Eight of Pentacles: tarot card meaning

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Eight of Pentacles upright means: Work, employment, commission, craftsmanship, skill in craft and business, perhaps in the preparatory stage. Reversed: Voided ambition, vanity, cupidity, exaction, usury. It may also signify the possession of skill, in the sense of the ingenious mind turned to cunning and intrigue.

The picture

“An artist in stone at his work, which he exhibits in the form of trophies.” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

Upright

Work, employment, commission, craftsmanship, skill in craft and business, perhaps in the preparatory stage.

Waite's additional meanings: A young man in business who has relations with the Querent; a dark girl.

Reversed

Voided ambition, vanity, cupidity, exaction, usury. It may also signify the possession of skill, in the sense of the ingenious mind turned to cunning and intrigue.

Waite's additional meanings, reversed: The Querent will be compromised in a matter of money-lending.

In one line

Craftsmanship: skill in the work of the hands. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)

Where it sits in the deck

The Eight of Pentacles is the eighth card of the suit of Pentacles, one of the 56 Minor Arcana. The other Eights: Eight of Wands, Eight of Cups, Eight of Swords.

In Esbat

Esbat deals a card of the day, face down until you turn it, and holds all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. The Eight of Pentacles can be shared as a picture. All 78 tarot card meanings.

Sources

Meanings and picture descriptions: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), public domain, checked against the Wikisource transcription. Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, 1910, public domain. Like the app, this page records what the book says; it does not promise outcomes.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Esbat: Tarot & Book of Shadows, on Google Play

A card of the day, face down until you turn it, and all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. For Android.

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