King of Pentacles

Meaning: High ambition, materialistic satisfaction, and worldly success. (Labyrinthos)

Depiction: The bespectacled Captain Bildad, in the cabin, sitting upright, reading from a large book, as described in the text. A doubloon is balanced on his lap.

Text: Chapter 16, The Ship

The space between the decks was small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so, and never leaned, and this to save his coat tails. His broad-brim was placed beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed; his drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on nose, he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume.

Comments: This "fighting Quaker" is loath to spend any more than absolutely needed to protect his investment; although not strictly "materialistic" he certainly cares a great deal about wealth.

Queen of Pentacles

Meaning: A reliable woman.

Depiction: Bildad's sister Charity boards the Pequod as it sits in harbor, carrying a long oil ladle, a whaling lance, and a doubloon.

Text: Chapter 20 - All Astir
Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain Bildad’s sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward’s pantry; another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate’s desk, where he kept his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some one’s rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity—Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of well-saved dollars.

But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and a still longer whaling lance in the other.

Old Quaker woman, Civil War era. Provenance unknown. (Pinterest)

Comments:  No one appreciated Charity's jug of lukewarm ginger-water when grog was what they really needed, but I'm sure many of her other contributions came in handy.

By the way, I just had a really great idea for a fanfiction story, which I'm not going to write. Just imagine if when Ahab's secret crew was discovered, it turned out to be not Fedallah & Co., but  Charity and a hardy group of whaling widows from her Temperance League and quilting circle.  You know they could handle a harpoon, and they'd never forget the pickles.

Knight of Pentacles

Meaning: Daily tasks and responsibility. (Labyrinthos)

Depiction: Fleece the cook stands at the stove, turning a steak with his long tongs made out of straightened iron hoops; one of these hoops holds a doubloon.

Text: Chapter 64 - Stubb's Supper
The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops..

Comments: Chapter 64 is a hard chapter to get through, as it's unpleasant to read about Stubb abusing his privilege as an officer to force the elderly Black cook to get up and make  (and remake) him a steak, especially when Fleece can barely walk due to his bad knees. Admittedly, it's nothing unusual for any sailor to be ordered around, but this seems different in light of the cook's age and physical condition. Then there's all that stereotypical dialect when Stubb insists that Fleece preach to the sharks.  Although it's clear there is some sympathy for Fleece, I sense this scene may have been intended to be humorous to Melville's contemporary audience in the Civil War era. Reading it now, it's difficult not to think of anything but racism, exploitation and abuse of power. With this card, I see the stove as Fleece's horse; he does his work every day, performs his role on the ship as required, and gets through life as best he can.

Page of Pentacles

Meaning: Energy, passion, progress and adventure.

Depiction: Tashtego sings out, having spotted a whale, standing high  at the top of the mast,  leaning forward with his hand outstretched as described in the text. There is a doubloon in his pointing hand.

Text: Chapter 47 - The Mat-Maker
High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming.

“There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”

Comments: Finally a Tashtego solo card! This scene stood out to me when I thought about the meaning of the card.

Ten of Pentacles

Meaning: Legacy, roots, family, tradition (Labyrinthos)

Depiction: In a scene that predates the events of the book, Captain Gardiner, the captain of the Rachel, stands on the deck of his ship with one arm over the shoulder of each son, one 12, the other around  18. Ten doubloons decorate the side of the ship.

Text: Chapter 128 - The Pequod Meets the Rachel
But the captain, for some unknown constitutional reason, had refrained from mentioning all this, and not till forced to it by Ahab’s iciness did he allude to his one yet missing boy; a little lad, but twelve years old, whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood of a Nantucketer’s paternal love, had thus early sought to initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocation almost immemorially the destiny of all his race.

Comments: Other than Starbuck talking about his wife Mary and referencing Ahab's unnamed wife, this is the most notable chapter in which family ties comes up. It was only when I reread the chapter that I noticed that Captain Gardiner originally had two sons aboard with him, not just the one that was lost.

Nine of Pentacles

Meaning: Abundance, material security, rewarded efforts.

Depiction: The Bachelor and its merry crew bound for home, as described in the passage below. Nine doubloons adorn the side of the ship.

Text: Chapter 115, The Pequod Meets the Bachelor

It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.

The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colours were flying from her rigging, on every side. Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp.

Comments: This was originally the description for the Empress, but I determined that that the sort of material abundance represented by the Bachelor was more appropriate here.  One of the miniseries - I believe it was the 1998 version with Patrick Stewart-  has a lively scene of the Bachelor approaching with the sailors dancing on the deck and their Fijian brides playing flutes.

