The Weekend Tarot Reading: Eight of Wands

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

We seem to be getting a fair number of Wands in our Weekend Tarot series, and most of them part of a run. First the Seven; then the Knight; then the Six — and now the Eight. So, in effect, we are starting to see the narrative of one card build into a larger story as the cards progress, albeit with a little switching around. Let’s see what the Eight means, and where it picks this story up with its own particular narrative.

The Eight of Wands is a comparatively straightforward tarot card for me: essentially ‘it does what it says on the box’. The title conferred on it by the little white book accompanying my deck is “Activation”; and I’m inclined to fall in line with this observation.

Eight Wands appear as if from the left side of the card, slanting downwards to the right. Behind them is an expanse of blue sky, which takes up the vast majority of the background — so much so that only the Wand at the bottom overlaps the landscape running along the bottom of the card. Blue sky speaks to me of unimpeded movement and of possibility. There are no clouds to slow down progress, and the sky itself is like a blank canvas. The saying “blue sky thinking” came to me as I looked at it. Clichéd as this phrase is in the corporate world, I feel that the meaning is somewhat reinvigorated in the context of this card.

The Wands stand out proudly against their cobalt backdrop; and the sense of unfettered movement is complemented by the land that runs along the bottom of the card in a modest strip. There are expanses of grass dotted with trees, and the river vibrates visually with the blue heavens above it: the ideal conditions for growth. Water, as you probably know, is often associated with emotions. Here, it is flowing rather than stagnant, suggested by its running across the width of the card. It feeds the landscape around it; but although it moves, it isn’t agitated (like the sea in the Two of Pentacles, for instance).

There is a small building on the hill at the left of the picture. It looks like a ruin, though doesn’t smack of desolation or disintegration. More like a gentle mellowing. The Wands travel over it. The ruin has had its (productive) time, and now it’s time to move on.

And finally the Wands themselves. There is an element of speed that is implied rather than explicit. There are no ‘speed lines’ accompanying the Wands, no backward movement of the sprigs on the shafts. And yet there is a sense of action in their angle, the fact that they are airborne. They are in parallel formation, controlled by a power that lies within them but also has its roots elsewhere (in the observer). They will land where they are most useful. An energetic alliance.

One of the Wands lags very slightly behind the rest. Catching up, perhaps? In which case, maybe it is the wand that the figure holds in the Seven of Wands. In the Seven of Wands reading, I remarked that I felt that the figure was at odds with himself, and that the battle was an inner one, rather than one that involved other people. In the Eight, that sense of antagonism has been defused as the Wands (the psyche) unite, the Wand that the figure was holding being the one that is a little later on the uptake, and moving in to catch up with its counterparts.

Integration and action, and a swift transition on to the next phase. That, in essence, is the Eight of Wands.