A Roman priest once told a Greek colleague that his gods had no myths, only rituals. The Greek laughed. The Roman was not joking. The relationship between Pentacles and Coins in Tarot is not a translation error or a marketing decision. It is a deliberate shift in how a culture frames the same truth: matter is sacred, and the sacred takes material form. Pentacles and Coins are the same suit under two names, but the difference between them tells us something about how Western esotericism learned to talk about money, earth, and the body without flinching.
What Are Pentacles and Coins in Tarot?
Pentacles and Coins are the fourth suit of the Minor Arcana, associated with the element of Earth, the material world, physical health, work, and prosperity. In the oldest surviving Tarot decks from 15th-century Italy, the suit was called Denari (denarii, the Roman silver coin). When French occultists systematized the Tarot in the 19th century, they renamed it Pentacles to emphasize its esoteric meaning over its literal one. The cards are the same. The lens is not.
Where Did the Two Names Come From?
The earliest Tarot decks were playing cards. The Visconti-Sforza deck (c. 1450) shows coins with crosses and heraldic designs. They are money, plain and direct. A coin is a coin. The suit carried no mystical weight because the deck was not yet a divination tool.
That changed in 1781 when Antoine Court de Gébelin published Le Monde Primitif, arguing that Tarot was a surviving Egyptian book of wisdom. Court de Gébelin called the suit Deniers (coins) but treated them as symbols of worldly goods and commerce. He did not rename them. He did not need to.
The shift came with Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse Louis Constant, 1810-1875), the French occultist who rebuilt Western ceremonial magic. Lévi wrote Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1854-1856) and connected Tarot to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. He assigned each suit to a divine name and an element. Coins became the suit of Adonai (Lord) and the element of Earth. But Lévi still called them Coins.
The actual renaming happened in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888. Golden Dawn members like S.L. MacGregor Mathers and Arthur Edward Waite wanted to strip the Tarot of its gambling associations and restore what they believed was its original occult meaning. A coin was too common. Too commercial. Too much like actual money. They replaced Coins with Pentacles, a word that evoked ritual tools, magical circles, and the five-pointed star of protection.
Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) and the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (1909) cemented the change. Pamela Colman Smith drew the suit as golden discs with five-pointed stars, not coins. The name stuck in English-language occult Tarot.
But the Marseille tradition, the Thoth deck (Aleister Crowley, 1944), and most European decks kept Coins or Deniers. Crowley called them Disks in The Book of Thoth but acknowledged they were the same suit. He wrote that the disk was “the coin of the realm of the Microcosm.” He did not pretend the difference was large.
What Each Name Actually Means
The two names are not synonyms. They emphasize different aspects of the same elemental force.
Coins name the suit by its function: exchange, value, trade, the physical medium of human labor. A coin is stamped with a ruler’s face and a nation’s seal. It circulates. It buys bread, pays rent, settles debts. The name keeps the suit grounded in the real economy of human life. It does not flinch at money.
Pentacles name the suit by its form: a disc inscribed with a five-pointed star. The pentagram is an ancient symbol of protection, the microcosm (the human body with limbs outstretched), and the four elements governed by spirit. Calling the suit Pentacles shifts attention from what the object does to what it represents. The coin becomes a ritual tool. The transaction becomes a sacrament.
The difference is between a farmer counting his harvest and a magician consecrating a talisman. Both are acts of earth. But one is work and the other is ceremony.
How the Suit Works in a Reading
When a Pentacles card appears in a spread, the question is almost always about the physical world. Money, health, home, career, the body. But the suit does not reduce to finance.
The Ace of Pentacles is a seed. A gift. An opportunity that arrives through the senses. The Two of Pentacles is juggling, adaptation, the constant motion of keeping things in the air. The Five of Pentacles is exclusion, poverty, the cold outside the warm window. The Ten of Pentacles is inheritance, lineage, the wealth that outlives one person.
These meanings work whether the card is called Pentacles or Coins. But the emphasis shifts. A reader who calls them Coins will tend to interpret the suit through practical outcomes: will the business deal close, can the rent be paid, is the job secure. A reader who calls them Pentacles will tend to look at spiritual relationship with matter: is the querent grounded, are they honoring their body, do they treat their work as a craft or only a paycheck.
Neither is wrong. Both are incomplete without the other.
The Element of Earth and the Material World
The suit of Pentacles or Coins is the suit of Earth. In the Golden Dawn system, Earth is the final element, the densest, the slowest. It is the body that contains spirit. The soil that grows food. The bones that outlast flesh.
