Knight of Wands

Identity

Symbols

• The Rearing WarhorseThe instant before landing — both the posture of departure and the threshold of losing control.+

  Waite reads the man through his horse: "the motion of the horse is a key to the character of its rider" and suggests "the precipitate mood." The rearing body is the real portrait; the rider is drawn through it.

• Flame-red CrestThe flame above his head — even at gallop, it stands upright in the wind, unbent.+

  In heraldry the crest is the device fixed atop the helm — at a tournament, the part of a knight's arms that made him known from a distance. This rider's device is no beast or badge, only a plume in fire's colours.

• Salamanders on the SurcoatThe same emblem as the Page's — a ring of fire still open at the tail, but now worn over mail, carried outward by a person.+

  In the Paracelsian scheme the Golden Dawn took up, the salamander is the elemental spirit of fire — and Book T titles this Knight "King of the Spirits of Fire." His coat wears the title as a pattern.

• Pyramids on the HorizonNot the goal — he rides past them; the point of this card is not speed, but a heading already chosen.+

  Waite's own wording is "passing mounds or pyramids" — things he rides by, not toward. He sets the Page of Wands "in a scene similar to the former," so the Knight crosses the same ground the Page stands on.

• The Short WandA single wand in leaf, carried at a rider's length — the whole suit reduced to what one hand can hold at a gallop.+

  Waite's text has him "armed with a short wand" — the only arm it names for a man in mail. A staff in leaf stands where a lance would be.

• Mail Armour Beneath the TunicMail under the salamander tunic — iron beneath, emblem on top: the body protected, the allegiance displayed.+

  Waite stresses the contradiction: "although mailed," he "is not on a warlike errand" but shown "as if upon a journey." The armour belongs to distance and the unknown road, not to a battle waiting at its end.

Story

Everything in this frame is mid-motion except the land. The horse has thrown its weight back onto its hind legs, forehooves off the ground, and the rider rises with it, so the eye is pulled upward first and then across, along the line of the ride. Around him the desert lies bare and still; the pyramids he is passing sit low and small on the horizon. Nothing else stands in the picture — no road, no companion, no wall to stop him. What is frozen is the top of the leap, before the hooves come down and the momentum is spent.

Correspondences

Elemental Dignity

Shadow

Related Cards

Page of Wands

The Chariot

Five of Wands

Combinations with this card