Ten of Wands

Mutable fire: low sun, bleached trees, the flicker.

TEN OF WANDS

The Ten of Wands takes you deep into the woods, and lets you get lost.

There are tall trees in white sunlight, bleached animal skulls, and flickering light.

The monochrome landscape and white fog makes everything look the same.

Darkness can hide secrets in the shadows, but too much whiteness – as in fog, bright sunlight, or overexposed photographs – hides just as much.

T. Susan Chang describes the stifling nature of this card. With too much wood – too many wands – a fire can’t breathe. Or, worse, it becomes unmanageable; a wildfire.

One thing I'll tell you about building a fire is that if you load in too much wood, it won't light. Fire feeds on earth, but it needs air to breathe. So too can ambition stifle the talent and inspiration that surrounds it. But should you manage to ignite your 10-too-many wands, you will have a true conflagration on your hands! It will not stop until it has exhausted itself by destroying everything in sight, and that's a message of this card too.

By this time of the year, it can feel as though we have too many burdens, but that if we put them down, something bad will happen; perhaps a conflagration.

But fire, creativity, passion, and spirit need rest and space.

The wands are about to tumble anyway, so what freedom might there be in letting them fall as they may?

SAGITTARIUS III + TEN OF WANDS

This card correlates with the first decan of Sagittarius. You can learn more about the decans here.

Sagittarius III is Spectrality. In this decan, the Sun and Saturn meet. This echoes the wider seasonal movement from the mutable fire of Sagittarius towards the Saturnian heaviness of Capricorn, and the winter solstice.

This Saturnian feeling of boundaries and limits is present in Sagittarius III and in the Ten of Wands. Austin Coppock captures these limits:

Some offerings can only be made once.

– Austin Coppock, ‘Sagittarius III – A Horse’s Skull’

The presence of Saturn imposes limits, and grounds us in the reality of time and distance. The horse’s skull of Austin Coppock’s decanic name provides a spectral flicker between life and death – a recognisable animal, yet one who has already passed on.

The Ten of Wands in the Thoth deck is heavy with finery and tradition. These wands are ceremonial and weighty. The name of the card is simply ‘Oppression’.

The reason for this name seems connected to the tightly constructed, cage-like grid of wands; there is no flow or movement here, but stasis and heaviness.

The orange background hints at the Sun’s presence in the decan associated with this card. Though Saturnian themes of tradition and limits and history are here, so too is the gentle heat of the Sun – an invitation to put down the wands and feel the heat of the Sun on your skin.

These wands must be put back in their proper place – instruments to be used, not a prison to be endured.