King of Wands.
Appetite that has lasted long enough to feed itself.
Upright, then reversed, as Waite gave them in 1910.
A king half turned away, looking off to the left, a sprouting staff planted beside him. Lions on the throne back and salamanders biting their own tails. On the floor by his foot, a live lizard nobody is holding.
He has wanted things for a long time and has not stopped. Authority that came from appetite, decades on and still in leaf, and not arranged for your benefit: he has not turned to face you. If what you have done for years is still growing, this is what it looks like from outside.
Four things people go to on this card
- the lizard
You went to the lizard on the ground, real, loose, and the only living thing near him that is not on a piece of furniture.
The salamanders on his throne are embroidery. That one is alive, on the floor, near his foot, and nobody is holding it. Fire owned and fire kept are different things, and the card puts both on the plate a foot apart.
So the picture is not saying he has mastered anything. It is saying he has learned to sit near it. If there is something in your life you have stopped trying to control and not stopped keeping, you already know what the lizard is.
What have you learned to sit near rather than control?
- the salamanders
It was the throne back you touched: salamanders with their tails in their mouths, closed into circles, and lions between them.
This is the finished version of the suit's emblem, and it is the one detail that separates him from the Knight and the Page, who both wear open ones. The circle is not decoration; it is a claim about what has happened to the fire.
A circuit means the fire comes back round. That is what long competence looks like from outside: the same appetite, but it feeds itself now instead of needing lighting every morning. If yours has started doing that, you will have noticed the mornings getting easier.
What in your working life has finally started feeding itself?
- his turn
You went to how he is sitting, turned away, side-on, looking off to the left rather than at you.
He is not performing the office. Every other king in this deck faces you; this one has half turned, mid-thought, and has not arranged himself.
That is a strength and a warning at once. He is not managing your impression of him, which means you get the truth and no reassurance. Where it would help you to be turned away like this, the card suggests, is exactly where you are currently most careful about being seen.
Where would it help you to stop managing the impression and just be turned away?
- the staff
Your eye went to the staff, planted on the ground, upright, and still sprouting after all this.
Long authority that has not gone dead. It is the same cut branch as the Ace, decades on, still in leaf and now holding weight, which is the whole promise of this suit if it goes well.
Ask, honestly, whether the thing you have been doing for years is still putting out leaves. The card is specific that it can, and equally specific about what a staff looks like when it has stopped: it is furniture.
Is the thing you have done for years still putting out leaves, or only holding weight?
On the Tree of Life, Book T puts the King of Wands on Chokmah, wisdom, in Atziluth, the world of fire: the kings of all four suits sit there, one to a world. It is the second place in the Tree of Life spread.
Which zodiac signs does the King of Wands cover?
Twenty degrees of Scorpio to twenty degrees of Sagittarius: the last third of Scorpio and the first two thirds of Sagittarius, which the Sun crosses about 12 November to 12 December each year. Book T gives every king thirty degrees across two signs like this, which is why a court card belongs to no single sign. The three decans inside it are Seven of Cups · Eight of Wands · Nine of Wands, so a birth in any of them carries the King of Wands as well as its own card.
Draw a card, and if this one turns, press whichever of these four you went to and the reading is written from there instead. Pulled it in a spread of your own? Read the whole spread here.
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