The Fool & the Three of Wands. It's time to light your fire.
Reading by Rahne Alexander
“The Wands is the suit of work, drive, and passion.”
For years I kept my tarot practice secret. I suppose it was mostly because I didn’t feel like I could talk about it without feeling silly — not so much because I felt shame about cartomancy; more because I didn’t feel conversant in the language. I didn’t want to be shamed for saying the wrong thing or for misreading the textbook. Learning the tarot was learning a language without a teacher.
I’d been reading tarot for myself for more than fifteen years before I started talking about it publicly. I’d thrown myself deep into it, concentrating and absorbing the language. And then five or so years ago I began to be open about my practice, and I soon discovered that I really enjoy reading cards for others, and I also really enjoy writing about tarot.
I’m beginning this column with jennifer with the intent of a monthly mediation on the meaning of one of the cards, and I’m excited to see where this journey goes.
At first I thought that maybe I’d begin with The Fool, and if you are familiar with tarot you’d suspect that it’s a logical place to begin. But it’s also a little obvious — it’s the first card of the major arcana, an indicator of a being at the beginning of a journey, of cutting one’s losses and setting off on a significant new path. But I don’t prefer to be obvious, and the paint of tarot is to trust the cards to reveal something.
So I thought, I’ll stand by The Fool as a backup plan (which, to be honest, is not a bad backup plan for any of us, particularly in the current state of the world) and gave the deck one chance to show me something more interesting and useful.
The deck served me a Three of Wands.
Three of Wands
…a card about opportunity and the manifestation of desire. How will it show up for you this month?
Turns out, this is also a card about starting a new journey, about lighting a fire. This is a card about opportunity, and the manifestation of desire. But this isn’t The Fool looking for something of a fresh start, this is a card about having a completed business plan, about picking the point on the horizon you will next be moving toward. This is an opportunity that has been planned and labored for.
With all of my goals as a writer and an artist, until recently it never occurred to me to pursue writing about tarot beyond the periodic social media post. Self-doubt and imposter syndrome are common experiences for so many of us, especially when we are largely self-trained in a discipline, and especially when the tarot constantly asks us to ask more questions, to reflect more deeply on our goals and desires and motivations. This is why it’s important in my practice to read across different interpretations of the tarot – different decks, different artists, different scholars whose knowledge and eloquence inspire me to consider the themes and archetypes in ways that are outside my own narrow experience. I am a Libra, after all.
Shop jennifer: the bookshop
The Library of Esoterica: Tarot. $36.80
What started as a parlor game has been transformed into a source and system of self-exploration. To explore the Tarot is to explore ourselves, to be reminded of the universality of our longing for meaning, for purpose and for a connection to the divine. This book explores the symbolic meaning behind more than 500 cards and works of original art, two thirds of which have never been published outside of the decks themselves.
There is rarely a singular, linear answer to any given tarot reading. Each card pull is an opportunity to reveal patterns both obvious and clandestine. For me, I think this Three of Wands is telling me that there is an opportunity here to share my 20 years of study, and to do away with my tendencies towards self-doubt and silence.
Here’s what I know for sure: the Wands is the suit of work, drive, and passion. It is the suit of the element of fire. Every fire needs fuel, heat, and oxygen. If I want, I can choose to use this self-doubt as kindling for this firestarter — to double benefit: stoking the flame and cremating that self-doubt for good.
Rahne Alexander is an intermedia artist and writer from Baltimore, Maryland. She holds an MFA in Intermedia + Digital Arts from UMBC. A tarot reader for more than 20 years, she can be reached for readings at rahne.com/tarot.