The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Queen of Wands

Wands, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

The Wands throughout this suit are always in leaf, as it is a suit of life and animation. Emotionally and otherwise, the Queen's personality corresponds to that of the King, but is more magnetic.

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

In divination

A dark woman, countrywoman, friendly, chaste, loving, honourable. If the card beside her signifies a man, she is well disposed towards him; if a woman, she is interested in the Querent. Also, love of money, or a certain success in business.

Reversed: Good, economical, obliging, serviceable. Signifies also—but in certain positions and in the neighbourhood of other cards tending in such directions—opposition, jealousy, even deceit and infidelity.

The library's note

Waite keeps his description brief and comparative: the Queen's temperament matches the King's "but is more magnetic," carrying the suit's vitality as warmth that draws rather than commands outright. He restates, for her card specifically, the description he gives the suit as a whole, wands "always in leaf," "a suit of life and animation," as though her personality were simply that fact made human. Of the suit's four court ranks, she is the one Waite lets stand closest to the plain elemental claim itself.

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/pktwaqu.htm

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