5 of Wands

  • Arcana Minor
  • Suit Wands
  • Figure on this site Open combat
Historical evidence

In the earliest decks

The Five of Wands belongs to the suit that Italian players call bastoni, batons. Wikipedia’s article on the Marseille pattern traces the straight batons, set against the curved swords, back to Mamluk playing cards, where the swords were scimitars and the batons polo mallets. Tarot itself is Italian in origin, and it began as a card game.

In Marseille-pattern decks the numbered baton cards are pips, not scenes. The batons are drawn as straight staves that cross one another into a lattice, and the odd-numbered cards add one upright baton through the middle. That is the pattern a five takes in that tradition: no figures, no story, only a count of staves.

The Sola Busca deck, probably made in Venice around 1491, is different: it illustrates every numbered card of every suit, and its batons suit uses Arabic numerals. Photographs of it were given to the British Museum in 1907, and Waite and Pamela Colman Smith probably saw them. Scholars argue that Smith drew on it for her minor arcana, and the usual example is her Ten of Wands.

Historical evidence

The Rider-Waite-Smith card

The Rider-Waite-Smith card, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith and published in 1909 and 1910, is a scene, where the Marseille five is a pattern of staves. Waite describes it as a group of young men brandishing staves, as if in sport or strife. Wikipedia’s article uses almost the same wording for the picture.

Because older decks mostly show plain pips for this card, the figures are Smith’s doing within the Waite commission. They are shown in play-fight or real conflict, and Waite himself calls it “mimic warfare”.

Myth and literature · Quotation

Waite’s description

A posse of youths, who are brandishing staves, as if in sport or strife. It is mimic warfare.

Myth and literature · Context

Later meanings

Everything here was added long after the cards were first made. In the Thoth deck, designed by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris, the Five of Wands is titled “Strife” and is placed in the first decan of Leo with Saturn. That scheme comes from twentieth-century occult systems, not from Italian card makers or from Waite’s text, which gives no such attribution in this entry.

Wikipedia’s Wands article adds that wands are linked in these systems with fire and the fire signs, and that Crowley tied the suit to Will. These are modern occult correspondences, offered as tradition, not as fact about the cards’ origin.

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: direct confrontation, real stakes, honest conflict, open competition

Open combat means the stakes are real and visible for everyone involved, with nothing hidden behind diplomacy or pretense. This isn't a comfortable card, but it's an honest one. If direct confrontation is what's actually needed, the cleanest version of it happens out in the open, where both sides know exactly what's at stake.

In general: A conflict is happening in the open, which, despite the discomfort, is healthier than the same conflict hidden underground.

In love: An argument that needs to happen plainly rather than through passive signals. Say the actual thing.

In work: Direct competition or disagreement that's better handled openly than through politics and indirection.

Reversed

Keywords: pointless conflict, fighting out of habit, exhausted stakes, pride over purpose

Conflict for its own sake, once the original stakes have evaporated, just burns energy on a fight nobody actually needs to win anymore. If the original reason for the battle is gone and you're still fighting out of habit or pride, it's worth asking what continuing actually gets you.

In general: The original reason for this struggle has faded, but the fighting continues out of momentum. Consider standing down.

In love: An argument that's continued long past the point where either person remembers what it was originally about.

In work: Office conflict or rivalry sustained by ego rather than any remaining practical stake. Disengaging costs less than continuing.

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

Discovery trails that pass through here