Knight of Wands · Wands · Fire

Pamela Colman Smith drew the Knight of Wands mid-leap. The chestnut horse has thrown its forelegs off the ground, head pulled low against a red bridle, mane rising in curls shaped like flame. The rider goes with it: pale steel armor, visor raised, face bare, and where a feather plume would sit, a crest of red flame-tongues streaming off the helm. His yellow surcoat is worked all over with black salamanders, the old fire-lizard said to live inside the flame, and its hem is cut into scallops like fire. Each salamander curls nearly into a ring and then stops, head and tail not meeting. In his red-gloved hand a rust-red staff still in leaf, green shoots along its length, held upright like a lance he has forgotten to lower. Low in the distance, under a pale blue sky, three pyramids on flat orange ground. Nothing grows out there. He is going anyway.

Everything on this card is already moving except the ground.

Fire in the suit of fire makes this the hottest knight in the deck: appetite with a horse under it, conviction that starts moving before the argument has finished. Waite’s own list for him runs to departure, absence, flight, a change of residence.

Upright, that becomes impulsive courage, the leap taken while the careful are still consulting the map. The salamanders give the temperature: fire that has not closed on itself yet.

Reversed, the same heat with nothing to burn. Departure turns into escape, passion curdles into temper, and the plan gets outrun so badly it is simply left behind. His gloved hand is on the reins. The card only asks how hard he is pulling.