When the Noise Fades but the Tension Remains
One of the first questions I think many of us ask when we see the Reversed Five of Wands is, “Does this mean today will have less conflict?”
It’s a fair question.
After all, if the upright card often points toward competition, disagreement, or competing energies, wouldn’t turning it upside down suggest the opposite? Maybe everyone’s finally settled down. The disagreement has run its course, the drama has lost its audience, and today will simply feel… easier.
It’s a comforting thought.
I’m just not sure that’s what the card is showing us.
The longer I’ve studied tarot, the less convinced I’ve become that reversals work quite that simply. Turning a card upside down doesn’t magically erase its symbolism. The five people are still standing there. The wands are still crossing. Whatever was happening in the artwork a moment ago appears to be happening still. If the picture hasn’t changed, maybe the question shouldn’t be, “Has the conflict disappeared?”
Maybe the better question is, “What’s different about the way I’m being invited to understand it?
Traditional Foundation
That question was interesting enough that it sent me back to Arthur Edward Waite’s own description of the card.
Whenever I find myself questioning an interpretation I’ve carried for years, that’s usually where I start. Not because Waite has the final word on every card, but because if we’re working with the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, it helps to understand what its creators may have been trying to communicate before we begin adding our own observations.
What I found surprised me. Waite never actually describes this scene as a fight. Instead, he calls it “imitative strife.”
That phrase, imitative strife, has stayed with me because it doesn’t quite match the picture most of us carry in our minds when we hear the word conflict.
The more I look at the artwork, the less it resembles an outright fight.
Nobody appears injured. Nobody has fallen to the ground. There isn’t a clear aggressor or an obvious victim.Every figure is standing. Every wand is raised. Everyone is fully engaged in whatever is happening, yet it’s surprisingly difficult to determine who is actually fighting whom. It made me wonder if we’ve been looking at this card too narrowly.
What if Pamela Colman Smith wasn’t trying to illustrate aggression or arguments at all? What if she was capturing something most of us experience far more often?
Competing demands.
Competing priorities.
Competing energies.
Five different things asking for our attention at exactly the same time. That certainly creates tension.
Anyone who’s ever tried to answer emails while the phone rings, dinner is cooking, a child is asking for help, and tomorrow’s deadline is quietly sitting in the back of their mind knows exactly what that feels like. Nothing catastrophic is happening. Nobody is attacking us. Yet our nervous system doesn’t always distinguish between physical conflict and mental overload. To the body, too many competing demands can feel remarkably similar.
Suddenly, the Five of Wands begins to look less like five people fighting…and more like what it feels like to have five priorities all trying to become the most important one.
Let’s turn the card over. Could the reversal simply mean less?
Maybe? Maybe instead of five competing demands, today there are only three. Maybe one responsibility has been completed, one misunderstanding has been resolved, or one unnecessary expectation has quietly fallen away. The tension hasn’t disappeared, but it has become more manageable. That’s certainly one way to read it. But I also notice something else.
The artwork hasn’t changed.
There are still five people.
There are still five wands.
No one has left the scene.
That makes me wonder if the reversal isn’t reducing the amount of energy at all. Perhaps it’s changing our relationship with it. Maybe the competing demands are still present, but we’re beginning to recognize that not every wand deserves the same amount of our attention. And I think that’s where today’s card becomes especially interesting.
Whether the reversal suggests less tension, internal tension, or simply a different perspective on the same situation, it asks us to slow down before jumping to an answer. Rather than memorizing a reversed keyword, we’re invited to study the artwork, ask thoughtful questions, and allow the image to speak before we decide what it means. To me, that’s one of the greatest gifts of tarot. The cards don’t simply give us answers.
They teach us how to ask better questions.
Sometimes the Struggle Is…
If the Reversed Five of Wands really is inviting us to think about competing demands rather than obvious conflict, it suddenly becomes much easier to recognize in everyday life. We don’t have to wait for a shouting match or a dramatic disagreement to understand this card. More often than not, it appears in the ordinary moments when too many things quietly compete for our attention.
Sometimes the struggle is…
- trying to answer one email while thinking about the five you still haven’t opened.
- feeling guilty when you rest because another part of you insists you should be doing something productive.
- carrying a conversation in your head long after the other person has forgotten it.
- wanting to be present with your family while your mind keeps drifting back to work.
- saying “yes” because it’s easier than disappointing someone.
- juggling so many priorities that you can’t remember which one actually matters most.
- mistaking mental exhaustion for personal failure.
- believing that if you could just get caught up, everything would finally feel peaceful.
Reading through that list, I notice something interesting.
Very few of those experiences involve someone arguing with us.
Most of them involve us arguing with ourselves.
Perhaps that’s another clue the Reversed Five of Wands has been quietly offering all along.gy is going and whether the struggles we’re carrying still deserve as much space in our lives as we’ve been giving them.
Looking back over those everyday struggles, one question keeps rising to the surface.
Are you trying to solve every competing demand…or are you learning which ones no longer deserve your energy?
That Distinction Matters
One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is that not everything competing for my attention deserves an equal amount of my energy. That sounds obvious when we say it out loud. Of course some things matter more than others. Yet most of us don’t live that way. We answer the loudest email first, not necessarily the most important one. We spend hours worrying about something that may never happen while quietly neglecting the relationship, project, or opportunity that’s sitting right in front of us.
