The Eight of Pentacles is about becoming a master of your craft. When you’ve found the right profession, sometimes work feels like play. You can get so lost in the flow of what you’re doing that hours pass without you realizing it. You have found your calling and are (or are about to be) happily employed doing work you love. Keep learning and perfecting your skills. Even though you have reached or on the path to expert status and could rest on your laurels, you’ll enjoy your work more if you focus on continued improvement. Everyone knows you are a master at what you do. You have the history (and the body of work behind you) to prove it.
Keywords for the Eight of Pentacles Card
- Happy employment
- Apprenticeship, education
- Creating a major body of work
- Mastering your craft
Keywords for the Eight of Pentacles Reversed
- Fixing someone else’s mistakes
- Perfectionism
- Lacking ambition or focus
Patterns and Correspondences of the Eight of Pentacles Tarot Card
- The Pentacles = rules the material world and money
- Suit of cards = diamonds
- Timeline = months to years
- Number 8 = mastery and prosperity
- Zodiac sign = Virgo
- Element = Earth
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Eight of Pentacles Tarot Card Meanings for Love
The Eight of Pentacles is about work and focused dedication, not romance. If this card appears in a love reading, it usually means it’s time to focus on your work and career.
So, if you are looking for a new relationship, hold off your search for awhile. Strengthen the other areas of your life so they are solid and under control. You won’t be able to enjoy a new romance if you are stressed about money, work, your health, or other relationships.
If you are in an existing relationship, things are no longer easy-breezy. You’re well past the infatuation stage and now your relationship is work. Which is perfectly normal, natural, and exactly as things should be.
Build the relationship together. Generally (although this may not be true for your specific situation), men want more sex and less fighting, and women want more emotional connection and less advice.
So, if you are a woman and this rings true, tell your partner exactly what “emotional connection” looks like to you. Show your partner how to do it by asking for exactly what you want.
And if you are in a relationship with a woman, you’ll fight less (and get laid more), if you listen to your partner and don’t try to fix their problems for them.
Eight of Pentacles Tarot Card Meanings for Work
The Eight of Pentacles is a card focused on Doing The Work. It’s about mastering your craft through focused and deliberate practice.
This card isn’t about the end result. It’s about enjoying the work and the practice of building your skills. You find joy in the process when you aren’t concerned with success, rewards, or recognition.
Of course, if you are building your skills with joy and deliberate practice, you will ultimately find the success you’re looking for. But that’s not why you do the work. You do it for the intrinsic rewards.
If you are struggling at maintaining enthusiasm on a project or career path, it helps to ask yourself if you want to do the thing or be the thing.
For example, you might want to play the guitar – but don’t want to put in the time and effort to learn it. You want to be someone (musical, creative, and impressive) who rocks out, but you actually don’t find pleasure or joy in practicing.
There are other things you feel the opposite about. You might not care if anyone ever calls you a writer (being the thing), but you enjoy writing (doing the thing) so much that you do it every day regardless of the outcome.
So ask yourself if your project or career path is about doing or being. Are you doing it for the internal rewards (of joy and pleasure) or for external rewards (of money or recognition)?
Eight of Pentacles Tarot Card Meanings for Health
The Eight of Pentacles card is positive card for health, if you are willing do to the work.
There will be no quick fixes. This card is not about dieting or overnight changes. It’s about a true lifestyle change.
Experiment and practice to find the health path that is right for you. Explore different ways to move your body until you find a few that light you up. Experiment in the kitchen (or with meal delivery) until you find a way of cooking and eating that suits your lifestyle and desires. Don’t give up until you find what works for you.
And once you find your path, devote yourself to practicing it with daily action. Measure and track your efforts, not only your results. When you combine focused effort with patience and consistency, you’ll see the changes you’re looking for.
Eight of Pentacles Tarot Card Meanings for Money and Finances
When you focus on building your skills and a body of work, money will follow. You must focus on doing the thing (whatever your work is) extremely well, with joy and practice. People are drawn to quality and commitment.
If you are wondering where to invest your money, choose to invest it in yourself. Education, training, and professional development are never wasted.
Invest in professional-quality tools. Identify your strengths and create a plan to improve them. Break each skill down into its basic sub-skills. Create a plan of deliberate practice to improve each sub-skill, one at a time. Join a mastermind, hire a coach, or invest in quality professional training to build the specific skills you need. Identify your weaknesses and set up systems to get past or around them. Hire people to do what you don’t do well.
Forget about learning skills “just in case” you may need them. Don’t fill your head with advice you aren’t ready to take action on. Get extremely deliberate and learn skills “just in time,” as they become necessary for your growth.
Eight of Pentacles Tarot Card Meanings for Spiritual Guidance
Your unique skills, interests, and passions are a spiritual gift. It is your responsibility to follow your interests, practice your skills, and hone your abilities. By becoming the best, most focused version of yourself, you will be able to serve the Universe and your community in the way you are meant to.
Our spiritual journeys are a search for meaning and connection. You will find both through service.
Your service will be different from everyone else’s, because you are different. Your talents, abilities, interests, and desires combine to create a path of service that is uniquely you.
The Universe wants you to be the biggest, strongest, most creative version of yourself. It needs you to grow into the person you were meant to become. Your magnitude is a service to the world and acts as a light and inspiration to others.