The wands represent the element fire. Those with fire medicine to offer did not come by it easily. Water (cups) medicine is derived from compassion and forgiveness. Air (swords) healing is made of understanding and a knowledge of where to obtain resources. Earth (pentacles) medicine assures that one belongs and offers a respite. Fire (wands), however, delivers an antidote in the form of having survived the same experience, by being able to say: I know you, I am you, and you will survive and thrive beyond this wound.
In the Nine of Wands, we see a figure looking at his past, at the ordeal he just survived. He is wearing a bandage but it is a surface wound, it will heal without lasting damage. At least physically, this is true. Of course, our mental and emotional states often do not heal in pace with our bodies and certainly not in the same manner. To survive and thrive we often need to reach into the world to touch the lives of those who doubt they can process through healing, those who doubt their ability to recover a sense of self and purpose.
Apollo took him in and raised him as a son, teaching him to be a centaur of arts and letters, so to speak.
The Nine of Wands is often associated with the myth of a centaur named Chiron who is known as a wounded healer. Chiron was abandoned by his parents at birth. Apollo took him in and raised him as a son, teaching him to be a centaur of arts and letters, so to speak. In this environment, Chiron uncovers great wisdom and strength from within himself that allows him to create a series of healing modalities. He comes to realize that the most powerful remedy for what ails him is to give to others what he himself most needs. It is in this way that he prevents his own pain from festering into varieties dysfunction. This purpose inspires and motivates Chiron to become a great teacher on the nature of the inner wisdom required to perform the rites of this antidote born from the realm of fire. It is sometimes said that Chiron invented pharmacy, medicine, and surgery.
Chiron was an immortal, eventually struck by a poison arrow. For all his knowledge and skill Chiron was unable to heal his wound, which became unbearably painful. But being immortal he was unable to die. So, Chiron used his skills in wisdom and language to persuade Zeus to exchange Chiron’s immortality for the freedom of the famous, fire-stealing trickster, Prometheus. Zeus, somewhat uncharacteristically, follows through on his agreement to free Prometheus and also fixed Chiron in the endless night sky as the constellation we know as Sagittarius or Centaurus.
…we walk the spiral of healing our primal emotional wounds again and again and again.
Chiron’s constellation belongs to all of us. It remains a permanent fixture in the pantheon of stars, there to guide us, to hold us, in our continuous rounds of self-healing. We do not do this work once or twice or even three times, we walk the spiral of healing our primal emotional wounds again and again and again. If we are to maintain our strength and find a purpose for living with and through a soul full of grief, we will need the company of others with whom we may exchange the energetic gifts of perpetual healing and the joyous wonders it continually offers up. Chiron is there to remind us that fire medicine works because it gives as it receives and vice versa.
May we feel whole in the repetition of healing.
By Michelle Embree
Author of Daydream Tarot: A Basic Guide for Visionaries
READ Michelle’s monthly Tarot Column in ANTIGRAVITY MAGAZINE
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