Two of Wands

Two of Wands from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck

The Two of Wands is the second card in the suit of Wands. It usually stands for riches, fortune, and magnificence. It can also mean physical suffering, disease, and sadness.

General description

In the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, Pamela Coleman Smith depicts the Two of Wands as a tall, well-dressed man looking over the battlements of his roof across the sea and shore. He's holding a globe in his right hand, while a staff in his left rests on the stone fortification. Here is a lord overlooking his dominion and alternately contemplating a globe; it looks like the malady, the mortification, the sadness of Alexander the Great amidst the grandeur of this world's wealth, knowing he can never possess it all in this lifetime.

Divinatory meaning

The artwork in the Rider-Waite deck gives an impression of heaviness, of a load on the back, which easily may attain the more concise form of fear or a feeling of being downcast, impotent, weak and not able to resist circumstances. So it may signify the pressure of material conditions, the responsibility imparted by riches, but also projects or conceptions of an economical nature and the idea of capital and capitalizing.

Further the combination of the principles of air with the house of Taurus must relate to music, and we may be sure that this card always has some significance in that way and in the sphere of art intellectually and in general.

If reversed, the card can mean: Surprise, wonder, enchantment, emotion, trouble, and fear.