Keywords for the Nine of Wands include: Courage, recovery, strength, success, conquest, determination, resilience, and defiance.
You won’t believe how many people read. that as “amputee”.
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In the Sacred Sisterhood Tarot The Nine of Batons (Wands) is an Above the Knee amputee. Her prosthetic leg starts at her hip, and the nine wands are a field of sunflowers behind her. She looks like a badass, I’m not gonna lie. And as someone familiar with disability world, the assumption I make fro her prosthesis is that she was likely born with amniotic band syndrome, or some other condition that affects the growth of limbs. I’m not an expert, but it’s rare to have an injury that requires such a high amputation. So, I read her as someone who’s been finding ways to do things differently for her entire life. She’s absolutely defiance.
Not everyone’s gonna read her the way I do. They’ll see such a high amputation and think oh, the poor thing, she’s been through so much. They might be the people who say “have a blessed day” a little too strongly when they speak to someone with a disability. They might not be. They may be incredibly empathetic. But in tarot interpretation matters so much. Now, this deck does have more representation, in the Knight of Pentacles (which I’ll discuss another time), so that does help.
I expected more peg-legs in the Lady Pirates Tarot, not gonna lie. That’s why it irks a bit that while we have two excellent ladies with monovision—like me!—and an injured person using crutches in the Five of Pentacles (We’ll get there). The Nine of Wands is the only one rocking a Long John Silver style look. Now, she’s a pirate, and a Below the Knee amputee, so chances are she has been through some shit. And she’s not smiling. She’s ready to fight back. In her, I do not see the “possibly unnecessary defense” influence of the Moon on this card. This reads like a Seven of Wands to me. I’m not mad at it, but I’d prefer her on a card where she could be stomping that leg into some enemy (it probably costs too much for that, but let a girl dream.)
Like the Sacred Sisterhood Tarot, the Fyodor Pavlov Tarot has an amputee in the Nine of Wands (and a wheelchair user in the Knight of Coins/Pentacles come to think of it). In this case, there’s an amputee without a prothesis—who really shouldn’t be upright with that crutch like that…having him injured on both sides would’ve worked fine, I assure you. This pushes us toward the second meaning of the Nine of Wands, but there two important differences here:
1. He’s not the only example of an amputee n the deck. In the King of Wands, we see an amputee with a prosthesis in a card that has to do with ambition and leadership. That he’s overcome hardship may be read in the prosthesis, but that’s the reader’s mind entirely.
2. He’s shown as the traditional “soldier protecting himself” with other injuries that indicate he’s still suffering. This isn’t someone who has “overdoing adversity” stamped on him at the point where it’s impossible to tell how he was injured—or indeed, if he was. It’s not someone able-bodied thinking about how they’d rather die than lose a leg—it’s a reminder of the pain o injury, and he’s pushing forward before he’s able to be fitted for a prosthesis, or at a point where it’s not possible. His leg isn’t the only obstacle here.
I see something similar in the Numinous Tarot’s Nine of Candles. Yes, this woman might be in more danger than others because she is mobility-impaired, so her pushing forward is brave—but she’s also using her walker as a source of courage. It stands between her and the danger. It’s not the “wands” in the card, and it’s not her only protection. If there’s an actual threat, she can burn it down. Her disability isn’t a net positive or a net negative here. It’s simply a feature, in a deck with two other cards where the disability is simply a trait.
The Nine of Wands isn’t a bad place for a person with a disability. As a group, we’re pretty damn tough, and sometimes we’ve been through stuff that makes us a little paranoid. But it’s not all we are. If you can show that in the card, go for it—as long as you don’t make that your only representation—but beware of what a less aware reader could see if their keyword for this card is different from yours.
I got most of these (after the RWS) when I last quit smoking a couple years ago (think I made it five years) as a deal with myself - I could spend my cigarette budget on indie tarot decks. I started up again but it was a good incentive at the time. (Update: Quit again may 2026)
I have also traded and given decks away so there are more that I’ve had and lost, but this is my current collection of 27 31 tarot decks (I’ll make a separate post for oracle and misc decks). I also tried to get these in a way that corresponded to the majors order to help limit my spending but it got pretty neurotic with swapping out deck positions and stuff so I’ve stopped worrying about that as much. It kinda helps me remember my collection though.
Adding a read more coz on desktop the pics make it a long post.
I put in parentheses the year I got them in, more or less. I added pictures and I'll update with links to other posts if I ever do deck reviews. I’ll also update this post and title if I get new decks.
