The Tarot of Eli, LLC-Minor Arcana: Thoth Tarot-4 of Wands-Completion & The Medieval Feathers Tarot-4 of Wands

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The fourfold vibration in Tarot always signifies stability, structure, and the first crystallization of elemental force. The 4’s are perfection, realization, completion, and settlement—matters brought to rest upon their foundation. Thus, they are the first stable manifestation of their suit. The Thoth 4 of Wands is no exception. It is titled Completion and known as the Lord of Perfected Work.

Astrologically, this card is attributed to Venus in Aries, and is ruled by the angelic intelligences Nanael and Nithal. At first glance, Venus and Aries seem opposed—the soft goddess of love and the fierce god of war. Yet here they unite, balancing and perfecting one another in harmony. This is why the card bears the title of Completion: the marriage of opposites, the equilibrium of Mars and Venus, Fire and Water, Male and Female.

Fire as Spirit and Sexual Force

In the Hermetic Qabalah, Fire is never just literal flame; it is the creative Spirit, the vital spark, the Will-to-Be. It is passion, ardor, and the sexual energy that generates all life. In the 4 of Wands, this fiery force is perfected into a balanced union. Venus in Aries teaches us that Spirit cannot act alone; it requires communion. All creation stems from polarity, the embrace of two that become one.

Just as the ancient axiom declares, “There is no completion without the Two who are One,” this card reveals the mystery of spiritual eros. The male impulse of Aries (dynamic assertion, fiery initiative) finds its complement in the female of Venus (harmony, receptivity, fertility). Together, they create perfected work—a structure both firm and beautiful, fiery yet adorned with grace.

Qabalistic Implications

On the Tree of Life, the 4’s correspond to Chesed—the Sephira of Mercy, rulership, and divine order. Here, the chaotic Fire of Spirit (Wands) is organized and stabilized by Law and structure. The 4 of Wands thus expresses the first truly “settled” form of Fire: a balanced flame that illuminates without consuming, a hearth-fire rather than a wildfire. This is Spirit in its most harmonious form, capable of sustaining life and purpose rather than merely igniting beginnings.

Practical Application

In divination, the Thoth 4 of Wands points toward completion, perfected efforts, and the joyful harmony that comes from union. It can signify a successful partnership, a creative project reaching its stable phase, or the satisfaction of seeing something beautifully balanced. At its deepest level, it teaches that the Will-to-Create is only completed through the uniting of opposites. This is the alchemical formula of Solve et Coagula in action: dissolution into polarity, followed by unification into wholeness.

The very union of atoms occurs through the eternal collaboration of the Male Will-to-Force and the Female Will-to-Form. These are expressed in Nature as the electric (projective, dynamic) and magnetic (receptive, formative) aspects of energy. It is their marriage that generates Wholeness, Health, and Wealth, for all true abundance is born from the interplay of these polarities. To attempt to sever Spirit from Sexuality is to embrace ignorance—a fear-born distortion that breeds division, weakness, and error.

Such falsehoods give rise to what may rightly be called “flesh-o-phobia”—the condemnation of the body and its desires—confusing docile souls with the illusion that the sacred is somehow opposed to the sensual. In truth, Spirit is embodied through Sex; Fire becomes Form only through the embrace of the Two that are One. The age-old strategy of divide and conquer has always underpinned dogma and indoctrination, fragmenting human beings by teaching them to war against their own life-force. To reunite Spirit and Flesh, Will and Form, is to overthrow this false division and to stand once more in the power of Completion.

There is a reason why Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris placed the Ram of Aries and the Dove of Venus at the two ends of the wands in the Thoth 4 of Wands, crowning the card with the title Completion. Aries and Venus together reveal that the perfection of Fire does not occur through domination, but through union. The Ram charges, the Dove descends, and in their embrace is born perfected work.

Yet the Patriarchy, its institutions, and its modern extensions—the Military Industrial Complex and its media—have labored to strip sexuality of its sanctity. What was once the holy sacrament of Life’s union was redirected into a sterile substitute: the lifeless ritual of Organized Religion. Sex, intrinsically linked to Creation, was desacralized; Woman, who is the vessel and the very power of birth, was debased, reduced to an object in service of rule through division. Thus “divide and conquer” became not only a political strategy but a psychological weapon, severing humanity from the holiness of its own flesh.

