The Weekend Tarot Reading: The Knight 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

The Knight of Wands, a youthful figure, straddles his mount. His hair, his gloves, and the horse are a fiery red, and plumes of flame spout from the top of his head and the back of his left arm. The reds are complemented by the yellows in his tunic, the leaves on the horse’s rein covers, and the desert below him. This is a card that radiates heat.

Then there are two counterpoints to the fieriness.

First, I see green on the horse’s rein covers and the five sprigs of leaves on the wand he clasps in his right hand. The heat is tempered. The horse — the means by which the Knight makes his journey, or the way that he moves through life — is not out of control. The reins lead my eyes from the Knight’s left hand to the horse’s mouth, which sits “on the bit”: it isn’t fighting the Knight, but is working for him; and the Knight’s grasp is both strong and authoritative.

Second, an expanse of sky forms the largest part of the backdrop. Blue is cool and that coolness is extended to the metallic sheen of the Knight’s armour. This particular personification of creative spirit may be intense, but there is also the presence of rationality. The sky also speaks of possibility — a cloudless blank canvass, and a lack of interference. He is a free agent, his path unimpeded.

This sense of free agency is further brought out when we take a second look at the flames on the Knight. Only his armour is on fire, and he doesn’t seem at all concerned about it. This is because the fire is as much a part of the Knight as his flame-red hair. Far from inflicting damage, this is the fire that comes from within. It is the Knight’s questing zeal as he burns up the landscape.

And what of that landscape? Along the bottom of the card runs a thin strip of desert, with pyramids at the far left. The desert is an earthly furnace; the yellow of the sands are echoed in the ragged yellow tunic, which draws my eyes to the salamanders, themselves symbols of fire.

The Knight is heading away from the open expanse of sand and in the direction of the pyramids. I get a sense that he is questing into new lands, and new possibilities, after a period in the wilderness that seared away those things that he no longer needed. His tunic certainly indicates that he has met with a conflagration of sorts, as it lies in tatters across the horse’s flank. The pyramids evoke an ancient wisdom. Is the Knight, himself, wiser after his ordeal?

In the juxtaposition of sky and flame there is a meeting of the elements air and fire. This combination can be cleansing and reinvigorating. It can also be explosive and destructive. Creative passion, like flames, can be both a servant and a master, and sometimes the sparks that we ignite for a ‘controlled burn’ end up burning uncontrollably themselves.

This card, to me, is all about a decision point — a place where creative zeal is held in balance. Can you see the mix of forward and backward motion in the picture? The forward motion is described in the fire and tunic blowing in the breeze created by movement; the horse’s front hooves reaching out of the picture, the Knight’s pointed toe. The backward motion by the way the horse’s head is set down, its weight concentrated in its hind legs, and the fact that the Knight is sitting back and deep in the saddle.

Will the Knight, consumed with passion, spring forward and challenge the very pyramids themselves by leaping over them? Or will he keep his eyes on them, acknowledging them as a guiding principle? Can he channel the energy coursing through him effectively and powerfully… or will he self-immolate? I get the strongest sense today that his is the course of focused creation that is productive rather than destructive, zealous rather than fanatical. But it is potent nonetheless!