Gilded Tarot - Eight of Wands
by Ciro Marchetti, companion book by Barbara Moore
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide

Description: Eight intricately wrought wands, worked with gold and tipped with gold crescents, soar upward through the air. Beneath them, the sun is rising over a bucolic meadow dotted with grazing sheep.

Companion book interpretation: "You are waiting for an outcome. You will not wait long. Events set in motion are moving speedily to their inexorable conclusion. Be aware of the dangers of interfering. By altering the movement of one of the wands, the others, because of their proximity to each other, will be affected. The connections are intricate, and you may not be able to see the larger ramifications of your actions."

My take: I can never see any Rider-based Eight of Wands without thinking of that awe-inspiring and horrifying war scene from Kenneth Branagh's "Henry V." It begins with a field of slender, deadly arrows arcing across a gray sky. With this deck, this resonance is especially strong. These aren't just innocent sticks pulled off a tree and thrown into the air. These are more like javelins. They were crafted by man to serve a distinct purpose -- they may be carrying messages of hope, or they could be spears of war. The land below them may soon be covered with armies, littered with the bodies of the dying. But for now, the earth rests peacefully. We'll just have to wait and see what happens next.

Atalantaix