8 of Wands: Sagittarius I
Decan ruler (Chaldean): Mercury
Hermetic title: Swiftness
Corresponding majors: The Magician [Mercury] + Temperance [Sagittarius]
Dates: November 21- November 30

With the 8 of Wands we arrive at the first decan of Sagittarius, the sign of the Archer and the great centaur-teacher of heroes, Chiron. In tarot, the minor cards of Sagittarius are the 8, 9, and 10 of Wands. I have always found these particularly apt at a metaphorical level. The 8 of Wands is the speed of the arrow. The 9 of Wands is the strength of the archer - the greater the strength, the farther the flight. And the 10 of Wands is the striking of the target - the decisive THUNK when the arrow sinks into the bulls-eye. Together, the speed, strength and strike depicted in these cards form a picture of determination and deadly accuracy at a distance.

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As the Sun arrives in Sagittarius I this year, great Jupiter is concluding his yearlong transit through this sign of his rulership. Astrologers and magical practitioners are furiously collecting the last of his blessings - that sweet Jupiter-juice will not be on tap again for a couple of years! (Not a modern-day alchemist? You can purchase some of the good stuff here.)

Mysteries of Temperance
Temperance is, in fact, the card of alchemy. In case you've wondered why its alternate name in the Thoth deck is "Art," that's because alchemy has long been known, among its practitioners, as "the Art" or "the Great Work". On the Thoth Art card, behind the alchemistic angel, you can make out the alchemist's motto, "Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem," or "VITRIOL".

Often we assume Temperance means "moderation" - and that is not inaccurate. Finding the middle way is an integral part of Temperance. But "moderate" does not mean "average". The Great Work is not the work of trying to be mediocre. It is the work of traveling to one's own heights and depths, exploring the light and shadow, expanding the self to its own extremes - in the same way that one tempers a sword by plunging into white-hot fire and ice-cold water. That's why on the Tree of Life the path of Temperance runs between the sephiroth of the sun and the moon, hot and cold celestial opposites.

To be tempered is to be "tried and tested" - pushed to one's limits and brought back. In cooking, when we temper foods, we work with physical opposites (recall the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismesgistus - aka the alchemist's Prime Directive - in which we are called to separate "the subtle and the gross"). We take substances to the extreme ends of what they can tolerate, and then guide them safely back to the middle. We introduce a little cold into the hot, a little hot into the cold, a little dense into the light, a little light into the dense.

Jupiter, as ruler of Sagittarius, is the great teacher, the broadener of worldviews and expander of fortunes. When Temperance is his vehicle, he teaches us by enlarging our experiences, by putting us in touch with our own mythologies and tasting what might be our own greatness.

Rainbow Messengers
We've mentioned Temperance's connection with the bow (which has even more extensive Kabbalistic roots - my Fortune's Wheelhouse co-host Mel did a graphic that lays out the Tree of Life connection). But there is a second set of references to the bow shape embedded in Temperance, and these have to do not with the classic hunting weapon, but with the meteorological phenomenon that is a rainbow.

The rainbow forms when two opposites meet: fire (the sun) + water (the rain). (We will encounter this phenomenon again in the 10 of Cups, as watery Pisces gives way to fiery Aries.) While there is no rainbow explicitly depicted on the Waite-Smith Temperance card, it is there in code. To one side of the Temperance angel, we see a stand of irises - blooms named after Iris, the messenger goddess.

So in a sense, the 8 of Wands corresponds to two messenger deities: Hermes, in the form of Mercury the Magician, and Iris, in the form of Temperance. Both travel freely above and below; between Olympus, our human world, and Hades. Both act as agents of the Olympians, though rarely at the same time (Hermes is the messenger of the Odyssey; Isis of the Aeneid and the Iliad). They bear prayers, work magic, perform miracles at the behest of the elder gods. Is it any wonder that the 8 of Wands is such a reliable indicator of swift-traveling news?

Express package delivery
In my own experience, the 8 of Wands has been among the most literal of cards. I get it slightly more often than expected (50 times in the last 5 years). In that time it has presided over trips by plane, train, and automobile; the return of lost items; the Muslim ban airport protests; dozens of in-person and online conversations; thousands of written words - not to mention that time in October 2016 that I got this idea to launch a tarot podcast (my co-host Mel, who has this Mercury placement, says she finds the Lord of Swiftness vanishingly swift - if you don't catch the 8 of Wands mid-flight, it's here and gone). More than anything else, though, the 8 of Wands has brought me mail: letters, packages, emails, Amazon deliveries.

