MINOR ARCANA · WANDS · FIRE
Seven of Wands
Tarot card meaning · Lord of Valour
UPRIGHT
Standing your ground, defending your position.
REVERSED
Giving up, overwhelm, feeling attacked from all sides.
The card
The Seven of Wands is the seventh card of Wands, the suit of Fire: will, energy and ambition.
The Golden Dawn named it the Lord of Valour and gave it Mars in Leo, the decan of 20°–30° Leo, which the Sun passes through each year from about 12 to 23 August.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: Seven 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:
A young man on a craggy eminence brandishing a staff; six other staves are raised towards him from below. DIVINATORY MEANINGS It is a card of valour, for, on the surface, six are attacking one, who has, however, the vantage position. On the intellectual plane, it signifies discussion, wordy strife; in business—negotiations, war of trade, barter, competition. It is further a card of success, for the combatant is on the top and his enemies may be unable to reach him. REVERSED Perplexity, embarrassments, anxiety. It is also a caution against indecision.
FURTHER MEANINGS A dark child.
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: Seven 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.