Minor Arcana · Wands · Fire
Knight of Wands
Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it. These are what two traditions wrote, not predictions.
In Waite's words: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911)
He is shewn as if upon a journey, armed with a short wand, and although mailed is not on a warlike errand. He is passing mounds or pyramids. The motion of the horse is a key to the character of its rider, and suggests the precipitate mood, or things connected therewith.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), public domain.
In the Golden Dawn's Book T (1912)
Note that the Kings are now called Knights, and the Princes are now called Kings. This is unfortunate, and leads to confusion; the Princes may be called Emperors without harm. Remember only that the horsed figures refer to the Yod of Tetragrammaton, the charioted figures to the Vau.
A WINGED Warrior riding upon a black horse with flaming mane and tail: the horse itself is not winged. The rider wears a winged helmet (like the old Scandinavian and Gaulish helmet) with a Rayed Crown, a corslet of scale-mail and buskins of the same, and a flowing scarlet mantle. Above his helmet, upon his curass, and on the shoulder-pieces and buskins, he wears as a crest a winged black horse's head. He grasps a club with flaming ends, somewhat similar to that in the symbol of the Ace of Wands, but not so heavy, and also the sigil of his scale is shown; beneath the rushing feet of his steed are waving flames and fire. He is active — generous — fierce — sudden — impetuous.
If ill dignified, he is evil-minded — cruel — bigoted — brutal. He rules the celestial heavens from above the Twentieth Degree of Scorpio to the First Two Decans of Sagittarius: and this includes a part of the Constellation Hercules. (Hercules is always represented with a Club.)
Fire of Fire
King of the Salamanders.
Golden Dawn Rank
Book T — Golden Dawn, c. 1888 · the deck's native system (predates this imagery)
RWS Knight of Wands = Golden Dawn Knight of Wands — Fire of Fire.
Editorial note · where Book T's figure and the picture differ. The picture is Pamela Colman Smith's (1909); Waite's words are from The Pictorial Key (1911).
Both ride. Book T's Knight is a winged warrior on a black horse with flaming mane, holding "a club with flaming ends"; Waite's is "shewn as if upon a journey, armed with a short wand". In Book T the mounted figure is the senior court of the suit, the old King (the 1912 printing: "the horsed figures refer to the Yod"); in the picture's deck the Knight ranks below the King.
Correspondences
Rules 21° Scorpio – 20° Sagittarius. As Fire of Fire, this court is the fire aspect of an ardent and swift suit.
Book T as printed in The Equinox I(8), 1912, public domain (notes in square brackets are Crowley's). The correspondences are this site's compilation from Book T. Open it in the Golden Dawn deck.