Six of Wands

The Six of Wands occupies the middle decan of Leo in the fire suit's zodiacal sequence, Jupiter ruling between Saturn's friction at the Five and Mars's exhaustion at the Seven; Jupiter's placement at the sign's midpoint is usually read as the suit's clearest example of the Chaldean sequence producing a genuinely fitting result, expansion and generosity arriving exactly at the point where competitive strain has resolved into recognized success.

Pamela Colman Smith's picture, a laurel-crowned rider advancing on a white horse among a crowd of companions also carrying wands, is one of relatively few Rider-Waite-Smith minors to show public acclaim explicitly rather than private feeling or effort, and it has no equivalent in the Tarot de Marseille, whose Six de Batons is six ordered batons in a lattice, read by number and suit alone, without any procession or crowd to interpret. The white horse recurs elsewhere in the deck at moments of triumph or purity, and commentators generally read the choice here as deliberate rather than incidental, distinguishing this rider's mount from the more ordinary horses given the court cards' knights.

The Golden Dawn and Thoth titles agree exactly, both Victory, one of the more stable namings across the two systems; Harris renders the six wands as an ascending, radiant geometric pattern under Jupiter's glyph, keeping the sense of triumph without the crowd Smith's picture supplies.

Upright the Six of Wands is read as victory, public recognition and the pride of success acknowledged by others; reversed, as a setback, a fall from favor, or achievement that goes unrecognized.

Pre-Golden-Dawn cartomancy read a bare six of wands as a resolution following the Five's disruption, success in general rather than specifically public acclaim; the crowd and the laurel wreath are Smith's own additions, and it is her picture more than the older tradition or the matching Victory title that ties this card so firmly to recognition granted by others rather than to private satisfaction.

Waite's own printed meaning, expectation crowned with its own desires, good news, victory and consequent presumption, includes a note of caution, presumption, that much current practice has quietly dropped in favor of a more uncomplicated reading of triumph; the reversed card's warning against ego inflated by success arguably preserves that older caution more faithfully than the upright reading now does.

Because the rider is not alone, the card is frequently distinguished from cards of purely private achievement elsewhere in the deck, and readers commonly use it specifically when a querent's success depends on, or will be witnessed by, other people, rather than for triumphs that go unnoticed by anyone else.