Ace of Wands
Wands
How This Card Is Derived
Papus gives no separate description of this card. It is derived from his system: Wands is Yod (י), the active, originating principle, acting in Atziluth, the archetypal world; the number 1 is Yod of the first series, the pure active origin of the suit. The meaning below is that combination read out — the active, originating principle taken at its 1st term — not a quotation from him.
Upright
The active principle of the active suit — Papus's purest origin, Yod within Yod. Nothing precedes it and nothing conditions it: the impulse itself, before it has an object, a plan or a cost. In Atziluth this is the archetypal beginning, which is why the card always feels larger than its circumstances. It has no content of its own. Everything the suit does afterwards is this force acquiring one.
Reversed
The impulse dissipated — force that arrives, finds no channel, and is spent on nothing. Or the beginning postponed until conditions are right, which for a Yod means postponed indefinitely.
Correspondences
- Suit
- Wands — Yod (י), Atziluth, the archetypal world
- Suit principle
- the active, originating principle
- Number
- 1 — Yod of the first series
- Numeric role
- the pure active origin of the suit
In a Spread
At the commencement, the matter begins in a pure impulse, and Papus would read the rest of the spread as what that impulse ran into. In opposition, somebody else's initiative. At equilibrium the situation is held by a force that has not yet been directed. As the result: a beginning, not an outcome.