The Suit of Wands
The Wands
Interpretation
Seeing the world as it is.
I’m going to take a pause on the major arcana cards here and talk about the design and thought behind the lower arcana or “pip” cards.
In the Tarot De Marseille tradition these cards are not individually illustrated as they are in later Rider Waite Smith versions of the Tarot. This older style of depicting the suits goes back at least to the 14th century and is the basis of Tarocchi Cards which predate Tarot (maybe). Just as with a deck of modern playing cards, the pips form a tempo or rhythm that builds and subsides from Ace - X. Each suit can be appreciated as an interwoven fugue of symbols that ebb and flow to form a way of thought, a way of seeing vs a singular idea or outcome.
I’m going to start with the suit of Wands (clubs in a deck of playing cards). The suit of Wands represents intuition, the spiritual path, and the spirit world. The foundation of my Wands design is a pattern from Morris & Co from the 1800s and the beginnings of the Arts & Crafts Movement. The Arts & Crafts movement was not only a style of design, it represented a philosophy of using the tools of mass production to create beautiful everyday objects, it represented a way of living by integration of the spirit world into everyday life.
Against this Arts & Crafts background I’ve selected Gauguin’s walking stick as the representation of the Wand. The Wand is typically a transitional object that bridges the divide between this world and the next. Think of a magician’s wand being used to conjure invisible forces to act in the physical realm.
Gauguin abandoned France for Tahiti to live what he felt was a more natural relationship with the world. He left behind his culture and the physical trappings of the growing modernism and urbanity of Paris to live simply amongst Tahitians, just as we seek the solitude of the spirit world away from the electric chatter of modern life. Gauguin imagined himself a native in this new home, but Gauguin was only a cultural interloper seeking solace from his given path to wrap himself in the trappings of exotica. In this same way we can traverse the spirit world but like Gauguin we are only visitors, interlopers, witnesses to a place and culture we are incapable of understanding.
As Gauguin, we travel the path of the Wands from the Ace to the X, growing more adept at walking this path and learning the foreign but familiar ways of a life that feel familiar but is not ours to own.
As we complete the path from the Ace - X of Wands we first encounter Gauguin’s impression of this new land and it stares silently back at us. Here we understand that while we imagine ourselves a denizen of the spirit world we are only visitors, a foreign tourist dipping our consciousness into an incomprehensible universe. The Page of Wands is the gatekeeper to this new world, her shadow sibling whispering in her ear as they work at an unknowable task. We can not hear their voice or understand their language, we can only read their gaze.
If we can accept that we are foreign to this world and set aside all questions and preconceptions of what we find here, we are then escorted under moonlight by the Knight of Wands. She is ancient, and silent and we simply follow her as she goes about the work of her world on horseback.
The next experience is the Queen of Wands who stands alone, naked holding but not offering a symbolic fruit, looking upon her is our reward for our patience and surrender. She’s not making an offering to us but instead showing us a way to be. Consume gifts of spirit to feed your growth. They are within not external, and your consuming of them brings the two worlds closer together.
Finally is the King of Wands. The King also toils at an unknownable harvest, consumed in the sea. The moon lights his work, the tide pulls at his body and he wields Gauguin’s cane to gather his bounty.
The journey of Wands is not a destination, it is a series of ways. Surrender to witness the world as it is, follow the example of those who live here, consume new ways of knowing, and harvest your bounty but know you will bring nothing back from this journey but a new way of expressing yourself in your world.
