MINOR ARCANA · WANDS · FIRE
Nine of Wands
Tarot card meaning · Lord of Great Strength
UPRIGHT
Resilience, persistence, the last stretch.
REVERSED
Exhaustion, paranoia, giving up too soon.
The card
The Nine of Wands is the ninth card of Wands, the suit of Fire: will, energy and ambition.
The Golden Dawn named it the Lord of Great Strength and gave it Moon in Sagittarius, the decan of 10°–20° Sagittarius, which the Sun passes through each year from about 2 to 12 December.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: Nine of Wands, with the title and the zodiac decan from the Golden Dawn, as shown above.
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 figure leans upon his staff and has an expectant look, as if awaiting an enemy. Behind are eight other staves—erect, in orderly disposition, like a palisade. DIVINATORY MEANINGS The card signifies strength in opposition. If attacked, the person will meet an onslaught boldly; and his build shews that he may prove a formidable antagonist. With this main significance there are all its possible adjuncts—delay, suspension, adjournment. REVERSED Obstacles, adversity, calamity.
FURTHER MEANINGS Generally speaking, a bad card.
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
Its trumps
The High Priestess: its planet, Moon · Temperance: its sign, Sagittarius
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: Nine of Bâtons (batons). The numbered cards carry no scene, only the suit's symbols arranged as on a playing card, so they are read from the number and the pattern.
Learn more in the lessons
- The Tarot & the Stars — Decans, Pips & Courts · 16 min
- The Structure of the Tarot · 14 min · free
- Reading the Cards · 16 min
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.