The Spiritual Meaning of the Two of Pentacles Tarot Card

The Two of Pentacles tarot card typically shows a character who looks like a juggler or royal fool balancing two coins or pentacles around an infinity symbol. The character looks comfortable enough, but there’s a sense that he has to keep moving in order to keep those two pieces balanced, otherwise everything will fall apart.

A Balancing Act

This card is, somewhat obviously, about balance. Pentacles are the tarot suit of earth, material reality, the physical needs of the body, home, security, money, and career. They represent the real stuff of life that we have to deal with alongside our emotional or spiritual pursuits. The Two of Pentacles is a step beyond the Ace, the pure essence of Pentacles. Twos can be exciting and generative: There was just one, and now there are two; two that can be balanced, played with, and compared against each other. But there’s often tension in the second card of each suit; perhaps a feeling that we’d just gotten the Ace handled, and now we have to figure out what to do with another coin.

My favorite question to ask a querent (or myself!) when I pull this card is, “Who are you entertaining?” The juggler seems to need to keep going. Why, and for whom? What would happen if he let the coins drop? Who would he disappoint and what would he lose?

I often find that this card appears when someone is trying to balance too many realities at once. It often feels like there’s too much to do, but underneath that, there may be a resistance to dropping something. We need to let go of something but feel we can’t—often because we’re afraid if we drop a coin, we’ll let someone down.

People pleasers have a great tendency to get overly busy, neglecting their own emotional or physical needs to make sure that no one else is upset or hurt. What would happen to the juggler if he decided he wanted to stop trying to entertain the king and go do something for himself? What if he put down his burdens and thought about what he really needed and wanted for himself?

In some versions of this card, the character is represented as a tightrope walker or someone balancing very high up with no safe way to get down. There’s a fear of stopping; a fear of changing something and risking the slightest shift in this delicate, unsustainable balance. The juggler can’t balance forever. He will eventually give in to exhaustion and need to stop. What then?

Body Image and Perception

Since this card is in the suit of pentacles, we must also ask about how this archetype is playing into our relationship with our body. Because the figure on the Two of Pentacles is usually an entertainer of some sort, we may also want to look at how we feel about the way our body is presented to the world; how it is seen and consumed. Who do we feel our body is for? What would it feel like to remember that our body is not for someone else’s consumption but actually an aspect of who we are, the sacred container for our minds and spirits, the vessel through which we experience our one wild and precious life?

A New Direction

Sometimes the Two of Pentacles indicates a new partnership in work or in life, a new element added to one’s career or one’s experience of material reality. It is a nudge in a new direction. There’s always a shift in balance whenever a new element comes into play, and that can be as exciting as it is disturbing.

The Two of Pentacles is also an invitation to begin the journey of the pentacles; to start to learn the lessons of material reality in a new way. These lessons aren’t always easy. From an archetypal perspective, we can look at the movement of each suit from the perspective of Joseph Campbell’s classic Hero’s Journey. The Two can represent the Call to Adventure. Classically, the hero wants to stay in their everyday life, in their status quo. When the call comes, they tend to refuse, wanting to stay the same rather than take the risk to change.

The Two can be that moment of contemplation about this call to a new way of life. If you are in this position and facing two directions, ask yourself which choice feels more like change and which feels more like staying the same. Are you ready for a new journey, whether that be inner or outer? Or will you refuse the call and remain balancing, entertaining, until you are exhausted?

Explore how tarot can help you navigate dark days.