What do you think of the 8 of Wands? Do you find it exciting? hopeful? flighty? a little dangerous? Well, you’re not wrong. In today’s episode of the Between the Worlds podcast, Amanda Garcia Yates and I converse at length about the charms and pitfalls of the Lord of Swiftness, its astrology and history, its symbolism and its magical uses - including my own personal riff on talismanic tarot, the 8 of Wands luggage tag (now available for purchase)!
Between the Worlds is a heartfelt and inspirational card-by-card tarot podcast, hosted by Amanda and expertly produced by Carolyn, and you should definitely subscribe. For each episode, they call upon a different tarot practitioner for commentary and personal experience, which means that you get a wide variety of personal styles, views, contexts, and approaches to the cards.
So, about those luggage tags: Way back in Sagittarius I season of last year (that’s late November, for you non-astro folks), I wrote about the 8 of Wands (or Express Delivery). I mentioned that on a trip to Singapore a few months earlier, I’d devised some 8 of Wands luggage tags as talismans to help our effects make it through the long journey smoothly. They worked like a charm, as it happened.
So when we recorded our conversation about the 8 of Wands, it made me think - why don’t I get those tags made properly, by a real printing company, in indestructible plastic?! I re-did the design with seals of Mercury as a background pattern, found a suitable manufacturer, and voilà! They are now available both here and on my Etsy site for a chill buckaroo apiece (making it the perfect add-on to get your Arcana Case or perfume order up to the $44 minimum for free shipping. Express delivery indeed!)
You can write your name on the back with Sharpie (and you can erase it with rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball). That’s a kind of consecration, so try to do it on a Mercury day (Wednesday) at Jupiter hour, or a Jupiter day (Thursday) at Mercury hour. You can calculate planetary hours here. It wouldn’t hurt to fire off a Hymn to Hermes while you’re at it