Ace of Wands definitions

The commencement of an action. The sprouting of a seed, or germ of an idea. The nature of the action is revealed by the cards around the Ace of Wands

• Rider-Waite: Ace of Wands

  A hand issuing from a cloud grasps a stout wand or club.

  Creation, invention, enterprise, the powers which result in these; principle, beginning, source; birth, family, origin, and in a sense the virility which is behind them; the starting point of enterprises; according to another account, money, fortune, inheritance.

  Additional Meanings: Calamities of all kinds.

  Reversed Card meanings

  Fall, decadence, ruin, perdition, to perish; also a certain clouded joy.

  Additional Meanings: A sign of birth.

• Book of Thoth: Ace of Wands

  This card represents the essence of the element of Fire in its inception. It is a solar-phallic outburst of flame from which spring lightnings in every direction.

  These flames are Yods, arranged in the form of the Tree of Life. (For Yod, see Atu IX supra.)

  It is the primordial Energy of the Divine manifesting in Matter, at so early a stage that it is not yet definitely formulated as Will.

  The Ace of Wands is the beginning or seed of Fire, so that not even Will has formed.

  More information

• Golden Dawn - Ace - The Radix of the Powers of Fire

  Natural force, strength, and energy are available for use

• Mathers: Ace of Wands

  Birth, Commencement, Beginning, Origin, Source.

  Reversed Card meanings

  Persecution, Pursuit, Violence, Vexation, Cruelty, Tyranny.

• Etteilla: Ace of Wands

  Birth, Beginning. Nativity, Origin, Creation. Source, Principle, Primacy, New. Extraction, Race, Family, Station, House, Lineage, Posterity, Circumstance, Cause, Reason, First, First Fruits.

  Reversed Card meanings

  Fall, Cascade, Decadence, Decline, Wasting Away, Weakening, Dissipation, Collapse, Bankruptcy, Ruin, Destruction, Pulling Down, Damage, Devastation. Mistake, Error, Misunderstanding, Despondency, Exhaustion, Discouragement. Perdition, Abyss, Chasm, Precipice. Perish, Descend, Wane, Demean Yourself. Depths.

• Thierens: Ace of Wands

  TRADITION

  Birth, source, principle, beginning, origin, cause, reason, creation, invention. Some say also: family, but this is probably to be taken as 'family-descent,' or parentage or origin of the family, which is a different idea. Reversed: Fall, perdition, decadence, decline, ruin, etc.

  THEORY

  The element of Air on the First house or ascendant has of course to do with birth and beginning, because it is the coming through of the message from above to the regions of the physical plane; the ascendant indeed is the synthesised appearance of the heavens at the beginning of . . . whatever it may be, and so this card signifies on one hand the inflow of light from above into the world of matter and fact, which can have several meanings. On the other hand, seen from the side of light itself, it is the 'fall in matter' and the decline of the higher, as well as the enlightening of the lower. The cards of the airy element have always and in every instance a double meaning and not only in the sense of right and reversed, but a meaning on two sides. And apparently this has been wrongly introduced as 'right' or 'reversed' in some cases. So the ace of wands will represent the effect of suddenness, of the incidental, even accidental, showing some appearances of the planet Uranus. It denotes something that is making its appearance all of a sudden; a sort of manifestation, creation such as the birth of a child. This, by the way, is generally considered to be a joy for the parents, etc., but may not be for the soul, which has to accept once more the limitations of life in a body of earth. And this is the two-sidedness of the significance.

  CONCLUSION

  Birth, beginning, innovation, creation initiative, impulse, origin, principle, source, cause reason, parentage, handing over of a message, news revelation, initiation. On the other hand come the meanings derived from fall, decline, descent, depreciation, profanation, etc. But it means that which will happen once only and which cannot be taken back.