Dodal, linked reproduction
Sept de Bâtons
Jean Dodal’s Marseille pack · Lyon, 1701–1715.
Read the BnF catalogue record ↗One wand against the pattern
Follow the single upright or foreground wand and its relation to the other six.
Start with the pictures
Seven of Wands
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 185
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Dodal
Sept de Bâtons
One upright baton runs through three crossed pairs. The surrounding floral ornaments and repeated diagonals keep the design broadly symmetrical.
Smith
Seven of Wands
A figure on uneven high ground braces a staff against six staffs rising from below. The two feet are shown in different footwear.
Harris
Seven of Wands · 7
A coarse, uneven club stands in front of six more regular crossed wands. Scattered flames interrupt the field around it.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite connects the advantageous position with courage, debate and competition. His account stresses the possibility of successful resistance while keeping indecision and anxiety among the alternative readings.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley describes Valour as individual effort called upon after an earlier balance has weakened. Mars in Leo supplies force, but the crude foreground club is an improvised weapon rather than an image of settled order.
Does the central wand complete the pattern or appear to resist it?
Write one thing you can point to in the image, one interpretation from a named author, and one inference of your own. Keeping the three separate gives you something useful to revisit.
Sources and image credits
The Dodal cards are one early-eighteenth-century Marseille witness. The black-and-white Smith plates come from the 1922 Rider reprint, whose title verso lists first publication in 1910. Colours in later editions can differ.
Foolmade supplies the linked Dodal reproductions. Its surrounding commentary is not the basis for our historical claims. These images are linked externally; the Smith illustration reuses the public-domain source scan with its full page context.
Harris’s paintings are linked on their host’s reference pages. Crowley’s text is the separately identified Thelemagick transcription of The Book of Thoth. Neither a modern reproduction nor a transcription replaces examination of the original artwork or edition.