The Explorer of Vials appears when we are sending and receiving new information about our emotions, our relationships, and our desires. Did you find the message in a bottle the Explorer is holding, or are you the one who wrote it? Perhaps both? This Explorer is figuring out their feelings and how to best communicate those to
others (or even to themself; is the message from your subconscious?). They may also be learning how to respond to the feelings of others in the healthiest way for all those involved.
The Explorer sits on top of the giant jellyfish where they cannot be stung, showing an understanding of healthy boundaries and compassion/respect for others. This card may represent those with strong empathic tendencies, who absorb the feelings of others and/or project theirs outwardly, but aren’t adept at handling this yet. Learning to manage this inward/outward flow is key for you or the person this card refers to.
It’s been a while since I’ve done tarot, but today felt like the right time to do it. I couldn’t find any specific spreads, so I kinda made my own up. I used the Soulflower Plant Spirit Oracle, the Wild Unknown Tarot (WU) deck, and the Numinous Tarot (NT) deck.
Spread positions were: (1) The quality presiding over the year; (2) something to leave behind; (3) something to take with me; (4) a lesson learned.
(1) Quality presiding over the year: Daylily - Centering
Text from the card: Daylily is short-lived, each bloom fading after only a day. She reminds you to live in the present, with a deep understanding that you cannot change things outside of yourself. Daylily encourages you to live in the moment, to loosen up and allow natural processes and flow to occur in your daily happenings.
(2) Leave behind: NT: The Moon; WU: 2 of Wands
This is interesting, because I consider both the Moon and the 2 of Wands to be generally positive cards, something that is supported by the guidebooks for both these decks. So why leave them behind? I think perhaps because they are both about internal processes, in some way. The Moon is about intuition, introspection, mystery, magic. The Two of Wands is about preparing for action - you have a goal and you’re beginning to move in that direction. Perhaps this means that last year was about preparing and that’s done now. This year is going to be about taking everything that last year was preparing and putting it into practice.
(3) Take with me: NT: The Shadow; WU: 4 of Wands (reversed)
Another one that made me go “what?” a little, at first. The Shadow is what Numinous Tarot calls The Devil and it is about the dark parts of one’s nature, all the things that are often repressed -- fears, biases, traumas, desires. The 4 of Wands is about accomplishment - reversed it’s not so different, it’s still about accomplishment but specifically about recognizing the small daily accomplishments. So, yes, taking everything I’ve learned about myself last year & putting it into practice, integrating the dark parts of myself into a unified whole. You can’t pretend to leave your shadow self behind - it’s always with you, really. IDK, I haven’t drawn any solid conclusion about this, but reading these two cards in conjunction w/ what came before is definitely making me think that 5781 is the year of Doing Things.
(4) Lessons learned: NT: 8 of Tomes; WU: Justice
8 of Tomes is about recognizing one’s own progress and improvement, acknowledging one’s own skills. Justice is about decision-making and, well, justice, and I like to dig into the reading of this card in the Numinous Tarot guidebook (even though it’s the Wild Unknown version of the card) to be about using one’s privilege wisely to lift others up. So - lessons learned from 5780 were to acknowledge & recognize my skills and accomplishments and use these abilities to work toward justice.
This is less of a definitive guide and more documentation of how I take notes on decks I work with. I’m always interested to see how other people do it so I wanted to show my process. I hope some of these ideas will inspire folks to develop their own systems and share!
Why Take Notes
I don’t take notes on every deck I own. For some, I received them at a time when there wasn’t much free time to dig into them or I just knew it wasn’t going to be a deck that would see heavy usage so it wasn’t worth the time.
But every now and then I get a deck and immediately know I’m going to relying on it. In those cases, I find it really valuable to study the deck as deeply as I can. There’s a learning curve with any deck, but studying it head on really makes that go easier in my experience.
But more than that - it’s just fun!
For those of us who don’t use Books of Shadow and the like, divination notes and a divination journal can be a really rewarding way to spend time with our spirituality.
My Microsoft OneNote System
This is the system I’m currently working on with the Numinous Tarot I just got. I’m incredibly in love with deck and wanted to do something more involved for it. Also, my disability has been flaring up again and greatly impacts my ability to use my arms and hands so I needed it to be digital so I could update it more consistently.
As you can see, I set up a new notebook just for this tarot deck. I have a tab for general notes and then one for each of the major sections of the deck.
