MINOR ARCANA · WANDS · FIRE
King of Wands
Tarot card meaning
UPRIGHT
Vision, entrepreneurship, bold leadership.
REVERSED
Impulsiveness, arrogance, unrealistic expectations.
The card
The King of Wands is one of the four court cards of Wands, the suit of Fire: will, energy and ambition.
In the Golden Dawn's scheme each court card is an element within its suit's element: the King of Wands is Fire of Fire.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: The Knight of Wands. Crowley's courts are Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess, so this is the card the Rider–Waite–Smith deck calls the King.
In Waite's words
Arthur Edward Waite designed the deck that Pamela Colman Smith drew, and explained it in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911). His text, with his spelling:
The physical and emotional nature to which this card is attributed is dark, ardent, lithe, animated, impassioned, noble. The King uplifts a flowering wand, and wears, like his three correspondences in the remaining suits, what is called a cap of maintenance beneath his crown. He connects with the symbol of the lion, which is emblazoned on the back of his throne. DIVINATORY MEANINGS Dark man, friendly, countryman, generally married, honest and conscientious. The card always signifies honesty, and may mean news concerning an unexpected heritage to fall in before very long. REVERSED Good, but severe; austere, yet tolerant.
FURTHER MEANINGS Generally favourable; may signify a good marriage. REVERSED Advice that should be followed.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), Part III §§ 2 and 4. Public domain; text from the 1922 printing on Wikisource.
Related cards
The same card in the other suits
In three historical decks
The same card as it was painted in fifteenth-century Milan, printed in the French pattern of the Tarot de Marseille, and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider–Waite–Smith deck.
In the Tarot de Marseille: Roi (the king) of Bâtons (batons).
Learn more in the lessons
- Reading the Court Cards · 16 min
- The Tarot & the Stars — Decans, Pips & Courts · 16 min
- The Structure of the Tarot · 14 min · free
Images: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909 (public domain); the RWS1909 scans on Wikimedia Commons. Lequart, Paris, c. 1890 (public domain); scans from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica), via Wikimedia Commons. Attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, mid-15th century (public domain); scans by David Madore, via Wikimedia Commons.