Pumpkins As Pentacles

The Knight of Pentacles and the 7 of Pentacles from the new and upcoming deck The All Hallows’ Eve Tarot.

In our current project, All Hallows’ Eve Tarot, the Knights are all female witches, with the broom representing the mode of transport. It’s a bit of a departure from the more traditional knight on a horse, but we’ve never shied away from playing around with this a little. With Santa’s Helpers, all of the Knights are on reindeer rather than horses, and The Psychedelic Space Tarot has alien type horses, with the more futuristic Knight of Swords riding a hover bike.

But let’s get into it. So the Knight of Pentacles here is sitting beside her pumpkin. She’s holding her broom, but is obviously stationary. While the other Knights are on their brooms in the air, the Knight of Pentacles is a stationary, non moving Knight by tradition. This represents a very conscientious figure, slow to rush into anything without first considering the matter.

I imagine this figure is the kind that will plan for a future, and will be more likely to have most things organized. Contrast this to the Knight of Swords who is notorious for rushing into battle, sometimes without knowing the full facts of the matter.

The 7 of Pentacles features a woman resting with a rake in hand. The leaves have mostly been tidied away. Perhaps she has gotten up early to tidy her yard, or it could be the evening, depending on how you might interpret the sun. Is it rising or setting? Beside her is seven pumpkins, representing the pentacles of her suit.

Like the Halloween Waite, we’ve continued with the pumpkins as pentacles theme in the All Hallows’ Eve Tarot because it just seems right. This goes back to the ancient idea of abundance being associated with plenty of physical material possessions, especially necessities like food, good wine, land and so on. Since Pentacles or Coins relate to the material world and material needs of people, I think this works here.

Of course throughout the deck there are slight crossovers between the symbols, such as the Knight of Pentacles holding a broom, the symbol we chose to represent the wands; The figure in the Death card holds a Jack o Lantern pumpkin in his hand, and Temperance holds the same cups as the cups suit. I think, however, that with the cards maintaining the general Waite-Smith poses and symbolism of the original RWS, along with many of the cards retaining their titles based on the RWS, I don’t foresee any confusion in the cards for those familiar with Pam’s original illustrations.

So we’re getting close to wrapping up the All Hallows’ Eve Tarot project, and hopefully in the next few weeks we will be closer to getting the entire deck gathered together for the official printing.