Wands, and PHRASING

Hello I have jet lag and post-flight-tranquilizers in my system and I CAN SEE THROUGH TIIIIIIME is what I’m saying. What better occasion to talk about wands, the last Tarot suit? Not specific cards yet, because q.v. seeing through time.

So first of all, the symbolism is not accidental, by which I mean feel free to insert your own dick jokes here, by which I mean “insert your own” dick jokes here, which is absolutely what she said. I am not a giant fan of the gender binary, and there are certainly versions of wands that are only phallic in the “eh, longer than it’s wide” sense, but you get a lot of A Wizard’s Staff Has a Knob on the End in most decks, for this suit.

There’s a whole fire versus air occult slapfight about this and Swords, but I don’t have the background. I learned wands as Fire, and to me that makes a fair amount of sense.  Most wands are portrayed as wood (right?), which contains the potential for fire, whereas swords are metal, which is a thing a fire acts on (although you could make an argument for flint and steel). Fire is also willpower, which makes sense for wands in the non-dick sense: you can do a lot of things with them, from beating people senseless to poking sheep into place to supporting your weight and others, but most of that takes a certain amount of effort and focus. (And is also true in the sense of penis metaphor, yes.) Swords, like intellect and power, often can be very effective without a lot of will, but that can be more dangerous.

Fire also means relationships, which is an odd distinction: a personal connection that’s deeper or longer-lasting than the basic Earth sex/money stuff of Pentacles, but not the goddamn hippie songfest that’s the most stereotypical interpersonal deal with Cups. If I have to define relationships–which is not a thing I ever thought I’d do in my life again, so thanks, Tarot–in this context, I’d say they’re human interactions that contain the potential to invest or receive a significant amount of willpower–ongoing interactions with people that move energy around. That can and usually does overlap with any of the other suits.

We’ve also got creative energy here, which, like relationships, is interesting because it overlaps with another Cups domain–in this case, art. The difference is a little easier to define here: Cups provide the inspiration, whether for a whole project or a bit of it one, while Wands are the force that carries it through and gets it done. (In theory, Pentacles can provide the logistical elements, and Swords the planning and abstract ideas, with Wands the unifying force of the project.)

Fire is one of my favorite elements, and it’s an interesting one, because its basic nature is to change the fuck out of everything. Sometimes that’s gently, in a sunlight-and-seeds kind of way, or at least tempered, like when you bake a cake, and other times it’s like, nope, goodbye to your eyebrows buddy, hope you enjoyed ’em. If you feel strongly enough about a person that they change your life or you theirs, even if only in one particular way, that’s a relationship–Fire and Wands. If an artistic inspiration actually gets you to sit down and sculpt or paint or write or whatever, to make something that wasn’t there before, likewise. Despite the opposite element, there *is* a lot of overlap with Cups, but the difference is, as I see it, that Fire/passion is feeling that makes matters different. Cups *can* be a force for change, especially in cards like the Six or Eight, but Wands pretty much always are–and there’s the difference between “feelings” and “passion.”

As the suits go, wands are probably around pentacles for classically-positive associations. There isn’t the Shit This Is Mostly Bad News quality of Swords, but neither is there the Almost Always Happy Times feel Cups. A lot of the cards really have a very neutral or undefined feel: here’s a situation, and how it’s going to play out, or how it should, is uncertain.

It’s, ah, all in the way you use it, you might say.