QUEEN OF WANDS
Updated: Jun 9
Fig. 42.1. Pamela Colman Smith, Queen of Wands, from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck, 1st ed. (London: William Rider & Son, 1909), chromolithograph.
Fig. 42.2. Josh Baird, Queen of Wands, from the Sego & Salt Tarot, 1st ed.
QUEEN OF WANDS : "1881: AUNT ZINA, THE COMFORTER"
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THE TRADITIONAL TAROT
KEY IDEAS: Big picture, Boldness, Courage, Confidence, Determination, Generosity, Growth, Independence, Leadership, Loyalty, Optimism, Stability, Taking control, Vision. REVERSED: Demanding, Low confidence, Selfish, Temperamental.
ALTERNATIVE TITLE/S: The Muse
COTTONWOOD TAROT: The Queen of Wands marches to the sound of their own drum, but it might be more accurate to say that the drumbeat is their own heartbeat. You know those moments when you feel like you’re being the most sincere, full version of yourself? That’s Queen of Wands territory. And of course, that means that everyone’s inner Queen of Wands will look a little different. Your most authentic self might be vocal, while someone else’s is quiet. Your most authentic self might gravitate to the written word, while someone else’s is all about physical movement. This variety makes a lot of sense when you look at the elementation of this card. Fire and water are both visibly changing all the time, making new shapes. You can’t pin it down. A person for whom the Queen of Wands is particularly dominant may go through many personas or distinct life phases, but each new identity is a genuine reflection of who they are in that moment. This kind of core loyalty to oneself can translate to incredible charisma. A prescription for embodying the Queen of Wands is tricky to define, because it’s all about doing whatever comes from your true self, and there’s no one-size-fits-all recommendation for that. The most helpful exercise may be to ask yourself, before any given activity, “What do I truly want?” If possible, spend a day devoted to embodying whatever answers come. What do you truly want to eat? What music do you truly want to listen to (if any)? How do you truly want to spend the next hour?
With the Queen of Wands, you have the mingling energies of Water (the element associated with Queen cards) and Fire (the element associated with Wands cards). Think of water being heated up, simmering and boiling and steaming, for a sense of what this card’s energy feels like.
Eden Gray’s The Tarot Revealed, published in 1960, gives the following description for the Queen of Wands: “A blonde, blue-eyed woman, animated and magnetic. Generally she lives in the country, is home-loving and nature-loving. She is friendly, chaste and honorable. If the card beside her is a man, she is very fond of him; if a woman, she is interested in her welfare. The card may mean success in undertakings and enterprises.” —Sara K. S. Hanks, Cottonwood Tarot
QUOTES:
"I am deliberate and afraid of nothing." — Audre Lorde
"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim." — Nora Ephron
"I have a woman's body and a child's emotions and a man's mind and that's a volatile combination." — Edna St. Vincent Millay
"She was a woman who knew how to burn without being consumed." — Unknown
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SEGO & SALT TAROT
BIOGRAPHY: Zina Diantha Huntington entered the world on January 31, 1821, in Watertown, New York, as the seventh child of William and Zina Baker Huntington. Raised in a devout Presbyterian home, her upbringing was defined by strict religious discipline, including daily communal Bible study, morning and evening prayer, and musical worship where Zina accompanied the family on her cello. Her father, a diligent student of scripture, eventually became convinced that no contemporary denomination mirrored the structure of the original Christian church. Consequently, when the family encountered the message of the restored gospel, nearly the entire household joined, and Zina was baptized by Hyrum Smith on August 1, 1835.
Fig. 42.3. Zina D. H. Young, ca. 1880–1900. Courtesy of the Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
ZINA, THE COMFORTER: In her role as the General Relief Society President, Zina D. H. Young was an exceptionally prolific healer, arguably the most documented in the history of the LDS Church. While modern practices restrict healing ordinances to male priesthood holders, during Zina’s era—extending through the early 20th century—women’s participation in healing was an accepted orthodox practice. Zina frequently performed rituals involving washing, anointing, and sealing blessings, often in the company of high-ranking church officials including her husband, Brigham Young. She was a vocal advocate for women's spiritual authority, declaring at an 1889 conference that it was the right of faithful women to administer healing ordinances to fellow sisters and children. Her dedicated service to the sick, particularly during the arduous trek west, earned her the enduring title "Zina, the Comforter."
