Seven of Pentacles Tarot Card Meaning: Upright, Reversed, Love and Career

The Seven of Pentacles is the tarot card of the pause taken partway through long work: you stop, lean on the tool, and judge whether what you planted is worth another season. Upright it counsels patient assessment and a harvest that is close but not ready; reversed it points to impatience, sunk effort, and crops that will never repay the waiting. This guide covers the Seven of Pentacles upright and reversed, its symbols, and its reading in love, career, feelings, advice, and timing.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean in tarot?

The Seven of Pentacles meaning in tarot is assessment partway through long work, at a point where value clearly exists but has not been collected. It is the seventh card of the suit of Pentacles, an earth suit governing money, labor, property, the body, and everything that takes physical time to grow. Where the Ace of Pentacles plants and the Eight of Pentacles grinds, the Seven of Pentacles stops and counts. Its question is not whether you succeeded but whether this is growing fast enough to deserve another season of your life. In the Golden Dawn attributions the Seven of Pentacles carries Saturn in Taurus, the third decan of Taurus, roughly May 11 to 20, which pairs the slowest classical planet with the most unhurried earth sign. That doubling of patience is why the Seven of Pentacles almost never signals speed. Readers pull it for people who are mid-degree, two years into a business, or eight months into a relationship. Nothing has failed and nothing has arrived. The Seven of Pentacles occupies that gap and asks for an honest verdict on it.

The number seven gives the card its particular unease. In the Pentacles sequence, the Six of Pentacles has just settled a question of giving and receiving, and the Eight of Pentacles will shortly return to the workbench. Seven falls between those, outside the tidy symmetry of six and before the disciplined repetition of eight, which is why practitioners read sevens across all four suits as cards of testing, faith, and unresolved position. The Seven of Wands defends, the Seven of Cups fantasizes, the Seven of Swords schemes, and the Seven of Pentacles waits. Earth makes that wait literal rather than psychological. A vine cannot be argued into fruiting early, and this is the only Pentacles card in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck whose figure has stopped working, which is precisely its message. The Seven of Pentacles is the deliberate, slightly uncomfortable act of stepping back from something you are attached to and pricing it honestly. Readers frame it as the card that separates patience from stubbornness, since from the outside those two look identical.

Is the Seven of Pentacles a Major or Minor Arcana card?

The Seven of Pentacles is a Minor Arcana card, the seventh numbered card in the suit of Pentacles. Minor Arcana cards describe conditions rather than fated turning points, so the Seven of Pentacles points to a decision within your control.

What element is the Seven of Pentacles?

The Seven of Pentacles belongs to the element of earth through the suit of Pentacles, also called Coins or Disks. Earth ties the card to tangible outcomes: salary, harvest, property, health, and time actually spent, rather than feelings or ideas.

What is the one-line meaning of the Seven of Pentacles?

In one line, the Seven of Pentacles means stop, look at what you have grown, and decide whether to keep investing. Readers shorten it to patient assessment or the pause before the payoff.

What do the symbols on the Seven of Pentacles tarot card mean?

The Rider-Waite-Smith Seven of Pentacles, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909, shows a young man in a green tunic and reddish leggings standing in tilled brown earth, leaning both hands on a long-handled hoe and staring at a leafy vine to his side. Six pentacles hang among the broad leaves like fruit. A seventh lies on the ground near his feet. The sky is a flat pale gold with no weather in it, nothing that would explain urgency. Every element of the Seven of Pentacles carries the same idea. The hoe is still in his hands rather than dropped, so the pause is temporary. His weight rests on one hip, a posture of tiredness rather than despair. The pentacles grow on a bush, which no real coin does, marking the image as value ripening rather than a farming scene. Waite's description in his 1911 guide notes that the young man looks intently at the pentacles and that these appear to be his treasures, with his heart in them. That attachment is what makes objective assessment hard for the person the Seven of Pentacles describes.

