Six of Wands

Identity

Symbols

• The White Horse in Green ClothThe force that carried you this stretch — it has been dressed in formal cloth, meaning you are not the rider now; you are the one being carried.+

  Waite's text never mentions the horse; it gives only 'a laurelled horseman'. Smith supplies a white mount under a green drape, so the green of the two small wreaths is repeated across the largest shape on the card.

• The Laurel-Crowned StaffYour tool is granted a second form today — no longer just an instrument, but a sign that can be received, and also returned.+

  Pliny the Elder calls laurel the Romans' messenger of joy and victory, fixed to dispatches and soldiers' spears. Waite's reading keeps both senses: a victor, but also 'great news… carried in state by the King's courier'.

• Five Staves Held UprightWhat actually brought you here is not the horse — it is these five, who chose to raise their staves straight up beside yours.+

  Waite gives the company no number and no faces, only 'footmen with staves… at his side'. In the Golden Dawn system the card is the 'Lord of Victory': Jupiter in Leo's second decan, under Tiphareth, at the centre of the Tree.

• The Open Sky AheadThis procession has not yet arrived. Its point is not this moment, but to deliver you safely home, somewhere past the edge of the picture.+

  Waite's text gives the scene no setting at all: no road, no destination. Smith keeps it that bare, with only open sky behind the procession, so the end of the march lies outside the frame. The card shows passage, not arrival.

• The Rider's Red CloakA red cloak on the mounted figure — the colour that marks the man the procession is for.+

  It is the cloak that is red, not the horse's drape: the cloth beneath him is green. Set on that green, the red is the warmest patch in the picture, and it falls where the eye already goes, on the figure raised above the rest.

• Laurel Wreath on the Rider's BrowThe same green ring he carries on his staff, worn on his own head.+

  Waite crowns twice in one sentence: 'a laurelled horseman bears one staff adorned with a laurel crown'. Man and staff wear the same sign, and his reading names it 'expectation crowned with its own desire, the crown of hope'.

Story

The gaze is lifted in stages: past the heads of the men on foot, up the horse's shoulder, to the rider seated above them all. The six staves rise out of the group like a small grove carried along with it. The march is unhurried; no one in it is pressing ahead. Behind the raised staves there is only open sky: the company has left one place and not yet reached another, and the card draws neither.

Correspondences

Elemental Dignity

Shadow

Related Cards

Four of Wands

The Chariot

The Sun