The Five of Wands is also known as the Lord of Strife. It is aligned with Saturn in Leo and brings restriction, challenge and unfulfilled desires.
There is an element of conflict here, and it often shows up in others' resistance to you - people are unco-operative, belligerent and obstructive and this is a great cause of frustration to you. In fact, it causes even more resistance in you because you do not understand why you are struggling so much when others around you are thriving.
Whenever you feel blocked or frustrated by circumstances or people in your life, it is a sure sign that you are feeling an internal conflict. The outer is merely reflecting the inner and it is time to realise the outer manifestation needs to be resolved within before things improve on the outside.
This is something of a chicken-and-egg situation, since the tendency is to wait until outer circumstances improve before deciding that things are going right and that you need that to feel good on the inside. But in reality this is not what is going on.
Once you decide to be at peace with yourself then you will begin to see the same harmony in your world. They say that what we resist persists, and if you resist difficult circumstances or people, then you just become a match to that energy and attract it to you as a magnet attracts metal. Have you ever noticed that the more attention you give to a bully or a foe, the more they stick to you because you are energetically connected by the conflict. If you diffuse your reactiveness to these situations, and merely observe the actions without getting hooked into them and making them mean something about you, then they cannot have any power to persist.
The opportunity with the Five of Wands is to recognise the nature and cause of conflicts with others as originating from within yourself - resolve the inner conflict and you will notice that outer conflicts are no longer necessary.
Image from "Celtic Dragon Tarot" © Lisa Hunt.