The lone pentacle on the ground carries most of the card's ambiguity and is worth reading deliberately. Practitioners take it either as a coin already harvested, one concrete result proving the vine works, or as a coin that dropped and was lost, the branch of the project that failed. The Seven of Pentacles supports both, and the surrounding cards usually decide. The turned soil under his feet shows this is cultivated ground rather than wild growth. Somebody dug this, and that somebody is standing in front of it. The green of his tunic echoes the green of the vine, tying the worker visually to the crop, which is the entanglement that makes the Seven of Pentacles hard to judge from the inside. Note what the picture omits: no basket, no cart, no buyer, no barn. There is no infrastructure for collecting the harvest anywhere in the frame, and readers use that absence to ask whether you have a plan for converting this growth into something usable, or have only been growing it.

Why do the pentacles grow on a vine in the Seven of Pentacles?

The vine in the Seven of Pentacles turns money into agriculture, which is the card's central metaphor. Coins do not grow on plants, so the image tells the reader that this value follows a growing season with its own pace and cannot be produced on demand.

What does the hoe in the Seven of Pentacles symbolize?

The hoe in the Seven of Pentacles symbolizes work that is paused rather than abandoned. The figure leans on it with both hands instead of setting it down, so the tool is still available the moment he decides the crop is worth more effort.

What is the figure in the Seven of Pentacles feeling?

The figure in the Seven of Pentacles reads as tired, absorbed, and mildly impatient rather than distressed. His head is angled down at the vine and his weight is on one hip, a posture of long looking, which is why the card is linked with brooding over slow progress.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean upright?

Upright, the Seven of Pentacles means your investment is working but is not yet finished, and this is the moment to evaluate rather than to act. It reports genuine progress. Six pentacles on the vine is a real crop, not an empty field, so the Seven of Pentacles never denies that you have built something. What it denies is that you can have it now. Practitioners read the upright Seven of Pentacles as long-term thinking, perseverance, delayed rewards, and the discipline of not digging up a seed to inspect the roots. Waite's divinatory list for the card opens with money, business, and barter, which anchors it in material affairs rather than mood. In a reading about work, the upright Seven of Pentacles describes a project in its unglamorous middle, past the excitement and short of the result. In a money reading it describes value accumulating quietly, such as equity or a skill that will price higher later. The upright Seven of Pentacles is an encouragement with a condition: keep going, but only after you have looked properly.

The upright Seven of Pentacles also has a sharper edge that beginner readings often miss. Assessment implies the possibility of a negative verdict, and this card does permit one. The tarot tradition does not use the Seven of Pentacles to demand loyalty to any project that happens to be underway; it uses it to insist on measurement before more resources go in. That is why experienced readers ask a querent who draws the Seven of Pentacles what evidence would change their mind, and by when. A person who cannot answer is not being patient, they are avoiding a decision. In practice the upright Seven of Pentacles most often resolves into one of two instructions. Either the growth rate is acceptable, in which case the correct move is to wait without checking obsessively, or the growth rate is not acceptable, in which case the correct move is to redirect the effort while the season still allows it. Both readings are upright. The Seven of Pentacles counts patience and honest exit as the same virtue applied to different data.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean for a project already underway?

For a project already underway, the Seven of Pentacles means the halfway audit. It tells you the project is viable, that returns are behind schedule relative to your hopes, and that adding more effort blindly is riskier than pausing to measure what the effort has produced so far.

Does the Seven of Pentacles mean success?

The Seven of Pentacles means success in progress rather than success achieved. Readers distinguish it from harvest cards like the Nine and Ten of Pentacles, which show value collected and enjoyed, while the Seven of Pentacles still has the crop on the vine.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean in a past position?

In a past position, the Seven of Pentacles means the current situation was built by a long stretch of unrewarded effort. It credits work you may have stopped counting, and explains why a present result feels earned rather than lucky.

What does the Seven of Pentacles reversed mean?

The Seven of Pentacles reversed means the patient waiting has curdled, usually into impatience, wasted effort, or a refusal to admit that a poor investment is a poor investment. Readers give the reversal three main faces. The first is impatience: pulling up the crop, checking the balance daily, quitting a plan in month three that needed a year, or abandoning a relationship, course, or job before it could produce anything. The second and more painful is sunk cost, where the Seven of Pentacles reversed describes someone still feeding time and money into a visibly barren field because leaving would mean the earlier years were wasted. The third is misdirected effort: the work is real and hard, but going into the wrong crop entirely. Waite's reversed note for the Seven of Pentacles points to anxiety about money, particularly money one is considering lending, which fits the modern reading of financial worry attached to something already committed. In practice the reversed card arrives with burnout and a low-grade sense that the effort is not landing anywhere.