Now it is true that we all order a lot online these days, but it is also true that there is a dark side to the acceleration of delivery and communication: warehouse workers enduring modern-day wage slavery, the polarization of discourse, the spread of hate speech, the loss of competition. We should not forget that Mercury is a god of deception, and he is in fact in detriment in Jupiter's realms (as Jupiter is in detriment in his). And while many of the decan images feature the man-horse theriomorphs of Sagittarius, Agrippa's features an armed soldier. His translation of the Latin Picatrix speaks of audacie, libertatis, et militie - "Boldness, liberty, and militancy". Here we have a warrior who is definitely trying to get away with something.

In the 8 of Wands, Mercury's speed combines with Sagittarius' great range to shrink distances and shorten times. But his virtues here are amoral: they are viral. It is up to us to use this powerful ability as a weapon of destruction, or as a boon to humanity.

Make a Talisman!
The 8 of Wands is one of two minors bearing no human figure (the other is the 3 of Swords). It may just be my opinion, but I think that makes it particularly effective for magical work: it's a particularly pure expression of the idea of rapid progress and imminent arrival.

It happened this summer that my daughter and I were headed halfway around the world to visit relatives in Singapore. Looking ahead to a 48-hour round trip in economy on five separate planes belonging to a carrier not known for its reliability in the baggage department, I found myself quite anxious about the secure arrival of our things.

That's when I was struck with the notion of making 8 of Wands luggage tags. If the 8 of Wands could be counted on to deliver messages and packages, I reasoned, might it not also successfully deliver suitcases? Does it not literally depict items flying through the air, about to land in their intended destination? So during a Mercury hour a few days before the flight, I took some printouts of the card, stuck them on cardboard with packing tape and our return address on the back, and affixed them to our bags with zip ties.

Well, I have to say, I have never gotten my bags through an airport with such speed. Both coming and going (and in between, when we had to manually transfer them through the international gates), they were among the first to make it onto the belt. The customs guys barely looked at them. It was as if they had an invisible guardian shepherding them along with maximum speed and minimum fuss.

Though I've not had occasion to test them since, I dare say 8 of Wands tags could work in any number of contexts. Remember, the 8 of Wands does not particularly care about what it is you're trying to communicate or carry - it just wants to get the job done, fast. Now I'm not telling you to carry this talisman when you're trying to sneak your weed into Coachella. But I'm also not telling you not to.

Kabbalistic Doubles
One last point. In our esoteric tarot podcast, Mel and I have often spoken of "Kabbalistic doubles". That's a reference to the concept of Kabbalistic dignity, which is just a fancy way of saying "the number and planet of the card correspond to the number and planet of the sephira," Hermetically speaking. For example, the 3rd sephira, Binah, corresponds to all 3's in tarot, and also the planet Saturn. So when you have a 3 card that is associated with Saturn, like the 3 of Swords (Saturn in Libra), we say it has Kabbalistic dignity.

There are seven such cards in the minor arcana (and I can't believe I've gotten to the next-to-last one without talking about this!) They are zodiacally consecutive, and the stretch runs from Libra II to Sagittarius II. Astrological essential dignity does play a part. While each planet rules the decan of the card, the two malefics, Mars and Saturn, are in rulership and exalted respectively; it pays to find the value in the 3 of Swords and 5 of Cups! But even the planets in detriment, Venus and Mercury (7 of Cups and 8 of Wands) do well in their fashion, not to mention that they're easier to work with.

Now every decan, and the minor card associated with it, has its particular skill or specialty. But these 7 cards, I find, hold particular power if you can harness it. The 7th and 8th sephiroth, Netzach and Hod, are known as the "sephiroth of prophecy" - meaning they specialize in transmitting divine communications to our mortal world. Personally, I think that means the Kabbalistically dignified 7 of Cups and 8 of Wands are among the most magically accessible minors we have.

The Takeaway
When you get the 8 of Wands, chances are that thoughts and ideas, goods and services are on the move! It's a good time to reach out to people you've been meaning to contact and send off things you've been meaning to mail. You can also expect long-awaited answers and any anticipated packages to show up. If Mercury is retrograde, you have an excellent chance of finding lost things, so look again in the places you could swear you already checked 8 times.

Finally, if the 8 of Wands is to deliver, it will deliver swiftly or not at all. Don't agonize, brood, labor, or wait for the anticipated news/stuff. If you have a light-bulb moment, act quickly! The blessings of this card are real, but fleeting!