Opening the calculator…
This usually takes a second or two.
Still working. On a slow connection it can take a few seconds more.
Opening the calculator…
This usually takes a second or two.
Still working. On a slow connection it can take a few seconds more.
Minor Arcana · Suit of Wands · Number card
Two · Wands
A card that falls upside down is read reversed.
Key words
↑ UprightPlanning aheadWider horizonsRestless command
↓ ReversedWonder and fearPlaying it safePlans shelved
What it means
↑ Upright
On his battlements a man holds the world in one hand and looks past everything he already commands. The card speaks of mastery over what you have built and a restlessness for what lies beyond it — Waite likens it to Alexander the Great, sad amid all his riches. Use the restlessness: draw the map, weigh the routes, and decide which wall you are ready to leave behind.
↓ Reversed
Wonder and fear arrive together: the wider world comes into view before any plan for it, or the plan stays in the drawer because what lies past the walls feels too large. Separate what alarms you from what you actually know, and make one small move you can take back, to test which of the two is nearer the truth.
Two in Wands is the moment of choice, when an enterprise already under way must decide where to go next. In the 1909 Smith–Waite deck, this card shows a man on a castle roof holding a small globe, one staff in his hand and another fixed to the wall, looking out over sea and land. The globe is the wider world he is weighing; the rose and lily painted beside him are commonly read as desire and pure intent held together.
Upright
Between the alternative readings there is no marriage possible; on the one hand, riches, fortune, magnificence; on the other, physical suffering, disease, chagrin, sadness, mortification. The design gives one suggestion; here is a lord overlooking his dominion and alternately contemplating a globe; it looks like the malady, the mortification, the sadness of Alexander amidst the grandeur of this world's wealth.
Reversed
Surprise, wonder, enchantment, emotion, trouble, fear.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III.