Nine of Wands
Tarot card meaning, upright and reversed
What it means
Upright
This card is read as resilience near the end of a long effort: tired, wary, and still standing. Waite called it strength in opposition.
Reversed
Reversed, it is read as exhaustion, defensiveness, or a guard that never comes down even when the fight is over.
A question to sit with
What old wound still makes you brace for the next blow? Is there someone you could let help guard the line?
The deeper reading
Traditionally the will that has been wounded and remains. Readers take it as the dignity of endurance.
What is drawn on the card
A man with a bandaged head leans on a wand and looks warily to one side. Eight more wands stand behind him like a fence.
As Pamela Colman Smith drew it in 1909. Our paintings follow these scenes.
Waite’s own description (1911, paraphrased): A figure leans on his staff with an expectant look; eight upright staves stand behind him like a palisade.
- Suit
- Wands
- Element
- Fire
- Domain
- Will, passion, creativity, action
Where the card comes from
- Tarot began as a card game in 15th-century Italy. The earliest record is from Florence in 1440, and the game is still played today in France, Austria and Bologna.
- Reading the cards for fortunes is documented from Bologna around 1750, with ordinary playing decks.
- In 1781 Antoine Court de Gébelin wrote that the cards came from ancient Egypt. There is no evidence for it, and he wrote before anyone could read hieroglyphs (1822).
- The Hebrew letters and astrological signs on each card are 19th-century French and English occult attributions; the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888) fixed the set most readers use.
- The scenes follow the 1909 Waite–Smith deck, designed by A. E. Waite and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. The Innerverse cards are our own paintings of those scenes.
Sources: Michael Dummett, The Game of Tarot (1980); Morgan Library & Museum, Visconti-Sforza tarot, MS M.630; Court de Gébelin, Le Monde primitif, vol. VIII (Paris, 1781); A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911).
Draw your own card
Nine of Wands is one of 78. Draw one card or a three-card spread in the Innerverse, read with the same art and the same sources, free.
Or make it daily: one card each morning, with a private note →Want the whole deck? All 78 cards and the guidebook.
Traditional readings, presented as tarot readers have held them. They are a record of a practice, not a prediction.