page of wands

Daughter of Wands, often known as Page of Wands, by Kim Krans

For a long time I interacted with tarot peripherally. I’ve enthusiastically followed mystics like Jessica Dore, who posts a daily card and a monthly tarot offering. I’ve interviewed a person who combined the tools of tarot and reiki to help others heal. When my mom started working with the cards, I accepted her card pulls eagerly. I’ve even watched YouTube videos where readers pull cards to be sent into the universe of potential querents. But it wasn’t until I read Alexander Chee’s essay, “The Querent” in his memoir, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, that I decided I wanted to work with the cards myself. I love Chee’s writing always, but this particular essay stood out to me because it wrestled with something I too wrestle with: wanting to make the future certain.

This, as all future dealers know, is a fruitless task, and it isn’t, in my experience, the function of the tarot. Chee’s essay acknowledges both the futileness of this urge and the way knowing our fate sometimes dooms us. He asks as a final prompt, “What can you trust of what you can’t see?” And it was this question that compelled me to begin working with the tarot. I told Joe that I wanted my own deck and that I couldn’t buy it myself—an oft dismissed tarot superstition—he obliged on Christmas, gifting me The Wild Unknown Tarot Deck by Kim Krans and ample sage for burning. I created an altar in the spare bedroom we’ve designated for my creative activities, donning it with crystals, sage, writing materials, candles, and a zodiac wheel I found long ago at an estate sale in Squirrel Hill. I pulled my first cards the day after Christmas and chose a three card spread, to be interpreted as past, present, future or mind, body, spirit. I pulled IX-The Hermit, VIII-Justice, and VII-The Chariot. Three major arcana cards, three serious bitches. I’d asked the cards to provide insight into a friendship that was teetering on ending and the cards confirmed my suspicions with grace.

But as the days and weeks have gone on, I’ve found that not all of the tarot’s answers are answers and not all of my questions are questions. Often, I arrive at the altar with just shy of 30 minutes to spare, between walking the dog and starting my work day. I burn sage across my chakras and across my altar. I light a candle named Snow Witch and I get down to the business of tuning into myself and the cards with the time I have to spare. As a result of this rushing, I often find myself frustrated with the cards: when they don’t supply easy pathways to success or pleasure or getting right with myself; when they throw something ugly into my face that I’d been avoiding; when they challenge me to acknowledge my goodness; when they compel me to reconsider my hand in things. These are not 30 minute considerations. They take chewing. But luckily, the cards have a way of making you chew.

Two weeks ago I asked the cards, How can I create more pleasure in my life?

Tiny, beautiful thief of peace

I pulled the Daughter of Wands or as she is more commonly known, the Page of Wands. I was elated with the imagery: the bedazzled serpent guarding her blossoming wand. It sang to me—protect your blooms, protect your art, protect your love. It reminded me of scripture: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of love.” I saw myself instantly in this shining snake and I knew what I needed to do. This was reinforced by both the Wild Unknown guidebook description of the Daughter of Wands and the Biddy Tarot description of the Page of Wands. It’s a card of creativity and inspiration. It’s a card of starting new projects and building strategy around them. It’s a card of freaky, spiritual energy—it sings. Per Biddy Tarot: “The Page of Wands can appear when a spiritual path or journey may be calling you. You have a curious mind and are intrigued to see where this call might lead. While you are very much the novice when it comes to this spiritual endeavor, you are open to the experience and keen to discover new levels of consciousness.”

This spoke to me across the board: my writing, my work with tarot, my ever-growing desire to learn the bass. I was electric, I was the snake.

But today I arrived at the altar full of venom. I had just finished a long walk with the dog in which he never stopped pulling. His fear and anxiety were palpable through the leash, and despite my best attempts to keep our energies separate—listening to guided morning meditations while I swear and pull back—I didn’t maintain the peaceful energy I woke up with. I asked the cards, How can I express my anger in a safe way?

The magical snake I’d cherished so much two weeks ago returned to me with a vengeance—she had messages to deliver. Something I’d glossed over in my first reading of the card is the danger of the snake, beautiful but widely feared. Protective, fierce, not to be challenged, there are energies here to be worked with, energies within myself that can be acknowledged without becoming overpowering. Anger is a difficult emotion for me, I distrust it, in myself and in others. It is a trigger for me and because of this, I have a tendency to repress it in myself and shut down when others express anger in ways that stir up bits of PTSD for me. But lately, I’ve been trying to work with anger in a healthier way: acknowledging it when it comes up, working through it safely, be that writing about it or channeling it into exercise, and then talking about it with safe and trusted confidants. If you have trouble working with your own anger, I highly recommend therapy; it has been a huge gift to me.

So now I’m considering what parts of anger and pleasure are linked, how when we experience our anger fully—find where it stems from in our body and feel it—we are able to more fully access our pleasure. How you can only know the full spectrum of emotional experience when you’ve tapped into the extremes, i.e. knowing how good things can feel takes respecting and honoring the worst emotions. I’m thinking about this snake within myself, how her anger is born from the need to protect my time, resources, and my centered, creative energy. I’m thinking about how I can be both the snake (my anger) and the blooming wand (my creativity, my love, my passions), and how rather than damaging each other, these qualities allow each other to exist more fully.