Eight of Pentacles

Meaning:  Work, craftsmanship, steady patience (Wikipedia)

Depiction: From his  open air vice-bench across from the try-works, the carpenter plies his trade. Just like in the RWS card (but on a ship!), he chisels a gold coin. The other seven  doubloons of the suit are scattered about him on the deck.

Text: Chapter 107- The Carpenter
But, besides the application to him of the generic remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually recurring in a large ship, upon a three or four years’ voyage, in uncivilized and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readiness in ordinary duties:—repairing stove boats, sprung spars, reforming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull’s eyes in the deck, or new tree-nails in the side planks, and other miscellaneous matters more directly pertaining to his special business; he was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both useful and capricious.

Axes and adzes - USS Constitution Museum

Comments: This card could not be a more perfect fit for the unnamed carpenter of the Pequod.

Seven of Pentacles

Meaning: Harvest, rewards, result. (Labyrinthos)

Depiction: Three boats in tandem tow a vanquished whale by night; Ishmael, rowing, looks behind him at their harvest. The boats are studded with seven doubloons.

Text: Chapter  64- Stubb's Supper
Stubb’s whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow business of towing the trophy to the Pequod.

 Comments: There's so much ink devoted to  harvesting different parts of the whale in Moby Dick, but I wanted to focus on the immediate aftermath of the hunt for the purpose of this card.

Six of Pentacles

:

Meaning: Generosity, ability to receive help

Depiction: In their room at The Spouter Inn, Queequeg has two piles of silver on the table, and pushes one toward Ishmael, who looks surprised and grateful. Six gold doubloons hang on the wall in the background.

Text: Chapter 10 - A Bosom Friend
He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers’ pockets. I let them stay.

Comments: Without a doubt, Queequeg is the most generous character in the book, which this passage clearly demonstrates. In contrast, Captain Ahab's monomania doesn't allow for magnanimity, though he has moments of kindness and empathy, as shown in his interactions with Starbuck and Pip.

Five of Pentacles

Meaning: A test of resources, adversity.

Depiction: Ishmael is trudging along on a snowy street with his carpet bag, body bent against the cold wind, looking for an inn he can afford. His hand is in his pocket clutching his last pieces of silver. He is walking past a wall with a  brightly painted sign featuring five doubloons.

Text:  Chapter 2 - The Carpet-Bag
Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don’t be too particular.

Photo by Vivienne Gucwa

Comments: The church window on the original RWS card could be substituted for the painted sign with doubloons, as Ishmael does pass "a negro church" on his wanderings; I  decided not to follow the original card that closely.

Four of Pentacles

Meaning: Possessiveness, frugality, security

Depiction:  Third mate Flask is sitting below the mainmast; the doubloon Ahab nailed to it is visible above his head. He holds an enlarged doubloon in the manner of the RWS card and two are similarly by his feet. He sits surrounded by boxes of cigars, his chosen form of wealth.

Text: Chapter 99- The Doubloon

“I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what’s all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that’s true; and at two cents the cigar, that’s nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won’t smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here’s nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy ’em out.”

Comments: Flask is described as "mediocre," and this passage screamed Flask to me. To him, the doubloon is nothing more than a means of keeping him supplied with his favorite smokes.

Three of Pentacles

Meaning: The coming together of different kinds of knowledge in order to build something together (Labyrinthos)

Depiction: Under a night sky, the three harpooners Tashtego, Daggoo and Queequeg are stoking the fires of the try-works while supervised by Stubb. In the background, at the helm of the ship, Ishmael has the tiller turned backwards (sternwards) as he gazes, mesmerized, at the flames. There is a doubloon figure  etched on each of the three try-pots.

Text: Chapter 96 - The Try-Works
Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship’s stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet.

***
Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship’s stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. In an instant I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind, and very probably capsizing her.

Comments: This is a good chapter for showcasing the different roles for the crew as they work together.  Except Ishmael, whose job is apparently losing himself in reveries, as usual.

Two of Pentacles

Meaning: Balance (Wikipedia)

Depiction: In his whaling boat, Flask stands balanced on Daggoo's shoulders, Daggoo bracing him with one arm, as he scans the sea. He holds an oversized doubloon in one hand, Daggoo holds the other in his free hand.

Text: Chapter 48- The First Lowering

“I can’t see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to that.”

Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty shoulders for a pedestal.

“Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?”

“That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you fifty feet taller.”

