Queen of Wands

Upright

warm authority · attracting what you tend · confident fire

She sits with a sunflower and a black cat, and the room comes to her. This is fire that knows how to host — creative confidence, a warmth people can sit beside without getting scorched. Tend your people and your work as a garden you actually live in; you do not have to perform the heat, you can be it.

Reversed

jealous heat · charisma as weather control · a fire gone sulky

The sunflower has turned all the way inward, or the cat is doing the ruling. Soften the pride; it is only a draft on the flame. Queen of Wands reversed asks you to warm the house without needing to be the sun in it.

On the card

• Sunflower

  A will that turns toward light. Warmth with a spine.

• The cat

  Independent heat at her feet. Comfort that is not clingy.

• Desert throne

  She can sit in fire without flinching.

When it shows up

This looks like the friend who cheers you and also tells you the truth, or you becoming that person.

History

Smith’s Queen holds a flowering staff and a sunflower; a black cat sits at her feet; lions decorate the throne. Waite’s Queens are the watery (inner) face of each suit; her fire is magnetic rather than martial. The cat is her familiar of instinct. Sunflower and lion both track the sun — fire as loyalty to light.

If you want to sit with it

How do you hold your own fire so other people can sit near it?

Optional. Nothing is saved.