From the peace and harmony of the Four of Wands, we move to the fights, struggles, irritations and contests in the Five of Wands.
Let’s take a look at the elements that often go into the interpretation of the Five of Wands.
Suit and element
Suit: Wands
Element: Fire
Both Wands and Fire have been discussed in previous posts (see ‘Related Posts’ below). In summary, Wands are about direction, control, power, intent, and will. They are associated with effort and hard work, and with its phallic shape, masculine characteristics such as drive, ambition, energy, and action.
Fire, on the other hand, implies heat, light, energy, and growth. It is also associated with purification, desire, destruction, sacrifice and divinity. Being pure energy, Fire has no form of its own, and left without fuel, will soon burn out (but maybe not until it has destroyed everything that can burn). It signifies both the spark of life and the spark of inspiration.
In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, the life-giving power of Fire is represented by growing leaves on the Wands.
In combination, Wands and Fire represent ideas and creativity, magic, and transformative power. The Wands personality is charismatic, passionate, enthusiastic, optimistic, and dynamic. When the power of Wands and the all-devouring energy of Fire combine, there is change, action, conflict, struggle, and suffering, but also celebration, victory, and strength in adversity.
The Suit of Wands usually represents creativity, business and career matters, and spirituality.
* Some Tarotists prefer to associate Wands with Air, in which case you will combine the characteristics of wands with those of air. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, whose teachings still have a major influence on Tarot, associated Wands with Fire.
The number
All meaning in Tarot is associative, that is, all elements and symbols take on the meaning(s) most often associated with them. When card meanings differ from and contradict each other, the cause is often different interpretations of one or more symbols. The number five is a good example of divergent associations.
Tilling the soil
Four represents a world of structure, order, control, and security. Everything changes, however; all things grow and decay. And so four gives way to five; to chaos, destruction, and loss.
Four represents a successful harvest. Before new seed can be sown, the soil needs to be prepared. Five is the upheaval and disruption of tilling, but also the possibility of fertility and growth, and therefore health and vitality. It is the transitional phase to an even deeper balance and harmony.
It brings with it freedom, but also disruption, instability, and alteration.
Creativity
If seen as change and unpredictability, Five is a number of creativity. Creative inspiration is stifled in the unchanging world of four, but flourishes where everything is in flux. Times of transition and uncertainty open new possibilities and expanded horizons.
Time
Where four defines a three-dimensional shape (the pyramid), five represents the fourth dimension, which is time. Time brings change and growth, but also endings, loss, and decay.
To Christians, the number might suggest the five wounds of Christ, another image of pain and violence. It is also an image of sacrifice.
The pentagram
Just as four is the square, five is the pentagram, or five-pointed star. When the star is upright (one point upward and two down), the pentagram signifies humanity: we have four limbs, and the head makes a fifth protrusion. (See the image below, from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Libri tres de occulta philosophia. Agrippa was a sixteenth-century German physician and alchemist.)
Five also indicates humanity because humans have five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot, and five senses.
Because five is the number of humanity, it signifies that humankind is a mixture of good and bad.
5 = x + y
The Pythagoreans saw five as the number of marriage, of mystic harmony, the joining of heaven and earth and the union of male and female in marriage. Five is the sum of two and three (5=2+3); two represents the earth and the feminine, while three stands for the sacred (see the post on the Three of Wands). Three is also the first odd number, and therefore male. (Remember that the Pythagoreans did not regard one as a real number.)
Five can also be written as 4+1, which is the union of the material (four) and the divine (one).
If Five is written as 2+1+2, with two signifying duality, we can say that five is the balance between opposing forces, and that it can mediate and negotiate where there is conflict and opposition (two). It can also mean that man and woman are equal, with God as the balancer in between.
The Pythagoreans regarded five as a circular number, because when squared, 5 is always part of the solution: 52 = 25, 55 = 3125.
Three and four both signal completion, the end of a cycle. Five is completion in a different way: that of totality, holism, a whole. This is because five fingers make a hand and five toes make a foot. (Sort of.) Five points make a ‘man’ (see Agrippa’s diagram above). Five senses let us form a picture of the (material) world around us.
‘Whole’ and ‘completion’ mean comprehensiveness, and from there we go to comprehension and understanding.
Moving on
In the fire suit, five is about movement, constant activity, and restlessness; movement not only because five is a circular number, but also because the pentagram is an infinite shape. You can trace the lines over and over, without coming to a stop. (See Eliphas Lévi’s Pentagram on the right, from his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, 1855).
Unlike the Four of Wands, which looks to the past, five focuses on the future.
On the Tree of Life
The Kabbalistic system assigns significance to numbers according to the ten sephiroth on the Tree of Life.
The fifth sephirah on the Tree is Gevurah (or Geburah), often translated as strength, judgement, power, restraint, severity, or discipline. Where Chesed is mercy, Gevurah is perfect justice.
Associations that flow from “justice” include difficult decisions, duty, rewards and punishment, sowing and reaping, morality, and fear.
Mars, the god of war, is assigned to Gevurah, where he strengthens the severity of the sephirah with power and authority.
