Three of Wands.
A plan that has left the harbour.
Upright, then reversed, as Waite gave them in 1910.
His back is to us. He stands on a rocky ledge with one hand on the rightmost of three staves planted in the ground, looking out over a yellow sea at three small ships, and the sky is the same yellow as the water.
He has done the thing, and now he stands watching it happen without him. Enterprise, trade, the first results of something begun. If something of yours is out of your hands this week, this is the card for the waiting and not for the sending.
Four things people go to on this card
- his back
You went to his back first. The card refuses to show his face, so whatever he is feeling, you are supplying it.
Read him as satisfied and this is a card about arrival. Read him as anxious and it is a card about waiting. The picture will not settle it and nobody else will either.
What you supplied says more about where you are this week than the card does. He is standing perfectly still either way, which is the one fact available, and the stillness is compatible with both. If you supplied dread, notice that the ships are still afloat.
You supplied the expression on his face. What was it, and why that one?
- the ships
You went to the ships. They are small and far off and they are either leaving or returning, and the card does not say which.
He sent them, or he is waiting on them. Either way they are out of reach now, and they are moving at their own speed on water he cannot stand on.
This is the card of the thing you have already set in motion and can no longer touch, which is a particular discomfort with no remedy except other work. Checking on it does not move it. You have been checking, and the checking has been the only thing you did this week that made no difference.
What have you already set in motion that you keep checking on instead of leaving alone?
- the staves
Three staves, planted, upright, and he is holding one; the other two are standing on their own.
Two of the three stand without him. That is the whole difference between a beginning and an established thing: some of it now holds itself up, and he is touching only the one nearest him.
It is worth knowing which of yours are which, because people go on holding the ones that would stand anyway. You are holding at least one thing up that would stand if you let go, and the reason you have not let go is that letting go would prove it.
Which of the things you are holding up would stand on their own if you let go?
- the sky
The sky is the same yellow as the sea, which means the horizon is a decision rather than a line.
You choose where one ends and the other begins. The picture does not draw the join. There is a strip of mountains on the right and then nothing to say where water becomes air.
That is what a plan looks like from the cliff once it has left. The limits are not out there being measured. They are being set by you, provisionally, in the light you have, and the light is the same colour all the way up. Whoever put the horizon where it is in your plan, it was drawn in, not found.
Where have you put the horizon, and did you set it or accept somebody else's?
Its ten degrees
The Golden Dawn gave the Three of Wands 10° to 20° of Aries, ruled by the Sun, and Book T calls it the Lord of Established Strength. The Sun is in it from 30 March to 10 April. Power draw Saturn is on this card tonight. The decan page for this card.
The wheel runs on from here. The decan before this one is Two of Wands, Mars in Aries, 20 March to 30 March. The one after is Four of Wands, Venus in Aries, 10 April to 20 April. All thirty-six, in order.
On the Tree of Life, Book T puts the Three of Wands on Binah, understanding, in Atziluth, the world of fire: every three is Binah, in its own suit's world. It is the third 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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