Nine of Wands.
Still braced, and nothing attacking.
Upright, then reversed, as Waite gave them in 1910.
A man with a bandage round his head, leaning on a staff. Eight more stand behind him like a fence, all in leaf. He is looking sideways, out of the frame. There is nothing there.
The wound is old. The fence is good, and he is standing in front of it rather than behind it, which is where the strain comes from. Resilience is the usual word, and it is the wrong word for a man spending everything on a possibility. Nothing is attacking you at the moment, and you still have not sat down.
Four things people go to on this card
- the bandage
You went to the bandage, white, round his head, the only thing in the card that says anything already happened.
Something did happen. He is not imagining it, and the guard that got set afterwards is a different thing from being frightened in general, because it has a date and a cause and a scar.
The strength in this card is the unglamorous kind: still standing, still watching, on the strength of having been hit once. If your guard is up, it is up for a reason, and the reason is worth naming before you decide whether it still applies.
What actually happened to you once that this guard is still set for?
- the eight staves
It was the fence you touched: eight staves standing behind him in a row while he holds the ninth.
Everything he has already built is standing at his back and doing nothing. It is a good fence. He is not behind it; he is in front of it, holding the last one, as if the eight might not hold.
That is the most common shape of exhaustion, and it is worth naming: not a lack of resources, but standing out in front of them because you do not trust them to hold. Yours are behind you. Turn round and count them.
What have you already built that you are standing in front of instead of behind?
- his eyes
Your eye went to his face, turned sideways, out of the frame, at something we cannot see.
Nothing is happening in the picture. He is watching the edge of it anyway, and the watching is the cost: not a blow, but the hours of attention spent on a direction nothing has come from.
Ask how long you have been holding a line against something that has not actually come back. That is the question the card is built to make you flinch at, and the flinch is the answer.
How long have you been braced against something that has not come back?
- his grip
You went to his hands, and he is not holding the staff like a weapon; he is leaning on it.
He is using it to stand up. If he raises it, he falls over, which makes the staff both the defence and the support at once, and neither job can be given up without losing the other.
That is precise about how people carry a long strain. The habit that is exhausting you is also the one keeping you upright, and it cannot simply be put down. It has to be replaced, and the replacement has to be in your hand before you let go.
What is holding you up and wearing you out at the same time, and what could replace it?
Its ten degrees
The Golden Dawn gave the Nine of Wands 10° to 20° of Sagittarius, ruled by the Moon, and Book T calls it the Lord of Great Strength. The Sun is in it from 2 December to 12 December. The decan page for this card.
The wheel runs on from here. The decan before this one is Eight of Wands, Mercury in Sagittarius, 22 November to 2 December. The one after is Ten of Wands, Saturn in Sagittarius, 12 December to 21 December. All thirty-six, in order.
On the Tree of Life, Book T puts the Nine of Wands on Yesod, the foundation, in Atziluth, the world of fire: every nine is Yesod, in its own suit's world. It is the ninth place in the Tree of Life spread.
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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