As counterpoint to Chesed—the Expressed Father—Gevurah is the Expressed Mother. This means that five is both female and, as an odd number, male. Again we can say that five expresses the equality and union of man and woman.
The heart of the matter
Five can be a turning point or a pivot. Why? In the sequence of the single-digit numbers, five is the middle number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. It stands between beginning (one) and completion (nine), which means five is a significant number. Whatever happens in five, choices and actions will influence the rest of the suit.
Five goes to the heart of the matter, the very centre of attention.
Five can therefore also represent mediation and negotiation between parties.
A spiritual number
Five can be a spiritual number because there are five books in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament, that is, the Law); Jesus received five wounds on the cross, and 5=2+3, in this case with two referring to the twofold command to love God and your neighbour, and three to the Trinity.
Mediaeval alchemists added aether to the four elements fire, water, air, and earth. They believed that aether was the same or a similar substance to what heavenly bodies are made of. Aether is also often associated with spirit.
William Wynn Westcott, co-founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, muses that five can refer to a demi-goddess, for five is half the decad (10), which is divine.
Twins?
Westcott also suggests that five can refer to twins, because it divides the decad into two equal parts (5+5=10). (Numbers: Their occult power and mystic virtues.)
Astrology
The Golden Dawn assigned the first decan of Leo (Saturn in Leo) to the Five of Wands. Picatrix described this decan as one of boldness, liberality, victory, cruelty, lust, and violence.
Saturn, as the furthest planet that could be seen with the naked eye (that is, the planet was seen as the boundary of the universe), is the planet of restriction, boundaries, limits, discipline, duty, and the rigid enforcement of the law. Saturn is the Roman equivalent of Cronos (a titan), often confused with Chronos, the personification of time. Due to this confusion, Saturn is also the master of time (or Father Time), and therefore growth, loss and decay.
Saturn is in detriment in Leo, which might mean that fiery, wilful Leo has to suppress his enthusiasm and impulsiveness. The result could be explosive, turning Leo’s natural authority and courage to cruelty, lust, and violence.
Tradition
The Golden Dawn’s interpretation is a combination of characteristics of Gevurah and Saturn in Leo. They agree with Picatrix’s view (cruelty, violence, lust), and add rashness and wastefulness. Their title for the card is “Lord of Strife.” Crowley agreed.
Waite, however, seems to give the energy and competitiveness of five and the exuberance of Wands greater emphasis. He sees “mimic warfare” and “sham fights,” and the “strenuous competition and struggle of the search after riches and fortune” (The Pictorial Key to the Tarot).
The bit about riches and fortune is probably Waite’s attempt to reconcile Etteilla’s interpretation with his. Etteilla perceives gold, riches, luxury, and fortune (and, for some reason, the physical, philosophical, and moral sun) in the card.
The image
Are the boys fighting, or are they trying to form a pentagram with the wands? How serious is the fight?
Corresponding majors
The corresponding major arcana cards are Trump V, The Hierophant, and Trump XIV, Temperance (14=1+4=5)
Five means trouble in the suit of Wands, and therefore spiritual and sexual problems. And so the Hierophant depicts everything that the Five of Wands is not. The Hierophant shows harmony and a common purpose; In the Five of Wands there is conflict. Instead of loss, the Hierophant suggests “found.”
Spiritual power turns into the fight for temporal power. Perfect peace has become restless movement; eternity, the loss and decay of earthly time.
The Hierophant stands for convention, tradition, morality, the tried-and-true, conventional wisdom, social norms, formal education, and marriage. He also represents perfect justice—tempered by mercy and forgiveness—and appropriate expression of sexual desire.
The Five of Wands depicts the struggle against rules and conventions. The card could also suggest a loss of the inhibitions and restraints necessary in a civilized society. Depending on how violent you see the fight, this struggle could free creative inspiration, or remove the social restraints that keep us civilized.
Temperance is another foil for the aggression displayed on the Five of Wands. Trump XIV shows the most positive aspects of five—moderation, balance, successful combination, blending, and harmony—while Wands turn to violence and, depending on how aggressive you think the card is, cruelty and lust.
Corresponding minors
The fives in the suits are about hardship and loss, and the worst that the suit could bring. In the Five of Cups we find emotional pain; in the Five of Swords, despair and mental anguish; in the Five of Pentacles, poverty and illness.
Like the Four of Wands, the Five of Wands can be seen as the most positive of the four cards. The exuberance and enthusiasm of Wands could result in not much more than lost tempers and perhaps the ‘aggression’ of a war game. On the other hand, if repressed anger boils over and the boys lose their inhibitions, the fight could lead to bloodshed and depravity.
Sequence
The Four of Wands suggests perfect peace and domesticity. Change is inevitable, however, or growth will come to a complete standstill. In the Five, peace is disrupted, harmony becomes a fight, order becomes disorder. Peeking ahead, we can see the victor riding triumphantly away. But what happened to those who lost the fight?
Related Posts
Making meaning: The wand as a symbol
So, you drew the Ace of Wands in a reading?
Personal power perplexed: Two of Wands (Part 1)
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