Cult of Tarot Forum

Let's talk about the Hands.

Aces are typically recognized as representing something akin to the "soul" of the suit they represent. Personally I have thought of this in terms of "virtue." The idea of "beginnings" also fits. And the RWS Aces, as everyone knows, uses a single hand holding the symbol of each suit.

Here we have 2 examples of closed hands, yet with different intensities.


And here we have 2 open hands, yet they portray slightly different gestures.



I also want you to notice that with the Wands and Cups, the hand enters the scene from the right and the Swords and Pents from the left.
When you consider that Pamela Coleman Smith designed theater sets, could it be significant that fundamental rules of staging say that "good guys" always enter the stage (or screen) from the left and "bad guys" from the right?

We can hold that thought. I don't want to run too far afield here but maybe some of you find that significant.

Back to our Ace of Wands.

This card always makes me think of the force behind any act of creation, and that agrees pretty much with Waite's interpretation. There is power and strong intention and focus. The power is more in cleverness and will and not so much in brute force. A change in the grip to make it more like the one of the sword would give a more violently menacing feeling to the Ace of Wands. (The violent menace of the Ace of Swords is somewhat mitigated by the crown, but that's another discussion)

In terms of a fundamental virtue, I see this card as portraying strong commitment to ideals, principles, promises, following through.

What do you think of when this Ace shows up?

this is a very enlightening thread, in some cultures hand gestures in dance and theater play a vital roe in conveying meaning and intent, hence the connection with Pam's theatrical background.

I will have to mull this over more.

i have considered the left and right aspect of the 2 male suits and 2 female suits to suggest 2 sides of the same coin; their bilateral aspect. on the other hand, as it were, it makes connections across the standard suit couplings of male and female, namely: cups & wands [stage left] and pentacles and swords [stage right]. that said, if we keep with the bilateral parity - and things in nature generally are bilateral, as they are on the human body - a 3rd pairing of left and rights is possible: cups & swords and wands & pentacles. with this pairing, we have the orb and scepter of monarchy in pentacles and wands, while having thought and feeling in swords and cups. note how the sword - the suit's symbol - ascends through the crown [metonym for head, the sword then like the spine, chakras, kundalini] while the Paraclete descends to offer soul sustenance to the suit's symbol.

what's with the W on the cup- is that Waite again, self-promoting?

it should be said, the symbols don't do nothing - the wand sprouts leaves, grows, is alive; the sword pokes through a magically hovering crown, adorned with flora in an otherwise barren land; the cup runneth over, its out-pouring ever mounting; the pentacle looks as if it could fit in the passageway made of foliage, thereby completing the puzzle if you will, or being the door at least - the stone rolled away from the tomb.

hi
The open and closed hands are interesting. It may be that wands and swords are forces that you wield and that cups and pentacles are forces that act in a different way. The ace of swords can sometimes be invoked force.The ace of cups can sometimes be a pregnancy. They are very different forces.
inomminate

The Ace of Pentacles comment re the stone rolling away from the tomb is especially interesting... I think a lot of people, not just Waite, and going back to the Marseille deck, have seen the Ace of Cups as representing the Grail, historically. So providing a "hint" of the "stone rolling away" in another Ace seems to me something that Waite might want to do, indeed.

I have only been studying tarot for a couple of months now and I've had trouble discerning the differences in the aces. When they come up in readings I'm like "well it's... it's good! It means umm... good stuff is coming! And uhh.. yeah! All good!" LOL But I do see how the source of the manifestations or forward moving energies can be different. Wands make me think of desire, passion, strength of will, and determination. So perhaps an ace of wands in a reading could be telling you "trust your gut, follow your passion, and you will achieve your goal". As far as everything else talked about with the open and closed hands and your more in depth analysis? I was unaware of that perspective and I'm trying to absorb it as it's helping me gain a deeper understanding of this card. Thanks.

One of the first things that comes to my mind when looking at all four RWS aces at the same time is that the hands holding Wands (Fire) and Cups (Water) which are polar opposites in GD correspondences nevertheless both come from the West, while Swords (Air) and Pentacle (Earth) which are also polar opposites in GD correspondences both come from the East. So there is some balancing of the Yin-Yang in all of this that feels right on an intuitive level.

The hand does not grip the Wand in the same way as it grips the Sword. The way the thumb points up feels symbolically significant. It makes me think of how I naturally hold old fashioned flashlights and those plastic lightsabers of my Star Wars-crazed childhood. I had my thumb poised that way to click both things on and off, and this is kind of an "AHA!" for me. The Ace of Wands can illuminate when you want it to, but it has to be directed by will. The Ace of Wands is a tool and you have to practice in how to use it. Hold it right or otherwise, like a character in a movie who gets a "jump scare" moment, you will drop it.

And there will be "jump scare" moments ahead. So be ready. Not paranoid, just prepared.

As a tool, the Ace of Wands is all about using our Self or things we think and create to present information to the world. It comes up when its the right time or place to be creative, to give a presentation, to start a new enterprise, to join a new tarot forum.... XD We are approaching this new endeavor with a need to both give and take though. The Ace of Wands is the same wand that the Page of Wands is holding. It represents the New Thing the Querent is about to do or dive into, not the Querent.

A hand coming from a cloud is, in iconografy, the Hand of God. To me all 4 aces are symbols of the (inner) divine. The sprouting wand could be a reference to Aaron's rod that sprouted (the kundalini was activated in his spine), which made him High Priest of God.

This, of course, is literal symbolism. The meaning of a card is in the eye of the beholder.