Patriarchal misogyny perpetuates the lie that men “own” the power of life. In truth, Life is a Feminine Mystery. Woman is the Creatrix; she may choose to bear children or not, for birth is Her prerogative alone. She does not bow to men; she creates them as consorts, partners in play and in balance, never masters of her throne. Diversity itself—male, female, and “other”—is the device by which Life ensures its eternal renewal, but always under the aegis of freedom of choice, the first gift of the Goddess.

Thus Venus, the Goddess of Love, fashioned for Herself a consort—Mars, Aries the Ram. Male force has no true meaning apart from its union with Her, for only She knows the inner why of Maleness. As a man, I know this truth: I cannot know myself without surrendering my ego and personality into Her embrace. She is the Mirror of Being; only in Her reflection does my force find its form.

The 4th Sephiroth, Chesed—Mercy—is known in Qabalah as the Demiurge, the “Lesser Creator.” It is here that Divine Order descends into Form, for Chesed is the Divine Architect who gives rise to structure and light. In this sense, Chesed is both masculine and feminine, for the act of building requires the interplay of Force and Form. United through the Path of Strength (Teth, the Lion), Chesed and Geburah together reveal the Greater Creator—the Divine Creative Itself.

Light is the plasmic, electric expression of the Masculine, while Form is the shaping, magnetic matrix of the Feminine. Light carries the data, but only through Her Understanding is it woven into idea and structure. Thus, the Feminine makes visible the hidden language of Light, giving it flesh and meaning.

On the Western Hermetic Tree of Life, the Divine Feminine Binah is depicted as a black Sephira—the Great Sea, the Womb of Creation from which Light is born. Black is not absence but potential; it is the infinite matrix of receptivity, the unseen depths from which all images emerge. The Visible Light itself, we must remember, is but 0.4% of the electromagnetic spectrum. The rest belongs to Her—vast, unseen, and immeasurable. She is the Great Mystery that contains all possibilities.

Within this dynamic, Chesed (Mercy, Jupiter) and Geburah (Severity, Mars) are not opposites but two sides of one coin. Chesed expands, Geburah contracts; one gives, the other takes away. They are the two arms of the Divine Body, balancing one another as the right hand of love and the left hand of strength.

In the Thoth 4 of Wands, this polarity is epitomized in the union of Aries (Mars) and Venus, the mythic consorts whose embrace generates Completion. The Ram charges forward with fiery initiative, while the Dove descends in peace, harmony, and grace. Together, they enact the ancient alchemy of opposites: the marriage of Mercy and Severity, the interplay of Force and Form, the dance of Electric and Magnetic currents.

This perfected balance produces the Lord of Perfected Work, for only when the fiery Will-to-Force is tempered by Love’s Will-to-Form does Spirit become stable enough to crystallize into manifestation. Here the flame does not burn wildly; it stands as a sacred hearth-fire, radiating warmth, creativity, and life. The 4 of Wands thus reveals the secret of stability in the realm of Fire: the completion of creation through union, the eternal truth that no force achieves wholeness until it has embraced its complement.

The 4 of Wands represents Chesed—the Sephira of Mercy and Divine Order—flowing into the realm of Atziluth, the World of Pure Spirit. At this level, Fire is not yet material flame, but the primal vitality of creation itself: the Will-to-Be.

Here the swift, active force of Aries/Mars is infused with the harmony and luxury of Venus, while simultaneously reflecting the expansive benevolence of Jupiter, the ruler of Chesed. This triple current produces a vibrant but fleeting brilliance. In an astrological sense, this placement would often indicate a warm, brief apex of romance, passion, or inspired connection—a fire that burns brightly, though not indefinitely. It is the spark of completion, a celebration of perfect balance, yet one that must give way to new cycles of growth.

