Knight of Pentacles - Hold your horses
Offering for the Full Moon occurring on 17 October 2024 (AEST) - there is no audio recording this month while I’m travelling
A bulky masculine figure is dressed in full armour, and sits on a large black horse. A red tunic covers his armour. His face is exposed under a helmet decorated with a green plume of foliage. He holds a pentacle in front of him at the level of his upper chest and seems to be gazing at it. His horse stands on a grassy flat, dressed in red decorative tack, and the same green foliage as its rider. The horse’s hind legs and tail are not visible and it too appears to gaze out like its rider. The background and lowest part of the scene is of rolling hills with a mountain range further back, and tilled brown earth in the midground. The clear yellow sky takes up most of the card background.
Knight of Pentacles from the Rider Waite Smith tarot
This is the second Knight I've drawn for the full moon offering this year; the Knight of Wands showed up a couple of moon cycles ago.
All the Knights in the tarot represent a young, maturing masculine energy and taking action and doing. So these two knights together encourage general reflection on how you are acting in the world over the season, beyond the monthly lunar cycle.
What is your relationship with ‘taking action’? Are you more comfortable with Acting? Thinking? Feeling? Or Being?
Unlike the Knight of Wands - who is fiery and enthusiastic, the Knight of Pentacles is earthy and stable. He is grounded and moves steadily. At his best, he is strong, reliable and dependable in his concerns for the practical and material matters of the pentacles realm: body, finances and home.
Who in your life embodies this steady, measured, and tough figure? Or how are these qualities evident or desirable in you?
Their service is as builder - and their action rests in good preparation to ensure that they lay down proper foundations and the structural supports to grow the thing.
What are you building or growing in the realms of home, health, work and finances? What would be the “groundwork” to ensure it’s built to last?
But, for all this, he’s sometimes accused of being boring, plodding, and a bit dull - ie. not the brightest spark. More strength and brawn than brains. At his worst, he can be stubborn and immovable.
While it pays to watch out for when slow becomes stagnant, belligerent, or too late, I think these critiques are a little unfair.
He’s certainly the least vital of all the Knights, and in a role that represents movement, he and his horse do seem to be standing pretty still! But I know people in my life who seem to embody many of the qualities of this Knight. They’re intelligent and care deeply, but need more time to come around to things. They see value in “measuring twice and cutting once”
Rather than rush, risk errors, be driven by emotions and take shortcuts, the Knight of Pentacles is willing to pull up. He’s not afraid to say “Hold your horses! Let's take a moment to brood on this”.
Frustrating if you prefer snappy dialogue, bustle, and fast-paced operations. But it’s a manner that works if you are going for longevity - the Knight of Pentacles doesn’t tend to burn out.
Do you want it fast? Or do you want it to be good?
Where can you slow down to act in a way that is surefooted, and gently persistent, for long-term gains?
To me, the Knight of Pentacles as this trustworthy builder embodies the notion of values-guided action. Gazing at the pentacle is like checking in with what matters. This is a basic tenet of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), where you’re encouraged to explore the values you want to live by.
Values are more stable and lasting than surface thoughts and ideas and aren’t at the whim of impulsive desires or big feels. They are your core principles - things like courage, accountability, kindness, honesty … (there are heaps!). Your values are the things you turn to, to guide your actions and behaviours towards meaning.
They can be a deep abiding source of motivation and act like a rudder or compass when in doubt of what to do, or if you’re distracted by external influences, or when you want to shift reactive patterns.
What are the values behind the thing you want to build? What matters to you? What would these values look like as actions?
While he may not be a ‘thinker’ the Knight of Pentacles is learning to connect to his core being and operate from there.
That he can be too slow and ponderous, even stuck at times is a product of his youth and inexperience. He’s learning to turn his behaviours into conscious ones. To do this means developing a deeply rooted source of self-support and integrity that becomes the longer-term backbone of trust to see something through and build a legacy.
Mendy xx