TWO OF WANDS
The Two of Wands as interpreted by @annalionhearted and @bngtanctouts.
I was very excited when I was assigned the suit of Wands because it’s my favorite suit out of the deck and the one I relate to most, but I was also a bit intimidated. While the other suits relate to clearly defined realms of our life experience (Cups = feelings/the heart, Swords = the mind, Pentacles = the body/reality), Wands are more abstract and a bit harder to pin down. They refer to our passion, our creativity, our vision for our life, and our drive to achieve our dreams. I suppose you could relate them to the spirit, but even that is a nebulous concept without one agreed-upon meaning.
The Two of Wands is particularly tricky in this regard. Like all the Twos it can refer to balance, duality, choices, and partnership but once again it exists in the difficult-to-define realm of the creative force. The Two is what comes after the Ace’s first spark of inspiration but before the Three’s more concrete planning and visualization. It’s the moment when a new idea, project, or vision begins to crystallize and take shape, when you determine whether it’s a fleeting burst of interest or whether you truly want to invest time into this thing and gather the resources, co-conspirators, and knowledge necessary to make it a reality.
One of my tarot mentors, Veronica Varlow, always referred to the Two of Wands as the “world domination” card; in a traditional Rider Waite Smith deck, it’s portrayed as a figure holding a globe in one hand and surveying a vast open panorama. This depiction captures the strong feeling of “not only do I want to do this, but I can do this, I will find a way” that the Two of Wands encompasses.
When brainstorming with Sof about how this could translate to our deck, I often found this feeling difficult to put into words. What I finally settled on was the fact that the formation of BTS as we know it may have been the first spark, but it was when they began connecting with what eventually became ARMY that the pieces really began to fall into place and it became evident that this scrappy little pre-debut group might actually have something in them. It was this connection that gave them permission to dream and dream big, that led them to the unimaginable heights that they now have reached.
None of us are capable of executing our visions alone; we need people to bounce ideas off of, knowledge from those who came before us, resources that we may not have at our immediate disposal, and an acknowledgement from either ourselves or others that yes, it is okay to have impossible dreams, that we can pursue this new and exciting interest and see where it leads. We need to ensure that the spark we felt when entertaining a new possibility doesn’t fizzle and go out but instead is fed, nurtured into full blaze.
This is the energy the Two of Wands brings to us, and I could not be more thrilled with how Sof’s portrayal turned out. Whenever we were talking through a card meaning, she always took careful notes, synthesized the information, and turned it into something even better than I could have imagined in my head. I am so thrilled and honored to share our card with you.
Artist’s Interpretation of the Two of Wands by @bngtanctouts
After we ended the meeting where we discussed our ideas for the second card, all the knowledge Anna had transmitted to me were flowing in my brain without direction. I didn’t really know at the moment how I would be able to visually represent all the things this card means and after multiple tries (and quite honestly — terrible designs) I was able to come up with this cute and sentimental concept for the 2 of wands. Card 2 for me represents the beginning and the feeling that everything is possible if we envision ourselves within the map that we’ve planned; that’s the main reason for all the little elements you can see here.
As you know, the ARMY bomb is a big part of this fandom but also a visual representation of our connection with Bangtan, if not at a concert in your friends house at 4AM watching a concert being held on the other side of the world. A map is the clearest representation for when you need guidance getting somewhere you don’t really know where to go; that’s why inside the ARMY bomb you can also see a map drawn from Korea to any other part of the world where an army gets connected to BTS (also why you see the army logo).
This connection is important on so many levels but I think it was tremendously important at the beginning of BTS; from the girls in Mexico getting bullied because they liked a Korean group before it was “mainstream” to the girls in South Korea working a double shift at a café so they could gather funds for an ARMY-BTS event.
As Namjoon says, we’re their beginnings and their ends. And for many of us, they were also the beginning of looking at this map with a little more hope in our hearts.
Credit: Rolling Stone