Distinguishing the reversed faces from each other is the practical skill, and the surrounding cards do most of that work. Fast cards nearby, the Knight of Wands, the Eight of Wands, the Chariot, tilt the Seven of Pentacles reversed toward impatience, someone moving at a speed the situation cannot match. Static or hoarding cards, the Four of Pentacles, the Hanged Man, the Devil, tilt it toward sunk cost and attachment. Cards of scattered labor, the Two of Pentacles or the Eight of Pentacles reversed, tilt it toward effort aimed at the wrong target. There is also a constructive reversal that comes up more often than the card's reputation suggests. The Seven of Pentacles reversed can mark the moment the audit finishes and the verdict lands, when a person stops waiting and either walks away or commits fully. Read that way it is a release, and it often precedes a real change of direction in the spread. The unhealthy version keeps looking at the vine; the healthy version puts the hoe down and goes elsewhere.

Does the Seven of Pentacles reversed mean wasted time?

The Seven of Pentacles reversed frequently means time spent without proportionate return, though not always time wasted outright. Readers separate effort that taught you something from effort that only cost you, and the reversal asks you to price the difference honestly rather than defend the total.

What does the Seven of Pentacles reversed mean for money?

For money, the Seven of Pentacles reversed points to an investment that is underperforming, a loan you are uneasy about, or spending that keeps propping up something unprofitable. Waite's own reversed note for the card names anxiety over money proposed to be lent.

Is the Seven of Pentacles reversed ever positive?

The Seven of Pentacles reversed is positive when it marks the end of an unproductive wait. Cutting a dead project, leaving a stalled job, or closing a relationship that stopped growing all read as healthy reversals, since the card's core concern is not loyalty but return on what you give.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean in love and relationships?

In love, the Seven of Pentacles means a relationship that is growing slowly and is currently being evaluated by at least one person in it. It is not a passion card. The Seven of Pentacles love reading describes commitment treated as cultivation, where two people have put in real months or years and are now at the point of asking what those years have produced. For couples, it shows up around the plateau after the early rush, during long-distance stretches, before an engagement or a move, or when one partner has been carrying more of the effort and has started counting. For single people, the Seven of Pentacles love meaning points to a slow-burning connection worth patient investment rather than immediate chemistry, or a stretch of dating that has produced no obvious result and is prompting a review of the approach. The card rarely predicts a fast romance and rarely announces an ending. What the Seven of Pentacles love reading does reliably say is that the relationship is at a decision point, that both the effort and the growth are real, and that the fruit is not ripe yet.

The Seven of Pentacles is unusually honest about relationship arithmetic, which is why readers value it in love spreads despite its lack of romance. It brings up the questions people avoid asking out loud: how much of my life have I already given this, what has it returned, and would I choose it again knowing what it costs. That is uncomfortable framing for a couple, but the alternative the card warns against is drifting for years without running the numbers. Reversed in love, the Seven of Pentacles describes waiting on someone who is not moving, staying because leaving would waste the invested years, or the opposite failure of walking out of something promising because it was not exciting quickly enough. It also appears for people stuck on a partner's decision about divorce, distance, or exclusivity, where the wait itself has become the relationship. Paired with the Two of Cups the Seven of Pentacles suggests the investment is mutual and worth continuing. Paired with the Eight of Cups it suggests the honest verdict is departure.

Does the Seven of Pentacles mean a relationship is ending?

The Seven of Pentacles rarely means a relationship is ending. It means the relationship is being assessed, which can end in renewed commitment just as easily as in departure. Endings show more clearly when it falls beside the Eight of Cups, Death, or the Three of Swords.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean for a new relationship?

For a new relationship, the Seven of Pentacles means slow growth with genuine potential. It favors connections that build through shared time and practical support over instant chemistry, and it asks for patience through an early stage that may feel unremarkable.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean in a reconciliation question?

In a reconciliation question, the Seven of Pentacles indicates that something remains between the two people but will not return quickly. It favors gradual reconnection over a dramatic reunion, and warns against forcing a timeline the other person is not working to.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean for career, money, and health?

