Tarot Spread: Fanning the Flames
Working with the Queen of Wands
The Queen of Wands is one of the most beloved court cards among the tarot readers I know, no doubt thanks in large part to Pamela Colman Smith’s inclusion of a black cat at her feet in the famous Rider Tarot image. This makes the Queen of Wands the “witch” of the tarot, and that’s incredibly gratifying to many a witchy woman I know.
Beyond just that fun characterization, the Queen is also popular because of how she wears her proverbial crown. She sits in her power, but she doesn’t leap out of her chair to do so. As I describe her in Awaken the Court Cards, the Queen is someone who leads through persuasion and inspiration, which can sometimes take the form of seduction, manipulation, or enchantment. How fabulous is that?
My workbook for the Awaken the Court Cards class includes a tarot spread for each of the sixteen court card personas, among many other fun things. In writing the spread questions, I tried to distill the persona’s primary elements into concepts that would help the reader connect with that court card and learn from its strengths and shadows. And in creating the layout, I tried to find a home for those aspects within the imagery of the Smith-Waite/Rider Tarot and, where possible, the Thoth Tarot.
As a result, each tarot spread represents only part of the court card, but it should represent an aspect of the court cards that you would want to embody and get to know better, warts and all.
For this Queen of Wands tarot spread, Fanning the Flames, I was working with three concepts based around her queenliness, her fieriness and wateriness (as the Water of Fire), her astrological correspondences, and how she distinguishes herself from her fellow members of the Wands court.
Radiating competence and purpose
Fostering the will
Wielding seductive power
From there, I worked with the evocative imagery created by Pamela Colman Smith and Lady Frieda Harris (painter of Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot) to create the following questions and layout.
Inspiring Aura: Where do I have greatest effect on others?
Regal Bearing: How can I demonstrate competence?
Golden Stalk: What support does my will require?
Pedestal: How can I establish proper boundaries without falling to pride?
Familiar: Where can I always turn for support and wise counsel?
If you’re loving connecting with the Queen of Wands, you might also enjoy this little “potion” I concocted one day when channeling her essence for the launch of my Kickstarter campaign for Life Line Tarot: Color Outside the Lines. It draws on some of the correspondences I associate with the Queen of Wands (and Queens and Wands more broadly) as documented in Awaken the Court Cards. But there is plenty of room for personalization.
Blood orange rooibos tea leaves
Hot water (I use 185ºF)
A squirt of lemon juice
A swirl of honey (or 3–4 dollops if you’re feeling extra esoteric), and
A pinch of saffron threads
Pair with a Cara Cara orange for some fun pops of color and an added sweetness that’s as smooth as the Queen herself.
You can order Awaken the Court Cards as a digital workbook through my site here or via my Etsy shop. And you can order a full-color, large paperback version via Amazon. Or learn to read the court cards with greater nuance and power through my course, Awaken the Court Cards.
The image shown behind the layout is from my own Life Line Tarot, a single-line tarot deck revitalizing Pamela Colman Smith’s iconic imagery for the 1909 Rider Tarot by Arthur E. Waite. You can order it through my site here, via my Etsy shop, or from a handful of approved retailers (see the Life Line landing page for a list of approved resellers of the Life Line Tarot and Life Line Lenoracle). The card shown beside the recipe is from the now out-of-print Color Outside the Lines edition.