Seven of Wands

The image

A young man stands on a rocky rise, gripping a wand across his body with both hands. From the bottom edge of the card six more wands thrust up toward him, held by attackers who cannot be seen. He wears a green tunic, and a detail often pointed out by modern commentators is his footwear: he seems to have on two different shoes, as though he dressed in a hurry when the challenge came. Behind him the sky is clear and the land falls away into the distance. His expression is strained but determined.

History

As with nearly all of the numbered minors, the older decks offered nothing like this scene: the Marseille Seven of Batons shows a lattice of crossed staves with one upright through the centre. Pamela Colman Smith's composition is one of her most direct pieces of storytelling, built from the simple geometry of six against one. Waite's interpretation in 1910 drew on the Golden Dawn title, while his business meanings — negotiation, barter, competition — continued the practical fortune-telling tradition of Etteilla and the nineteenth-century cartomancers. Later writers on the Waite–Smith pack, Rachel Pollack among them, stressed the card's psychological side: the energy, and the cost, of being always on guard.

Symbolism

The Golden Dawn named it the Lord of Valour and attributed it to Mars in Leo, the planet of combat in the sign of courage, placed in Netzach, the sefirah of victory and of the passions on the Tree of Life. Crowley's card bears the same title. Seven is often a number of testing and solitary effort (see number 7), and in this suit it asks for courage rather than calculation. The height gives the defender his advantage; the hidden attackers suggest that pressure can come from many directions, not all of them visible and not all of them personal.

In a reading

Readers frequently contrast the Seven with the Nine of Wands, a later and wearier stage of the same vigilance. With Strength it emphasises inner fortitude; with the Five of Wands it describes an ongoing contest in which one has the upper ground. In an advice position it often says: hold your position. In an obstacle position it may warn of exhausting defensiveness.

Because the attackers are invisible, some readers ask whether the opposition is real or imagined, and whether the querent has climbed a hill that nobody else wants. In questions of principle, though, the card is a clear endorsement of standing firm, and it is often welcomed by people who are defending a decision that others doubt.