Man, I remember the first time I really got the Reversed Mother of Pentacles. Hated that card. Absolutely loathed it. Every time it showed up, I just saw “poor” and “bad parent” and “clinging to stuff.” My readings were just utter crap back then because of stuff like this.
I was so trapped in the textbook definitions. If the Mother of Pentacles upright means a stable, nurturing, grounded foundation, then reversed must mean the opposite, right? That’s the common mistake we all start with. We open the tiny white book, or we Google it, and we see lists:
- Financial mismanagement.
- Neglect of family or health.
- Over-nurturing, smothering.
- Obsession with material possessions.
And we just STOP there. We pick one that looks grim and we tell the client, or ourselves, “Dude, you’re either going broke or you’re smothering your kid.” It’s a total shortcut, and frankly, it makes your Tarot practice look like a cheap parlor trick. It’s reading the menu instead of tasting the food.
I did this for years. I was running a small, part-time reading gig—just trying to cover the mortgage—and my interpretations were messy. I was using a little bit of this system, a little bit of that system, mixing Rider-Waite with Thoth ideas, throwing in a pinch of astrology I didn’t fully understand. It was this total interpretation soup. The moment a reversal showed up, I’d panic and default to the worst-case scenario. It became this vicious cycle where every Mother of Pentacles reversed was a guaranteed gloom session. I was missing the action hiding in the reversal.
The Time My Foundation Totally Crumbled (Why I Know This Card)
I only really learned what the Reversed Mother of Pentacles demands when my own life got completely upended. It wasn’t about a reading; it was real life hitting me with a two-by-four.
I was working a contract gig a few years back. It was supposed to be a solid, two-year retainer—my material foundation. We’d just bought a house, my partner had quit their job to go back to school, and I was the primary breadwinner. I was the upright Mother of Pentacles, right? Stable, providing, grounded.
Then, the client—a dude I thought was reliable—just stopped paying. Not like, missed a week. Like, missed three months in a row. Every email was a promise, every promise was a lie. I was doing the work, but the financial support, my actual grounding, just vaporized. I went from feeling secure to checking my bank account every hour with my heart pounding. We burned through the savings we needed for the taxes, just to cover the monthly bills. We started selling off stuff we didn’t need, then stuff we did need. I was operating entirely from a place of fear.
I remember pulling a spread for myself in the middle of all this chaos—just begging the universe for a hint. I wasn’t charging myself, obviously. And bam. There it was. The Reversed Mother of Pentacles, right in the “What is blocking me?” position.
My first thought? “Well, duh. I’m broke. My foundation is shot. The card just confirms I’m a failure. Time to go cry.”
That’s where the mistake is. And this is the part you need to avoid NOW.
Stop Reading It Like a Curse, Start Reading It Like Trapped Energy
When I finally calmed down, I trashed all the textbook definitions. I looked at the image again. The Mother of Pentacles is about physical action—caring for the body, the home, the money, the dirt. It’s the Earth element, the Queen element. It’s steady provision.
Reversed doesn’t mean the money disappears. It means the energy is trapped or misdirected. I was trying to ground myself in another person’s commitment (the client’s payment). That was the quicksand. My grounding was external, not internal.
The card wasn’t saying, “You are failing.” It was saying, “Your material dependence is upside down. Fix your structure.”
The practice I started right there, on the floor of my messy office, was this:
- Stop chasing the deadbeat client (I finally hired a lawyer to handle the mess, outsourced the headache).
- Stop focusing on the money I didn’t have.
- Start focusing on the money I could generate right now, directly from my own hands.
- I got hyper-local. I sold some old equipment (a sacrifice, yes, but it put cash in my hand).
- I negotiated a temporary payment plan with the mortgage company—I physically stabilized the foundation, even if it was just for a month.
I took the trapped energy—the fear, the obsession over external resources—and I reversed the reversal by making my material world depend only on my immediate, accountable actions. The Reversed Mother of Pentacles doesn’t mean neglect; it means you are neglecting the simple, physical facts of your reality in favor of a complicated illusion.
Avoid the dictionary definition mistake. When you pull this card, ask yourself: “What tangible, physical thing am I failing to control right now that I absolutely can?”
That’s the gold. That’s the practice.