In Tarot study, however, we must go beyond astrology and attend to its position on the Tree of Life. The 4’s always correspond to Chesed, the Demiurge, who stabilizes and organizes the chaotic vitality of the element into its first true structure. In Atziluth, this means Fire has reached its stable form: not wild, consuming flame, but a sacred fire that radiates, illuminates, and endures. It is the Fire of Spirit brought into perfect order—an image of union fulfilled, passion harmonized, and Will rooted in Love.

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Therefore, Venus in Aries, the outer attribute of the Thoth 4 of Wands, signifies the passionate harmony of love in action—the marriage of beauty and desire, gentleness and fire. Yet the inner attribute is far deeper: it is the force of Chesed (Jupiter), the pure “4” that embodies Fire, Air, Water, and Earth in balanced expression. This is Fire in the World of Yod—Atziluth, the realm of Pure Spirit.

Thus, in the 4 of Wands we encounter the Completion of the process initiated by the Supernal Triangle (Kether, Chokmah, Binah). What Binah—the Great Mother and Will-to-Form—conceived, is here manifested through Chesed, the Architect Father who builds structure beneath the Abyss. In Chesed, the promises of the Supernals become intelligible and stable, the first crystallization of spiritual force into form.

Because of this, the 4’s represent a dominating influence over all that follows in their suit. They are the highest and most stable expression of their element that can still be grasped intellectually. In Wands, this is the perfected flame: the Will-to-Create harmonized and complete. Hence, the title of the card—Completion.

Yet this very apex of perfection carries its own challenge. At such a pinnacle, balance is delicate; the smallest error can create significant upheaval. This reflects a universal law: that all order in the higher worlds must undergo continual transformation when expressed in the lower. For in Malkuth, the material plane, all things inevitably pass from order into disorder. Therefore, the 4 of Wands not only celebrates perfected work but also reminds us of the vigilance required to sustain it, for completion is always a prelude to the next cycle of change.

Chesed, the 4th Sephira on the Tree of Life, is the Qabalistic Demiurge—the first sphere to exist below the Abyss, the Abyssal Womb of Binah. As such, Chesed is the Lord of all Manifested Active Power, the stabilizer of the raw Supernal currents. What began as the primal impulse of Chokmah (Wisdom) and the receptive matrix of Binah (Understanding) now becomes crystallized in Chesed (Mercy) as a coherent and intelligible system.

Here we find the emergence of Order, Law, Measurement, and Government—not in the political sense of worldly governance, but in the cosmic sense of a lawful architecture. Chesed is the Divine Architect, establishing the very measurements by which form can exist, and by which Spirit becomes harmonized and bound within Nature. Without the balancing influence of Chesed, creation would either remain formless potential or collapse into chaotic force.

Yet, Chesed is not a tyrant. As the sphere of Jupiter, his rulership is benevolent, merciful, and expansive. His authority to rule is granted by the Divine Feminine Herself—by Binah as the Great Mother and, in Tarot, as the Empress. Thus the rulership of Chesed is not self-arrogated but bestowed, grounded in Love and Creative Understanding.

This is why in the Thoth Tarot, the Empress and Emperor are depicted face-to-face in the Tibetan Yab-Yum posture, signifying their mutual dependence and eternal embrace. The Emperor (Chesed) holds the scepter of order, but his power derives from the Empress, the Fountain of Life. Together, they illustrate that true authority is never divorced from Love, and true structure is always born from Understanding.

Venus in Aries tempers the raw, volcanic force of Aries-Mars, softening aggression with beauty, tact, and gentleness. It teaches that no true work can be established by sheer force alone; it must be guided and completed through harmony and love.

In the Thoth 4 of Wands – Completion, this union is vividly illustrated. The crossed wands are headed by Rams, invoking both Aries and Chesed, the Father-God Amoun-Ra, the archetypal Demiurge who orders creation. The shafts terminate in the Doves of Venus, emblems of peace and the descending grace of love. Between Ram and Dove is revealed the marriage of Fire and Harmony, Will and Form.

The solar yellow-rimmed circle in the center represents the limitation of perfected work—a form completed, active, and now held within defined boundaries. It is a reminder that once work has reached its apex, it is set apart, crystallized, and must be sustained through vigilance and balance.

