Tag Archives: suit of wands

Card Meanings, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Tarot

Tarot Encyclopedia – The Ten of Wands

Leave a comment

(Note: this is a collection of the meanings attributed to the cards by some occultists in the past centuries. It does not reflect my own study or opinion of the cards. It is only meant as a quick comparative reference as I develop my own take.)

The Ten of Wands from the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) tarot deck

Paul Foster Case (and Ann Davies)

The third decanate of Sagittarius is the time period from December 12 to December 21. In divination its meanings are those of the Tenth Sephirah combined with the planetary forces of the Sun and Jupiter, the zodiacal sign of Sagittarius together with its natural Ninth house of the Higher Mind.
Well-Dignified: generosity; success and honor in connection with the law, religion or philosophy; possibility of post of responsibility; gain through travel.
Ill-Dignified: ostentation; dogmatism; overbearing pride.
Note :- this card often carries the significance of a burden of responsibility of ‘too many irons in the fire’, or the need for a rearrangement of the Querent’s affairs or activities so as to get them in better order.
Keyword: Fullness of power.
(From The Oracle of Tarot course)

A. E. Waite

A man oppressed by the weight of the ten staves which he is carrying. Divinatory Meanings: A card of many significances, and some of the readings cannot be harmonized. I set aside that which connects it with honour and good faith. The chief meaning is oppression simply, but it is also fortune, gain, any kind of success, and then it is the oppression of these things. It is also a card of false-seeming, disguise, perfidy. The place which the figure is approaching may suffer from the rods that he carries. Success is stultified if the Nine of Swords follows, and if it is a question of a lawsuit, there will be certain loss. Reversed: Contrarieties, difficulties, intrigues, and their analogies.
(From The Pictorial Key to the Tarot)

The Ten of Wands from the Rider Waite Smith tarot

Aleister Crowley

The Ten of Wands is called Oppression. This is what happens when one uses force, force, and nothing else but force all the time. Here looms the dull and heavy planet Saturn weighing down the fiery, ethereal side of Sagittarius; it brings out all the worst in Sagittarius. See the Archer, not shooting forth benign rays, but dealing the sharp rain of death! The Wand has conquered; it has done its work; it has done its work too well; it did not know when to stop; Government has become Tyranny. One thinks of the Hydra when one reflects that King Charles was beheaded in White hall!

[…]

The number Ten refers to Malkuth, which depends from the other nine Sephiroth, but is not directly in communication with them. It shows the Force detached from its spiritual sources. It is become a blind Force; so, the most violent form of that particular energy, without any modifying influences. The flames in the background of the card have run wild. It is Fire in its most destructive aspect.

The card also refers to the influence of Saturn in Sagittarius. Here is the greatest antipathy. Sagittarius is spiritual, swift, light, elusive, and luminous; Saturn is material, slow, heavy, obstinate, and obscure.

The eight Wands are still crossed, showing the enormous power of the completed energies of Fire; but they have lost their patents of nobility. Their ends seem more like claws; they lack the authority and intelligence shown in the earlier cards; and in front are the two formidable Dorjes of the Two of Wands, but lengthened to bars.

The whole picture suggests Oppression and repression. It is a stupid and obstinate cruelty from which there is no escape. It is a Will which has not understood anything beyond its dull purpose, its “lust of result”, and will devour itself in the conflagrations it has evoked.
(From The Book of Thoth)

The Ten of Wands from the Thoth tarot deck

Golden Dawn’s Book T

FOUR hands holding eight wands crossed as before. A fifth hand holding two wands upright, which traverses the junction of the others. Flames issuant. Saturn and Sagittarius.

Cruel and overbearing force and energy, but applied only to material and selfish ends. Sometimes shows failure in a matter, and the opposition too strong to be controlled; arising from the person’s too great selfishness at the beginning. Illwill, levity, lying, malice, slander, envy, obstinacy; swiftness in evil and deceit, if ill dignified. Also generosity, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, when well dignified.
Malkuth of HB:V (Cruelty, malice, revenge, injustice).
Therein rule HB:RYYAL and HB:AVMAL.

