Dodal, linked reproduction
Dix de Bâtons
Jean Dodal’s Marseille pack · Lyon, 1701–1715.
Read the BnF catalogue record ↗When support becomes weight
Look for the change from a structure that carries force to one that obstructs it.
Start with the pictures
Ten of Wands
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 179
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Dodal
Dix de Bâtons
Two upright batons overlap a woven group of eight diagonal ones. The dense crossing fills much of the card, without a person carrying it.
Smith
Ten of Wands
A bent figure carries a bundle of ten long staffs toward distant buildings, with the face obscured by the load.
Harris
Ten of Wands · 10
Two dark, heavy vertical bars dominate eight crossed wands. Flames spread behind and between the closely packed implements.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite names oppression as the main thread but allows that success and gain can themselves become the burden. He openly acknowledges that the meanings collected for this card cannot all be reconciled.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley describes Oppression as Fire detached from its directing sources. He contrasts Saturn with Sagittarius and reads the two enlarged dorjes as bars that repress the remaining force.
Which detail changes your sense of these wands from support to burden?
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.