Looking at the Vanessa Tarot 4 of Wands made me smile.  The image reminds me of the episode of I Love Lucy when she stomps grapes in Italy.  The women on the card look like they are having a wonderful time – full of life and enjoying a warm, sunshiny day.  You can almost smell the fruit, the sun and the earth.  One thing that struck me as I looked at this image is that there is a bit of alchemical transformation taking place here.  The grapes are being transmuted from solid to liquid and will be transmuted again to create wine.  

And in light of my epiphany with the 3 of Wands earlier this week, I think one of the concepts this card portrays is what can be achieved once the teamwork has become solid and grounded.  After all, a task like making wine needs a team.  One person might be able to do it but he or she would be exhausted.  So it takes a solid foundation and a team working on the project.  But there’s also a sense of sexiness, sensuality and fun to this image.  So maybe it’s a reminder to keep in touch with the fun side of a project or not losing sight of our more sensual side of our nature.  Granted this might not always be appropriate in all workplaces, but maybe it’s about keeping in touch with our senses and not letting the paperwork or administrative minutiae create situations where we are solely focused on the intellectual.

In the Tarot of the Magical Forest we see a more traditional image that looks like a more traditional 4 of Wands portrayal.  One frog seems to be proposing to the other.  Once again we see a situation where the combining of energies can produce a transmutation into something else.  When two individuals marry they create a new entity – the couple.  For some people the individual is subsumed by the couple.  For others the relationship is more like a Venn diagram – there is one section for partner A, one section for partner B and one section where they overlap.  In this type of relationship the overlap, the merging is the couple.  This is a separate and distinct entity and it requires tending and a lot of work for it to remain healthy and happy.  A sense of fun, sexiness and sensuality can only help.