Knight of Wands
Oh how I want so badly, everything, right now. Dearest reader, I have been listless all week long and quite frankly I am so tired of feeling like I have a million things that need to get accomplished yet I have zero motivation to do any of it. So, let me guide us through another read along meditation to find our Knight of Wands.
We are walking down a sidewalk, the sun is out and there are bushes, trees, children and life happening all around us as we take our stroll down the block. We decided to leave the house because we were quickly turning into mold in the dark rooms of our cozy abode. So we drank a glass of water, put on our sneakers and headed out to get some life back into our old bones. But as we walk we feel the stiffness in our feet and our legs, they don’t really want to let the hips loose. We stop at a driveway with sidewalk chalk drawings and jump ropes laying around. The chalk says, “Go ahead and jump!” So we pick up the neon colored jump rope in our hand, we look down at it and feel a jolt of nostalgia. “When did I last hold one of these handles in my hand?” You wonder. The first couple of times you try to jump, the rope gets caught. Your feet just don’t want to get any air today. You keep trying. “Dammit!” You keep hitting your legs, and then at one point you trip and almost fall down. Your face fills up with blood and fury. So you stomp your feet and throw the stupid jump rope across the lawn. You let out a shriek and kick at the air. When your foot comes back down to the pavement you feel a buzz in your ankle and think, “great, what did I do now?” But you take another stomp, and it kind of feels good slapping your foot on the pavement, so you do it again. And you keep slapping your feet on the pavement and then you start to jog in place! You can feel your hips loosening up, so you kick your legs up in the air one at a time pretending to be a rockette. And that feels so good you start doing jumping jacks. You jump and jump and now you’re breathless. So you lean over to catch your breath and you see the jump rope handle out of the corner of your eye. You think about how you’re always so hard on yourself, you can probably jump rope now with ease since you are warmed up. You walk over and grab the jump rope and of course, you are jumping with ease, you do about twenty before you feel the blood rushing to your calves and you decide that you’ve proven enough to yourself today. We decide to move on with our walk and you are feeling quite accomplished, maybe tomorrow you will leave an activity in the driveway for strangers to enjoy. We decide to stop by a beautiful oak tree, and we notice a little pink rock on the grass, someone has painted it. On one side it’s pink with a darker pink crystal painted, and on the back it’s written, “Sit down here and find your inspiration today.” So we decide to sit, hoping this isn’t a prank to get squirted with water guns by the neighborhood kids. We sit down and lean against the tree. Pretty soon we start to gaze up at the branches above our heads with the sun spraying us with rays in shattered bursts. We fall asleep until the sun goes down and we wake up just as the last bit of light is leaving. You walk with me back to your house and that is where I leave you to go back home, to sleep a good night’s sleep.
Now, if you are still with me, I understand that we didn’t seek out to accomplish anything in particular. We are not decoding a pail of skeleton keys left by the road, or going up the a cottage door with a hearth covered in trinkets. But what my meditation seeks to do is to have you feel warmth. Wands are associated with fire, inspiration, passion, not just intellectualizing life, but feeling it and being present. All of the Knights are fiery in their nature, but the Knight of Wands is particularly actionable. But we can’t take action if we are not in our bodies, if we are not willing to be part of our human time, so stomping the feet allows an easy way to get back into the body. Sitting under sun rays can help us feel our muscles contract delightfully in the summer time ease. We are alive!
The Knight of Wands asks us to feel our pleasures with tenacity, don’t sleep on this life. However, when the Knight of Wands is leading us to haphazardly we can find that we are being impulsive or arrogant in our pursuits. Grounding and centering is helpful when we pull this card. This energy can also feel like the five year old that wants to open their birthday presents right now, instead of on their birthday. Or the feeling of disregarding the debt you’re in, and using a credit card to pay for a last minute trip to Jamaica instead of being kinder to your future self that will have to pay that balance plus interest.
This card can lead us into some of our most glorious sex-capades, road trips, whiskey dives, and jobs that become canon events of passionate lore. It takes us out of our anxious thoughts and into our deep belly of desire for life. Whoever you are, I hope that even as the world turns and repressive thought forms try to rule the masses, you are worthy of a life well lived. Blessed be.
Photo is from The Muse Tarot by Chris-Anne