Five of Wands Tarot Card Meaning: Upright & Reversed

Keywords, Symbols, Colors, Astrology, Love, Timing & Yes or No

Five young men swing tall wooden staves at one another on uneven ground, each dressed differently, each pointing his own way. Nobody is struck, nobody bleeds, and nobody seems to be on the same team.

This card turns up the week every opinion in the room arrives at once.

Welcome to the fortieth entry in my tarot glossary, and the eighteenth card of the Minor Arcana.

Every Five breaks a pattern. In Wands, that disruption runs through passion and drive, so the clash is loud, physical, and mostly harmless.

Below you’ll find the card’s symbols, its color psychology, upright plus reversed meanings with keyword lists, what it means in love or as feelings, how other cards amplify or diminish it, its element, its astrology, timing, whether it leans yes or no, and my own intuitive read after years of pulling it for clients.

Stay to the end for the simple way I finally stopped confusing this card with the Five of Swords.

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What Does The Five of Wands Tarot Card Actually Mean?

The Five of Wands is children play fighting, with grown-up stakes.

Everyone is trying to find their position and put some structure in place. None of it comes together, and the effort turns deconstructive instead of useful.

Chaotic is the right word for it. Nobody is getting hurt, though plenty of egos are getting bumped.

Energy with nowhere to land

In the Rider Waite Smith image, five figures brandish long staves in a loose scrum, each one aiming somewhere slightly different.

Look at the staves.

They cross in every direction and connect with nothing. All that force is real, and none of it is building anything yet.

Wands trace back through the batons and clubs of the older European decks, the suit of fire, enterprise, and raw vitality.

Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom reads this scene as a game rather than a war, struggle undertaken for the sheer energy of it, which is exactly why the bruises stay small.

What Are the Symbols on The Five of Wands Tarot Card?

Every detail here is about effort pointed in too many directions.

Pamela Colman Smith drew a skirmish without a single wound, and that restraint is the meaning.

• The five young men: distinct personalities, each certain his way is the right way.
• The raised staves: passion and drive held high, colliding instead of cooperating.
• The mismatched clothing: different backgrounds, different priorities, no uniform and no shared plan.
• No contact landing: the fight is mostly noise, all swing and very little strike.
• The uneven ground: no level footing yet, which is why nobody can agree where to stand.
• The open sky: plenty of room to grow, once the jostling stops.
• The youth of the figures: inexperience, play, the clumsy start of learning to work together.
• The sprouting wood: living staves, so the energy here is creative even while it’s scattered.
• The number five: disruption, the middle of the suit where the pattern gets shaken.

What Do the Colors on The Five of Wands Tarot Card Mean in Psychology?

Color does its work on you before a single meaning gets read.

Researchers have long tied specific hues to specific responses, and this palette is a playground more than a battlefield.

How Do Other Cards Amplify or Diminish The Five of Wands?

No card reads alone. In every spread, the neighbouring cards either stir the Five of Wands into a bigger brawl or settle everyone down.

This is called adjacency: two or more cards working in unison, building one cohesive story instead of a list of single card definitions.

When two cards disagree, don’t pick a winner. Acknowledging the disagreement is the reading.

Is The Five of Wands a Yes or No Card?

Not yet, while too many hands are still on it.

The Five of Wands holds things up until somebody agrees on the plan.

Its hesitation points at process, which means the delay is fixable.

Joan Bunning reads this card as disagreement, competition, and hassles, all of which tend to clear once people stop talking over each other.

Reversed, the answer leans toward yes, since the group is finding a way to cooperate.

In a live reading I steer away from flat yes or no answers anyway, since your free will does the real work and no card gets to choose on your behalf.

This card simply asks who’s drawing up the blueprint.

What Is The Five of Wands’ Timing in a Tarot Reading?

Timing under the Five of Wands runs on stop and start energy.

Bursts of activity, then a stall while everyone argues, then another burst. Real momentum begins once the roles are settled.

Five is the number clue, pointing to five days, five weeks, or five months.

Midsummer scuffles

Saturn in Leo places the card in the first decan of Leo, roughly the twenty-third of July to the first of August.

High summer fits it, with long days, hot tempers, and everybody wanting to be out in the sun.

When this card turns up for timing, I ask how many people currently get a vote on the outcome.

The answer is almost always more than it should be, which is the delay in a single sentence.

