Ten of Wands · Wands · Fire

Ten staves clamped in both arms against his chest, their sprouting green tops fanned above him, their lower ends splaying down in front of him until one touches the earth. Bent nearly double under them: red tunic, pale hose, laced salmon shoes, a grey puffed sleeve where his arm closes round the load. Pamela Colman Smith kept his face out of the card. The head is turned into the bundle, and all that shows of it is a crown of yellow hair. Flat cloudless blue sky, flat ochre field, the numeral X plain above the load. Ahead at the right edge, a few pale houses under red roofs, trees crowding behind. He is walking straight toward them, and his head is too low to see them.

Nobody put this load on him. He gathered it one staff at a time, and wanted every one.

Wands is the suit of fire: will, drive, the thing that wanted doing. By the Ten the fire has nowhere left to go but into weight. The Golden Dawn put Saturn in Sagittarius here, gravity lodged in the sign that keeps saying yes.

Upright, the tradition reads burden and overreach. Success thickened into freight. Work carried alone, because handing any of it over would cost more explaining than hauling. The card of the person who learned to gather and never learned to put down, read without scolding. The load is real, and it is his.

Reversed, the bundle drops. Some readers name collapse, the weight finally winning. Others name release: staves let go, work shared, the head coming up. The hand opens either way.

Ten staves, and he only ever needed one to walk with.