Etteilla

Betrayal
Upright. In terms of spiritual medicine, this card, in its natural position, signifies: Betrayal, Perfidy, Cunning, Deception, Trickery, Surprise, Misdirection, Dissimulation, Hypocrisy, Prevarication, Duplicity, Dishonesty, Darkness, Falsehood, Conspiracy, Collusion. – Imposture.
Reversed. Obstacle, Concern. – Barrier, Hindrance, Contradiction, Difficulty, Pain, Work. – Inconvenience, Abjection, Dispute, Complaint, Stumbling block, Enclosure, Entrenchment, Fort, Fortification.

MQS

Card Meanings, Cartomancy, Divination, Divination Master Post, Fortune-telling, Tarot

Tarot Encyclopedia – The Ace of Wands

2 Comments

(Note: this is a collection of the meanings attributed to the cards by some occultists in the past centuries. It does not reflect my own study or opinion of the cards. It is only meant as a quick comparative reference as I develop my own take.)

The Ace of Wands from the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) Tarot deck

Paul Foster Case (and Ann Davies)

In Tarot Divination the Ace of Wands has these key meanings: natural as opposed to invoked force; strength; force; vigor; vitality; particularly the force of concentrated will; the principle of beginning; initiation or inception of any enterprise or activity; concentration of power; involution of force.
Keyword: Initiative
(From the Oracle of Tarot course)

A. E. Waite

A hand issuing from a cloud grasps a stout wand or club. Divinatory Meanings: Creation, invention, enterprise, the powers which result in these; principle, beginning, source; birth, family, origin, and in a sense the virility which is behind them; the starting point of enterprises; according to another account, money, fortune, inheritance. Reversed: Fall, decadence, ruin, perdition, to perish also a certain clouded joy.
(From The Pictorial Key to the Tarot)

Aleister Crowley

This card represents the essence of the element of Fire in its inception. It is a solar-phallic outburst of flame from which spring lightnings in every direction. These flames are Yods, arranged in the form of the Tree of Life. (For Yod, see Atu IX supra.) It is the primordial Energy of the Divine manifesting in Matter, at so early a stage that it is not yet definitely formulated as Will.

Important: although these “small cards” are sympathetic with their Sephirotic origin, they are not identical; nor are they Divine Persons. These (and the Court Cards also) are primarily sub-Elements, parts of the “Blind Forces” under the Demiourgos, Tetragrammaton. Their rulers are the Intelligences, in the Yetziratic world, who go to form the Schemhamphorasch. Nor is even this Name, “Lord of the Universe” though it be, truly Divine, as are the Lords of the Atu in the Element of Spirit. Each Atu possesses its own private, personal and particular Universe, with Demiourgos (and all the rest) complete, just as every man and every woman does.

For example II’s or VI’s Three of Disks might represent the establishment of such an oracle as that of Delphi, or VIII’s might be the first formula of a Code such as Manu gave to Hindustan; V’s, a cathedral, XVI’s, a standing army; and so on. The great point is that all the Elemental Forces, however sublime, powerful, or intelligent, are Blind Forces and no more.
(From The Book of Thoth)

Golden Dawn’s Book T

A WHITE Radiating Angelic Hand, issuing from clouds, and grasping a heavy club, which has three branches in the colours, and with the sigils, of the scales. The Right-and Left-hand branches end respectively in three Flames, and the Centre one in four Flames: thus yielding Ten: the Number of the Sephiroth. Twoand-twenty leaping Flames, or Yodh, surround it, answering to the Paths; of these, three fall below the Right branch for Aleph, Men, and Shin, seven above the Central branch for the double letters; and between it and that of the Right twelve: six above and six below about the Left-hand branch. The whole is a great and flaming Torch. It symbolizes Force — strength, rush, vigour, energy, and it governs, according to its nature, various works and questions. It implies Natural, as opposed to Invoked, Force.

Etteilla

Birth
Upright. This card means, in its natural position, as far as the medicine of the spirit is concerned: Birth, Beginning. – Nativity, Origin, Creation. – Source, Beginning, Primacy. – Extraction, Race, Family, Condition, House, Lineage, Posterity, Occasion, Cause, Reason, First, First fruits.
Reversed. Fall, Decadence, Decay, Decline, Decay, Decay, Dissipation, Failure, Bankruptcy, Ruin, Destruction, Demolition, Damage, Devastation. – Guilt, Error, Contempt, Abatement, Depression, Discouragement. – Perdition, Abyss, Chasm, Precipice. – Dying, Falling, Decay, Derogation. – Depth.

MQS