Five of Wands tarot card meaning
Five of Wands is the card of competition, friction and many voices. Friction among people or ideas, often more energetic than dangerous. The Five of Wands reflects healthy competition or creative clash.
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Five of Wands upright
Friction among people or ideas, often more energetic than dangerous. The Five of Wands reflects healthy competition or creative clash.
Drawn upright, Five of Wands is the card at ease with itself, and competition, friction and many voices sit comfortably side by side. The image of five young figures brandishing wooden wands at one another in a lively holds the whole of it. Read it as a mirror, and ask what in your own life it is showing back.
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Five of Wands reversed
Conflict avoided until it festers, or a quarrel nobody can win. Ask what the contest is really about.
When Five of Wands falls reversed, many readers take it as the card’s energy turned inward. The competition it stands for has not gone; it is waiting, or it has been overused. Ask which, and the card has done its work.
What the card shows
The plate shows five young figures brandishing wooden wands at one another in a lively, disordered contest, none clearly winning, open field behind.
In the tradition this deck follows, the plate’s details are read this way: the staff as will and creative fire. Together they are why Five of Wands is read for competition, friction and many voices.
Five of Wands in love
For a question of the heart, Five of Wands turns attention to competition. It may mirror a season of friction in a friendship or a marriage, and it asks, gently, whether many voices is being offered as well as received. Wands are the suit of will, work and creative drive, so Five of Wands reads love through desire, energy and what two people are building.
Five of Wands in work and money
At work, Five of Wands reflects competition, and with money it asks about friction. Hold it against a real choice in front of you and see where many voices fits. Wands are the working suit of fire, so Five of Wands speaks plainly here, about drive, projects and the energy you bring to them.
As a question to carry
Is this struggle helping you grow, or simply tiring you?
Write it down, and come back to it when many voices next comes up in your week.
The suit of Wands
Five of Wands belongs to the suit of Wands, the suit of Fire, which tradition gives to will, work and creative drive. As a five of the suit it is a card of strain and change, the friction that comes in the middle of a story.
Read with its own keys, competition, friction and many voices, it shows fire at one particular point in the suit’s story. See all fourteen cards of Wands.
Draw your own cards
Reading about Five of Wands is one thing; drawing it in answer to your own question is another. Members draw from the full deck in the Almanac tarot: the card of the day, three cards, or the ten-card Celtic Cross, each card read in its place.
Tarot is a tool for reflection, not a replacement for God, prayer, Scripture or wise counsel.
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Common questions
What does Five of Wands mean in tarot?
Five of Wands is read for competition, friction and many voices. Friction among people or ideas, often more energetic than dangerous. The Five of Wands reflects healthy competition or creative clash.
What does Five of Wands mean reversed?
Conflict avoided until it festers, or a quarrel nobody can win. Ask what the contest is really about. Reversed, it keeps its theme of competition, seen from the side where it is blocked or overdone.
What does Five of Wands mean in love?
For a question of the heart, Five of Wands turns attention to competition. It may mirror a season of friction in a friendship or a marriage, and it asks, gently, whether many voices is being offered as well as received.
