- Element
- Earth
- Arcana
- Minor · Pentacles
- Attribution
- Venus in Virgo
- Feeling shows as
- Time and provision
- Stage
- The near-complete
Nine of Pentacles
as feelings
They enjoy you, and they do not need you, and both of those are true at once.
Why
The Nine of Pentacles is affection from a self-sufficient position. 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 Nine of Pentacles is affection from a self-sufficient position. This person has built a life they like and they are not looking for rescue, completion or a role to fill. What they feel for you is a genuine pleasure rather than a necessity, which is a colder sentence than the reality: chosen rather than needed is the better half of that bargain. The card is clear about the terms, though. Anyone hoping to be indispensable here is going to be disappointed by somebody who is perfectly all right alone.
Reversed
Reversed, the independence has become a wall. Self-sufficiency used to avoid depending on anybody, or a person keeping their life deliberately closed so that nothing can be lost from it.
Reversed late in a suit, the card usually reads as excess or as refusal to finish. Either the feeling has been taken past its useful point, or a conclusion is being avoided because reaching it would mean something.
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 near-complete.
At a Nine the feeling has almost everything it was going to get. The state described is nearly finished and the person holding it knows the shape of it.
Nines are close and slightly solitary. What is usually missing is the last thing, and the last thing is generally the other person.
Venus in Virgo, the second decan. Venus is what colours the feeling and Virgo is the temperature it runs at, which is why this card cannot mean quite what the ones either side of it mean. The two elements are the same, so nothing here is moderated: this is earth undiluted, at its most characteristic and its least balanced.
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 number this late in a suit is doing something odd at the start of a connection: it describes a feeling further along than the relationship is, which is worth noticing.
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. Inside something already established, nines are close and slightly solitary. What is usually missing is the last thing, and the last thing is generally the other person.
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. This late in the suit the feeling has run most of its course, so what the card describes is a settled state rather than an open question.
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. Applied to something unspoken, at a Nine the feeling has almost everything it was going to get. The state described is nearly finished and the person holding it knows the shape of it.
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 Nine 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.
