26-Five of Wands – Upright Salem Deck

Your Chosen Card – Five of Wands Upright Salem Deck

When upright, the Five of Wands is a card of competition. It suggests that you are assertively pursuing your desires, even though your personal interests may conflict with those of your colleagues. You are willing to compete fairly and enthusiastically with your rivals to achieve your goals. This card advises you to ‘put your pedal to the metal’ as you engage in the game of life. A mock battle can prepare you for the real thing. Allowing for diversity of opinions is a sign of strength in a relationship. Traditionally this is a card of riches and opulence; perhaps only the affluent could afford the expensive outfits and leisure time to play at the mock battles depicted on this card.

Keywords Upright: Competition, assertiveness, friendly disagreement, disparate interests, conflicting ambitions, a lovers’ quarrel, rivalry, mock battle, celebrating diversity, confrontation, testing your mettle, fighting for what you want, successful speculation, luxury, affluence, diversity, pursuing your desires, engaging with peers in the game of life.

Timing: 0 Leo–10 Leo. Tropical, 23 July–2 August. Sidereal, 18 August–26 August.
Astrology: The stern taskmaster Saturn (debilitated) in the first decan of fiery Leo, realm of the Waite Knight/Thoth Prince of Wands (Air of Fire) and Strength (Leo). Saturn is linked to the World. The Golden Dawn regarded this decan as the beginning of the zodiac.
Number Symbolism: 5 – instability, disruption, loss, crisis, tension, competition, conflict.

Crowley/Thoth: Strife, quarrels, fights, the element Fire burdened and embittered by Saturn.

When Five 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 Five of Wands is unclear it may help to choose a card from the Major Arcana to provide more insight into what it is Five 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 Five of Wands using cards from the Salem 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

Portable Magic
Book Details
Portable Magic: Your own intuitive perception of this spirit is that she is female, so you modify her title, calling her the Lady of Peace Restored. You conceive her initially much as she is depicted on this card in the Rider Waite Tarot, as a slender woman with short dark hair who wears a long white robe that hangs down to her feet. She is not blindfolded, as she appears on the Waite card, nor does she carry swords. These symbolic details on Waite’s version of the card are only intended to indicate A. E. Waite’s concept of the card, and are not inevitable features of the elemental spirit of the card. This description is intended only as an example another magician might well see the spirit differently.

Tarot Books

Complete Book of Tarot: Card 5, the possible or ideal outcome, was the Five of Wands depicting a group of young men engaged in rivalry and competition.

Complete Book of Tarot: The Ten of Cups shows a happy family enjoying life in secure circumstances. Unlike the Devil card (which focuses almost exclusively on self-interest and material lusts), the Ten of Cups displays the joy of sharing in close personal relationships. As the last card in the spread, the Ten of Cups suggests that, in the end, the tarot can help us to establish more loving relationships. The Golden Dawn associated this card with the warlike planet Mars, suggesting that the support of close personal relationships can help us weather the stresses and conflicts of daily life.

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Complete Book of Tarot: The sleep-with-your-cards myth: you must sleep with a new deck of cards under your pillow to become properly attuned to them.