Ace of Wands in 6 decks
The same card as 6 decks draw it, five and a half centuries apart. What stays the same is the card’s core; what changes is where a reading can find something new. The meanings are written for the Rider–Waite–Smith picture; the descriptions here are of each deck’s own. Not in Oswald Wirth, which has no Ace of Wands card.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A hand reaches from a cloud gripping a living wooden staff that is still sprouting leaves. Below it a river winds through green country toward a castle on a hill. The staff is held upright, like something being offered or planted, and the leaves are drifting free of it.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A hand reaches from a green scalloped sleeve or cloud at the lower right, gripping a thick green club with lopped side branches whose cut ends are red. Yellow and outlined white flame-shaped drops fall all around it on the plain ground. There is no title or number.
Rider–Waite–Smith
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A hand reaches from a cloud gripping a living wooden staff that is still sprouting leaves. Below it a river winds through green country toward a castle on a hill. The staff is held upright, like something being offered or planted, and the leaves are drifting free of it.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A hand reaches from a green scalloped sleeve or cloud at the lower right, gripping a thick green club with lopped side branches whose cut ends are red. Yellow and outlined white flame-shaped drops fall all around it on the plain ground. There is no title or number.
Tarot de Viéville
Jacques Viéville, c. 1650
A hand in a grey sleeve emerges from a spiky red and yellow cloud at the lower left, gripping a thick green club. Lopped branches sprout red and yellow shoots along the club, and red and white drops fall around it.
Visconti-Sforza
Bonifacio Bembo, c. 1450
A single upright blue staff with gold baluster-shaped ends runs down the card. A ribbon, gold on one side and white on the other, winds round it, and its white face carries the motto 'abon droyt' in red letters between small flowers. The cream ground is filled with green leaves and red and blue flowers within a red border.
In the Visconti-Sforza deck the number cards show only their suit symbols, and the trumps are unnamed and unnumbered.
Sola Busca
c. 1491
Two winged infants climb a single great club that rises from a blue fluted pedestal, hugging it with both arms. Laurel garlands tied with red ribbons hang across the top and down the sides. A red helmet lies at the lower left, a grey shield at the right, and the letters M and S sit between the infants.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
A single bamboo pole rises from a moss-filled stone planter, a flame streaming from its top like a torch. A red ribbon with a small hanging tag is knotted around the stalk, and red maple leaves swirl around it. A small stone fox sits at the base, with a wooden railing, a lantern and the eaves of a building behind in the dark.