Is Seven of Wands a yes or a no?

This card leans yes. It carries forward movement, and in a straight yes/no draw most readers take it affirmatively.

The Seven is defending what you won.

Success attracts challenge, and this card is the point where you find out whether you will hold the position or hand it over.

He is wearing mismatched shoes. That is one of Smith's small deliberate details, widely read as evidence that the defender came to this in a hurry, improvised, and is winning anyway. He is on high ground and cannot see who holds the six staves rising at him.

Yes/no readings are the most popular use of tarot and the one it is worst suited to. A seventy-eight card deck built to describe nuance is being asked for one bit of information, and most of what it knows is discarded in the process.

A more useful version of the same draw: read Seven of Wands as what shape this takes, not whether it happens. Standing your ground. Defending a boundary, a position, a piece of work.

You have the high ground and the advantage. Use it and do not apologise, which is the instruction people struggle with when the challenge comes from somebody they like.

Its realism is the good part: the defender is not prepared and is not losing. The card does not require you to feel ready in order to hold something.

Reversed, the lean weakens or inverts. Overwhelmed by the number of challenges, or giving up a position you had earned.

The second is worth distinguishing from a decision. Conceding because it is no longer worth defending is fine; conceding because the defending is exhausting is the reversal, and the two feel identical on the day.

Also read for defensiveness where no attack was made, which is the version everybody around the person can see and they cannot.