Five of Wands: tarot card meaning

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Five of Wands upright means: Imitation, as, for example, sham fight, but also the strenuous competition and struggle of the search after riches and fortune. In this sense it connects with the battle of life. Hence some attributions say that it is a card of gold, gain, opulence. Reversed: Litigation, disputes, trickery, contradiction.

The picture

“A posse of youths, who are brandishing staves, as if in sport or strife. It is mimic warfare, and hereto correspond the” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

Upright

Imitation, as, for example, sham fight, but also the strenuous competition and struggle of the search after riches and fortune. In this sense it connects with the battle of life. Hence some attributions say that it is a card of gold, gain, opulence.

Waite's additional meanings: Success in financial speculation.

Reversed

Litigation, disputes, trickery, contradiction.

Waite's additional meanings, reversed: Quarrels may be turned to advantage.

In one line

A sham fight: the scramble for fortune. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)

Where it sits in the deck

The Five of Wands is the fifth card of the suit of Wands, one of the 56 Minor Arcana. The other Fives: Five of Cups, Five of Swords, Five of Pentacles.

In Esbat

Esbat deals a card of the day, face down until you turn it, and holds all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. The Five of Wands can be shared as a picture. All 78 tarot card meanings.

Sources

Meanings and picture descriptions: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), public domain, checked against the Wikisource transcription. Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, 1910, public domain. Like the app, this page records what the book says; it does not promise outcomes.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Esbat: Tarot & Book of Shadows, on Google Play

A card of the day, face down until you turn it, and all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. For Android.

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