By Sarah Taylor
“Dynamic action.” This is one of the descriptors on the Knight of Wands, who stands — or rather sits, intently and intensely — at the centre of this week’s tarot reading.
The Wheel of Fortune, Knight of Wands, The Hierophant from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl.W- Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.
The Knight of Wands is described elementally as the fiery aspect of fire. In his highest expression, he is Eros embodied in the masculine principle: directed, focused, charged, yet also mature and contained. You can see this in the flames that lick in the background — an extension of his red hair — his strong jaw — suggesting resoluteness — and his hand in a fist resting on his forehead. He is ready for action.
What interests me most in the card is the monochrome of white, and the black and white surface, that come together in the negative space created by his arm and the side of his face. My eye is drawn to it time and again. It feels like a ‘break’ — a fire-break, a haven from the flames. To me, it is space to think — a place of focus and integration of energies that would otherwise have nowhere or nothing to breathe. He ‘holds’ that space, and the flames back, with his fist. There is Will at work here. Far from burning out of control, he is able to work with the fire — his fire — in a way that brings measure and presence to his experience.
As a Court Card, the Knight will tend to represent an aspect of who you are, a person who comes into your experience, or both. However, I also sense a transpersonal aspect to this more personal one, which may play out in the world at large: he embodies “Mars in Sagittarius” energy, an aspect that is current as I write this — the Knight of Wands associated with Sagittarius, and the Mars emphasised through his masculine-ness.
The two cards on either side of the Knight are qualitatively different. The Knight is the fire — the personal fire — to the cool, blue, star-filled backgrounds of The Wheel of Fortune and The Hierophant. While the Minor Arcana and Court Cards refer to the details of your life and aspects of the personality respectively, the Major Arcana represent Soul-based archetypal themes that are activating within and around you. Some are more personal and closer to home; others are more transpersonal and on a wider scale. All, however, speak to a quickening of that particular archetype, which furthers your Soul’s journey along the path of your life.
The Wheel of Fortune, associated with Jupiter, is the harbinger of a change in outer circumstances, effected by a shift in one’s relationship to oneself (hot, as it is, on the heels of The Hermit). It is this turning of the wheel that brings the Knight to where he is. The turning has a cosmic feel to it: all of the elements are present at the centre of the wheel; there is movement on all levels. And yet, through all of this movement, there is a still point too. It is when you move to the centre of the Wheel as it turns that you move to your own centre.
This is defined in the final card: The Hierophant is the particular energy at the centre of The Wheel of Fortune; it is what you can draw from when things outside have been inexorably set into motion.
Associated with Taurus as The Hierophant is, this idea of grounding is underlined by an earth sign. The Hierophant is Spirit’s expression on Earth. He holds the rituals and observances — both formal and informal — that create conscious, enacted accountability to a power higher than your physical self. As it is written on the card, The Hierophant is “inner teacher,” “spiritual father,” and “highest transformation.” The last of the first five cards in the Major Arcana that features only one figure, he is the point at which your authority over the physical world (The Emperor) opens into an awareness of an authority that does not reside in matter.
This is a particularly masculine reading — and by that I mean that it is concerned with the attributes of single-pointed focus and consciousness that we all have, no matter what our gender. And you will need both of these if you are to work with your own highly creative, dynamic abilities (and think of creativity in a broad sense of bringing something into the physical that has your own ‘stamp’ on it) at a time when they are both abetting, and being abetted by, circumstances that are changing — and most likely changing markedly.
Can you be the Knight at the centre (of your embodied awareness), who is the very essence of a highly charged artisan of fire, and yet holds to his connection to something that is in him, but not of him? Can you use the power that you carry within, not simply to create for creation’s sake, but to establish and maintain that connection?
Are you, in fact, the architect of the change that you see and feel — not at the mercy of it, but knowing what to do with it and where to go when fortune shapes your outer circumstances to fit your inner revolution? Both The Hierophant and the Knight of Wands seem to think so.
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Wheel of Fortune (Jupiter), Knight of Wands (the fiery aspect of fire), The Hierophant (Taurus)
If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.