MINOR ARCANA · WANDS · FIRE
Six of Wands
Tarot card meaning · Lord of Victory
UPRIGHT
Victory, public recognition, confidence.
REVERSED
Ego, fall from grace, lack of recognition.
The card
The Six of Wands is the sixth card of Wands, the suit of Fire: will, energy and ambition.
The Golden Dawn named it the Lord of Victory and gave it Jupiter in Leo, the decan of 10°–20° Leo, which the Sun passes through each year from about 2 to 12 August.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: Six 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 laurelled horseman bears one staff adorned with a laurel crown; footmen with staves are at his side. DIVINATORY MEANINGS The card has been so designed that it can cover several significations; on the surface, it is a victor triumphing, but it is also great news, such as might be carried in state by the King's courier; it is expectation crowned with its own desire, the crown of hope, and so forth. REVERSED Apprehension, fear, as of a victorious enemy at the gate; treachery, disloyalty, as of gates being opened to the enemy; also indefinite delay.
FURTHER MEANINGS Servants may lose the confidence of their masters; a young lady may be betrayed by a friend. REVERSED Fulfilment of deferred hope.
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: Six 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.