Earth in Tarot is not passive. It is fertile, generative, patient. The Page of Pentacles studies. The Knight of Pentacles plods forward. The Queen of Pentacles nurtures. The King of Pentacles commands resources. Every court card in this suit is someone who has learned to work with matter rather than against it.
The element of Earth also governs the physical senses. Touch, taste, smell. The Pentacles suit is the only suit that regularly shows food, gardens, coins, tools, buildings. It is the suit of things you can hold.
That is why the relationship between the two names matters. Coins name what you can hold. Pentacles name what you can consecrate. The suit demands both.
The Kabbalistic Connection
In the Golden Dawn’s system, each suit corresponds to one of the four worlds of Kabbalah. Pentacles correspond to Assiah, the World of Action, the lowest and most material of the four worlds. Assiah is where spiritual energy becomes physical reality.
The ten numbered cards of Pentacles correspond to the ten Sefirot on the Tree of Life, but filtered through the World of Action. The Ace is Kether in Assiah: the first spark of material possibility. The Ten is Malkuth in Assiah: the completed physical kingdom.
This is where the name Pentacles becomes necessary. A coin does not carry Kabbalistic weight. A pentacle does. The five-pointed star on the card is a diagram of the microcosm, the human being as a reflection of the divine. The circle around it is the macrocosm, the infinite. Together they say: matter is spirit made visible.
Aleister Crowley wrote in The Book of Thoth that the disk “represents the Earth, and the Earth is the Throne of the Sun.” He meant that the material world is not a prison. It is the place where spirit sits down.
Why the Confusion Persists
Readers new to Tarot often ask which name is correct. The answer is both, and neither is the whole truth.
Some traditions insist on Pentacles because they want to distance Tarot from gambling and fortune-telling. Calling the suit Pentacles makes it sound serious, ritual, occult. It elevates the deck from playing cards to sacred text.
Other traditions keep Coins because they refuse to spiritualize money. A coin is not dirty or low. It is the symbol of human exchange, of value created and shared. To rename it Pentacles is to pretend that money does not matter, which is a luxury only the comfortable can afford.
The Marseille Tarot, which predates the Golden Dawn by centuries, calls the suit Deniers. The Thoth deck calls it Disks. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck calls it Pentacles. Modern decks split roughly along the same lines.
The confusion is not a problem to solve. It is a tension to hold.
Common Misconceptions
Pentacles are not always pentagrams. A pentacle is a disc with a symbol inscribed on it. The symbol is often a pentagram, but it can be a hexagram, a cross, or a geometric design. In Tarot, the pentagram is standard, but the card is still a pentacle.
Coins are not always money. A coin in Tarot represents value, but value can be health, time, skill, or love. The suit is about what you invest and what you harvest. Money is only the most obvious form.
The suit is not the least spiritual. Beginners sometimes treat Pentacles as boring compared to Wands (fire, passion) or Swords (air, intellect). But the Earth suit is where spirit becomes real. A vision that does not change how you live is not a vision. It is a daydream.
The two names are not from different decks. Many decks use both names interchangeably. The same card can be called the Five of Coins in one book and the Five of Pentacles in another. The card does not change. The language does.
FAQ
Are Pentacles and Coins the same suit? Yes. They are the same suit with different names. Pentacles emphasizes the ritual and symbolic meaning. Coins emphasizes the practical and economic meaning.
Which name should I use? Use the name that matches your deck. Rider-Waite-Smith decks say Pentacles. Marseille decks say Coins. Thoth decks say Disks. All three refer to the same element and the same set of meanings.
Why did the Golden Dawn change the name? The Golden Dawn wanted to remove Tarot from gambling and commercial fortune-telling. Renaming Coins to Pentacles elevated the suit to an occult symbol and aligned it with ceremonial magic.
Does the name change the meaning of a reading? Subtly, yes. Calling the suit Coins keeps the reading grounded in practical outcomes. Calling it Pentacles opens the reading to spiritual and symbolic interpretation. Most experienced readers hold both meanings at once.
The Relationship as a Practice
We light a candle on the Pentacles card. Not the Ace, not the Ten. The Two, where a figure juggles two coins inside an infinity loop. We place a real coin beside it. A quarter, a euro, a yen. Something that has passed through hands. The candle flame moves. The coin does not. That is the relationship.
The Pentacles suit is the place where spirit and matter touch. Call it Coins and you honor the work. Call it Pentacles and you honor the symbol. Call it both and you honor the truth.
For more on how the suits relate to each other, see our Tarot Minor Arcana guide. For the specific symbols that appear on Pentacles cards, visit the glossary of Tarot symbols. And for a deeper look at how the Earth element operates across all four suits, read Elemental Correspondences in Tarot.