MINOR ARCANA · WANDS · FIRE
Page of Wands
Tarot card meaning
UPRIGHT
Enthusiasm, exploration, a message of opportunity.
REVERSED
Lack of direction, hasty ideas, bad news.
The card
The Page 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 Page of Wands is Earth of Fire.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: The Princess of Wands. Crowley's courts are Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess, so this is the card the Rider–Waite–Smith deck calls the Page.
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:
In a scene similar to the former, a young man stands in the act of proclamation. He is unknown but faithful, and his tidings are strange. DIVINATORY MEANINGS Dark young man, faithful, a lover, an envoy, a postman. Beside a man, he will bear favourable testimony concerning him. A dangerous rival, if followed by the Page of Cups. Has the chief qualities of his suit. He may signify family intelligence. REVERSED Anecdotes, announcements, evil news. Also indecision and the instability which accompanies it.
FURTHER MEANINGS Young man of family in search of young lady. REVERSED Bad news.
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: Valet (the knave) 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.