Fig. 79.1. Pamela Colman Smith, 4 of Pentacles, from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck, 1st ed. (London: William Rider & Son, 1909), chromolithograph.

Fig. 79.2. Josh Baird, 4 of Pentacles, from the Sego & Salt Tarot, 1st ed. 

4 OF PENTACLES : "1826: THE TREASURE SEEKERS"

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THE TRADITIONAL TAROT

KEY IDEAS: Boundaries, Confidence, Conservatism, Control, Fear of loss, Frugality, Gift, Greed, Guardedness, Hoarding, Insecurity, Materialism, Savings, Scarcity, Security, Stinginess, Success, Wealth. REVERSED:  Financial insecurity, Generosity, Giving, Reckless spending, Self-protection.

ALTERNATIVE TITLE/S: The Lord of Material Power

CARD INTRODUCTION: Every tarot card has a blend of sweetness and bitterness in it, but the sweet/bitter tension of the Four of Pentacles feels especially delicate, like the tiniest breeze in either direction could topple it over. In the simplest terms, the Four of Pentacles is about being protective over what you value … and it’s also possessiveness borne of fear and ego. It’s holding things close with an undeniable tenderness … and it’s also refusing to share. It’s saying “I don’t owe you anything” and how in some moments that’s the most liberating truth you could ever utter … and in other moments it’s a way to neglect the service that’s both your privilege and your obligation. The Four of Pentacles is caring for what you own and finding contentment in that practice … and it’s also hoarding whatever feels like wealth, even if it threatens to destroy you. There’s so much power in holding something back. The Four of Pentacles is a meditation on what that power means to us and how we use it for good or evil or both. This card asks for brutal honesty about motivation. Are you preserving something because it truly needs protection, or because letting go feels too risky to survive? The figure in the card grips their coins with their whole body -- feet planted, arms locked, crown secured -- as if letting go would shatter them. But nothing stays alive without circulation. Resources, love, time, attention all stagnate when they’re clenched too tightly. The Four of Pentacles supports restraint but also questions fear-driven attachment. Where could a small act of trust create movement again, without asking you to give away more than you can afford?  —Sara K. S. Hanks, Cottonwood Tarot

QUOTES:

1. "The things you own end up owning you." —Joshua Fields Millburn 

2. "Wealth is the ability to fully experience life." —Henry David Thoreau 

3. "He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have." —Socrates 

4. "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature." —Helen Keller 

5. "The greatest wealth is to live content with little." —Plato 

6. "Possession is the grave of enjoyment." —H.G. Wells 

7. "Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction." —Erich Fromm 

8. "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." —Henry David Thoreau 

9. "The more you have, the more you are occupied. The less you have, the more free you are." —Mother Teresa

10. "The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own." —Lao Tzu 

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SEGO & SALT TAROT

“There comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.” —Mark Twain

ON FOLK MAGIC: Folk magic is defined as a specific perspective on the cosmos. It views the supernatural realm as being fundamentally bound to the physical world, differing from the formal definition of "religion," which separates these two concepts into independent realms. Through the lens of magic, the natural world is populated by spiritual entities—acting as go-betweens for humanity and the divine—including both benevolent and malevolent spirits capable of affecting a person's physical well-being and soul. To avoid injury and obtain advantages, individuals who view themselves as living within this magical framework perform specific rites designed to sway these spiritual forces and otherworldly beings.¹

JOSEPH SEES SPIRITS: Martin Harris first became aware of Joseph Smith Jr. in 1824. During that summer, Harris hired Joseph’s father to construct a fence. While the work was underway, Harris asked Joseph how he managed to complete in a few hours the amount of labor that typically took his father and two brothers an entire day. Joseph replied that he was receiving help but refused to provide specifics, suggesting Harris figure it out himself. The following day, Harris spoke privately with the elder Smith, who revealed that Joseph had the ability to see anything he desired by using a special stone. He claimed Joseph frequently witnessed spirits in that area guarding large pots of coins. According to the elder Smith, the spirits had moved a rock for them because Joseph had not attempted to take their treasure. Harris later had a dream where he spoke with these spirits and was permitted to count their coins. Upon waking, he found a dollar coin in his hand, which he viewed as a divine omen. Joseph later described Harris’s dream in exact detail and warned that the spirits were offended by the taken coin, prompting Harris to return it.¹