Balance itself is expressed by the four flames, each doubled, showing the equilibrium of masculine and feminine principles within the number four. At the very heart of the card rests the double triangle, the Shatkona—the ancient seal of union between the Divine Feminine (Shakti) and the Divine Masculine (Shiva). This is the consummation of “As Above, So Below,” the perfected union of Spirit and Matter, Force and Form, Love and Will.

Thus, the 4 of Wands is not merely completion as an end, but completion as a marriage of energies, a perfected equilibrium that radiates both stability and creative joy.

Shatkona

The Shatkona is an important and sacred symbol in Hindu and Vedic traditions. It is often described as a six-pointed star, similar to the hexagram in other traditions, and is composed of two interlocking triangles:

1. An Upward Triangle (▲): Represents the male principle, Purusha, or the element of fire (Agni). This symbolizes spiritual aspiration, divine consciousness, and the ascent towards the higher realms.

2. A Downward Triangle (▼): Represents the female principle, Prakriti, or the element of water (Apas). It is a symbol of material manifestation, creative energy, and the descent of the divine into the physical world.

When these two triangles interlock, they form the Shatkona, a geometric representation of the union of Shiva and Shakti, or the cosmic interplay between the masculine and feminine energies. This union is a cornerstone of Hindu metaphysics, illustrating harmony, balance, and creation.

Symbolic Meaning of the Shatkona

• Shiva-Shakti Unity: The merging of consciousness (Shiva) with energy (Shakti), representing the eternal balance necessary for creation and dissolution in the universe.
• Macrocosm and Microcosm: It represents the divine in the macrocosm (the universe) and the microcosm (the self).
• Spirit and Matter: The upward triangle symbolizes spirit, while the downward triangle signifies matter. Their union signifies the realization that spirit and matter are inseparable.
• Anahata Chakra: In Yogic tradition, the Shatkona is often associated with the Anahata Chakra (the heart chakra), which is the center of love, harmony, and equilibrium.

Connection to the Sri Yantra

The Shatkona is also seen in the Sri Yantra, where it forms part of the intricate geometry symbolizing the cosmos. Here, the triangles represent the divine energies that interplay to create and sustain the universe.

Alchemical Parallels

In addition to its Hindu origins, the Shatkona has parallels with alchemical and Hermetic symbolism in Western esoteric traditions, where the upward triangle represents fire and the downward triangle represents water. The union of fire and water signifies balance and the alchemical Solve et Coagula process.

In summary, the Shatkona is a powerful symbol that conveys deep metaphysical concepts, emphasizing unity, balance, and the divine creative forces at work in the cosmos. It serves as a reminder of the harmony between opposites—spirit and matter, male and female, and the interplay of creation and dissolution.

The 4’s in Tarot represent completion—the stabilization of the original Will into a perfected form. At this stage, there is no further attempt to expand, for the will has reached its fulfillment. Yet equilibrium has its own dangers: if left static, the energy of the 4’s can become fixed, immobile, and lapse into stasis.

This is where the inhale–exhale dance of Venus and Mars reveals its mystery. Their union is not static but rhythmic, the universal breath that sustains the pulse of creation. Just as intercourse mirrors the cycle of inhale and exhale, so does the dance of the Hindu Shiva and Shakti represent the eternal rhythm of polarity in motion. Thus, the 4 of Wands is not merely an ending but a perfected balance in motion—a wheel spinning in harmony, radiating stability through rhythm rather than rigidity.

For this reason, the 4’s exert a dominating influence over all subsequent numbers and suits, establishing the foundation upon which all further developments must rest. Their balance is not a straight line connecting Aries (Force) and Venus (Form), but a lemniscate (∞)—a horizontal figure eight that symbolizes the ceaseless back-and-forth rhythm of polarity. Here the mystery of O = 2 (the One manifesting as polarity) and 2 = 1 (the polarity resolved back into union) is revealed in whole matrimony.