ADVERSITY: Zina was noted for her resilient acceptance of divine will, maintaining her faith through a series of profound personal tragedies. She suffered the loss of her mother during the forced removal of the Saints from Missouri and later lost her father during the exodus from Nauvoo. Furthermore, while traveling westward as a pioneer, she endured the hardship of giving birth to a child within the confines of a wagon.
WOMEN AND HEALING: “Respecting the female laying on hands, he [Joseph Smith] further remark'd, there could be no devil in it if God gave his sanction by healing—that there could be no more sin in any female laying hands on the sick than in wetting the face with water—that it is no sin for any body to do it that has faith,...if the sisters should have faith to heal the sick, let all hold their tongues, and let every thing roll on.” —Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes, April 28, 1842 4
A RITUAL FOR EXPECTING MOTHERS: By the year 1880, Latter-day Saint women had established a specific spiritual ceremony for expectant mothers, frequently referred to as a "washing and anointing" prior to childbirth. During this period, members of the Relief Society viewed these administrations not as an administrative function, but as a direct fulfillment of their spiritual mandate to care for those in distress. These early practitioners interpreted the power to heal through the lens of New Testament scripture, believing that such miracles were "gifts of the Spirit" accessible to any believer who exercised sufficient faith.5
A RIGHT AND A DUTY: “Is it necessary for sisters to be set apart to officiate in the sacred ordinances of washing, anointing, and laying on of hands in administering to the sick?...It certainly is not. Any and all sisters who honor their holy endowments, not only have the right, but should feel it a duty, whenever called upon to administer to our sisters in these ordinances, which God has graciously committed to His daughters as well as to His sons; and we testify that when administered and received in faith and humility they are accompanied with all mighty power....Inasmuch as God our Father [Father] has revealed these sacred ordinances and committed them to His Saints, it is not only our privilege but our imperative duty to apply them for the relief of human suffering. We think we may safely say thousands can testify that God has sanctioned the administration of these ordinances by our sisters with the manifestations of His healing influence" —Eliza R. Snow6
A PRACTITIONER OF POLYANDRY?:At eighteen, Zina was courted by Henry Jacobs, while simultaneously receiving multiple marriage proposals from Joseph Smith regarding the doctrine of plural marriage. She initially declined Smith’s requests due to her regard for Emma Smith, her commitment to traditional monogamy, and a dislike for the required secrecy. She married Henry Jacobs in March 1841. However, later that year, Smith claimed an angel with a sword had commanded him to establish polygamy under threat of his life and position. Consequently, while seven months pregnant with Jacobs's child, Zina entered a spiritual marriage with Smith in October 1841.
Following Smith’s death, Zina was married to Brigham Young "for time" in February 1846. Though Henry Jacobs was frequently away on missions—including a 1846 call to England—no legal divorce between him and Zina was ever recorded. During his absence in England, Zina began living as the wife of Brigham Young, a relationship that continued for the rest of her life. She bore two children to Jacobs and one to Young, eventually identifying herself as the widow of Joseph Smith.7
BRIGHAM'S ATTITUDE TOWARD DIVORCE: In October 1861, Brigham asserted, "There was another way—in which a woman could leave a man—if the woman preferred—another man higher in authority and he is willing to take her. And her husband gives her up—there is no Bill of divorce required in the case it is right in the sight of God."8
ON LOVE & POLYGAMY: Zina observed that within plural marriages, wives often "expect too much attention from the husband and ... become sullen and morose" when those expectations aren't met. To find peace in such a lifestyle, she argued that "a successful polygamous wife must regard her husband with indifference, and with no other feeling than that of reverence, for love we regard as a false sentiment; a feeling which should have no existence in polygamy." Consequently, she shifted her emotional focus away from her spouse, finding her essential social and personal fulfillment through her bonds with relatives and her network of female friends.
