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Court card, Prince (Vau) of Wands

Prince of Wands

Air of Fire

The Prince of the Chariot of Fire

Rider-Waite: Knight of Wands

♋︎ ♌︎

In a reading

Swift, strong, impulsive, violent in action, just, noble and generous, fond of jokes and mockery, sometimes cruel in his humour; a person of great energy and little patience. Badly placed: cruel, intolerant, prejudiced, ill-natured.

On the card

A crowned youth rides a chariot of flame drawn by a lion, holding a phoenix wand; his crest is a winged lion head, and the flames around him are shaped into ordered waves.

Kabbalah and astrology

The Vau of the Yod: Air of Fire, the fire made intelligent and directed, the flame that knows where it is going. He rules the last decan of Cancer (the Four of Cups) and the first two of Leo (the Five and Six of Wands): the heart of summer.

Rules Four of Cups (Cancer III, The Moon), Five of Wands (Leo I, Saturn), Six of Wands (Leo II, Jupiter). The courts of the twelve arcs each take the last decan of one sign and the first two of the next, so that every court contains a hidden tension between two signs.

I Ching

Crowley builds each court's hexagram from two trigrams, the suit below and the rank above: Wands give Thunder, Princes give Wind. The result is hexagram 42, I, Increase (Wind over Thunder). See I Ching and the courts.

Depth psychology

Intuition carried into action by thought: the strategist of energy. As an inner figure, the animus as planner and mover. The four ranks are often read as the four ways the suit's function can be lived: the Knight extraverted and initiating, the Queen introverted and sustaining, the Prince as its intellectual form, the Princess as its embodied form.

Thoth and Rider-Waite

This card corresponds to the Rider-Waite Knight of Wands. Crowley renamed the ranks to follow the letters of the Name: Knight (Yod), Queen (Heh), Prince (Vau), Princess (final Heh), so that the Thoth Knight is the Waite King and the Thoth Prince the Waite Knight. The figures' mounts follow the Golden Dawn: Knights on horses, Queens on thrones, Princes in chariots, Princesses on foot.

Related cards

Cards ruled

Trumps of Cancer and Leo

The other Princes

The court of Wands

Correspondences follow the Golden Dawn system as used in Crowley's Book of Thoth and Liber 777. Card images are described, not reproduced. Where sources differ.