Minor Arcana · Pentacles · Earth
Knight of Pentacles
Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it. These are what two traditions wrote, not predictions.
In Waite's words: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911)
He rides a slow, enduring, heavy horse, to which his own aspect corresponds. He exhibits his symbol, but does not look therein.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), public domain.
In the Golden Dawn's Book T (1912)
A DARK Winged Warrior with winged and crowned helmet: mounted on a light brown horse. Equipment as the Knight of Wands.
The winged head of a stag or antelope as a crest. Beneath the horse's feet is fertile land with ripened corn. In one hand he bears a sceptre surmounted by a hexagram: in the other a Pentacle like that of the Zelator Adeptus Minor.
Unless very well dignified he is heavy, dull, and material. Laborious, clever, and patient in material matters.
If ill dignified, he is avaricious, grasping, dull, jealous; not very courageous, unless assisted by other symbols.
Rules from above 20 Degree of Leo to 20 Degree of Virgo.
Fire of Earth
King of Gnomes.
Golden Dawn Rank
Book T — Golden Dawn, c. 1888 · the deck's native system (predates this imagery)
RWS Knight of Pentacles = Golden Dawn Knight of Pentacles — Fire of Earth.
Editorial note · where Book T's figure and the picture differ. The picture is Pamela Colman Smith's (1909); Waite's words are from The Pictorial Key (1911).
Both ride. Book T's Knight is "a dark winged warrior" on a light brown horse; Waite's "rides a slow, enduring, heavy horse". In Book T the mounted figure is the senior court of the suit, the old King (the 1912 printing: "the horsed figures refer to the Yod"); in the picture's deck the Knight ranks below the King.
Correspondences
Rules 21° Leo – 20° Virgo. As Fire of Earth, this court is the fire aspect of a steady and enduring suit.
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.