Today I have to stay in and wait for UPS to deliver a parcel so I'm going
to spend the time constructively by getting my head around elemental dignities
in the tarot. Don't get me wrong: I'm not holing myself up all day and I have
no doubt that when I get bored of this I'll be out in the sun on the front
wall! This refers to the way in which cards in tarot spreads relate to each
other based on the interactions between the elements they are related to. There
are other methods of doing tarot dignities: I recently tried to read a book
called Tarot Decoded and ended up grinding to a halt because I don't understand
astrology, and a lot of the book was heavily based on astrology. So if you want
astrological correspondences and dignities this is not the place to look for
them.
On the other hand, for someone who reads intuitively like me, and who still
sometimes has to look up the meanings of cards after over a decade of reading,
a simpler method of dignities which doesn't involve learning from books has
served me quite well. If you're using a pictorial deck it is easy to see
literally how the cards relate to each other by the non-verbals of the figures.
For example, if all the cards but one are facing in the same direction that one
card may be being ostracised or standing out against the crowd. If the movement
in a spread is all in one direction except for one card that can mean going
against the flow in a situation. If the characters are facing each other that
can mean variously a love interest or a confrontation depending on how it feels
in the spread. On the whole I don't do
reversals, so if a card manages to get reversed in a spread I would normally
interpret it as literally standing on its head to get my attention.
For this reason I don't find court cards in a reading to be that much of a
problem because they can often help the cards relate to each other. A friend
often interprets them as the energy or attitude they represent, and so I will
tend to ask her when I need a second opinion, because for some time I've been
seeing them as people. I do this less for the 'pip' cards, tending to see them
as actions or events, and major arcana as major events, forces or 'karma' which
usually cannot be ignored. However I'm not a fortune teller, I'm a witch, and
reserve the right to throw these principles out of the window if it feels right
in a reading. This is the point of a reading by a witch, we don't tell your
fortune, we hold a mirror up to you and force you both to face your shit and
decide on how to move on from there.
There is a further method of working out dignities I like very much, and
that works better with pip decks than with pictorial decks. Have I said loudly
enough that the tarot started out life as playing cards and not as some
esoteric map of the universe? When you play a game with playing cards there are
some cards that go together and others that don't. This depends purely on the
rules of the game you are playing, so whether you adopt a system based on the
rules of tarocco, which is a trick-taking game, or on some other method such as
wands/swords vs cups/coins, you can see what the 'fortune' looks like by the
cards that are in your 'hand'. You could also do this with a poker scoring
system, and there is a whole tradition of divination by playing a game of
patience, and the outcome of the game is the answer to your question. I was
inspired in this approach by discovering that in one or all of the French tarot
games (I don't really know a great deal about them) the Fool can appear
anywhere, can be placed anywhere, and alters stuff by his appearance: exactly
the function of the Fool in the esoteric tarot. I find this approach to
elemental dignities exciting because it places us in the intersection of time
where a card game transmogrified into a map of everything. This approach
*feels* as if it's actually probably the oldest, and to my mind is close to the
heart of the matter, since both being able to play games and divine with
something such as a pack of cards appeals greatly to me.
Because of course you don't need to have some special tool to divine with -
for example it's amazing how witches can foresee the future in the froth on the
side of a pint glass when the pint in question has been paid for by someone
else - you merely need a method of assigning meanings to how things happen, for
example how sticks or shells fall, or what the score on dominos means. Once you
remove the pseudo-history - intended to give the system the authority imbued by
age of Egyptianness - from it, this is exactly what happened to the card game
of the tarot to turn it into a tool for divination. This also explains why
there are a number of different systems for what means what in the tarot,
although the one used in this essay will be the elemental attributions of the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Another aspect of working out the whole of a reading rather than just
individual cards is by the proportion of suits, compared to the whole deck,
that appear in a reading. The four suits have been linked to the four elements
of western esotericism, which are a way of dividing *everything* into four, so
that everything can be placed into one of these four categories (these are what
the tables of correspondences in magic textbooks are intended to illustrate,
although I can't think why these people bother because actually the important
thing in magic is what the magician's own correspondences between things are).