PUBLIC HEALTH: After her children were grown, Zina D. H. Young dedicated herself to various public service initiatives in Utah. She worked as a school teacher and expanded her medical knowledge by studying obstetrics under Willard Richards. Drawing on the midwifery skills she originally learned from her mother in New York, she "helped deliver the babies of many women, including those of the plural wives of Brigham Young. At their request, she anointed and blessed many of these sisters before their deliveries. Other women in need of physical and emotional comfort also received blessings under her hands."
To further her impact on local healthcare, she studied herbal medicine and home nursing starting in 1848. Her leadership was instrumental in the 1872 founding of the Deseret Hospital in Salt Lake City, where she served on the board of directors and spent twelve years as the institution's president. Additionally, she established a nursing school and provided instruction in obstetrics.11
Fig. 42.4. National and Utah suffrage leaders at the Rocky Mountain Suffrage Conference, Salt Lake City, 1895. Susan B. Anthony is seated third from the right; Rev. Anna Howard Shaw stands behind her with her hand on the chair. To the left are Sarah Granger Kimball, Emmeline B. Wells, and Zina D. H. Young (seated). Photograph courtesy of The Salt Lake Tribune.
WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE: "Young was active in the temperance and women's suffrage movements, and, in the winter of 1881–82, attended the Women's Conference in Buffalo and a National Woman Suffrage Association convention in New York."10
AUNT ZINA: "Sister Zina was all love and sympathy, and drew people after her by reason of that tenderness...There have been many noble women, some great women and a multitude of good women associated, past and present, with the Latter-Day work. But of them all none was so lovely, so lovable, and so passionately beloved as was 'Aunt Zina.'" Above all, her legacy is the strength she found in communities of women where she found "the Spirit of God is, and when we speak to one another, it is like oil going from vessel to vessel." —Susa Young Gates12
A LIFE OF DEVOTION: "In all spiritual labors and manifestations, she was greatly gifted, and no woman in Israel was more inspirational in prayer .... Her whole life was one of untiring devotion to her Heavenly Father." —Emmaline B. Wells13
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ENDNOTES
Zina D. H. Young, "No. 1," in "Leaves from the Life of Zina D. H. Young," Young Woman’s Journal 4, no. 5 (February 1893): 218–19.
General Relief Society Meeting Minutes, June 1889, in The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History, ed. Jill Mulvay Derr et al. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 552.
Zina D. H. Young, "No. 1," in "Leaves from the Life of Zina D. H. Young," Young Woman’s Journal 4, no. 5 (February 1893): 219–23; Zina D. H. Young, Diary, 1844–1845, Zina Card Brown Family Collection, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, UT.
"A Record of the Organization and Proceedings of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo," April 28, 1842, 36–38, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
Eliza R. Snow and Zina D. H. Young, "To the Branches of the Relief Society," October 6, 1880, in The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History, ed. Jill Mulvay Derr et al. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 469–471.
Eliza R. Snow Smith and Zina D. H. Young, "To the Branches of the Relief Society," Woman’s Exponent 13, no. 10 (October 15, 1884): 76.
Zina D. H. Young, "No. 2," in "Leaves from the Life of Zina D. H. Young," Young Woman’s Journal 4, no. 6 (March 1893): 249–50; Henry B. Jacobs to Zina D. H. Young, August 19, 1846, Zina D. H. Young Papers, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, UT; Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson History Co., 1901), 697–99.
Brigham Young, Office Journal, October 8, 1861, Brigham Young Office Journals, 1844–1881, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, UT.
Zina D. H. Young, quoted in "Mormonism from a Mormon Woman’s Standpoint," Deseret Evening News, November 22, 1869, 2.
"The Convention in New York," Woman’s Exponent 10, no. 17 (February 1, 1882): 132; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 3 (Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1886), 960.
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