The Suit of Wands

Wands are the living branch — wood that still puts out leaves, and burns when it is put to the flame. They are the suit of what you want and what you are willing to do about it: ambition, creative urgency, sex, courage, the restless heat that gets a person out of bed. Where a Wand falls, something is trying to begin, or to go further than it has gone.

In other decks: rods, staves or batons.

The element of fire

Fire is the element that transforms whatever it touches and cannot be held still. It rises, it spreads, it consumes its own fuel. In a reading, fire speaks of energy before it has a form — enthusiasm, inspiration, temper — and it asks the question fire always asks: what will this burn, and what will it light?

In astrology, fire is the element of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, and nine of these cards are the ten-day slices of those three signs. How the cards and the zodiac are paired.

Ace to Ten

The Ace is the spark itself. Two and Three are the plan and the first ships sent out; Four is the celebration at the gate. Five brings the scuffle that any real ambition meets, Six the public victory, Seven the defence of the high ground. Eight is pure momentum. By Nine the fire-bearer is bandaged and wary, and at Ten they are bent beneath everything they took on. The suit is the whole life of an enterprise, from the idea to the weight of having done it.

The court

The court of Wands are people of heat. The Page is curiosity with bright eyes; the Knight charges before the plan is made; the Queen is the hearth-fire as a person — warm, magnetic, sure of herself; the King leads by vision and by example. Read them as people in your life, or as the way you are meeting the matter.

Wands in a spread

A spread heavy with Wands is a spread about drive: a question of work, creation, desire or courage, and usually one that wants action rather than more thought.

A spread with no Wands at all may be telling you the energy is elsewhere — that this is a matter of feeling, thought or practical fact, and that pushing harder is not the answer.

The other suits

• The Suit of Cups — The suit of water: feeling, love, intuition and the life of the heart.
• The Suit of Swords — The suit of air: the mind, truth, conflict, and the words that cut both ways.
• The Suit of Disks — The suit of earth: the body, work, money, home, and everything that takes time to grow.
• The major arcana — the twenty-two cards outside the suits, and the one beyond them.