Three of Wands

The suit derives from the Italian 'Bastoni' (clubs, staves) and the French 'Bâtons' (batons). Numbered small cards in the Italian and French playing-card tradition carried no individual names; the three of batons was simply 'Tre di Bastoni' or 'Trois de Bâtons'. Divinatory meanings were assigned to these cards only from the late eighteenth century onward, beginning with Etteilla.

In the Marseille tradition the Three of Batons showed three batons arranged in a symmetrical pattern — often a central upright baton flanked by two angled ones — with leafy ornament and small hands holding them in place. There was no scene, no figure, no landscape. As with all Marseille small cards, the meaning was carried by the number combined with the suit, not by any illustration.

Pamela Colman Smith placed a robed figure on a high cliff or platform overlooking a strait, with three wands planted upright before him. Ships sail upon the water below, one of them outward-bound toward a distant shore. The figure's back is to the viewer, his gaze fixed on the ships and the horizon — the merchant who has launched his venture and now waits for it to return.

The three planted wands are the venture established — the initial will now rooted and outward-facing. The ships are the enterprise already in motion, the goods or ideas dispatched toward markets beyond view. The cliff-top vantage implies elevation, foresight, and the long view of someone who can see farther than those at sea level. The card speaks of patient expectation and the first returns of a long-range plan.

The Marseille Three shows three arranged batons with no scene. Smith's illustration made it the merchant on the height, and Waite's Pictorial Key emphasized established strength and the help of allies. In the Thoth deck Crowley titles the card 'Virtue', attributes it to Sun in Aries, and renders three wands surging with solar flame — the radiance of a will that has found its direction and now shines outward.

The Golden Dawn assigned the Three of Wands to the Sun in Aries, the second decan of the zodiac — the moment when the fire of spring is fully lit and unobstructed. The maritime imagery of the RWS card echoes the great trading cities of Renaissance Italy and Elizabethan England, where a merchant's fortune depended on ships sent beyond the horizon. As the third card of the suit it marks the first visible fruit of an enterprise that began in the Ace and was chosen in the Two.