What does Five of Wands mean reversed?

The Thoth Tarot is traditionally read without reversed cards: the reader judges from the cards around it whether a card is well or ill dignified. This is its ill-dignified or blocked reading: Suppressed conflict that wears you down from within; or a quarrel that degenerates beyond what is needed.

What are the Kabbalah and astrology correspondences of Five of Wands?

In the Golden Dawn system Five of Wands corresponds to the sephirah Geburah, the element Fire and Saturn in Leo in astrology.

Thoth Tarot · Minor Arcana

Five of Wands — Strife

Strife

strife · conflict · effort · competition · obstacle

A reflective starting point

What is Five of Wands — Strife asking you to look at?

Meaning changes with the position, the surrounding cards and your question. Take what follows as a language, not a verdict.

Read this card in a ritual Draw it from your own deck

Upright

The situation is conflictual: face the challenge openly and loyally, turning tension into strength.

At first sight

Conflicts, rivalries, difficulties that demand effort. It points to struggles, disputes and obstacles, but also to the strength needed to overcome them.

Within you

Tension between the wish to expand and the limits imposed; a frustration that can become a stimulus if it does not degenerate into resentment.

On the path

Fire in Geburah, Severity, with Saturn in Leo in the first decan: Saturnine weight pressed onto solar energy. Strife is fire wrestling with form, the will meeting the resistance of matter.

The shadow

Ill-dignified, it signals aggression, sterile quarrels, cruelty, energy wasted in contrasts.

Reversed

In the Thoth tradition a reversed card is read through its dignity with the neighbouring cards; this is its shadow side.

Suppressed conflict that wears you down from within; or a quarrel that degenerates beyond what is needed.

In love, work and spirit

Love. Arguments, tensions, jealousies; confrontation can clarify things if it stays loyal.

Work. Competition, fierce rivals, bureaucratic or hierarchical obstacles.

Spirit. Conflict as a forge in which the will is tempered.

Correspondences

Geburah · Fire · Saturn in Leo

Crowley's note

The wand of the Chief Adept, crowned by the winged globe, dominates and crosses those of the lesser adepts with phoenix and lotus: energy fights against the gravity of Saturn.