Queen of Wands

The Queen of Wands might sense a meaningfulness inherent in her experiences that transcends that of the individual actors and favors interrelationship. Consequently, her interest is in circulating the fire, in sharing experience and projects, and in developing a sense of a greater identity with multiple living parts. She gets her work done by enlisting help and engaging her subjects. She may wait a short while to give her consent to these experiences and projects, to have some assurance of their meaning or worth. She is noble and has her standards. She is an independent or liberated sort, but she has a peculiar form of self-directedness that takes direction from the world around her. She will take on the energy of what moves her. She is able to change who she truly is without pretending. She knows the importance of synergy. Her identity is inextrica- ble from her participation in life and she can even become the cause she supports. She will take guidance, but in an opportunistic way. She will take the lead, but in a way that obeys natural law, follows the movements of the world around her, and takes direction from an ethical compass. Being human, she may be deceived on occasion or be subject to charismatic actors. Too little pre-selection for the worth of an endeavor might lead to overextension, or dabbling. If a habit is made of this, the wrong kind of cynicism develops. She is attractive, magnetic, and approachable when her standards can be met. She can be a good sponsor or underwriter, if the pitch for the cause is persuasive enough. She needs to be both drawn and invited to participate in a project, then in turn, she can draw upon and invite some considerable resources into the work. Once excited into motion she can move with some authority, but what may appear to be an intuitive decisiveness and spontaneity is in actuality an alert sense of adaptive responsiveness. She is not reticent or shy. The Yijing counterpart, Gua 17, Following, develops the contrast between following willingly or willfully and following blindly or passively. The image is thunder in the lake, the pulse in the blood, the rhythm of things, to be sensed and moved along with. This Queen follows like a tracker, or even a bounty hunter. She tracks what is going on in her world. Ultimately she is more of a finder than a seeker. She is aware of where she is going and her pursuits are purposeful. It takes courage to be like this. She is not the type of lady to stay down, or in the kitchen. As a companion, she is a well-trained hetaera, self-assured and self-possessed. Nobility follows her loyally, wherever she might choose to go. Her sympathies are a resonance with the world. The Queen of Wands is proactively adaptive, practicing fitness by intent, taking fitness in the Spencerian or Darwinian sense of a skillful versatility. She can change who she is without pretending, and what she wants has no need to be constant. That’s just a regular, feminine thing, but it helps her to move with the energy that’s in circulation. She can best maintain concentration if the object of her focus is moving. While the Prince wanted to explore the extents of his realm of experience, the Queen wants the permutations of its applicability, to try the wisdom out and spread the experience around, to experiment and permute, to hybridize the elements of her culture. She is an artist herself in some way, and she supports the arts. To persuade her, one gets her enthused instead of convinced. She is genuinely interested in others, passionate when inspired, and generous for a good cause. But she is not selfless, and she might require much persuasion in terms of enlightened self-interest, even if hers is a larger idea of self that includes her whole realm. She still likes to be at the center of the hive. It’s those noble standards again. Her love and respect might be somewhat conditioned on worth, but the genuine thing is requited. She is a friend of higher culture. She likes to be involved, whether this be down deep in the work, in the rhythms and the composition, or above it like a conductor, coordinating the parts of the effort. Whether as active ingredient or catalyst, she likes being close to the heart and the pulse of things, ever ambitious to maximize throughput, so that benefits are shared or spread around.