Minor Arcana, the Wands

Four of Wands

Four tall wooden wands stand in the foreground of Pamela Colman Smith's Four of Wands (1909), with a heavy garland of flowers and fruit hung across their tops. Behind them two women in long gowns lift bunches of flowers high over their heads, in front of an old walled house with a round white tower and a red roof.

What Waite wrote it means (1910)

Divinatory meanings: They are for once almost on the surface—country life, haven of refuge, a species of domestic harvest-home, repose, concord, harmony, prosperity, peace, and the perfected work of these.
Reversed: The meaning remains unaltered; it is prosperity, increase, felicity, beauty, embellishment.

Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 190. Read it in the chapter

From the four great staves planted in the foreground there is a great garland suspended; two female figures uplift nose-gays; at their side is a bridge over a moat, leading to an old manorial house.

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

What's in the picture

The garland. A thick garland of leaves, red roses and round fruit hangs across the tops of the four wands. It dips in the middle, so the wands and the garland make a kind of open canopy.
The ribbons. Red ribbons tie the garland to the two outer wands, and their loose ends trail down in the air.
The four wands. They are planted in flat ground at the very front, two on each side, so we see everything else between them, as if through a gate. The sky above is a warm, even yellow.
The two women. One wears white with a blue mantle, the other red, and both raise bunches of flowers above their heads. Waite calls them "two female figures" who "uplift nose-gays".
The tower. Behind them rises a round white tower with a pointed red roof and a small dark window. It is part of a long grey wall with smaller red-roofed turrets.
The bridge. On the right, a low stone bridge with dark arches crosses toward the wall. Waite describes "a bridge over a moat, leading to an old manorial house".
The small crowd. At the far left, half hidden by the wands, a few small people stand together, one of them in green and one in red. They seem to be watching from the side, at a distance.
The little house. Further right, a small house with a red roof peeks over the top of the long wall.

The card in brief

In the deck: Card 26 of 78
Arcana: Minor Arcana, Wands
Number: Four
Element (Golden Dawn): Fire
Astrology (Golden Dawn): Venus in Aries
Title in Book T: Lord of Perfected Work
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 Radiating Angelic Hands, as before, issuing from clouds right and left of the card and clasped in the centre with the grip of the First Order, holding four wands or torches crossed. Flames issue from the point of junction. Above and below are two small flaming wands, with the symbols of ♀ and ♈︎ representing the Decan.
Perfection or completion of a thing built up with trouble and labour. Rest after labour, subtlety, cleverness, beauty, mirth, success in completion. Reasoning faculty, conclusions drawn from previous knowledge. Unreadiness, unreliable and unsteady through over-anxiety and hurriedness of action. Graceful in manner, at times insincere, etc.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), pp. 195–196. See the source
Papus (1892)
Obstacles to the Enterprise.
Nothing can be accomplished without obstacles. We therefore now find them appearing, and must prepare ourselves to overcome them.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 311. See the source