For example a preponderance of pentacles (earth) may mean money troubles,
issues around work, the home, etc. Cups in a reading (water) will refer to
emotions of any sort, anger, love, etc. Swords (air) mean thought. For users of
the Rider Waite deck, which is *not* the one used by the Golden Dawn because
Waite took his vows seriously and didn't let secrets out, you will notice that
he partly draws on the alternative tradition of swords and cups being the other
way around, so the images both contain elements of the other, so there's a hell
of a lot of water in the RWS Swords cards. Air here can mean conflict,
notoriously so in RWS, clear speech, decisions, concord, agreement, arguments,
and so on. Wands (Fire) refer to action, will, willfulness, stubbornness (no,
before you ask, I don't always get a lot of wands in my readings!).
To reiterate: the four suits of the classic divinatory tarot are attributed
to the four elements of western esotericism as a map of everything. By
correspondence everything will fit into one of these elements somehow. In fact
even the suit symbols have correspondences. Remember how in a previous post I
talked about understanding the meaning of the suits by what the suit symbol
means? Wands hit, swords cut, coins support and provide, cups contain except
when they overflow: it is clear to see how the Golden Dawn attributed the
correspondences they did to the suits. Incidentally the Golden Dawn's actual
tarot deck is no longer secret: the authentic way to get one for yourself is to
paint it yourself using the descriptions in Book T. For the full experience I
would advise getting Israel Regardie's Golden Dawn so that you can read all the
colour correspondences. This experience, carried out meditatively over a period
of at least a year, should leave you in a position of having entered the tarot
that no amount of book learning can do!
In the system of dignities I'm studying here these correspondences govern
how the cards relate to each other, including in readings - remember these are
no longer simply how cards relate to each other but how aspects of everything
relate to each other. This approach can seem slightly dualist when put on paper
flat, so please bear in mind that there is room for shades of interpretation in
the traditional tarot correspondences which are:
Swords (Air): hot, moist, light, active.
Wands (Fire): hot, dry, light, active.
Cups (Water): moist, cold, heavy, passive.
Pentacles (Earth): dry, cold, heavy, passive.
Just to pause and give my own jaded view on these basic correspondences
before coming to what the Golden Dawn has to say about them: they actually make
a great deal of sense. For example if you put fire and water together, if
there's less water you'll get steam, but if there's enough water, because it's
heavy, it'll put the fire out. Similarly water and earth mixed, being both cold
heavy and passive, you'll get mud, mud, glorious mud. I'm not going to beat
about the bush here: the active quality of swords and wands very clearly refers
to an erect penis, and the passive quality of cups and pentacles very clearly
refers to a vagina. This is where I personally begin to have a problem with
this map of reality because it doesn't resemble what I know nor yet what I
want, which is why it is important to make your own correspondences. Yes,
opposites attract, but it doesn't have to be that everything is either active
or passive: one could be both or neither. The lesbians tell me that it isn't
necessary in sex to stick with those active/passive divisions, and I would
agree that it isn't necessary in gay male sex either (I have a certain number
going through my head as we speak). Since we're on correspondences, as above so
below, as in sex so in life, I expect my sex and my life to mirror each other
and what I want my sex and life to be like.
The Golden Dawn had a number of principles of how these related to each
other in readings, which I've never quite got my head round, but I was reading
somewhere on Mary Greer's blog that the way to understand them is to study the
actual examples given in Book T so that is exactly what I intend to do in the
rest of this post. This is what Book T says about this:
'A card is strong or weak, well-dignified or ill-dignified, according to the cards which are next to it on either side. Cards of the same suit on either side strengthen it greatly either for good or evil, according to their nature. Cards of the suits answering to its contrary element, on either side, *weaken* it greatly for good or evil. Air and Earth are contraries as also are Fire and Water. Air is friendly with Water and Fire, and Fire with Air and Earth.' (Israel Regardie: The Golden Dawn, 6th Edition. Llewellyn Worldwide, Woodbury, Minnesota, 2009, p. 585).
