From The Key to the Tarot by A.E. Waite:

Queen of Wands - Throughout this suit the wands are always in leaf, as it is a suit of life and animation. Emotionally and otherwise, the Queen's personality corresponds to that of the King, but is more magnetic.

Divinatory Meanings: A dark woman or a countrywoman, friendly, chaste, loving, honorable.

Reversed: Good, economical, obliging, serviceable. Also signifies opposition, jealousy, deceit, and infidelity.

From the capitalists we inherit a desert. The whole of what we seize from them amounts to the vast lands and people long exploited to the point of perpetual and seemingly permanent exhaustion. In inheriting this desert we do not inherit desolation; we inherit the world. Our responsibility stretches out before us: We must turn the desert into a garden.

Above all else this card speaks for the need of self-determination, but what is the self? In these tumultuous times it is collective self-determination of the working class as a singular whole that will free us to plant the seeds of a future worth inhabiting.

The Queen of Wands warns of the dangers of alienation, so we must always have a hand on what we produce in this world.

The Red Lions cut from the Queen of Wands card:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wands13.jpg

See also: From The Tarot of A.E. Waite and P. Colman Smith: The Story of the World's Most Popular Tarot, by Johannes Fiebig with essays by Robert A. Gilbert, Mary K. Greer, and Rachel Pollack

From The Tarot of A.E. Waite and P. Colman Smith: The Story of the World's Most Popular Tarot, by Johannes Fiebig with essays by Robert A. Gilbert, Mary K. Greer, and Rachel Pollack

I will use this text to expound on the minor symbols of the Queen of Wands.

"The red lions, the throne extending into the sky: Passion and power. True will. Courage, wildness, sex. A bridge between heaven and earth, between theory and practice, wishes and reality. Its position at the back indicates the need for respect (literally, 'looking back'). This includes leaving unnecessary fears behind, such as the 'fear of flying' or the fear of coming to rest."

We need to respect where we came from as a society, but we also cannot fear flying from the old order of things. We do not need to hang onto the forms that no longer suit us, we can throw the old paper away and write something new. We should not fear the work ahead in making the desert grow with life.

"The black cat: Drive, self-will, unpredictability, survival instinct (a cat's 'seven lives'), corresponding to the salamander on the other Wands court cards. Negative: Cunning, underhandedness. Caterwauling. Blind spot, stumbling block."

Cats are both solitary creatures yet are capable of working together in collectives. We need to find the right balance between individual and collective self-determination to build a lasting society that serves everyone regardless of any trait or happenstance of birth.

"Jonathan Safran Foer expressed it this way: 'Everything is illuminated' (2002). Light and shadow, sun and darkness (earth forces) combine within a sunflower - both in reality as well as symbolically. Vincent van Gogh saw and painted this energetic union."

To remove all of one's darkness is to remove all their ties to the Earth.