After celebrating New Year, I often look to the Tarot deck for inspiration about the year to come, selecting a single card from the deck that gives me a forward motion of travel, a well of inspiration to draw from, or just an indication of where I might be heading.
This year, the card I find I most resonate with is the Page of Wands, a Minor Arcana card from the Wands suit that is aligned with desires, dreams, and aspirations. It is the suit we look to when thinking about planning our future and offers us an archetypal guide to make our plans come to fruition through hard work and self-determination.
About the Page of Wands
The archetype in this card is the Messenger, and much like the Greek mythological figure Hermes (known to the Romans as Mercury) he travels with purpose over great distances, always holding his wand as a staff to aid him on his journey, much as Hermes did with his famous Caduceus.
Our young page is travelling through foreign lands – the Pyramids of Giza are visible in the far distance – while the landscape around him is sandy and barren. He is an envoy or witness, a person trusted with delivering a message, testifying, or conveying some important decree or instruction to his masters.
We think of the biblical allusion to Paul the Apostle, going from land-to-land spreading the Word. He will travel far and wide, a communicator of news and stories who delights everyone wherever he goes, and taking parts of their culture with him.
He’s on a quest for truth through storytelling (hence the green leaves on his wand), finding meaning in the acquisition of knowledge and insight that he encounters on his travels, and putting communication at the core of who he is.
What the Page of Wands means to me?
What is key in this card is that the ‘wand’ the page holds is taller than the man, signifying that his role as messenger is greater than his Ego. It is his vocation, one he heeds with extreme seriousness and respect, hence the expression of quiet awe on his young face.
It is hard to stick to a vocation, especially if the culture around you doesn’t attach much value to it, but the Page of Wands encourages us to carry on, despite the terrible heat of the desert landscape he is walking through that makes the terrain so hostile.
If the past year for me was marked by loss, change, and upheaval, this year I hope to be more like the Page of Wands, travelling through the lands of this country I have newly moved to while pursuing my own dreams and aspirations as a communicator.
The youthfulness of the page tells me to be more playful and adventurous in my day-to-day, as well as channelling my energies and ambitions into my passions as a writer, always pushing forward to enjoy new experiences and creative directions. Here’s hoping for a more productive and happier year!
Paull Blakeman is the author of The Moon & The Priestess – Accessing the Creative Unconscious with Tarot’s Archetypes. Purchase here.
Paull Blakeman 
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