So to translate this into real terms:
Principle 1: Three cards of the same suit in a row strengthen the existing
nature of the middle one. Presumably this is what they mean by well-dignified.
Principle 2: A card surrounded by two cards of the same suit to each other
but opposite to the central card (i.e. sword/pentacle/sword,
pentacle/sword/pentacle, wand/cup/wand, cup/wand/cup) has its own instrinsic
nature weakened by the two surrounding it. Presumably this is what they mean by
ill-dignified. Reference to the correspondences above will show that the reason
they give these as complete opposites is that these two suits differ from each
other *in every way*: if they were on either side of a door looking through a
keyhole they'd still not see eye to eye. I think I'm going to try finally
committing this to memory pictorially by picturing the 6 of Cups and the 4 of
Wands together.
Hold for a moment the thought of which suits are friendly, because I think
only those first two principles are adequately explained in that paragraph; it
confuses them and is in fact explained in the next paragraph:
'If a card of the suit of Wands falls between a Cup and a Sword, the Sword modifies and connects the Wand with the Cup, so that it is not weakened by its vicinity, but is modified by the influence of both cards; therefore fairly strong.' (Ibid, p.585)
Principle 3: If the cards on either side are not opposites to each other,
but one of them is of the opposing suit to the central card, the central card
remains fairly strong, and is connected with its opposite card. This is the bit that has
always given me trouble and the bit where I've thrown Regardie across the room
and gone back to not understanding Golden Dawn elemental dignities. I think
what is happening is that the friendly card to the central card modifies the
central card so that it is less unfriendly with its opposing card, and the
opposing card therefore doesn't weaken it so much. The central card remains
strong.
'But if a card pass between two which are naturally contrary [to each other], it is not affected by either much, as a Wand between a Sword and a Pentacle which latter, being Air and Earth, are contrary and therefore weaken each other.' (Ibid, p. 585)
Principle 4: A card between two cards of opposing suits to each other is unaffected by them.
And so we come to the examples in Book T (Ibid, pp. 585 - 586) that Greer
refers to. She says that if you study them it makes the whole thing clear. I'm
hoping it will because that's what I'm going to do, trying to relate them to
the principles I've identified.
Example 1: '9 Sw. 10 Sw. 5 Sw. Very strong and potent in action. Very
evil.' Principle 1 applies here - the two cards of the same suit greatly
strengthen the nature of the 10 of Swords.
Example 2: '10 W. 10 Sw. 2 W. Not quite so strong. Ruin checked and perhaps
overcome.' The cards on either side are the same suit as each other so will
hold their influence over the central card. They're also friendly with the
central card, so in fact none of the four principles I've identified applies.
Presumably because the two outside cards are strong with each other and also
friendly with the central card they modify the drama queen aspect of the 10 of
Swords so that it is only ruin checked and *perhaps* overcome. This example
illustrates how elemental dignities can be used to give delicate shades of
meaning to a reading, and also explains why the Golden Dawn system seems so
complicated because of the permutations of suit that can occur in a reading. So
I'm going to make a fifth principle:
Principle 5: When a card is surrounded by two cards friendly to it and of
the same suit as each other, they modify its power slightly so that its power
is present but modified by the outer cards.
Example 3: '6 C. 10 Sw. 10 C. Rather good than otherwise. It is bounty
overcoming loss, like a piquant sauce which adds to pleasure.' Principle 5
again: the outer cards are of the same suit as each other and friendly with the
central card, so that the loss is still present but it is overcome by the outer
cards, rather than it being a case of 'no loss'.
