Two of Wands

Identity

Symbols

• Wand Fixed into the WallThe half of the will already established — it no longer needs to be held.+

  Waite's wording is exact: the second staff 'is fixed in a ring' — a fitting set into the masonry itself. Of the card's two wands it is the one no hand needs to hold; it belongs to the building, not to the man.

• Wand in HandThe half that still requires a hand — because the intent has not yet arrived.+

  In the Golden Dawn system the card is the 'Lord of Dominion' — Mars in the first decan of Aries, under Chokmah. Yet Waite's staff 'rests on the battlement' rather than being raised: the martial decan, drawn at rest.

• The Small GlobeThe world held as something that fits in the palm — the map condensed from abstraction into a specific sphere.+

  Waite reads the globe through 'the sadness of Alexander amidst the grandeur of this world's wealth'. Plutarch tells how Alexander wept on hearing there were countless worlds, having not yet mastered one.

• The BattlementThe line you built yourself — the one who looks out must first recognize that he stands on his own edge.+

  Waite sets him on 'a battlemented roof': a parapet cut for defence, its gaps made for shooting through, here turned into a lookout. The stone edge is the nearest thing in the picture; everything he surveys lies beyond and below it.

• Rose, Cross and LilyOn the left side of the card, rose and lily set together with a cross — the one detail Waite tells the reader to notice.+

  The same pair grows in Waite's Magician: 'the flos campi and lilium convallium', the Vulgate's 'flower of the field and lily of the valleys' (Song of Songs 2:1). Here they return not as a garden but as one emblem.

• Sea and Shore BelowWaite's 'sea and shore' — the dominion itself, spread below the roof, which the globe in his hand repeats in miniature.+

  Waite names no ships here — only 'sea and shore'. The next card sets ships on such water and puts its man on open ground; in the Two the sea is still a view from a fortified roof, held at the distance of a wall.

Story

The picture is a pause between two looks. A tall man stands high on a castle roof, gazing out over the sea and shore that open beyond the parapet. Waite says he looks 'alternately' — now at that distance, now at the small globe in his right hand — and the card catches him between the two. Nothing on the roof moves. All the scale in the picture runs one way: a whole country laid out below, and a copy of the world small enough to hold.

Correspondences

Elemental Dignity

Shadow

Related Cards

The Magician

Three of Wands

Eight of Wands