wands
No image of this card
Lady Frieda Harris painted the deck between 1938 and 1943; it was first published in 1969, seven years after her death in 1962. The paintings remain in copyright until 2032 in the UK and EU and 2064 in the United States, so no card images or substitutes appear here.
See the deck at its publisher ↗The Princess of the Shining Flame; the Rose of the Palace of Fire
Suit: Wands Minor Arcana Element: Fire
Also known as Page of Rods, Page of Staffs, Page of Staves, and Page of Batons.
Page of Wands: news, curiosity and the youthful expression of fire. The card joins the fire nature of Wands to its courtly role.
The card's place in the historical Minor Arcana sits beside its Golden Dawn correspondences and Waite's account of Pamela Colman Smith's image. Each reading keeps the source and deck that gave it shape.
8 sourced claims: 5 traditional , 3 modern
The Book of Thoth remains in copyright. The catalogue therefore gives the deck's titles, ranks and numbering beside the Golden Dawn material it inherits, while citing Crowley by page without reproducing his text.
This deck calls the card Princess of Wands; it is filed here as Page of Wands.
This deck's book publishes no upright and reversed lists, so none are shown. Its account of the card is cited below rather than reproduced.
The card is indexed as the Page of Wands; Book T ranks it Princess, while the Thoth deck prints Princess. Its Golden Dawn place is Princess / final Heh · Earth of Fire. Book T titles it The Princess of the Shining Flame; the Rose of the Palace of Fire.
Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris, Thoth — Part Three: The Court Cards.
Page of Wands
A richly dressed youth stands in a barren landscape and studies a tall budding wand as if preparing to make an announcement.
A concise visual description of Pamela Colman Smith's 1910 design, checked against Waite's card entry and the public-domain scan.
Upright, Waite associates the Page with a faithful messenger, favourable testimony, family news and the active qualities of Wands. Reversed, the card can indicate bad news, indecision or instability.
Waite treats these as historical divinatory allocations and explicitly warns that they vary by context and are not a universal symbolic canon.
Court cards are organised by rank, suit and elemental composition in Book T. They are listed separately because the source does not assign them to the numbered sephiroth in the way it assigns the pip cards.
Book T's formal title, Tree or elemental place, astrological attribution, and characteristic reading. This is the system used by the Hermetic Tree.
The Princess of the Shining Flame; the Rose of the Palace of Fire
Book T's formal title for this court card.
Fire · Wands
Wands express the powers of Fire: initiative, animation, desire, enterprise and force set in motion.
Princess / final Heh · Earth of Fire
Book T uses King for the mounted figure now usually called Knight, Prince for the figure now usually called King, and Princess for the Page or Knave. The source's role is preserved here rather than silently modernised.
One polar quadrant above the fire sign Leo
The twelve King/Knight, Queen and Prince/King cards bridge zodiac signs; the four Princess/Page cards instead rule polar quadrants.
Brilliance, courage and enthusiasm become materially present, but may turn theatrical, unstable or domineering.
A concise paraphrase of Book T's well- and ill-dignified characteristics.
Historical context and places where influential decks or occult systems differ.
One of the fifty-six suit cards in a standard Tarot pack: four suits of ten pip cards and four court cards.
The Met documents this structure in surviving fifteenth-century Tarot: Cups, Swords, Batons and Coins, each numbered from one to ten with king, queen, knight and knave. Occult correspondences developed later.
| Relation | To | First attested |
|---|---|---|
| Suit and element | Fire | 1888 CE |