ON EVERY FARM FOR MILES AROUND: The Smith family engaged in treasure hunting across almost every local farm for a significant distance, leaving behind pits that remain visible today. Some of these dig sites are located on the property where I currently reside. These excavations were performed under the cover of night and involved various ridiculous, occult-based rituals. The group responsible for this digging consisted of men and women who were generally held in low social regard.¹

THE CAMEL SADDLE: Peter Ingersoll noted that the Smith family’s primary occupation was searching for buried treasure. Although he was repeatedly invited to participate in their ventures, he always refused. Joseph Smith Sr. explained to him that the optimal time for treasure hunting was during the peak of summer; he believed the sun’s intense heat caused containers of money to ascend toward the surface. He claimed that many of the large stones scattered across the landscape—which appeared to be ordinary rocks—were actually chests of gold pushed upward by the heat. On a different occasion, the elder Smith asserted that the land's original occupants utilized camels rather than horses. As evidence, he described a cavern located on Mr. Cuyler's property that supposedly held vast amounts of precious metals and weaponry. He specifically mentioned a camel saddle suspended from a peg on the cave wall. When Ingersoll inquired about the type of wood the peg was made of, Smith could not identify it but noted that the material had petrified into a substance resembling iron or stone.¹

A MAN IN A GOLD CHAIR: Lorenzo Saunders recalled that while the Smith family members were generally decent individuals, they lacked steady occupation and were deeply involved in the treasure-hunting trade. Saunders witnessed them excavating a hill on his own property in 1826, roughly a mile from the Smiths' residence. He noted that Joseph Smith Jr. claimed his seer stone allowed him to see a figure seated in a gold chair within the hill. Joseph Smith Sr. identified this figure as a king from one of the ancient tribes who had been sealed inside the cave during a major conflict. Saunders was uncertain if the cave actually contained anything of value. He mentioned that the cave featured a door, which his family eventually removed and submerged in a water pit used for charcoal production.¹

JOE WAS IN HIS CAVE: John Gilbert noted that Joseph Smith Jr. was absent from the printing office during the seven-month production process, with all interactions being handled through intermediaries. Smith reportedly remained in his private room or a cave—the same location where the translation supposedly occurred—ostensibly receiving further divine messages from an angel. Gilbert’s understanding was that the golden plates were moved from the hill to Smith’s residence inside a bag. Initially, Smith was so intimidated after retrieving the plates from the angel's care that he concealed them for a full day before bringing them home. Eventually, the plates were moved to a cave to facilitate the translation process, which is where the final review of the manuscript was believed to have taken place.¹

THE SHERIFF DISCOVERS THE CAVE: Joseph Rogers, a resident of Palmyra, was well-acquainted with Joseph Smith Jr. before his rise as a religious leader. Rogers recalled that as a youth, Smith claimed to receive divine revelations regarding the locations of buried wealth. Smith convinced men like Peter Rupert and a blacksmith named Mr. Cunningham—whom Rogers viewed as gullible—that a gold chest was hidden beneath a beech tree on the property of Henry Murphy, Rogers' brother-in-law. Cunningham admitted to paying Smith for this lead, and despite Rogers warning him that Smith was a fraud, Cunningham feared that Smith could cast a spell forcing him to remain motionless for a fortnight. According to Rogers, Smith exerted significant influence over people, particularly those from New Jersey who held beliefs in the supernatural, whereas local "Yankees" from New York or New England were harder to deceive.

