distant mountains. The coin is offered above the garden, not planted in it.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A single large coin fills the centre: a green four-petal flower on a red centre, ringed by red triangular points and a yellow zigzag band. Yellow vine stems with small green flowers and red curls loop out above and below it. There is no title or number.
Rider–Waite–Smith
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A hand emerges from a cloud holding a large golden coin stamped with a five-pointed star. Below lies a well-tended garden with a flowering hedge, and an arched gateway in the hedge opens onto a path toward distant mountains. The coin is offered above the garden, not planted in it.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A single large coin fills the centre: a green four-petal flower on a red centre, ringed by red triangular points and a yellow zigzag band. Yellow vine stems with small green flowers and red curls loop out above and below it. There is no title or number.
Tarot de Viéville
Jacques Viéville, c. 1650
A single large yellow coin with a ring of red and yellow rays surrounds a four-petalled flower marked with a cross. Lines of capitals fill the space above and below, beginning PERE SAINCT and ending LE SOLEIL.
Visconti-Sforza
Bonifacio Bembo, c. 1450
A large gold disc fills the centre, tooled with leafy tendrils and ringed in pale orange. At its heart, inside a dark beaded ring, is a shield divided down the middle, red on the left and a paler, worn red on the right. Green vines with blue and orange flowers fill the cream ground above and below.
In the Visconti-Sforza deck the number cards show only their suit symbols, and the trumps are unnamed and unnumbered.
Sola Busca
c. 1491
A naked winged infant holds up a large disc whose central shield is grey and worn. Round the disc runs SERVIR CHI PERSEVERA INFINO TIENE, and a scroll at the left carries more lettering hard to read. Two more infants crouch below, laurel swags and an ox skull hang above, and a small 1 is at the right.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
A large gold coin stamped with a three-comma swirl emblem leans against a mossy rock in a misty forest, a curl of pale smoke rising from its top edge. A tanuki sits on the rock beside it. A stone lantern glows among the trees behind, and red leaves swirl through the air and lie on the path.