29-Eight of Wands – Upright Rider Waite Deck

Your Chosen Card – Eight of Wands Upright Rider Waite Deck

When upright, the Eight of Wands signifies swiftness in thought and deed. You are able to progress rapidly in a controlled and thoughtful manner. Your enthusiasm and confidence propel you forward. Your quick thinking and readiness to act decisively augur success in your endeavors. Messages and information pass quickly to and fro. This is one of the ‘travel’ cards of the tarot, suggesting that a journey or plane flight may be in the offing. Time spent in the countryside can be pleasant and refreshing. The flying wands on this card also symbolize Cupid’s arrows and may mean being smitten by love.

Keywords Upright: Swiftness, great haste, rapid progress, controlled acceleration, sport, enthusiasm, speeding toward a goal, the end of delay, confidence, quick thinking, rapid transfer of information, inspirational ideas, news from afar, an express messenger, contact with foreigners or people at a distance, Cupid’s arrow, love letters, flight, travel by air, rapid transit, a visit to the countryside.

Timing: 0 Sagittarius–10 Sagittarius. Tropical, 23 November–2 December. Sidereal, 16 December–24 December.
Astrology: Quick and clever Mercury (debilitated) in the first decan of fiery Sagittarius, realm of the Knight of Wands (Fire of Fire) and Temperance (Sagittarius). Mercury is linked to the Magician.
Number Symbolism: 8 – movement, action, power, determination.

Rider Waite: The card represents motion through the immovable – a flight of wands through an open country; but they draw to the term of their course. That which they signify is at hand; it may be even on the threshold. Divinatory Meanings: Activity in undertakings, the path of such activity, swiftness, as that of an express messenger; great haste, great hope, speed toward an end which promises assured felicity; generally, that which is on the move; also the arrows of love; (R) arrows of jealousy, internal dispute, stingings of conscience, quarrels; and domestic disputes for persons who are married.

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

Complete Book of Tarot
Book Details
Complete Book of Tarot: When upright, the Eight of Wands signifies swiftness in thought and deed. You are able to progress rapidly in a controlled and thoughtful manner. Your enthusiasm and confidence propel you forward. Your quick thinking and readiness to act decisively augur success in your endeavors. Messages and information pass quickly to and fro. This is one of the ‘travel’ cards of the tarot, suggesting that a journey or plane flight may be in the offing. Time spent in the countryside can be pleasant and refreshing. The flying wands on this card also symbolize Cupid’s arrows and may mean being smitten by love.

Tarot Books

Creative Tarot: Waite believed that the magical systems of the Golden Dawn and other systems were not about imposing your will on a situation (making someone love you, increasing your wealth, and so on) or about telling the future (Will this person love you? Will you ever be wealthy?). He believed they were for elevating the soul and for bringing what is unconscious conscious. He believed there was a divine order, and our job was to align ourselves with it or become a conduit, like the Magician in the tarot.

Complete Book of Tarot: Fact(s) 9: A good tarot deck is something to care for and cherish just as you would any object of beauty. Cards that get sticky with jam are hard to shuffle. Although it’s nice to receive the cards as a gift, most tarot readers buy their own decks and have more than one. If any of the above practices appeal to you, by all means engage in them but don’t feel obliged to do so. A useful discussion of this topic can be found in the article ‘Caring for Your Tarot Cards’ by Catherine Chapman.9

  • Do get in touch if you looked for Eight of Wands and we don’t have it listed. We would be more than happy to source the information for you. We hope you visit again for more online tarot information!

Tarot Triumphs: I would also like to credit the jongleurs as possible creators or transmitters of Tarot. These were medieval traveling entertainers who could juggle, sing, perform acrobatics, play instruments, act, tell stories, and even tame animals.14 Their profession overlapped with that of the troubadours or trouvères of southern France, whose poetry and music were on the whole more high-flown, but who shared the roaming, performing, marvel-seeking, and wonder-creating characteristics of the jongleurs.