Queen of Pentacles · Pentacles · Earth

Pamela Colman Smith put this queen outdoors, under a flat canary-yellow sky. Roses arch across the top of the card and come down the right border in red bloom. Blue hills stand far off on the left. The ground is red-ochre earth threaded with green; a rabbit sits in it at the lower right, ears up.

Her throne is pale stone, the high round back packed with carved fruit and leaves; at her knee, a long-muzzled goat’s head is cut into the panel below the seat. Gold crown with red points over a green veil, red robe, a green mantle spilling down the throne to the grass, the toe of a red shoe at the hem. Both hands are on one large gold coin marked with a black pentagram, one curled over the rim, the other flat across it. Her head is bent. She looks at the coin the way you look at something sleeping that is yours to keep alive.

Earth is the suit that has to be fed.

Earth is her material: work, money, food, the body, the room you actually live in. Waite gives her opulence, security, generosity, and a serious cast of intelligence; the goat is the old Capricorn signature. Things thrive near her; that is her authority.

Upright, that is nurture with its sleeves rolled up, competence so complete it stops looking like effort.

Reversed, the dial turns both ways. The lap closes: the coin held and never planted, comfort kept so carefully it stops feeding anyone. Or it opens too far, and she pours into everyone else’s garden until nothing at home is tended. Either way she keeps looking down. The question is what her attention is keeping alive.