Minor Arcana, the Wands

Five of Wands

Pamela Colman Smith's Five of Wands (1909) shows five young men on a patch of rough, open ground, each swinging a long wooden staff with leaves still sprouting from it. The staffs cross in a tangle high above their heads against a clear blue sky, and no two of the five men are dressed alike.

What Waite wrote it means (1910)

Divinatory meanings: 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.

Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 188. Read it in the chapter

A posse of youths, who are brandishing staves, as if in sport or strife. It is mimic warfare, and hereto correspond the

Waite's description of the card, from the same book.

What's in the picture

The tangle. The five staffs meet and cross over the middle of the group. None of them comes down on a head or a body; they only strike each other. Waite called the scene "mimic warfare", fought "as if in sport or strife".
Yellow-green. On the left, a young man in a yellow-green tunic and red hose leans back with his staff raised high, his head tipped up to watch the others.
Red. Next to him, a youth in a red tunic and a brown hat pushes his staff across his body with both hands, like someone blocking a blow from the side.
Black netting. Behind them in the middle, a dark-haired man in a black tunic patterned like netting lifts his staff over his head. His face turns up to the sky.
Blue spots. In front on the right, a youth in a white tunic with large blue spots stands with his back to us, right in the thick of it.
Green. At the far right, a youth in a green tunic, one sleeve white and one yellow, grips a tall upright staff and looks up at the others.
The legs. Their legs are planted wide and at odd angles, in red or yellow hose and soft green boots, as if every one of them is about to move.
The open ground. They stand on uneven ground streaked brown, green and purple. They have it to themselves, with no tree or building in sight and nobody watching.

The card in brief

In the deck: Card 27 of 78
Arcana: Minor Arcana, Wands
Number: Five
Element (Golden Dawn): Fire
Astrology (Golden Dawn): Saturn in Leo
Title in Book T: Lord of Strife
Drawn by: Pamela Colman Smith
Planned by: Arthur Edward Waite
Published: London, William Rider & Son, 1909
Scan: Pam-A printing, c. 1910, Wikimedia Commons

In the old books

Book T (1912)
Two White Radiant Angelic Hands issuant per nubes dexter and sinister. They are clasped together in the grip of the First Order, i.e. the four fingers of each right hand crooked into each other, the thumbs meeting above; and they hold, at the same time, by their centres, five wands or torches which are similar unto the wands of a Zelator Adeptus Minor. One wand is upright in the middle; the others cross each other. Flames leap from the point of junction. Above the middle wand is the sign ♄, and below is that of ♌︎: thus representing the Decanate. Violent strife and boldness, rashness, cruelty, violence, lust, desire, prodigality and generosity; depending on whether the card is well or ill dignified.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 177. See the source
Papus (1892)
Opposition to the obstacles. Victory after surmounting them.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 311. See the source