Five of Pentacles, the Rider-Waite-Smith card drawn by Pamela Colman Smith (1909)
Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith deck (1909). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Minor Arcana · Pentacles · Earth

Five of Pentacles

UprightThe card foretells material trouble above all, whether in the form illustrated— that is, destitution— or otherwise. For some cartomancists, it is a card of love and lovers-wife, husband, friend, mistress; also concordance, affinities. These alternatives cannot be harmonized.
ReversedDisorder, chaos, ruin, discord, profligacy.

Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it. These are what two traditions wrote, not predictions.

Draw & reflect Open in the card viewer

In Waite's words: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911)

Two mendicants in a snow-storm pass a lighted casement.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), public domain.

In the Golden Dawn's Book T (1912)

Lord of Material Trouble

A WHITE Radiant Angelic Hand issuing from clouds, and holding a branch of the white rose tree, but from which the roses are falling, and leaving no buds behind. Five Pentacles similar to the Ace. Above and below are Mercury and Taurus.

Loss of money or position. Trouble about material things. Labour, toil, land cultivation; building, knowledge and acuteness of earthly things, poverty, carefulness, kindness; sometimes money regained after severe toil and labour. Unimaginative, harsh, stern, determined, obstinate.

Geburah of ה (Loss of profession, loss of money, monetary anxiety).

Herein the angels מבהיה and פניאל> rule.

Correspondences

Decan: Mercury in Taurus (the 1st decanate of its sign).

Sephirah: Geburah in Assiah (the Material World).

Book T as printed in The Equinox I(8), 1912, public domain (notes in square brackets are Crowley's). The correspondences are this site's compilation from Book T. Open it in the Golden Dawn deck.

Images: Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951), public domain. Texts: Waite (1911) and Book T (1912), public domain. Selection and arrangement CC-BY-SA-4.0 (PlayfulProcess). Data: github.com/PlayfulProcess/recursive-tarot.