Six of Wands

The image

A young man crowned with a laurel wreath rides a white horse through a crowd. He carries a wand topped with a second wreath tied with a red ribbon. The horse is draped in a long green caparison that reaches almost to its hooves. Around the rider walk several men on foot, each holding his own wand upright, so that six staves rise together across the top of the card. The sky is blue and the figures press close, giving the sense of a procession through a street rather than a battlefield.

History

In the older card games the Six of Batons was a symmetrical arrangement of crossed staves. Smith's scene of 1909 borrows instead from the imagery of the classical triumph, in which a victorious general paraded with laurel through cheering crowds — the same imagery behind the Italian trionfi, the name by which the tarot's trump cards, and then the whole game, were first known in the fifteenth century. Waite's commentary describes a laurelled horseman bearing one staff adorned with a laurel crown, with footmen at his side, and stresses the several meanings the design was meant to carry.

Symbolism

The Golden Dawn titled the card the Lord of Victory and gave it Jupiter in Leo, the benefic planet in the royal sign, in Tiphareth, the central sefirah of beauty and harmony. Crowley kept the title Victory. Six, in the minor arcana, often restores balance after the upheaval of five (see number 6). The laurel is the ancient prize of victors and poets; the white horse suggests purity of purpose; the green cloth growth and renewal. A wreath on the wand as well as on the head shows honour both worn and displayed — the root of the card's confidence and of its risk of vanity.

In a reading

Readers often pair it with the Chariot, whose triumphal theme it echoes, and with the Five of Wands, whose contest it resolves. Next to the Page of Wands or the Eight of Wands it is read as good news arriving. In questions about exams, applications or competitions it is among the most favourable minor cards; in a past position it may describe a success whose glow is now fading.

Modern commentators often add a note of humility: the crowd that cheers today can turn tomorrow, and the card's strength lies in a victory earned honestly rather than in applause. For that reason many readers treat it as a sign to consolidate success, thank supporters and prepare the next step rather than rest on the laurels.