This is one card I finished my first pass with. I took a picture of it with the best light I could manage on my phone and then pulled it into here. I put my personal references in clearest view. I do that so I can begin to make and trust my personal associations. Since it’s digital I can update this as I do more readings and make more connections.
This deck also came with a digital guidebook, so I copy pasted the information here so I can compare it to my evolving understanding of the card.
Further down are where I have a few prompts I use when I’m trying to dig deeper into a card. They’re not filled out yet because I’m still in the beginning stages with this deck. But if I see this card turn up a lot in my readings, I’ll come back and do the journal prompts.
My Microsoft Excel System
I’ve written before about using an Excel sheet to make notes on tarot cards. I’ve played around with it some since writing that post but I will admit that it doesn’t produce nice neat notes so here’s a screencap of a blank Rider-Waite one. The download links on that post are still good by the way so you can still save yourself a little work if you want.
The major pro of this system I’ve found is that it forces me to keep notes brief. It’s makes me boil cards down to a few keywords. I use this more for decks that I already know and just want a reference for or for decks I don’t think I’ll be working with much.
I really like the visual nature of this set up. It fits more with how I picture the deck in my head when I’m working with it and that’s really helpful. It’s also pretty easy to search this set up for cards but also for keywords which is nice when I’m doing certain types of readings where I need to select a signifier ahead of time.
My Handwritten System
My dream handwritten system would be to hand bind a booklet and fill it with the same information I have in my OneNote system. But I’ve yet to have a situation that allows for that. So I mostly use my handwritten system for SOAP Journaling and daily draws. Since I do this mostly in my bullet journal, I can look up readings I do in the index of by day if I did them as a daily.
Note: Lots going on here, I know. It’s my personal diary, be kind. <3
It’s not perfect and I think I’m going to try putting them in a dedicating tarot journal just to see if I like that any better. I’m still figuring out what place a bullet journal has in my life at this point so that’s part of why my tarot journaling is kind of muddled at the moment.
Well to be fair, I’m still figuring out what place tarot journaling has in my life too. Everyone extols the virtue of doing something everyday but as someone with a chronic disability, ADHD, and other sensory processing issues that’s just Not Going to HappenTM. I really like doing a couple prompts in a challenge at a time and then putting it aside and then picking it up again when I can.
Conclusion
I hope this helps spark some ideas! I really do believe that deep study of a deck is worthwhile. Not mandatory by any means. I do just genuinely enjoy doing it. Give it a try! Write down what information you want to have on hand for each card and put together a system to collect it. Tag me in any experiments! I’m looking for more inspiration myself!
Thanks for your patience, folks! Been waiting eagerly to see what your reading from earlier was? Then wait no further. Comments and feedback are very much appreciated, as I may make these readings a monthly affair if there’s interest!
Fehu, XVII The Star
This month, you are continuing on the path towards finding your way in the great circle of life. Look to the sky; like the stars, your hidden truths may not be visible in the day but you will find them in adversity. Take comfort in your connection to the world around you, and the fact that you are but one part in a beautiful thing. You are not alone. Let that beauty - from within yourself, and from the universe - inspire you to reach greater heights and rattle the stars, and prosperity will find you.
Daguz, Six of Tomes
In the brightness of day, it is easy to see the path that we need to take. This month, embrace the sunrise that is coming to you as reward for the achievements that you have been working towards, and share your good luck with others around you. Lend a helping hand, let somebody read your notes, and understand that it is important to return the favours that have been given you. This is a time of community and richness, and you are at the centre of it.
Gebo, III The Nurturer
You have worked hard, and soon it will be your turn to see the fruits of your labour. This is not a gift, or at least not a traditional one; it is a repayment of efforts. You have sown seeds, and they are ready to bloom, perhaps in your spiritual life or your relationships with your deities or guides. Let this ground you, and nurture those seeds so that they can manifest into something that is truly and uniquely your own. Do not run away now when it is almost time.
This past week I finally received the two decks I have most anticipated receiving. The Numinous Tarot and the True Black. I waited almost six months for the former, over a year for the latter. And they are so beautiful.
They almost strike me as two sides of the same coin. One colorful and busy, one muted but striking. One kind and familiar, one cold and otherworldly.
I'm so thrilled to finally have these beautiful works of art in my hands, and I plan on doing an introduction spread with both of them together, something I haven't done before, but feels fitting. I can't wait to read with these.
