Six of Wands · Wands · Fire

Six staves rise under the numeral VI, rust-red and still leafing. One man rides a pale horse in profile against an empty blue sky, a green laurel wreath on his hair, a second tied to the tall staff in his fist by a red ribbon whose end flies loose. His cloak is deep crimson, a yellow tunic under it, his leg bare to a pointed shoe. The horse carries a red bridle, a red plume at the crest, and a pale caparison banded in olive and scattered with red squares. Its legs are never drawn, so nothing says how fast this moves. Behind his shoulder, two faces among the staves, one in an olive cap, one under a red crest, two hands gripping shafts. Both look where he looks. Nobody is looking at him.

He wears one wreath. The other he has to keep holding up.

The Golden Dawn hung this decan on Jupiter in Leo and called it the Lord of Victory: fire enlarged by good fortune, said out loud. The plate is quieter than the title. He is higher because he is mounted and they are on foot.

Upright, the tradition reads recognition, and reads it kindly: good news arriving, credit landing where it was earned, the return with what you went for.

Reversed, the same dial turns toward the wreath and away from the work. The honor becomes the point and wants renewing daily; or nobody comes to see it and the sweetness turns. Neither reading asks you to refuse the laurel.

The card asks something narrower: whether you still see the two faces at your shoulder, and whose hands are on the other staves.