4 of Wands

  • Arcana Minor
  • Suit Wands
  • Figure on this site A truce
Historical evidence

In the earliest decks

The suit of wands, called batons or staves in Italian decks, comes from the Latin suit system, which Europeans took from playing cards imported from Mamluk Egypt and Moorish Granada in the 1370s. In the Mamluk cards this suit showed polo sticks. Northern Italian decks drew it as plain batons.

The tarot pack itself appears in northern Italy from about 1440, when a set of extra trump cards was added to the ordinary four suits for a card game. Nothing in that period connects the cards to fortune-telling.

Number cards in these early packs were generally pips, with no scene. One example is the Visconti-Sforza card matching the Four of Wands (about 1450, now at the Morgan Library). According to one secondary web page that quotes the library’s catalogue, it shows four staves surrounded by a scroll bearing the Sforza motto A BON DROYT and a floral border. There is no garland, no figures and no house on it.

The first deck known to illustrate every number card is the Sola Busca, engraved in the late 15th century and probably coloured in Venice in 1491.

Historical evidence

The Rider-Waite-Smith card

Pamela Colman Smith drew the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, published in London by Rider in 1909, working to Waite’s instructions. Unlike most earlier decks, where numbered cards had simple designs, she drew each Minor Arcana card as a small scene.

Her Four of Wands is the picture most people now know: four tall staves with a garland hung between them, two figures raising bouquets, and a bridge over a moat leading to an old manor house.

Some scholars suggest Smith drew on the Sola Busca deck, which she may have seen in photographs at the British Museum. The Wikipedia article on that deck names her Three of Swords and Ten of Wands as similar to its cards. It does not link her Four of Wands to any Sola Busca card, and no such link is claimed here.

Myth and literature · Quotation

Waite’s description

From the four great staves planted in the foreground there is a great garland suspended; two female figures uplift nose-gays; at their side is a bridge over a moat, leading to an old manorial house.

Myth and literature · Context

Later meanings

Early tarot was a game. Divinatory meanings for individual cards came later: Jean-Baptiste Alliette, writing as Etteilla, was the first to assign them, in the 1780s, and Court de Gébelin’s claim of an Egyptian origin (1781) was not supported by Egyptologists.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in the late 1880s, tied the tarot to Kabbalah and astrology, renamed the suits Wands and Pentacles, and linked cards to astrological decans. The suit of wands became associated with fire.

The reading of the number four as stability, and the sense of homecoming and celebration, belong to these later traditions and to Smith’s 1909 picture, not to the 15th-century cards.

Modern interpretation

As read on this site

This is the meaning used for readings here. Using the tarot to divine is a modern practice, and the Norse figure shown for each card is this site’s own association; the tarot began as an Italian card game. A short history is on the Tarot page.

Upright

Keywords: truce, necessary rest, recovery, strategic pause

A truce called between rounds of a real struggle is a gift, not a surrender — rest taken deliberately so the next push can actually land with full strength. Use this pause to recover, not to posture about how you'll definitely win next time. The recovery itself is the strategy.

In general: A pause in hostilities or effort is well-earned and necessary. Rest now so you have something left for what's next.

In love: A cooling-off period after tension, used well, to actually recover rather than to rehearse arguments for round two.

In work: A natural lull in a demanding project. Take it as recovery time rather than treating it as wasted opportunity.

Reversed

Keywords: premature reengagement, insufficient rest, restarted conflict, impatience

A truce broken too soon, before either side has actually recovered, just restarts the same exhausting cycle a little earlier than it needed to. If you find yourself jumping back into conflict before you've caught your breath, check whether the urgency is real or just impatience dressed up as readiness.

In general: Returning to the fray before you've actually recovered. The urgency may be manufactured rather than necessary.

In love: Jumping back into a difficult dynamic before the underlying tension has actually cooled, restarting the same fight.

In work: Resuming a demanding push before recovering from the last one, leading to diminished returns and faster burnout.

Draw a card for a reading · How to read cards together · Reversed cards