Your Chosen Card – Two of Wands Upright Rider Waite Deck
When upright, the Two of Wands suggests that you are pondering a course of action or deciding on a future path your life will take. The young man on the card is contemplating a globe with a stance of self-assurance. Traditionally this card represented dark thoughts and sorrow. It reminds Waite of the sorrow of Alexander the Great amidst the grandeur of this worlds wealth. Modern interpretations view the Two of Wands as a card of fortune, grandeur, dominion, and influence over others. Perhaps it encompasses both meanings simultaneously. You may feel a sense of sadness as you contemplate a potential future course of action. The number two is related to partnerships, collaboration, and making important choices, which usually involve a sense of loss in giving up something to pursue another goal that you desire.
Keywords Upright: Dominion, influence over others, the power to control things, confidence, choosing ones direction in life, planning for the future, effective use of ones will, envisioning future developments, astonishment, an important decision, trying to figure a way out of a difficult situation.
Timing: 0 Aries10 Aries. Tropical, 20 March30 March. Sidereal, 14 April23 April
Astrology: The assertive and pioneering planet Mars (dignified) in the first decan of fiery Aries (the first ten days of spring); also the realm of the Queen of Wands (Water of Fire) and the Emperor (Aries). Mars is linked to the Tower. The fiery Queen of Wands gives birth to the season of spring at the beginning of Aries.
Number Symbolism: 2 – duality, partnership, choice, decision, balance, gestation.
Rider Waite: A tall man looks from a battlemented roof over sea and shore; he holds a globe in his right hand, while a staff in his left rests on the battlement; another is fixed in a ring. The Rose and Cross and Lily should be noticed on the left side. Divinatory Meanings: Between the alternative readings there is no marriage possible; on the one hand, riches, fortune, magnificence; on the other, physical suffering, disease, chagrin, sadness, mortification. The design gives one suggestion; here is a lord overlooking his dominion and alternately contemplating a globe; it looks like the malady, the mortification, the sadness of Alexander amidst the grandeur of this worlds wealth; (R) surprise, wonder, enchantment, emotion, trouble, fear.
When Two of Wands is upright you can pretty much take it that life is going well but that’s when life takes us by surprise. If Two of Wands is unclear it may help to choose a card from the Major Arcana to provide more insight into what it is Two of Wands is trying to tell you. If you had a particular issue in mind, or want to seek clarification on something else, you can also choose again to get more guidance.
This chosen card is part of your upright card reading for Two of Wands using cards from the Rider Waite Tarot Deck. You will find many more tarot pages that will be of great help if you need tarot card meanings. Use the search at the bottom of the page. We have some amazing tarot books for you to browse. Please see below.
Here are some snippets from a few of my favorite books
Book Details
Creative Tarot: The Golden Dawn actually didnt last very long. Infighting and power plays, mostly by the male members, splintered the group. Its most famous member was perhaps the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who remained interested in and engaged with magical systems until his death. The writer and magician Aleister Crowley is often associated with the group, but he was quickly ejected from its ranks for being a terrible person. (This is a fact, he was a terrible person. Look it up.) But two of its lesser-known members would spread the influence of the tarot far and wide: writer Arthur Edward Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith.
Complete Book of Tarot: Fact 6: The Oxford Dictionary defines psychic as ‘relating to or denoting faculties or phenomena that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, especially involving telepathy or clairvoyance.’ 7 In my view, the tarot is a tool that allows us to tap into our intuition, the results of which often appear ‘inexplicable by natural laws’ because we tend to ignore intuitive hunches as we grow into adulthood. The tarot helps restore the balance between rational analysis and listening to our gut. With continued practice, you may be surprised at how often unexpected yet verifiable impressions seem to leap from the cards.
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Tarot Triumphs: Or did gypsies play a part, as some conjecture? This is less likely, much as it appeals to many Tarot aficionados, myself included. Romany gypsies are now known to have left India about fifteen hundred years ago, a date rather early to have brought Tarot imagery with them.13 The images overall have an early medieval to Renaissance feel about them, injected with some strong classical associations. There are no overt Eastern allusions, and Tarot is generally considered to be a European invention, so an Indian origin seems unlikely. It seems more likely to me that the Tarot Triumphs emerged out of a more deliberate attempt to weld a set of images together by people with better access to books and manuscripts than gypsies were likely to have. The gypsies would have been on the move and lacking in formal education. But perhaps gypsy fortune-telling, as the Roma moved around Europe, played a part in the transmission. There is an element of learning to the Triumphs, an infusion of Christian imagery and also of more pagan beliefs, something that could have emerged from several centuries of evolution as images were picked up from diverse sources and gradually blended into a complete sequence for fortune-telling, imbued with folk wisdom; after all, wisdom itself is not the exclusive property of the educated classes.