Seven of Pentacles Tarot Card Meaning

Seven of Pentacles upright

A young man leans on his staff and looks intently at seven pentacles growing on a bush. Waite says these are his treasures and his heart is there. His meanings are contradictory — money, business, barter, and also quarrels — but the picture is of patient tending. Review your progress; real growth is slow.

Seven of Pentacles reversed

Waite reversed gives cause for anxiety about money that may be offered on loan. Read the terms before borrowing or lending.

A reversed card (What does Upright / reversed card mean?) is one drawn upside-down.

Is Seven of Pentacles a yes or no?

Upright: Mixed / not yet. Not yet — wait for the harvest.

Reversed: Reversed, Seven of Pentacles reads as a gentle no: money worries, impatience, loans.

The yes/no lean is BornClock’s reading convention drawn from the card’s meaning — Waite himself did not assign one.

Symbolism in the Seven of Pentacles card

What appears in the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith picture, as Waite describes it:

• Young man leaning on a staff — a pause in the work
• Seven pentacles growing on greenery — Waite: his treasures — where his heart is

In Waite’s own words (paraphrased)

Upright: money, business, barter; altercation, quarrels; innocence, ingenuity, purgation (Waite calls the meanings contradictory).

Reversed: cause for anxiety regarding money which it may be proposed to lend.

Source: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910, public domain). Some of Waite’s 1910 fortune-telling meanings are old-fashioned; the plain-English reading above is ours.