Artist: Frenec Pinter

I have neither Little White Book nor box for this deck. As with all cards, different people interpret the nine of wands in different ways. This reading is my feeble attempt at art interpretation, which is what I am left with when no one tells me what to think.

The man in the foreground is fishing at the edge of a canal. It looks like he is wearing fatigues and a Russian army hat. He is sitting on a poster of Lenin. Is this image during the war years, when Lenin, standing for maximum working-class democracy, lead the workers of the Tsarist Russian Empire to revolution? Or is it afterward, when the Stalinists, calling themselves Leninists, cut away at everything Lenin had worked for and adopted anti-working-class policies? I never paid attention in history class. There were too many wars and dates and dead white men.

Inner strength, stamina, and the will to go on despite impossible odds are at the center of the Nine of Wands. I would like to say, the man is a revolutionary. He sits on the ideals of Lenin, protecting them, making them his own. But the revolution is going on forever. So many people he knows have died. Will the war never end? It is so dark! If only he can follow the light of his inner strength, it will lead to glory.

The twist: there is glory for the Bolshevik Party, but all too soon their ideals are crushed and twisted. The revolution is stolen from the hands of the revolutionaries. The struggle of the working class has never ended. Only in heaven is there a chance for the light of inner strength to close its eyes in sleep, just for a moment.

This card shows that if we search deep inside ourselves, we will find the strength to endure.