Dodal, linked reproduction
Cinq de Deniers
Jean Dodal’s Marseille pack · Lyon, 1701–1715.
Read the BnF catalogue record ↗Strain in the arrangement
A picture of people in hardship and a strained geometry put difficulty in different places.
Start with the pictures
Five of Pentacles
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 273
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Dodal
Cinq de Deniers
One coin occupies the centre between upper and lower pairs. Symmetrical plant forms curve around the five disks.
Smith
Five of Pentacles
Two figures move through falling snow beneath a window containing five pentacles. One uses crutches.
Harris
Five of Disks · 5
Five dark disks, each carrying a small geometric mark, form a downward-pointing arrangement. Thin connecting lines and sharp red-yellow shapes surround them.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite emphasizes material hardship, but records relationship meanings from other readers and says the alternatives cannot be harmonized. The conflict belongs to the source and should remain visible.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley calls this Worry and reads Mercury in Taurus as strain in material conditions. He describes instability held together by the five elemental signs, combining tension with prolonged inaction.
What evidence makes the difficulty material, and what makes it a feeling of strain?
Write one thing you can point to in the image, one interpretation from a named author, and one inference of your own. Keeping the three separate gives you something useful to revisit.
Sources and image credits
The Dodal cards are one early-eighteenth-century Marseille witness. The black-and-white Smith plates come from the 1922 Rider reprint, whose title verso lists first publication in 1910. Colours in later editions can differ.
Foolmade supplies the linked Dodal reproductions. Its surrounding commentary is not the basis for our historical claims. These images are linked externally; the Smith illustration reuses the public-domain source scan with its full page context.
Harris’s paintings are linked on their host’s reference pages. Crowley’s text is the separately identified Thelemagick transcription of The Book of Thoth. Neither a modern reproduction nor a transcription replaces examination of the original artwork or edition.