For career, the Seven of Pentacles means you are in the unrewarded middle of something that will pay later, and a review is due. It commonly marks year two or three of a business, the stretch before a promotion, a degree not yet finished, a portfolio slowly gaining traction, or a job that pays adequately while providing no visible progress. The Seven of Pentacles career reading asks whether the role is still building toward something or has quietly turned into a holding pattern. For money, the card describes value maturing rather than money arriving: pensions, savings, equity, property, or a skill whose market rate is still climbing. It discourages cashing out early and discourages checking daily. For health, the Seven of Pentacles points to slow physical processes where results come from consistency over months, which fits rehabilitation, physiotherapy, fertility, dental or orthodontic work, weight change, and recovery from long illness. It counsels sticking with the regimen and measuring progress at sensible intervals rather than continuously.

In workplace readings the Seven of Pentacles has a distinctive practical use: it separates a slow job from a stalled one, and those feel the same from inside. A slow job still adds skills, contacts, reputation, or capital each year, so the vine is growing even when nothing dramatic happens. A stalled job adds nothing but tenure, and tenure alone is not fruit. Readers put that question directly to a querent who draws the Seven of Pentacles about work, because the card supplies no answer by itself, only the obligation to look. In business questions it accompanies the period just before profitability, where cash is thin and the founder is doing sums at night. Reversed in career it turns into burnout, an underpaid role defended out of loyalty, or effort poured into a product nobody is buying. Reversed in health it indicates impatience with recovery, or worry about progress that is in fact normal for the timescale.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean for a job interview or promotion?

For a job interview or promotion, the Seven of Pentacles means the outcome depends on accumulated track record rather than a single performance, and the decision will take longer than you want. It favors candidates with a long history in the role.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean for starting a business?

For starting a business, the Seven of Pentacles advises planning for a long runway before profit and reviewing the numbers at fixed intervals. It supports ventures with compounding value and warns against models needing immediate revenue to survive.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean in a health reading?

In a health reading, the Seven of Pentacles indicates gradual improvement through sustained routine, typical of physiotherapy, recovery from long illness, or dietary change. It suggests staying with the current approach and measuring at intervals rather than daily.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean as feelings and as advice?

As feelings, the Seven of Pentacles means someone regards you as a long-term investment they are quietly assessing. The Seven of Pentacles feelings reading describes attachment built over time rather than attraction sparked in a moment. This person has put effort into you, notices what that effort has returned, and is deciding whether to continue, usually without saying so. Alongside that there is often a strand of frustration, a sense that things should have progressed further by now, and sometimes a private worry that they are the only one still watering the plant. As advice, the Seven of Pentacles tells you to stop, take a real inventory of what you have built, and then choose deliberately between waiting and redirecting. The Seven of Pentacles advice is never to work harder immediately. It is to measure before adding anything more, because effort applied to a failing crop is the specific waste this card exists to prevent. Practitioners often phrase the Seven of Pentacles advice as a rule about seeds: do not dig them up to check whether the roots have taken. Set a date to look, then leave the field alone until then.

The feelings reading has a characteristic emotional temperature worth naming, because it explains why the Seven of Pentacles disappoints people hoping for a passionate answer. This is not a person feeling swept away. It is a person who has been here long enough to be practical, who values you in a way tied to time and reliability rather than intensity, and who may be somewhat tired. Readers gloss it as regard without urgency, and warn that the steadiness which makes the feeling durable also makes it slow to declare itself. On the advice side, the Seven of Pentacles has a second instruction that follows the first: once you have assessed, act on the assessment. A pause that never ends is the reversed card, and the design of the Seven of Pentacles assumes the young man eventually picks up the hoe or walks off the field. Practitioners make the advice concrete by asking for a review date, a number the situation must reach, and a decision about what happens if it does not.

Does the Seven of Pentacles mean someone is losing interest?

The Seven of Pentacles does not usually mean someone is losing interest, since disinterest does not bother to evaluate. It means their interest has moved from excitement into assessment, which reads as cooler but is often more serious than the earlier stage.

What is the Seven of Pentacles advice about waiting?