Therefore, the Thoth 4 of Wands represents more than the mere completion of a project. It is the image of union perfected—a rhythmic creative dance of opposites. On the human level, it reflects the harmonious interplay of the left (male/logical) and right (female/intuitive) brain, whose balance enables the full realization of any work, cycle, or creative act. In this card, completion is not an end, but a living equilibrium, the steady pulse of Spirit breathing itself i

When 4 electrons encircle a nucleus, the atom that results is Beryllium (Be). In chemistry, Beryllium is a stable alkaline earth element with atomic number 4, a strong yet lightweight metal often used as a structural stabilizer. Already, you can hear the resonance: “4” brings structure, stability, and a firm foundation—precisely what we see in Qabalistic symbolism.

The Number 4 in Hermetic Qabalah

In the Tree of Life, “4” corresponds to Chesed, the Sephira of Mercy, Order, and the Architect’s Law. It is the Demiurge, the stabilizing hand that takes the chaos of the Supernal Triad and builds it into a usable, structured form. Four is the first number that truly represents solidity:

• Geometry: 4 points create a plane; 4 sides create a square; 4 elements stabilize the world.

• Tarot: All 4’s are the “completion” cards—the first establishment of order after creative growth in the 3’s.

• Alchemy: The quaternary foundation—Fire, Water, Air, and Earth—rooting Spirit in the material world.

Venus and Mars in the 4 of Wands

Just as Beryllium’s 4 electrons form a stable shell, the 4 of Wands expresses stability of Fire. Here the polarity of Venus and Mars (Form and Force, Love and Will) achieves balance, producing not just a flash of passion but a completed structure of Spirit. It is stability in motion, a living equilibrium.

This shows why “4” is always both a completion and a limitation: once energy is structured, it can be sustained—but it can also stagnate if not continually renewed. Just as Beryllium is stable but reactive under the right conditions, the 4 of Wands holds perfection but requires rhythm (inhale–exhale, union–separation) to avoid stasis.

Hermetic Lesson

So, the scientific fact that 4 electrons make Beryllium harmonizes with the esoteric truth:

• The atom becomes stable at 4.

• The Sephira Chesed becomes the Architect of Form at 4.

• The Tarot 4’s become perfected work at 4.

All declare the same law: “In Four, Spirit finds its first stability.”

This card emphasizes the stasis of the Four. Four wands lie upon the floor, their energy stilled, unable to move forward or fulfill their purpose. Two rest upon each side, as if pausing in mid-task. There is a sense that effort has been expended, yet momentum has been lost.

At the center lies the partridge’s feather, a gentle reminder that rest itself can restore power. In time, the wands will rise again and complete their work, but for now, the wisdom is in pausing. The message here is clear: you have been doing too much, and it is time to sit back, breathe, and allow things to unfold of their own accord. By stepping aside, you witness the natural evolution of events without forcing them.

Upright Meaning

The 4 of Wands invites rest and recovery. It suggests that progress has slowed, not because of failure, but because the rhythm of life requires periods of stillness. This card encourages you to take a restorative break, trusting that energy will return and the work will resume at the proper time.

Inverted / Reversed Meaning

In reversal, this card indicates hesitation and avoidance. You may have stepped away from important projects, but instead of returning refreshed, you linger in retreat. This hesitation is natural, but it cannot continue indefinitely. Eventually, you must emerge from your shell and re-engage with your responsibilities. Take comfort in knowing that the pause has been restorative, but remember—the next step is to move forward.

When the 4 of Wands is thrown during a reading:

• New life.
• Excitement and growth.
• It is the key to spiritual and holistic completion.
• It suggests that the querent is experiencing the completion of something and experiencing the desire to begin something new.
• The 4 of Wands also implies that ideas are firmly established and proved by their flourishing, and it is time to move forward.
• The querent is manifesting a new destiny by acting on a sense of direction, supplied by the inner Self Knowledge that is forming a new identity.
• Here we see celebration and reward after laborious completion of an enterprise.
• Inner fulfillment.

If ill defined by the surrounding cards in the layout, it implies:

• Overestimation of one's -self.
• Blasphemy.
• Senselessness.
• Impatience for a fresh start.

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