Cirq' ulation Locale (Belgium)

Comments:  To modern eyes, this scene may give the appearance of  racial and rank-based domination, but reading this passage, I don’t get the sense that Daggoo is debasing himself to carry Flask on his shoulders; the text reinforces this ("The bearer looked nobler than the rider.").  Rather, it appears to be a sort of workplace parlor trick that the short guy and the big guy have discovered and revel in doing. It’s “their thing,” so to speak- their own personal spin on whale-hunting that they're known for among their shipmates. In the Starz Encore version of Moby Dick, it’s established at the beginning that Daggoo and Flask have had a long-term friendly working relationship, which seems consistent with how they are portrayed in the book.

Alternate Depiction: I've been reading  Raymond Weaver's Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic (1921),which includes a description of the crow's nest having two loops so that two sailors can watch from different sides. Instantly, what came to mind was Queequeg's resolution to "get into the same watch" with Ishmael back in Ch. 12, as well as the  fact that the two loops form the same infinity shape depicted on the card. So this card  could alternatively show Queequeg and Ishmael, those two opposites magnetically drawn to each other, standing on the crow's nest at opposite sides yet holding hands, a pentacle on each loop.

Ace of Pentacles

Meaning: Resources, security, stability (Labyrinthos)

Depiction:  A group of people, men, women, and children, and which includes Bildad and Peleg, stands before the Pequod which is moored in the harbor. They are clustered around a single giant doubloon, the pentacle of this suit. The group as a whole represents the owners/investors of the Pequod who were intended to reap the profits of this voyage.

Text: Chapter 16 - The Ship

 It turned out to be Captain Bildad, who along with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest.

Comments: Another interesting story never told is what became of these people in the aftermath of the wreck of the Pequod.

King of Swords

Meaning: Discipline, integrity, morality (Labyrinthos)

Depiction: Here we have Queequeg, the prince of Kokovoko,  immersed in his religious ritual (or "Ramadan" as Ishmael mislabels it), squatting on the floor in his bedroom in the Try Pots of Nantucket,  holding his wooden idol Yojo on his head. There is a whaling lance in the room to symbolize the sword of this suit, though we know that it was actually his harpoon that Queequeg kept with him.

Text:  Chapter 17-  The Ramadan.

With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, good heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether cool and self-collected; right in the middle of the room; squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on top of his head. He looked neither one way nor the other way, but sat like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life.

This scene was unfortunately cut from the book. 

Comments: I see Queequeg as having a strong internal compass and having absolute conviction in everything he does, whether fasting in the same position for a day and night, or saving a stranger who ridiculed him from drowning. I'm sure when he knew the Pequod would sink, he resolved to die and also was positive that either Ishmael would survive or that he would meet him again in the afterlife.

Aaaand that's it for Swords! On to Pentacles!

Queen of Swords

Meaning: Honest, independent, principled person. (Labyrinthos)

Depiction: Starbuck stands in front of a row of oil casks, some liquid on the floor evidencing a leak. He holds a lance in his hand and one arm is outstretched protectively.

Text: Chapter 109 - Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin
For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: “Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.”

Comments: Not pictured in the card, but this is the scene when Ahab points a loaded musket at Starbuck for having the audacity to tell him they have to remove all the barrels of oil from the cargo hold in order to fix the leak. But here Starbuck is courageous enough to hold firm, and Ahab actually backs down.

Knight of Swords

Meaning: Blindly charging forth without regard to consequences. (Labyrinthos)

Depiction: Ahab stands in a en garde position, his ivory leg stuck in the auger hole by the bulwarks, whaling lance in his hand. He is facing off with a floating mask of the head of Moby Dick.

Text: Chapter 36- The Quarter-Deck
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough.

Comments: This is one of my favorite passages in Moby Dick. The idea that our perception can mask reality and is not itself actual reality was not a new idea at the time, but showing that Ahab's cause is  to break through this illusion adds significant depth to what was never a simple man vs. whale story.

Page of Swords

Meaning: Curiosity, gossip

Depiction: Sailors Archy and Cabaco are passing buckets to each other on the quarterdeck under an evening sky. Archy, hearing noises, draws Cabaco's attention to the aft-hatches.  A whaling lance is propped up on the deck in the same position as on the original card.
Text: Chapter 43- Hark!

“HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”

It was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to fill the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence, only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel.

Image by R.D. Farrell, date unknown.

Comments: Just as I did with the Knight of Cups, I am breaking the rules here by having more than one figure on a court card. But who conveys gossip better than  the duo of Archy and Cabaco, who've unwittingly stumbled on Ahab's secret crew?