The Seven of Pentacles advice about waiting is to wait on a schedule rather than indefinitely. Choose a review date, decide in advance what result would justify continuing, and stop checking in between, because constant inspection is the impatience the card warns against.

What does the Seven of Pentacles advise when you are exhausted?

When you are exhausted, the Seven of Pentacles advises rest as part of the work rather than a break from it. The figure leaning on his hoe is not shirking, and the card treats a deliberate pause as the correct use of a season that cannot be accelerated.

What is the Seven of Pentacles timing, and is it yes or no?

The Seven of Pentacles timing is slow, and readers treat it as one of the clearest delay signals in the deck. Its Golden Dawn attribution of Saturn in Taurus places it in the third decan of Taurus, roughly May 11 to 20, which is the most common calendar answer given for the Seven of Pentacles timing. Beyond that, practitioners use the number seven directly and read seven weeks or seven months depending on the scale of the question, with months favored because Saturn and Taurus both argue for the longer figure. The suit contributes a seasonal reading, and the tradition splits: some readers assign Pentacles to winter as the earth suit, others follow the harvest imagery to late summer and early autumn. As a yes or no answer, the Seven of Pentacles is not a clean yes and not a no. It is best rendered as yes but later, or not yet. The crop is on the vine, so the outcome is available; the ripening is not finished, so the date is not now. Reversed, the Seven of Pentacles yes or no answer moves closer to no, especially when the question involves a quick result.

Because the Seven of Pentacles resists a fixed date, experienced readers use it to describe the shape of the wait rather than its length, which is usually more useful anyway. This card indicates a wait with visible progress in it. Something measurable changes each month even if the result stays out of reach, and that distinguishes the Seven of Pentacles from cards of genuine stasis such as the Four of Pentacles or the Hanged Man. If you can point at growth since last quarter, the timing the Seven of Pentacles describes is running normally. If you cannot, the wait has stopped being productive and the card is functionally reversed regardless of how it landed. In an outcome position the Seven of Pentacles suggests the result arrives later than the querent expects; in an advice position it predicts no date at all, only instructing you to allow one. The Eight of Wands or the Wheel of Fortune shortens the wait, while the Four of Pentacles stretches it.

How many weeks or months does the Seven of Pentacles indicate?

Readers most often assign the Seven of Pentacles seven months, and seven weeks for smaller questions. The Saturn in Taurus attribution pushes practitioners toward the longer reading, so seven months is the more common answer in career and money spreads.

What season does the Seven of Pentacles represent?

The Seven of Pentacles is assigned winter by readers who give the whole earth suit to winter, and late summer or early autumn by readers who follow the card's harvest imagery. Its decan of Saturn in Taurus falls in mid to late May.

Is the Seven of Pentacles a yes or no card?

The Seven of Pentacles answers yes but not yet. It confirms the outcome is achievable and refuses the timing you were hoping for, which is why many readers file it under maybe rather than forcing it into a straight yes or no.

Which combinations change the Seven of Pentacles, and how do the Marseille and Thoth decks show it?

The cards next to the Seven of Pentacles decide whether its pause resolves into commitment or departure, so combinations matter more here than in most Minor Arcana readings. Seven of Pentacles with the Eight of Pentacles means the assessment is finished and the verdict is to return to work. With the Ten of Pentacles the long investment matures into lasting security, often family wealth or property. With the Five of Pentacles the harvest has not yet covered the need and the wait is happening under real hardship. With the Eight of Cups the honest conclusion is to leave the field. With the Hanged Man the delay is necessary rather than accidental. With the Wheel of Fortune the stalled timing finally breaks. With the Knight of Wands the reading turns on a clash of speeds, an impatient person tied to a slow process. With the Three of Pentacles the assessment is external, a review by colleagues, examiners, or investors. With the Ace of Pentacles a new opportunity appears while the current crop is still ripening.

The card looks very different outside the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, and the differences change how it is read. In the Tarot de Marseille the Sept de Deniers is a pip card with no figure and no scene, showing seven coins arranged among painted floral scrollwork. Marseille readers work from number and suit rather than narrative, so the card reads as an interrupted material sequence, a count that has not reached completion, with the surrounding cards supplying the story. In the Thoth deck, designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris, the Seven of Disks is titled Failure and carries the same Saturn in Taurus attribution. Harris paints the disks as dull leaden forms in a blighted setting, and Crowley's reading is bleaker than the Rider-Waite-Smith one, emphasizing stagnation, unprofitable labor, and growth that has rotted. Readers who use both decks let the Thoth title sharpen the warning inside the Seven of Pentacles, treating Failure as the outcome the pause exists to prevent rather than as a contradiction of it.

