The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Eight of Wands

Wands, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

Motion through the immovable—a flight of wands through an open country; but they draw to the term of their course.

the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time

In divination

Activity in undertakings, the path of such activity, swiftness, as that of an express messenger; great haste, great hope, speed towards an end which promises assured felicity; generally, that which is on the move; also the arrows of love.

Reversed: Arrows of jealousy, internal dispute, stingings of conscience, quarrels; and domestic disputes for persons who are married.

The library's note

Waite's own description is the shortest given to any card in the suit: "motion through the immovable," a flight of wands drawing to the end of their course through open country. No figure appears at all, only the staves themselves in flight, wands' vitality stripped down to pure velocity between the held ground of the Seven and the settled weight of what follows. He reads it as haste toward "an end which promises assured felicity," speed rather than arrival, the suit's most kinetic pip before the Nine slows to watchful stillness.

a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come

Doors Onward

Sources & Further Reading

  1. Waite, A. E. (1911). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Card text quoted verbatim, his punctuation kept. (Public domain.)
  2. Card described at: http://sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pktwa08.htm
  3. direct fetch failed repeatedly; retrieved via mirror https://spiritmaji.com/sacredtext/tarot/pkt/pktwa08.htm which reproduces the same public-domain 1911 text

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