Wands is the suit of fire and is associated with the vital spirit and therefore with the spark of life which animates living things. The Latin word anima , from which we derive both the words 'animal' and 'animate', means soul, spirit and can mean courage and high spirits. The suit of fire represents the qualities of movement, vitality and of creativity.

Primitive living things such as these salamanders - who are without the capacity for complex feeling (cups) and for thinking (swords) - are connected with the power of fire because the spirit and the breath of life is within them. Their little bodies (disks) have been made more than the simple lump of matter by something that is difficult to define and to describe. They are animate beings whose capacity for movement is the obvious sign of the dynamic lifeforce within them.

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In ancient times salamanders were thought to be born in fire. And, in fact, the class of elemental spirits ruled by the element fire are called salamanders. Perhaps this legend exists because salamanders make their homes in the firewood people gather and when the wood was lit and burned an occasional salamander crawled out to escape the blaze. Or perhaps it was because salamanders are seen so often in the autumn when the bright fire colored leaves fall to earth and the ancient people who saw them were reminded of the orange and yellow flames of the hearth. To us, the idea of salamanders born out of fire seems an odd contradiction; it is a puzzling contrast to their true nature as water creatures. In this way the salamander and the fiery leaves of fall symbolize the duality inherent in the number two. The Two of Wands is a symbol of the division and opposition of fire and water

The interplay of opposites, is the beginning place of new creation. Here, in the Suit of Wands, it is an interplay of the spirit of living things. The active interplay of fire and water creates steam, which is a symbol of the transcendence of the spirit. Steam is a ethereal form of water; it has transcended its need for a container to hold it just as the spirit of the living creature can transcend the body to directly experience the life force it shares with others. This is the spirit in which primitive creatures live. They cannot experience their own individuality but the instinctual vitality of their kind runs through them. We yearn for this experience as humans; to join with another and to lose ourselves in the experience of unity in interplay with others. When this rare gift comes to us we call it a spirit-ual experience.

The dark color of these newts is symbolic of the earth that they have evolved from. Their bright bellies, which are fiery orange, symbolize the vital energy and their intimate connection with the fiery suit. They combine in their tiny bodies the two first suits and are symbolic of the development of the Suit of Disks into Wands. Animals represent potent creativity - one of the primary meanings of wands - because unlike the mineral world, they actively complete the sexual act which biologically expresses the fundamental creativity of life. When an animal recreates its own kind it performs the act through its own urgency to fulfill the procreative needs of the animal world.

Behind the autumn leaves, instead of the dark earth, is the starry sky. In very ancient times the stars were thought to be the hearth fires of the spirits in their world beyond the sky. The earth was the final resting place of most ancient people, whose eventual bed was a hole in the darkness of the soil. The nutrients released by the decomposition of the flesh was the source of the rich green life of the plants that grow above the burial pit. The spark of new life, symbolized by the stars, represents the spirits of the dead that speak to us about life. The stars symbolize the seeds of the grasses and the plants that will be born in the spring through the decomposition of leaves that cover and protect them in the soil. Or, perhaps they symbolize the spirit essence of living beings, as the ancients believed. Their multiplicity symbolizes the variety of paths and unique ways of being in the dance of the spirit.

The autumn leaves symbolize the spirit of life as it returns to the Earth from whence the vital power originally flowed into the trees. Trees were widely worshipped all over the ancient world for their long life and strength. The living spirit of the great forests of ancient Europe permeated the lives of the ancients. The trees were symbolic of their forest God, who was the lover of the Great Earth Goddess, from whom all life flowed. His life-force was manifested in the trees, and especially recognized as the long straight trunks - which were symbolic of the God's mighty phallus - and the leaves, which were his semen. As the leaves fell back to the ground they provided the needed spark for the fertile earth. The autumn leaves also imply a return to the inner life, as people return to the home when the cold weather and long nights advance, and the sun retreats to its winter path.