When Did Discs/Coins become Pentacles?

catboxer said:

Ah, yes, good old Peter Pantacles.

Those five-point stars first showed up, I believe, on Waite's deck around 1910.

According to M. Dummet, Waite engineered the name change this way. When he was translating Levi's "Rituals of High Magic," Waite deliberately left the French word "pantacles" untranslated. Levi said that the suit of coins represented "pantacles," which I guess roughly translates as "talismans." Waite knew that English-speaking readers would interpret the word as meaning "pentacles," and then he exploited the misunderstanding by having Pamela Colman Smith draw those little star thingies on the coins of his own deck.

That's from "Wicked Pack," p. 47.

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This pantacle/pentacle difference got me interested. I have just glanced at _Le Tarot des imagiers du Moyen Âge_ by Oswald Wirth, and I have noticed that Wirth uses the French word "pentacle" (rather than "pantacle") in relation to the Coins suit. At page 364, he writes:

"Aux 22 arcanes primitifs ont été ajoutées 56 cartes à jouer partagées en 4 séries de 14, désignées chacune par un emblème très significatif. _Bâton_, _Coupe_, _Épée_, _Denier_ constituent, en effet, un quaternaire magique, dans lequel, _Bâton_, Baguette or Sceptre correspond au pouvoir de commander, _Coupe_ à extase dionysiaque, source d'inspiration divinatoire, _Épée_ au discernement qui écarte l'erreur et _Denier_ à l'appui que les pentacles offrent au penseur qui n'est pas à leur égard un illetré.

"Le Sceptre se termine en fleur d'idéalité; la Coupe a pour base l'hexagone macrocosmique; l'Épée s'élance comme un rayon parti du pommeau solaire qui domine les croissants opposés de la garde; quant au Denier, il objective en quaternaire l"idéal du Sceptre. La possession des quatre instruments confère l'Adeptat ou la Maîtrise occulte."

Anyone who has the Wirth book in French or in translation ... There is an illustration in Wirth's book to accompany the quoted passages. It shows a Cup, Baton, Épée and a round object to the Deniers suit. The round object is partly concealed by the other three. What is it meant to be? A coin? A talisman?

By the way, I understand that Wirth's book was published in 1927, so it's after rather than before the epoch of Golden Dawn.

Kiama said:

Hi all,

Well my question is fairly simple: When did the Discs/Coins suit become the suit of Pentacles? I am guessing it must be fairly recently, somewhere around the beginning of the occult revival, but I am not sure.

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As others have noted as well, I think that Coins (Deniers) became Pentacles under the Golden Dawn.

As for Disks, there is no reference to them in the Golden Dawn's manuscripts published in Regardie's black tome. I suspect that the appellation Disks to designate the Coins suit arose only with Crowley's _Book of Thoth_ and the Thoth deck -- and not before Crowley. Does anyone know of any pre-Crowely usage of the term Disks for the Coins suit?

Rusty Neon said:

Anyone who has the Wirth book in French or in translation ... There is an illustration in Wirth's book to accompany the quoted passages. It shows a Cup, Baton, Épée and a round object to the Deniers suit. The round object is partly concealed by the other three. What is it meant to be? A coin? A talisman?

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Well, it is certainly not a pentacle - no five-pointed star anywhere in sight. It looks very much like a coin to me. Although it's size is not proportional to the others if it is a coin.

For divinatory purposes, I think the form of the Circle is absolutely vital in this suit.

Diana said:

Well, it is certainly not a pentacle - no five-pointed star anywhere in sight. It looks very much like a coin to me. Although it's size is not proportional to the others if it is a coin.

For divinatory purposes, I think the form of the Circle is absolutely vital in this suit.

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Thanks, Diana. You're right that the coin is out of scale. You have keen observation.

Yes, there's most definitely no 5-pointed star there. Just the pictorial or decorative elements from a coin or, less likely, a talisman.

I'm not a Crowley follower, but I find interesting when he wrote this about Disks:

"Nor are the Disks any more to be considered as Coins; the Disk is a whirling emblem. Naturally so; since it is now known that every star, every true Planet, is a whirling sphere. The Atom, again, is no more the hand, intractable, dead Particle of Dalton, but a system of whirling forces, comparable to the Solar hierarchy itself.

_Book of Thoth_, p. 210

Today I was researching the Decker/Dummett book "History of the Occult Tarot" for the purposes of the "non-illustrated-pip" thread, and I happened to come across the following:

"He [Mathers, in his 1888 pre-Golden Dawn tarot book] also called the Coins suit 'Pentacles,' a name subsequently used by all English-speaking occultists; it seems to have been common among occultists of that time, but had not been previously used in any work intended for the general public. Mathers gave a table in which the Coins suit is labelled 'money, Circles, or Pentacles.' He may not have meant by 'pentacle' a five-pointed star, since the word was sometimes used in a wider application to other magical emblems."

-- Lee

a bateleur's device

Digging further into "History of the Occult Tarot" pp49-52 we find "pentacle" is 1st applied in publication by Frederick Holland, who utillized the Shem ha-Mephoresch in the pips. Perhaps "pentacle" alludes to the astrological quinaries' telesme.

This is reflected in the sigil design in(14th C.?) Liber Iuratus.
http://www.esotericarchives.com/juratus/juratus.htm#aemeth

"...understood accurately, a Pantacle is the perfect summary of a mind. Hence we find in the Magical Calendars of Tycho Brahe and Duchentau, the Pantacles of Adam, job, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and of all the other great prophets who have been, each in his turn, the kings of the Kabalah and the grand rabbins of science."

"The initiatory symbolism of Pantacles adopted throughout the East is the key of all ancient and modern mythologies. "
-Levi, chap. X, Ritual

Pantacle in the abovea instance resembles "mandala" in application.

spinning, spinning, spinning
strophalos of nights
about your beacon of days
no cheap trick
-a Year made new

an afterthought:

"Bateleurs often sun (our pair at Chaffee Zoo will stand on the ground at the front of the exhibit). They stand upright and hold their wings straight out to the sides and tipped vertically, a classic "phoenix" pose, and they turn to follow the sun. Ours will sometimes remain in that position for the better part of an hour."
http://www.chaffeezoo.org/zoo/animals/bateleurEagle.html