Eight of Wands

Most books will speak most of this card in terms of swiftness and speed. The RWS deck set a standard for portrayals of javelins, spears, staffs, or arrows, all traveling at what seems to be great velocity. Both the association with the planet Mercury and the energy of the fiery Wands would seem to support this meaning. But this is only one of several attributes of more central meanings. Closer to the core, the idea behind the picture is that all eight items seem to share a common aim in their trajectory. The action of launching them had direction, method, purpose, or design behind it. Because of this they are going towards the same destination. Choices have already been made and decisions enacted. The projectiles have gone ballistic, but this word is poorly understood. An object that has gone ballistic is no longer under any force of acceleration: it’s coasting, acted on now only by gravity, windage, and drag. What set the projectile in motion has already done its job and the time to make big choices and mid-course corrections may be past. This was according to an aim or a plan, something that is now working itself out. It’s now up to the idea or the design to prove its own worth or viability. In the Hermetic view of magick, an imaginary version of what needs doing is done in advance, signaling the intention, sending a message to the future, and if the plan belongs there, the world will get the idea. The spell has already been cast. But this is just another way of saying that design precedes implementation. This card implies a developed mental ability that is applied to living in the world, and knowing something of our own capabilities, so that we can predict our effects. With the Seven of Wands we learned some things about who we are and what we are capable of. With the Eight, we can now apply that knowledge to improving our context, niche, or world, so that life can be more predictably trouble-free or pleasant. We have creative designs on the world. We are looking ahead and trying to solve our problems in advance. From our present position in what is going to be the past, it’s difficult to micromanage these affairs. What needs doing now has largely been done in advance. We can only try to cover our contingencies, and allow for range and windage. Expertise can only take us so far here. While events may not be entirely out of our hands now, the best laid plans might still need to adapt to unseen realities. Fussing and meddling might only interfere. We will need some patience: the ballistic arc is also a learning curve. “A screaming came across the sky.” The Yijing counterpart is Gua 50, The Cauldron, which also speaks of change by design, with a focus on the alchemy of creating or nourishing a better and nobler society. Results are not seen immediately here either. Once the spell is cast, one has to let it go or fly. The ceremonial food offering here models a kind of social engineering, nourishing our culture in specific ways to optimize cultural outcomes. We have an instrumentality mentality, and the recipe is our formula. This is explicitly an analogy: wind and wood below (8s), symbols of adaptive intelligence, feed the creative flames (Wands) above. We nourish and inspire others by doing what we do best and thus setting a good example. We honor the potential in our raw materials. We manifest our best visions. We set our standards high. In looking this far ahead, we also seek to become better ancestors, worthier founding fathers and mothers. What is cooking in the pot is a consecrated or dedicated offering. In the Western Mystery Tradition, this giving our best, this excellence by design, is the alchemy termed “the Great Work of the Transformation of Mankind.” It’s doing what we can for our evolution. In the words of the Great Ones, “Be excellent to each other.” The point is ensuring that we are better prepared for tomorrow than we have been in the past, that we continue to develop our life skills. There is the implication in the RWS card, in the association with Mercury, and in the Cauldron, that this is a joint or concerted effort, an alignment of aim and purpose, a cultural endeavor that necessitates networking, communication and cooperation. Forces are drawn into alignment, priorities are adopted by prior agreement, goals and objectives are shared. The root of the word communication means to make common, to spread the idea around. Alterna- tively, his card may also refer to the exercise of mental agility (cittammannata and cittapagunnata in Buddhism).