Today’s card draw from The Wild Unknown Tarot is 10 of Wands.

I want to start off by providing an important notice, which will be included in all of this series. However, other things that will be included that you can skip to are:

• Card Description
• Considering the Card, where I look at how I would interpret certain imagery used
• Traditional Rider-Waite definition

I only include the latter as a comparison, to show how wandering down your own understanding of images and symbols can bring you to a similar meaning, though along a different path with different experiences. This is to help expand knowledge of the card.

I will not, however, be including the definitions from the guidebook, as that is not the point of this. Also, I don’t have rights to that material.

Important Note

I started this series because I had read that people struggled with the deck purely because the definitions in the Little White Book were very Rider-Waite-based, and that there wasn’t much wisdom regarding the animals and symbolism chosen.

This series is to help you to decipher the meanings yourselves. I am by no means saying what I have to say about the cards are correct for anyone outside myself. However, I am providing my daily journal entries regarding the deck to act as a guide so that you can begin your own journey.

When I started tarot, I had no idea what to write in my journal, and thus didn’t. Instead I obsessively read and re-read the Little White Book belonging to the Spiral Tarot (which is why today I can completely quote the book). I didn’t trust myself to know the cards, even when I could recite the definitions. I was afraid to put the book down.

To this fear of lack of knowledge, the creator of The Wild Unknown writes:

You do know enough. You’ve been a person on earth every day since you were born. You’ve experienced all the emotions and situations these cards depict. Quiet the naysayer…don’t let it prevent you from sitting down with a friend (or yourself) and using these cards to help talk about what’s going on in your life. It will be positive. It will be radical. You’ll find things start to reveal themselves through the cards that have been hidden away, covered with dust.

pp. 10-11, The Wild Unknown Guidebook

Description of the Card

The card is predominantly black. It shows a dark, barely ‘lit’ space in which you can just make out 10 crisscrossed and jumbled branches. Nothing is seen byond them other than the white ‘glow’ in the center.

Traditional Card Meaning

Traditionally, the Rider-Waite-based decks show someone carrying a bundle of Wands, putting all their energy and strength to move them along. Their head is usually hanging down so they cant’ see where they’re going. There’s a house along the way, showing what the goal is, that there is an end in sign. The message behind the traditional card is that there is too much that the figure is carrying, and they’re losing sight of the goal. It’s too much for them to carry alone, they should pass the load along.

What I derive from the Card itself

If we look at this from an animal perspective, something with four legs, or even some birds, it’s difficult to get through. A deer might get tangled, or a swan, or the owl.

I think only small rodents or snakes would be able to navigate through the mess. Keeping in mind, the snake is the representing animal of Wands in this deck. This means that with its suit of Wands, with the energy of Fire, it is possible to get through the brambles.

It’s chaotic. It is difficult even to see how many branches there are. If this branch situation were approached as a person, it would still be difficult to organize and sort. The branches would tangle together and not want to be separated, then push against each other when tried to be laid neatly together.

Thus, because of this, they are difficult to deal with, and it can be easy to lose sight of the goal when everything keeps trying to push away but cling together. But there is still a way to see through them, and thus, you can see what’s on the other side of them, if only you can get through all the resistance.

If the branches are separated, divided up, then they’ll be easily passed through.

About the Deck

The Wild Unknown Tarot  is a 2016 Harper One publication, created by Kim Krans. The deck is widely available at most bookstores who carry Tarot cards, but also on Amazon. Kim Krans always wrote The Wild Unknown Guidebook.