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Minor Arcana · Suit of Wands · Number card
Ace · Wands
A card that falls upside down is read reversed.
Key words
↑ UprightA first sparkCreative driveA new venture
↓ ReversedA false startClouded joyLost momentum
What it means
↑ Upright
Out of a cloud, a hand holds a living branch still putting out leaves: the first spark of an enterprise, an idea with sap in it. What it favors is invention and the urge to begin — a project, a venture, a new line of work. Take hold of it while it is green, and turn the idea into one concrete first task.
↓ Reversed
The spark is there but does not catch: an idea held without being started, or a start that loses heart after the first push. It is a clouded joy, pleasure in a thing that never quite takes shape. Ask what is missing — time, nerve or a clear aim — and supply that before beginning again.
An ace is the root of its suit, and in Wands that root is raw drive: the first impulse to make or begin something. In the 1909 Smith–Waite deck, this card shows a hand reaching from a cloud to grip a wooden staff with fresh leaves on it, a castle on a hill in the distance. The hand comes from beyond the person, so the impulse arrives as a gift; the leaves mark it as alive and able to grow.
Upright
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.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III.