Elemental Dignities and Court/Trump cards

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 15 May 2005, and now archived in the Forum Library.

UKNicholas	15 May 2005
hi there A newbie here. I'm doing a 15-card spread and cards 7, 11, 15 are The Devil, Prince of Cups and Ten Cups respectively. I gather this represents psychological influences on the querent. My questions are: a) If I examine the cards from an "Elemental Dignity" point of view, do I need to consider the Earth aspect of the Devil? (And if so do I need to take into account the ED aspect of all trumps in my future readings? If so, are the ED aspects of trumps any more powerful than those of the minor cards?) b) Do I need to consider that the Prince is a water sign governed by Fire and if so, does the Fire aspect of this card affect the dignity of the ten cups and vice-versa? c) According to Crowley, the Prince of Cups can be prone to drug abuse. Does the presence of the Devil to his left suggest this is more of a possibilty? Or should I be looking at this purely from the querent's point of view? It think what I'm trying to say is that if the Prince represents a real person does this person have a family and Devil influence tugging at him from either side? Many thanks Nick

mnemosyne7	15 May 2005
Hi Nick, What great questions! I've seen several different sets of rules for using Elemental Dignities, and most of them set the Major Arcana as Neutral. But that doesn't mean that you have to. In fact, I think you should try reading this spread both ways and see which one works best for you, i.e., 1) read using the "earth" aspect of the Devil card and bring in both the primary and secondary influences in the Court cards, and 2) then read defining the Devil as neutral (as far as elemental dignities are concerned) and the Court cards as the element in which they reside. I'd be interested to see how both readings play out - where they are similar and where they diverge. As an aside, because you are picking up a deeper layer than primary elemental energies in the cards, have you considered reading using Astrological Dignities? This might be a better choice for you. Mnem

The Elemental Dignities and Court/Trump cards thread was originally posted on 15 May 2005 in the Using Tarot Cards board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Using Tarot Cards, or read more archived threads.