Example 4: '9 P. 10 Sw. 10 C. Very weak, slight loss in material things,
but more anxiety than loss.' Principle 3 applies here, so the central card
ought to remain fairly strong if I've got it right, because the two outer cards
are friendly to each other and only one of them is opposite to the central
card. However, the example makes it plain that the loss of the 10S is only a
slight loss so it is slightly weakened. The loss is specific to material
things, so the 10S is modified by the 10C and by it connected with its
opposite, the 9P.
Example 5: '5 Sw. 2 W. 9 Sw. Moderately strong. Rashness which brings evil
in its train. Evil.' Principle 5 again: the surrounding cards are of the same
suit as each other and friendly to the central card. The keywords given for 2W
in Book T are 'influence over another, dominion' (Ibid, p. 583), so this card
can be seen as influence gone wrong under the influence of the swords surrounding
it.
Example 6: '9 P. 2 W. 6 P. Fairly strong. Good. Considerable gain and
victory.' Principle 5 again, with the wandiness of the 2W modified by the
pentacleness of the outer cards to make it gain rather than influence.
Example 7: '10 C. 2 W. 6 C. Weak, evil. Victory which is perverted by
debauchery and evil living. But other cards may mitigate the judgement.' Aha,
principle 2 at work! The nature of the card is weakened by the cups surrounding
it. But it's interesting note the magician's insistence that all is not yet set
in stone and this could be mitigated by other cards in the reading.
On a personal note I'm finding this exercise interesting on two levels: one
is that for someone who has learned to read tarot in a post-Mary Greer and
Rachel Pollack era, how old-fashioned I find the Golden Dawn's method of
reading tarot. It seems clunky and overly prescriptive. The other one is that
I've been wanting to get my head round Golden Dawn elemental dignities for
years, but now that I'm getting a glimmer of understanding (don't get me wrong,
I'm going to have to come back to these principles and examples over and over
again actually to understand them), I'm finding I don't really like this
approach to relating cards to each other! For example when I put the three
cards in example 7 together my gut instinct (I'm actually using Morgan-Greer,
because that's my duvet deck), was to interpret it as being someone taking the
power to turn the back on whatever's happened in the past and move towards a
more positive future. Yes, there's definitely debauchery and evil living
present but I would put the accent on this combination being mitigated by
whatever else is present in the reading. The illustration to this post is this
combination: the keywords I've written on the cards are Etteilla's, which is
why they will seem strange to modern tarotists!
There is definitely a point to this exercise, even if I don't start
slavishly sticking to this system of elemental dignities: it's interesting to
read the cards the way the Golden Dawn would have done. We can too easily
forget that that order is the source of the majority of modern occultism, so
there can be no waste in going back to the source for a little drink now and
then. This is essentially exactly what I am doing by learning Etteilla's
meanings for the cards, which brings me to the other reason this kind of
exercise can be useful. We get stuck in our own little world. Learning another
magical system than ones own reinvigorates you, challenges preconceptions and
can give you ideas to contribute to your own system. Besides, seeing how the
other half live is always beneficial to a person. But this is all by the by.
Back to the examples.
Example 8: '9 Sw. 10 C. 5 Sw. Medium strong. Evil. Sorrow arising from
pleasure and through one's own pleasures.' Principle 5 again. Again clearly
sours the Golden Dawn meaning for 10C: 'Matters definitely arranged and settled
in accordance with one's wishes. Complete good-fortune.' (Ibid, p.583). A case
of making your bed and having to lie in it: you've arranged matters according
to your wishes only to discover that what you've willed isn't what you thought
it was!
Example 9: '9 P. 10 C. 6 P. Perfect success and happiness.' Once again
principle 5 - it would have helped if Book T had actually spelled out this one
principle that so many of the examples depend on! The 10C is modified slightly
by the pentacleness of the outer cards to add success to happiness.
Example 10: '10 W. 10 C. 5 Sw. Rather evil. Pleasure that when obtained is
not worth the trouble one has had in obtaining it.' Principle 3 applies here:
the Cups card is attached to its opposite, the Wands card, by the Sword,
souring the meaning of the 10C.
