MINOR ARCANA

King of Wands Tarot Meanings

The King of Wands helps us to turn all those thoughts and dreams into real plans and tangible results. The King is very pro-active energy and wants to be able to get stuck into his work, after making sure to plan every detail for the best chance at success. A bit like the Queen of Wands, the King has a way of balancing the internal and external world, to help move your closer to your goal in the best way possible.

However, it’s important to balance both the King’s elemental energies, air and fire, and not let one overpower the other. An imbalance within the King of Wands can cause things like procrastination or impulsive and risky actions that have a lower chance of working out.

King of Wands Tarot Meanings Entrepreneur

King of Wands Upright Meanings

In the upright position, the King of Wands is a charming card, able to motivate you to achieve your ambitions and create strategies to do so. Some of the key meanings of the King of Wands are:

Charming
Creative strategy
Motivator
Innovator
Leader

The King of Wands is a leader that likes to be just as hands-on as his subjects. If we visualise this card as a real ruler, he would be the type of monarch that would charge into battle alongside his men with no fear and pure confidence. He is a master strategist but doesn’t get stuck in the planning stage.

King of Wands Reversed Meanings

In the reversed position, the King of Wands can be reckless and impulsive. His ego is something that can often be his downfall and can lead him to extremes. Some of the main reversed meanings of the King of Wands are:

Overpowering
Controlling
Impulsive
Extremist
Reckless

The King of Wands is a card of intelligence as well as passion, so when we reverse that, the fire energy takes the lead and we can introduce an arrogance that can lead to trouble. Lack of communication and listening to others are some of the reverse King of Wands’ biggest challenges.

Reading King of Wands in a Tarot Spread

The King of Wands in a spread asks for firm and strategic leadership. There is a need to take all conscious ideas and plans and finally put them into action, instead of staying in a place where we are always plotting our next move but never taking it. The King calls for action and for you to take control of your own destiny, nobody will be able to execute your ideas as you can, so take the steps needed to do exactly that.

Like the Queen of Wands, the King may come into conflict with some of the other cards in the spread, so pay close attention to how the King’s energy interacts with the cards around him. Do they complement each other or are they conflicting?

King of Wands as An Invitation

In the form of an invitation, the King of Wands often asks us to step into our power and into that leadership role that will help us to move forwards towards our goals.

For King of Wands, this invitation could be the following:

An invitation to come up with a creative strategy to help you reach your goal
An invitation to assess your actions and make sure they are not needlessly reckless
An invitation to step into a leadership role
An invitation to find new ways to re-motivate yourself, especially in times of low energy

King of Wands as Sage Advice

The King of Wands can offer stern yet motivational advice, to help us see creative solutions to our most pressing problems and challenges.

Some advice King of Wands may offer is:

Be a leader, not a dictator. Check that your passion doesn’t cloud your logical thinking.
We all have the power to be an innovator, we just have to have the confidence to embrace creativity and trust our strategic thinking
Accept what you can control and let go of that which you cannot
If you are always making plans and spending time strategising, you’re not progressing, you’re procrastinating

King of Wands as a Lesson

The King of Wands holds a lot of lessons on being a leader and embracing authority in a way that isn’t controlling or dominating. It can be a tricky balance to master, but the King of Wands is a pro.

Some lessons that King of Wands may offer you are:

A lesson in turning plans into plans of action
A lesson in what it means to be a master procrastinator
A lesson in creative strategy
A lesson in how to be a motivator, not just for yourself but also for others

King of Wands as a Redirection

When the King of Wands shows up to redirect you, he is often popping up to show you that it’s time to start taking action on all those ideas you’ve been gathering.

As a redirection, King of Wands could symbolise a need to:

Exit the planning stage and start taking action
Refind your motivation using fresh techniques and tools
Stop being the follower and start to step into the role of leader
Check extremist behaviour and take steps to temper that passionate energy

Wands

The wands are the keepers of our passions, personal power, actions and impulses. They are tool for creativity and manifestation, helping us to make our desires and inspirations a reality.

Using the wands comes with its ups and downs. On one hand you are gifted the ability of endless possibility. You can make anything you want happen. However, the flip side of this is that you can also cause a great deal of destruction. Which one you end up with will depend on how you use the wands and how you decide to channel their energy.

King of Wands Tarot Meanings - Elemental

Fire + Air

The wands correspond with the element of fire, so they adopt all the properties we unconsciously associate with fire. The kings in the Tarot correspond with the element of air, so we add in this secondary element to see how it works with or conflicts with the wands element of fire.

For the King of Wands, we are focusing on the strategy and intellect of our passions and power – because air is the element of strategy and intellect. This gives us some structure to those more unruly impulses, it allows us to channel the fiery energy into the right areas. It can also lead to always feeling ‘in the right’ however, and can often be seen as arrogance.

Kings

The Kings in the Tarot are the leaders of their suit. What type of leader they are depends on the suit that they are in. For the King of Wands, we are dealing with a leader who is hands on, he likes to get s**t done himself as much as possible.

This type of leader can also have a fiery temper however and find it hard to delegate to others due to arrogance and inflated ego. The King of Wands is all about getting to the goal no matter what. He leaves little room for emotion or overthinking. He will ask the most relevant questions before jumping in, but leave the details to work themselves out along the way.