- Element
- Earth
- Arcana
- Minor · Pentacles
- Attribution
- Air of Earth
- Feeling shows as
- Time and provision
- Stage
- The decider
King of Pentacles
as feelings
They have decided you are theirs to provide for, and they back that with everything they have.
Why
The King of Pentacles is committed feeling with substance behind it. It is a earth card, so what it reports is what they have actually done about it rather than the whole of what they feel.
Upright and reversed
What it is like to hold this feeling.
A reversal is not the opposite of the upright card. It blocks it, delays it, turns it inward or takes it too far, and which of those depends on the kind of card it is.
Upright
The King of Pentacles is committed feeling with substance behind it. The decision has been made, and in this suit a decision means resources — time, stability, the real willingness to build a life around somebody. What is felt is deep and it is expressed through provision rather than through language, which can leave the other person well looked after and occasionally unsure they were adored. The card is as solid as the deck gets. Its weakness is inflexibility: what this King has settled, he expects to stay settled.
Reversed
Reversed, the provision has become possession or has failed. Either generosity is being used as leverage, or the security this person is used to offering is not currently something they can give.
Reversed, a court card is most usefully read as the same temperament under pressure, or as that way of feeling in yourself rather than in somebody else. It is very rarely a bad person and very frequently an unbalanced one.
Why the suit decides the answer
Earth does not feel the way the other three do.
The same rank in two suits describes two genuinely different states. This is the largest single fact about any card in a feelings position — larger than the picture on it.
Earth proves things. A Pentacles card in a feelings position reports what somebody has actually done — time given, arrangements made, a life quietly rearranged — on the principle that with this element, behaviour is the evidence and words are a commentary on it.
You will know an Earth feeling by its dullness. It shows up as reliability, provision and the unglamorous effort nobody notices, and it very rarely says anything that would sound good repeated to a friend.
Earth assumes that provision is intimacy. A Pentacles feeling can be entirely sincere and leave the person receiving it well looked after and unsure they were ever wanted.
Where the feeling is in its arc
The decider.
A King feels from a settled position. The state has been evaluated, accepted and organised into a policy, which is why Kings are steady and why they can be hard to reach. What a King feels has usually been decided some time ago and will not be revisited casually.
A court card describes how somebody feels rather than how much, which is why it is a poor source of reassurance and a good source of prediction
Air of Earth. Kings are the suit directed outward — the element organized, delegated and answerable to somebody, and here that faculty is applied to what they have actually done about it. air and earth work against each other, and the friction is part of the reading: something in this feeling is at odds with the way the person is built to hold it.
The same card, four situations
It does not mean the same thing for an ex as it does for a stranger.
Each reading below is built from two things that differ card to card: what the element does to a feeling, and how far along that feeling is.
Someone you have just met
For a new connection, Pentacles is slow and unusually trustworthy. Nothing in this suit arrives early, and what does arrive has generally been thought about for longer than it appears. A King this early means a decision has already been taken. That is faster than it looks — Kings do not fall, they conclude — and it will not be revisited casually.
A relationship you are already in
Inside an established relationship, Pentacles measures the structure rather than the mood. It reports whether this is being built on, which is the question that outlasts whether it currently feels good. A King inside an established relationship describes a settled policy rather than a mood, which is why this rank is so stable and so hard to shift when it is wrong.
Someone who ended it, or who you ended it with
For a connection that has ended, Earth is the slowest suit to let go and the least likely to say so. A Pentacles card here often describes somebody who has changed nothing about how they feel and everything about what they are willing to do. A King after an ending has generally closed the file. What is felt may be entirely intact and the position on it has been decided.
A feeling neither of you has said out loud
When nothing has been said, Pentacles suggests the evidence is already available and is not being read as evidence. This suit declares itself by doing, and expects that to be understood. A King says things when he has concluded them and not before. An unspoken feeling here has usually been fully reasoned and is waiting on an occasion.
The part most readings skip
What this card cannot tell you.
A feelings position is the one place a reader most wants to be told what they were hoping for, which is exactly why it is the easiest to misread.
- A card describes a quality of feeling. It does not identify a person, confirm that they are thinking about you at this moment, or guarantee what they will do next — and any reading that offers those things is selling certainty the deck does not contain.
- Feelings positions are the ones readers most want a particular answer from, which is exactly why they are the easiest to misread. If a card seems to confirm precisely what you hoped, that is the moment to check it against what has actually happened.
- One card is one input. A feeling that contradicts everything a person has done for six months is a card that needs the rest of the spread, not a card that has revealed a secret.
Keep going
A feeling is one position in a spread.
The full meaning of King of Pentacles — upright, reversed, love, career, money and the symbolism the painting carries — is on its own page. If you have not drawn a card yet, the reading below deals a real one.