What Element and Astrology Rule The Five of Wands?

The Five of Wands is Saturn in Leo, structure pressing down on the sign that most wants to shine.

Leo wants centre stage. Saturn demands rules, order, and patience, and the friction between the two is this whole card.

Fire is the element, and here it’s fire with too many people fanning it at once.

Each numbered Wands card takes a decan, a ten-degree slice of a fire sign, and this one opens Leo.

Team captains, siblings, creative collaborators, anyone who has ever shared a stage with other big personalities, all know this placement.

Worth remembering that Saturn’s pressure isn’t punishment. It’s the plan the group keeps forgetting to write down.

What Does The Five of Wands Mean in Love, as Feelings, and as a Person?

The Five of Wands is the sparring card in love, more banter than battle.

Here’s how it tends to read in the questions people ask most.

• In love, if you’re single: competition for someone’s attention, or a few suitors all circling at once.
• In love, in a relationship: bickering over small things, often with two strong wills who both want to lead.
• As feelings: attraction mixed with frustration. They’re energised by you and not yet sure how to work with you.
• As a person: competitive, lively, quick to debate, often more playful than they seem in the moment.
• As advice: decide together what you’re building before you argue about how to build it.
• Reversed in love: the bickering easing, or one person avoiding a conversation that needs to happen.

What Does the Five of Wands Actually Feel Like?

When I first started reading tarot, I couldn’t tell this card apart from the Five of Swords.

They both looked like conflict to me. Two cards, five people each, everyone in some kind of fight.

Then the suits sorted it out. Swords are your mind, and Wands are your passion, your vigor, your vitality, your life force itself.

Seen that way, the Five of Wands is children play fighting. Energetic, noisy, a little ridiculous, and nobody really means to land a blow.

Underneath the noise, these people are trying to figure out their positions and give things some structure. The trouble is that none of it comes together constructively, so the effort pulls things apart more than it builds.

Chaotic is a good word for it. Nobody is getting hurt, though.

Swords are painful. Wands can definitely leave some bruises and a few bumps on the head, though what this card bruises most is ego.

Researchers who study rough-and-tumble play have found the same thing in children and animals alike: mock fighting is how we learn to cooperate, read each other, and hold back our strength.

Hand out the plans

When this card lands, I think of five grown men trying to build a house without the plans.

There are too many engineers on the field. Everyone has the skill and the passion, and no one has the blueprint.

The way through is rarely to win the argument. It’s to agree on what you’re building, who’s doing what, and where it all goes.

Once the roles are clear, the same energy that was bumping heads starts raising walls.

The Five of Wands Tarot Card: Quick Answers

Is the Five of Wands a bad card?

Frustrating rather than bad. It shows friction that’s mostly harmless and usually fixable with a clear plan.

What’s the difference between the Five of Wands and the Five of Swords?

Swords are the mind, so its conflict wounds. Wands are passion, so its conflict mostly bruises egos and blows over.

What does the Five of Wands mean in the future position?

A busy, competitive stretch ahead. Agree on roles early and it stays playful.

What element is the Five of Wands?

Fire, under Saturn in Leo. Big energy pressing against the need for structure.

Save this card for later

Where The Five of Wands Might Be Pointing You Now

If the Five of Wands keeps turning up for you, in a reading, a dream, a tarot deck you shuffle at midnight, it’s worth listening.

This card tends to appear right before a group finally figures out how to work together.

You might be the one holding the plans.

When you’re ready to look at it with someone who’ll hold the whole picture, your reading is waiting.

Click here to book your reading to find where all that energy wants to go, plus who you’re really competing with.

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Keep Reading

Four of Wands · Five of Swords · Five of Cups · Five of Pentacles · Reversed cards · Start reading

About the Author

Nothing here requires either of us to travel. Chris Bennett is The Tarot Medium, counted among the best tarot readers in the world and one of the most trusted psychic mediums working today. Every reading happens online, which is how his week takes in Portland, Birmingham, Toronto, Sydney, Dublin, Raleigh, Philadelphia, Melbourne, New Orleans, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Ottawa, and Bristol, along with clients right across Canada, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, plus South Africa. Evidential mediumship, intuitive tarot, psychic life path readings, plus grief support with real psychological depth behind it make up the practice, with no fear and no theatrics in any of it. Anyone ready to read for themselves can start with his online tarot courses.