Rogers further noted that Smith and his followers excavated a cave in Manchester, New York, claiming it was a place for divine consultation. The entrance was secured with a padlock, but after Smith departed for Ohio, the local sheriff seized the site. Inside, authorities discovered a large amount of property that had been stolen from local farmers, leading many to believe Smith intended to eventually transport the items. Rogers concluded that Smith also practiced fortune-telling for money and possessed a keen ability to identify which individuals were most susceptible to being misled.¹

51 CITIZENS OF PALMYRA: Although Eber D. Howe’s 1834 publication, Mormonism Unvailed, was produced far from the actual excavation sites in Ontario, his colleague D. P. Hurlbut succeeded in gathering significant local details around Palmyra in 1833. A collective statement endorsed by 51 residents of Palmyra confirmed that the Smith family "spent much of their time in digging for money which they pretended was hid in the earth; and to this day, large excavations may be seen in the earth, not far from their residence, where they used to spend their time in digging for hidden treasures." Furthermore, Manchester local William Stafford told Hurlbut that the Smiths claimed almost all the hills in that region of New York were man-made structures containing "large caves" filled with "large gold bars and silver plates." When reviewing Hurlbut's 1833 findings, a contemporary reader is left with the impression that the Smiths viewed nearly every local glacial hill as an ancient Nephite mound containing hidden rooms that could only be reached by digging.¹

HURLBUT’S PREMISE: D.P. Hurlbut was an ex-Mormon who, in 1833, aggressively gathered testimonies from residents of Palmyra and Manchester regarding the Smith family’s involvement in treasure hunting. These affidavits, along with subsequent critical writings, suggested that such activities were merely ignorant superstitions practiced by either gullible victims or manipulative fraudsters motivated by simple greed. Because LDS historians believed the Smiths were neither foolish nor dishonest, they spent a long time denying that the family used occult practices to find wealth. By doing so, these historians unintentionally agreed with Hurlbut’s underlying assumption: that anyone actually seeking treasure must be delusional or predatory. This reaction is logical, as the 19th-century American worldview shifted toward a more "disenchanted" perspective that rejected magic, making treasure-seeking appear too absurd for anyone but the deceptive or the dim-witted. As a result, modern evidence confirming the Smiths' deep involvement in these practices is troubling for those who still equate treasure-seeking strictly with lack of intelligence or moral character.¹

THE CAVE IS REDISCOVERED: During the opening week of September 2015, Greg Pavone and I successfully located and excavated the cave at Miner’s Hill in Manchester, New York. There is a possibility that this cavern was first dug during the 1820s by Joseph Smith Jr., the creator of Mormonism, and it is potentially one of the sites where the Book of Mormon was translated or where its manuscript was drafted. Our team revealed the entrance to the cave and cleared out the interior down to the level of the original floor; however, more extensive digging, academic investigation, and preservation efforts are required.²

A FOOL & DUPE OF EVERY KNAVE: We are struck with astonishment when an individual as wretched as Smith suddenly adopts a facade of holiness and, claiming divine guidance, spends months hidden away excavating a hillside. He eventually emerges claiming to have discovered a new heavenly message, though this "revelation" is actually nothing more than a fictional story written by a late minister. It is deeply concerning to witness such a blatant deception being accepted and promoted by educated individuals, spreading with a speed that outpaces actual truth. Such events lead one to question the value of human intellect and modern education, as they seem to leave people vulnerable to being tricked by any dishonest person. It is clear that if God were to stop watching over the world, such falsehoods could consume humanity and lead to the catastrophic horrors described by theologians regarding the final battle of Armageddon.³

THE BOX WITH THE BROKEN CORNER: A group of three of us, equipped with tools, headed to the hill to search for additional gold chests or similar items, and we did, in fact, discover a stone container. In our excitement, we began to excavate around it with great care, but an invisible force caused the box to slide back into the hillside. As we watched, one member of our party attempted to pierce the lid with a crowbar to pin the box in place; however, the tool slipped, striking the edge and snapping off a corner of the stone. Eventually, that chest will be rediscovered, and when you see the missing corner, you will have proof that my account is accurate.¹

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ENDNOTES                                                                                                     

1. Alan Taylor, "Rediscovering the Context of Joseph Smith’s Treasure Seeking," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 19, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 19-22.

2. Vaughn E. Hansen, "Miner’s Hill Cave," Mormon Cave, accessed May 22, 2024, https://archival.link/mormoncave/sources.

3. "Mormonism," New York Journal of Commerce, reprinted in The New York Spectator, September 20, 1831.

4. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Co., 1876), 202.