“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?”
(Robert Browning)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Although the line from Browning’s poem was clearly meant to be inspirational, in common usage the phrase “his reach exceeds his grasp” is intended to mean that the individual is aspiring to a lofty summit that he can’t possibly attain. He might be able to admire the prize from a distance but he will be incapable of seizing it and bringing it within his control. Tarot requests of the “wishful thinking” kind often exhibit this weakness.

When discussing the Knight of Wands in his book Tarot Reading Explained, James Ricklef mentions that this Knight can be extremely persistent in overtaking the object of his desire, but once he has it in his sights he can lose interest and move on to the next challenge even before “closing the deal” on the current venture. It’s as if he realizes that having something in-hand is less exciting than the pursuit of it, so the Knight changes his mind.

Ricklef quotes Neil Gaiman in this regard: “The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted.” A corollary to this observation delivers a similar message: “Therefore, be careful what you wish for because it may not live up to expectations.” The Knight of Wands enjoys the stimulation of living in the moment but can’t imagine staying there for long. (As an aside, I mistakenly typed “Knight of Wants” in this paragraph, which was a fortuitous slip-of-the-digit; hence the title of this post.*)

Those who seek tarot’s wisdom may only be after insights about decision-making or problem-solving, but there are times when the aim is to find out whether they will get something they want, quite often in the area of romance or employment. As a companion piece to my essay on long-range predictions (“Metaphysical Entropy”), this one contemplates whether the original scope was feasible if the reading as a whole doesn’t strongly agree. Querents who ask this type of question to a competent diviner are usually advised to rethink it in the form of “What can I do to make this happen?” The recommended approach takes direction of events and circumstances out of the hands of an indifferent Fate and places the burden of control where it belongs.

The sticking-point in these situations is that querents may be too insecure to risk a personal foray into the unknown, so they choose to hide behind the tarot. That way, if events don’t go as they would prefer they can always blame the divination. I’m not an enabler or cheerleader, I “just read the cards,” and I make sure they understand that they still own the issue regardless of anything that comes up in the narrative, whether or not it supports their goals. When that responsibility is accepted, any failure on their part to make good on a prediction is not so much a case of overreaching or overshooting the mark as it is of misjudging the range in the first place. They won’t want to hear it, but maybe they were biting off more than they could chew anyway.