If you’ve been feeling a bit stuck or stalled recently, and the Two of Wands reversed shows up in your spread, you’ve just gotten a hint about how to solve your situation. We all face choices in our lives, and there’s a choice that you either aren’t making or that you’re unable to make. Sometimes these choices can be subtle and small but have major effects on how you feel. This is a card in the Wands suit, so you know it’s time for action when you see it appear.
The Twos and Wands
Twos indicate balance and peace. Two sides, two choices, two platforms on a scale — the twos are all about keeping equilibrium. Add the action-oriented Wands into the mix and you get actions to keep that balance and correct unharmonious situations. You have to do something to keep both sides equal.
In the case of the Two of Wands, that means making a choice or a plan. You’ve stayed in one place for too long (that’s not necessarily a physical location) and are ready to get going. Your plan is made, and it’s time to work on making it a reality. You’re looking forward in life and are taking action so that you make progress.
The Best-Laid Plans….
Of course, plans can go awry or never see the light of day, and that’s where the Two of Wands reversed starts poking at you. Maybe your plans aren’t working out. Circumstances change, and despite your best efforts, you find you can’t move forward as fast as you wanted to. Your plans stall, or you find you have to rethink them. Maybe you were planning to move to a new state for a new job and better quality of life, only to find that costs in the new state have risen dramatically, making the move a less desirable change. Or, maybe you began studying in a new field only to find that, with the end of the training program coming up, the bottom has dropped out of the job market in that field.
Another possible interpretation is that you need to make plans and aren’t. You’re delaying; you might not necessarily be afraid of making plans, but you’re delaying for some reason. The Two of Wands reversed says it’s time to get going.
Yet another possibility is that you know you need to make a choice, but you can’t. You don’t see much of a difference between the two choices, or the consequences of both are equally good or bad. Maybe there is so much information flying about that you’re confused and can’t see the best path very clearly.
Wands are typically the energy and action suit, but they can also be intuition-based, as in working off gut feelings. Are you listening to your gut? Maybe you’re making plans and things look like they’re going well, but you’ve got that cold feeling in your midsection whenever you think of your plans. Listen to that feeling; it’s telling you that something is off. It could be you don’t really want to go through with the plans — or maybe you’re so nervous that you need to address your inner doubts before proceeding.
And wait, there’s more: The Two of Wands reversed can indicate additional choices and paths that you didn’t realize were options.
Straightforward Imagery
The image on the card is fairly clear. Instead of a person looking into the distance with two wands or staffs, you’ve got someone upside down, hemmed in by those staffs. Something has restricted your plans, and as with any card that has a person on it, the reversed version looks like the Hanged Man — so there’s some suspension and waiting going on.
Those two staffs, by the way, look a lot like roses that have been hung upside down to dry. On most decks one of the staffs has a bracket holding it to the wall, which looks like the strip of tape you would use to hold the stem to the wall. Your plans seemed beautiful, but now they’re at an end, or you’re trying to preserve them but they need to go through a careful transformation. Or you have to basically upend them in order to get closer to your goal.
In many decks, the person holds an orb, like a crystal ball. When upside down, the orb doesn’t look very steady; the person doesn’t have a very good grip on it, and the ball could fall. In other words, your plan isn’t very stable, or there is something threatening to make it crash.
The position of the card doesn’t really change the meaning other than narrowing down time and perspective. If the card shows up in a past-influence position, then what you’re asking about was influenced in the past by something going awry with plans or you not making a decision, and so on. If the card appears in a position denoting other people’s actions, then someone else’s decision or actions affected the situation.
So How to Deal With This?
If you’ve just been putting off a decision or haven’t made a plan, your course of action is clear: Get off your rear and decide or plan. If you’re not seeing a difference between your choices, you may want to talk to someone new to the situation for a fresh perspective. A full tarot reading can help here as the reader could be an interesting third party to talk to. He or she can’t really tell you what to do, but you may get additional perspective through a question the reader asks you.
Whatever is going on, you have to take a look at where you’re going and nail down plans. Either create them, or look at your current ones and see where your movement forward may be experiencing roadblocks. And don’t worry — this is all part of life. Take it one step at a time, and you’ll get those blocks cleared.