What does the Seven of Pentacles with the Eight of Pentacles mean?

The Seven of Pentacles with the Eight of Pentacles means assess, then get back to work. The pair describes a completed review that ends in recommitment, and it is one of the most encouraging combinations for anyone deciding whether to continue training, studying, or building.

What does the Seven of Pentacles with the Eight of Cups mean?

The Seven of Pentacles with the Eight of Cups means the assessment concludes in departure. The pair points to walking away from something you invested years in because the returns no longer justify the cost, and it usually reads as a considered exit rather than an impulsive one.

Why is the Thoth Seven of Disks called Failure?

Crowley titled the Thoth Seven of Disks Failure because of its Saturn in Taurus attribution, where Saturn's heaviness settles into Taurus and stops movement. Harris painted the disks as dull and blighted, giving the card a far darker cast than the Rider-Waite-Smith Seven of Pentacles.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Seven of Pentacles a good card to pull?

The Seven of Pentacles is a good card with a cost attached: it confirms that real growth exists but refuses to say the growth is finished. Readers treat it as favorable for anything already planted and unfavorable for anything you want quickly. A student six months from graduating or a business in year two gets an encouraging answer from the Seven of Pentacles. Someone hoping for money this week gets told to wait.

What is the difference between the Seven of Pentacles and the Eight of Pentacles?

The Seven of Pentacles has stopped working and is evaluating; the Eight of Pentacles is head-down and mid-task. In the Rider-Waite-Smith images the difference is physical: the Seven of Pentacles figure leans on his hoe and looks at the vine, while the Eight of Pentacles craftsman sits at a bench carving disc after disc. Drawn alone, the Seven of Pentacles asks whether the effort is worth continuing and the Eight of Pentacles assumes it is.

Does the Seven of Pentacles mean money is coming?

The Seven of Pentacles means money is growing but not yet collectible. Arthur Edward Waite's own divinatory list for the card leads with money, business, and barter, and the picture supports that: seven pentacles are visibly on the vine, so the value exists. What the Seven of Pentacles withholds is the date. Readers take it as maturing money rather than incoming money, which fits vesting equity, a property gaining value, or a business approaching profitability.

What does the Seven of Pentacles mean for a specific person's intentions?

As a person's intentions, the Seven of Pentacles describes someone who is deciding slowly and privately whether to keep investing in you. This person is not indifferent, because indifference does not bother to evaluate, and not urgent either. They are weighing months of evidence rather than reacting to last week. Readers take the Seven of Pentacles here as serious but unhurried intent, which suits someone considering exclusivity or a move without having said so.

What zodiac sign and planet rule the Seven of Pentacles?

The Seven of Pentacles is attributed to Saturn in Taurus in the Golden Dawn system, covering the third decan of Taurus, roughly May 11 to 20. Saturn contributes delay, structure, and testing; Taurus contributes soil, slowness, and material growth. That pairing gives the Seven of Pentacles its flavor of value ripening on a schedule nobody can hurry. Crowley used the same attribution for the Seven of Disks in the Thoth deck.

Can the Seven of Pentacles mean giving up?

The Seven of Pentacles upright rarely means giving up, but it legitimizes the question. The point of the pause is that abandoning a field is a permitted outcome of assessment, not a betrayal of the work already done. Reversed, the Seven of Pentacles leans harder that way and marks the moment a person stops feeding something unproductive. Cards pushing toward walking away include the Eight of Cups and Death.

What does the single pentacle on the ground in the Seven of Pentacles mean?

The single pentacle lying at the figure's feet in the Rider-Waite-Smith Seven of Pentacles is read two ways, and both are standard. Read as a fallen coin, it is the loss already absorbed, the failed branch of the project. Read as the first pick of the crop, it is proof of concept, one tangible result from a vine still holding six. Which reading applies depends on the surrounding cards and on whether the querent is asking about loss or progress.