Example 11: '10 Sw. 6 C. 9 P. Fairly strong and good. The Sw and P being
opposite elements counteract each other. Therefore it is as if they were not
there.' That'll be my principle 4, then. The Golden Dawn, incidentally, saw 6
of Cups far more positively (Wish, happiness, success, enjoyment) than I do; I
prefer Storm Cestavani's phrase for this card of 'Get in the car, I have
candy.'
Example 12: '10 Sw. 6 C. 10 W. Fairly good. Some trouble, but trouble which
is overcome. If 6 C were a bad card the evil would carry the day.' Principle 3
again: the Cups card is once again attached to its opposite, the Wands card, by
the Swords card. Ironic how there should be that comment straight after I typed
my negative comment about the 6 of Cups - I swear I hadn't looked ahead!
Interestingly, I feel Etteilla would also have interpreted this combination more
negatively than the Golden Dawn, judging by his keywords on my cards: tears,
the past, and betrayal respectively.
That point brings me nicely to another aside on divination, namely that
there is no absolutely right way to interpret tarot cards. When people start
learning we tend to learn the meanings of the book or deck we're learning with,
which act as a foundation. As we associate cards with particular readings,
people or events, we give them our own attributes. That said, the point of
divination, like much of magic is not to divine. The point is to open up the
inner eye so that you will see, hear, or just damn know things that you have
absolutely no evidence for, but will nonetheless prove to be true. So don't
ever feel disheartened by the fact that occult studies lead you round in
circles or just open up successive layers of stuff you don't know - that's the
point. Once you know what you know it will always fall away for you to learn
the next thing. Is it any wonder magicians go crazy?
Example 13: '9 Sw. Death 3 Sw. Death accompanied by much pain and misery.'
Interesting, an example with a major. I think it's principle 5. However in this
particular example if you didn't interpret it as death (or an involuntary
ending) accompanied by much pain and misery, you really wouldn't be on the
right page of the textbook!
Example 14: '9 W. 9 Sw. High Priestess. Recovery from sickness.' In the
Golden Dawn system the High Priestess refers to change or alteration. So this
example would be slightly different, because surely everyone would agree that a
Major Arcana would 'trump' the pip cards in exerting its influence? And Book T
gives sickness for 9 Sw anyway. However I do believe that this combination may
be open to different interpretations, especially if you are not using a Godlen
Dawn-influenced deck. Reading the three cards linearly for example would give a
different outcome, for example the conflict between the high wands and high
swords energy, finding resolution in the High Priestess.
Example 15: '6 Sw. Q. W. King P. An active woman, courageous and reliable
with dark chestnut hair, and open fearless expression.' Principle 4: the two
outside cards are opposites to each other so the central card is unaffected by
them. Personally I don't like this interpretation of this combination at all. I
would either read it as a woman with a choice between staying with her
?husband/present situation or moving on to something else, or else I would
still see them as a couple but going on a journey together. However i realise
that this is to ignore the elemental dignities approach altogether!
Example 16: '7 C. King C. 5 Sw. A rather fair man but rather deceitful and
malicious.' This one seems different again, with different cards on each side,
not opposites, and one of them the same suit as the central card. The meaning
given seems to draw on the meaning of both of the outer cards somewhat. I feel
obliged to invent another principle right at the end.
Principle 6: When a card is surrounded by cards of different suits, one of
which is the same as the central card, and the other of which is friendly, the
central card's meaning is modified by both of them.
I hope this has served as an introduction to another way of interpreting
tarot cards, admittedly a rather complex one and one not well explained in its
major primary source! No doubt anyone wanting to use this system will
experiment and refine my principles. For me it has given me a glimpse into a
long-gone world of tarot interpretation, reinforced the respect I always feel
for the work the Golden Dawn did in its short life span, and spurred me on to
study the Golden Dawn system of tarot more. No doubt there will be further
posts forthcoming on this theme!
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