The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Three of Wands

Wands, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

A calm, stately personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff's edge at ships passing over the sea. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them.

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

In divination

He symbolizes established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery; those are his ships, bearing his merchandise, which are sailing over the sea. The card also signifies able co-operation in business, as if the successful merchant prince were looking from his side towards yours with a view to help you.

Reversed: The end of troubles, suspension or cessation of adversity, toil and disappointment.

The library's note

Three staves stand planted in the ground while a calm, stately figure leans on one of them, back turned, watching his own ships cross the sea below. Waite reads the scene as the suit's vitality turned into settled enterprise, "established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery," wands' energy no longer personal contest but business already under way and bearing fruit elsewhere. Where the Two surveyed a dominion with some unease, the Three watches its ships actually sail, the suit's ambition turned outward into something closer to confidence.

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/pktwa03.htm

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