Bohemian Gothic Tarot

PAGE OF PENTACLES

Lighter or more conventional meanings

Study, particularly of practical skills * A time to learn more about basic, everyday matters such as money and running a household * Someone who is a little old and serious for their age * Falling in love with a craft, throwing your all into it * Intern or apprenticeship.

Darker, shadow or more hidden meanings

Getting too obsessed with practicalities, taking no time out to dream * Getting drawn into repetitive, compulsive behaviour * Retreating over-much into fantasy * A young person who is inclined to hoard and save - though really they are too young to worry so much about money * Someone who becomes morbid, obsessional and depressed, losing their sense of fun.

The Page of Pentacles is generally shown as a young man holding a pentacle, but in our version this is a very innocent-looking young girl, clutching a huge bouquet of flowers. Behind her is a rather dilapidated church window in a stone "rose" shape. The card indicates study, learning and exploration about material matters; money, finances, skills, knowledge or even earthly manual activity that involves you making, building or growing something.

Pages are usually involved in study and learning, and so in interpreting this card it's useful to think about these aspects. There is an implication that the girl may be in an old graveyard, and that the flowers may be destined to be laid on a grave. She is also wearing lavender, the traditional colour that was used, in the 19th century, as a sign that a woman was in late mourning (black and grey indicated earlier stages in the mourning process). So our Page might in fact be learning about such very earthy matters as death, transformation and decay. If so, then it's important to consider if this is being done to good or bad purpose. I once met a fairly young woman who had become obsessed with attending funerals; she was almost in love with the drama of the grief and loss. What might have begun as a healthy intention to face up to the fact of death had degenerated into a morbid fascination. When we look at the charming little girl on this card she seems to be enjoying herself. But what we must ask ourselves is why she is happy. She may be someone who has come to terms with a loss and is now, in an entirely wholesome way, enjoying bringing flowers to the grave of the person she loved. Though it could be that she, like my acquaintance, is infatuated with all things funereal and indulging her passion for the morbid in an altogether more ghoulish manner. In a reading, this card might well ask us to explore the querent's experience with death, especially at a young age, and to ask what lasting influences and impressions resulted.

Some further ways to consider this card

Compare this card to the Four of Cups. Both girl and woman carry blue roses. Is it possible that the woman is the girl grown up? If so, what is her story?

And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her holy, and mild, and eloquent face, and poured over her maturing form, day after day did I discover new points of resemblance in the child to her mother, the melancholy and the dead. And hourly grew darker these shadows of similitude, and more full, and more definite, and more perplexing, and more hideously terrible in their aspect. For that her smile was like her mother's I could bear; but then I shuddered at its too perfect identity, that her eyes were like Morella's I could endure; but then they, too, often looked down into the depths of my soul with Morella's own intense and bewildering meaning. And in the contour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair, and in the wan fingers which buried themselves therein, and in the sad musical tones of her speech, and above all - oh, above all, in the phrases and expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and the living, I found food for consuming thought and horror, for a worm that would not die.
- Edgar Allan Poe, "Morella", Tales of Mystery and Imagination.