Notes on: 4 of Pentacles

In general, the 4s represent stability, while pentacles indicate the material abundance. So you might expect the 4 of Pentacles to simply indicate financial security. While prosperity is suggested by the card, there are clues that show us something a little less enjoyable is going on.

4 of Pentacles, Rider-Waite Tarot

In fact, the figure here looks decidedly insecure. The way he clutches the coin on his lap looks quite uncomfortable and he seems to be hunched over it.

Also, notice that the city lies in the distance--that's because this person has distanced himself from other people, the better to protect his wealth. Importantly, he has turned his back on the city. Couple this with the figure's posture and you get a sense of someone curled around his money as if trying to protect his own vital organs.

By extension, this card suggests clinging. Clinging--to cash, a relationship, or whatever--is really clinging to thoughts and beliefs which are unreal. Thoughts and beliefs are not the real world, nor real experience, but representations thereof. They are insubstantial and fleeting, and as such, cannot provide any real security. However much we may wish to preserve the status quo, each moment is in fact a whole new world, and we are living in denial when we cannot open our eyes to this fact.

If you search the internet for interpretations of the 4 of Pentacles reversed, you'll find two schools of thought: The first would have it that the 4 of Pents indicates miserliness, while the second asserts that it indicates profligacy. Since these two options are opposite and mutually exclusive, how is one to know which is right?

Interpreting a reversal always depends on one's understanding of the upright card. Some readers prefer to focus on the wealth indicated by the card, and for them the reversal is about excessive clinging to that wealth. Others--and I am one--note the elements of disharmony in the image, such as I've described above, and conclude that if the upright card already indicates stinginess, then the reversal must indicate that this possessiveness is blocked. An "opposite" interpretation would read this as profligacy--unwise spending, gambling, risky behavior, taking on too much debt. But a "blocked" interpretation indicates conservatism, caution, even anxiety about sources of security, without, however, being so extreme that the person can't loosen up a little.