8 Wands

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Moongold	20 Sep 2002
Some writers associate this card with *love* or relationship issues. Rachel Pollack is one of these, though she gives other interpretations too. Pollack says that Waite calls the 8 Wands "arrows of love". I only have a LWB for Waite and there isn't much there. Where does this association come from? I can't see much in the card to indicate the connection to love. In the Morgan Greer the Wands fly almost in formation through the air over a beautiful landscape of green country and water. You get the feeling of exhiliarating speed and sometimes I've had that when falling in *love*, particularly when I was younger. Ah, what a feeling! 8 Wands in the Mythic is again about the release of creative energy but I can't see the connection with relationships or love. I guess it doesn't really matter, but I wonder whether anyone can explain the association? Moongold

ihcoyc	20 Sep 2002
The 8 of Wands, for me, represents the practical application of the vitality of Wands. It is the card of any activity that creates a lot of fuss and bustle, belching smoke and flame and steam, going off in eleventeen directions at once. A card for big cities, and people who thrive in chaos. Which, perhaps, is love, if you're doing it right. Et ce Londres de fonte et de bronze, mon âme, Où des plaques de fer claquent sous des hangars, Où des voiles s'en vont, sans Notre-Dame Pour étoile, s'en vont, là-bas, vers les hasards. --- Emile Verhaeren [and this london of pig-iron and bronze, my soul, where iron sheets bang against the warehouses, where sails go off, without our lady for a star, sailing away out there towards chance.] Kant wrote a treatise on The Vital Powers. I should prefer to write a dirge for them. The superabundant display of vitality, which takes the form of knocking, hammering, and tumbling things about, has proved a daily torment to me all my life long. There are people, it is true-nay, a great many people-who smile at such things, because they are not sensitive to noise; but they are just the very people who are also not sensitive to argument, or thought, or poetry, or art, in a word, to any kind of intellectual influence. The reason of it is that the tissue of their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality." ---Schopenhauer, "On Noise"

Laurel	20 Sep 2002
I don't know where that association ala love comes from; its not one I personally use in most cases. I agree 100% of Ihcoyc's description of it as the practical application of vitality. I don't actually see 8 of Wands as a "chaotic" card though but rather the post-transformation of energy from a state of inertia into clearly articulated modes. A burst of energy to be sure but one that is being deliberately and enthusiastically channeled in specific pursuits. That sense of accomplishment and transformation can lead to an ecstatic experience. Astrologically, its Mercury in Sagitarrius which is an energetic and auspicious thing. Laurel

Thirteen	21 Sep 2002
Frankly, I've never heard or read of this card being interpeted as having anything to do with love in any other book. I think Rachel, good as she can be, might be tossing in a personal bias here for whatever reason. The only time I'd interpet this card as having to do with love would be in a spread where the other cards indicated that the goal for which these "arrows" were heading toward was a romance.

Forum Library > Using Tarot Cards Threads By Month > 8 Wands

Originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 20 Sep 2002, and now part of the Forum Library. Take part in active threads about Using Tarot Cards.