The Five of Wands suddenly feels very familiar. Not because people are arguing. Because everything seems to be shouting, “Pay attention to me!”
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if that’s where much of our daily tension comes from. It’s not always the size of our responsibilities that exhausts us. Sometimes it’s our inability to decide which responsibility deserves our attention first. Every unfinished task, every expectation, and every obligation begins waving its own wand, convinced it should be at the front of the line.
No wonder we feel overwhelmed. The Reversed Five of Wands quietly suggests another possibility. Perhaps peace doesn’t begin when every competing demand disappears. Perhaps it begins the moment we stop believing every demand deserves the same response. That’s a subtle shift. It’s also a life-changing one.
It means we can acknowledge that five things are asking for our attention while also recognizing that only one or two truly need it right now. The others can wait. Some may even disappear on their own if we stop feeding them with our constant attention. I think that’s why this card feels surprisingly hopeful. It reminds us that wisdom isn’t found in doing everything.
It’s found in discerning what matters most.
There Is Also Something Deeply Reassuring Hidden Inside This Card
The more time I’ve spent with the Reversed Five of Wands, the more I’ve come to believe its greatest gift isn’t the promise of a quieter life. It’s the possibility of a quieter mind. Those aren’t always the same thing. There will always be responsibilities waiting for us tomorrow morning. There will always be another email, another decision, another expectation competing for our attention. The card doesn’t pretend those realities disappear. Instead, it gently suggests that our experience of them can change.
That feels surprisingly hopeful.
Earlier, we wondered if the reversal might simply mean “less.” Less conflict. Less drama. Fewer competing demands. Sometimes that may be true. Life does have seasons when things begin to settle. But I wonder if the greater gift is something even more lasting. What if the card is helping us become better at recognizing which wands actually belong in our hands?
That’s a different kind of peace.
Not the peace that comes because everything around us has become orderly. The peace that comes because we’ve stopped trying to carry everything at once. I’ve noticed that the people I admire most aren’t necessarily the ones with the least responsibility. They’re often the ones who seem to know what deserves their full attention and what can simply wait until tomorrow. They aren’t ignoring life. They’re responding to it with intention instead of urgency.
Perhaps that’s the quiet wisdom hidden inside the Reversed Five of Wands. It reminds us that we don’t have to win every argument, solve every problem, or respond to every competing demand the moment it appears. Sometimes the most mature response isn’t adding another wand to the juggling act.
It’s recognizing which one can be set down.
Bringing the Reversed Five of Wands into Today
If I were carrying one thought from today’s card into the rest of my day, it would be this: Not everything competing for my attention deserves an immediate response. That’s a surprisingly difficult lesson to practice.
Our world rewards urgency. Emails arrive marked “high priority.” Phones buzz with notifications. Calendars fill faster than we can clear them. It’s easy to begin believing that everything is equally important simply because everything arrives at once.
The Reversed Five of Wands encourages us to challenge that assumption.
Before rushing into the next conversation, solving the next problem, or saying “yes” to the next request, it invites us to pause for just a moment and ask a simple question:
Which wand actually belongs in my hands right now?
I like that question because it doesn’t ask us to ignore our responsibilities. It simply asks us to stop treating every responsibility as though it deserves the same amount of our energy.
Sometimes today’s most important task is finishing the project in front of you instead of worrying about the next five. Sometimes it’s giving your full attention to the person sitting across from you instead of mentally rehearsing tomorrow’s schedule.
Sometimes it’s recognizing that the loudest demand isn’t always the most meaningful one. That’s a practice, not a destination.
Some days we’ll choose well. Other days we’ll find ourselves trying to carry all five wands again. That’s part of being human. The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is becoming aware enough to notice when our attention has become scattered and gentle enough with ourselves to gather it back again.
Maybe that’s today’s practice.
Not eliminating every competing demand. Simply choosing where your energy will make the greatest difference.
Until Next Time…
As I look at the Reversed Five of Wands one last time, I’m reminded that the artwork hasn’t changed since we first turned it over. The same five figures are still there. The same five wands still cross one another. The same movement fills the card.
What changed was the conversation.
We began by wondering whether a reversed Five of Wands simply meant less conflict. That’s certainly one possibility, and there may be days when life genuinely feels a little quieter. But today, the card invited us somewhere else. It invited us to notice that tension doesn’t always come from arguments. Sometimes it comes from trying to carry too many priorities, too many responsibilities, or too many expectations all at once.
I wonder what you’ll notice the next time this card appears.
Perhaps you’ll still see conflict.
Perhaps you’ll notice the competing energy between the figures.
Or perhaps you’ll find yourself asking a completely different question that neither of us thought to ask today.
That’s one of the reasons I never grow tired of tarot. The cards don’t stop speaking. We simply become better at listening.
The Reversed Five of Wands doesn’t ask us to fear tension. It doesn’t even ask us to eliminate it. Perhaps it simply asks us to become more intentional about where we place our attention, our energy, and our effort. And if today’s conversation has done nothing more than encourage you to look at this familiar card with fresh eyes…
I’d say that’s ten minutes well spent.