Three of Pentacles · Pentacles · Earth

A young workman stands on a rose-pink bench inside a building still going up, mallet raised at the pillar, turned toward the two who came to look. Grey-violet hood, yellow tunic, pale blue hose, red-gold hair; a tan plank across the bench at his feet, stone chips on the grey floor. Three pentacles are worked into the pale tracery above him: one high, two below, a small cross-quartered disc between the lower pair, and three strokes cut into the keystone at the crown. The nearer visitor, in black habit and fluted white ruff, tips his head back to look up. Behind him a taller figure, cowl up, face lost inside it, in an apricot robe strewn with red roses. Between them they hold an unrolled sheet, a design on it drawn in compass work. Behind all three, the building goes to black.

The drawing cannot cut stone. The mallet cannot decide the arch.

The Golden Dawn gives the decan to Mars in Capricorn and titles it Works. Waite reads it plainly as craft and skilled labor. The Ace was an offer; the Three is where a private skill is asked for by name, and the asking arrives with a plan, a patron, and a date.

Upright, the tradition reads craft that has found its commission. Competence made visible, checked by people who can tell good stone from bad.

Reversed, the three fall out of time. The plan changes after the cut is made. Credit settles on the paper instead of the hands, or the mason stops asking whether anyone still wants the arch.

None of the three has seen the building finished. They are looking at the same corner of it.