Elemental Dignities and the Majors

I think if I wanted planet's elemental qualities, I would describe them as follows:

Sun: fire
Mercury: air/earth
Venus: earth/air
Moon: water
Mars: fire
Jupiter: fire/water
Saturn: earth
Neptune: water
Uranus: air

similia said:

Thin buddha, do you mean that if the planet Venus where in someones natal chart in a water sign/house (e.g. Pisces) you would think of Venus in a watery way when reading for that particular person?

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Er.... yeah- if that makes it sound les insane, then that is exactly what I meant (in your face wizzle-scrooge!)

But no- seriously, I was just throwing the idea out there, because there doesn't seem to be any firm answer to the queston on which element to attribute to The Empress.

I hear Earth

I hear Air

I hear Water

Since Venus is currently in Sag, I thought maybe I could hear a call for Fire.

-tb

What's in an Empress?

There are different faces of The Empress which may help you understand the element attribution.

When The Empress is loving and motherly, she is being of water. When she is being talkative and understanding in a communicative way with her children without smothering, she is being air. When she provides for her children and is also supportive, she is being earth.

This is an excellent chance to use elemental dignity to find out exactly what she is representing! If she is next to cups, she is being watery. If she is next to swords, she is problem solving--like helping her child deal with a bully. If next to pentacles she is supportive and acting like a grounding support. However if she is next to another trump, then she may go back to more traditional examples of the empress.

You mentioned the fiery part of the Empress also. When venus is in sagittarius, venus is displaying it's energy in sagittarian ways. This isn't quite the same as being "just fire". That said, I think The Empress would be Ill dignified next to fire. This is the overactive mother in my opinion, and she does best in the other 3 elements, the closest she can be to fire is by being next to a sword. However, if it is an optimistic wand card, such as the 3 or ace, then I would say she is being creative.

If next to a court, then I would say the court is being influenced by the Empress, especially if the Empress was the card AFTER the court (if the spread is a linear spread) eg: 1....2....3....court....emp

rainwolf said:

There are different faces of The Empress which may help you understand the element attribution.

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This method that Rainwolf described is I think very useful for the cards where they may be considered to have multiple elements. I think perhaps trying to start the explanation with a planet that may be seen to have multiple elements was a bad idea when trying to illustrate the method. Sorry 'bout that

The elemental/astrological/qabalah attributions given so far are those typically used in Golden Dawn based decks (and hence the Thoth). Many people however will use GD based decks (especially the RWS) with different attributions, or even multiple ones for each card.

You could infact look at any card, and see aspects of all four elements, or even any of the 12 signs, or 7-11 planets. This is a more flexible approach, although not one that currently attracts me. This thread has a discussion of which sign may be applied to some of the cards. While its a little away from our topic, I think it gives a good idea of the way different people may approach the application of astrology to tarot, and how it affects a reading.

The advantage of thinking this way is you can then see how a card may express itself based on its neighbours (in the way RW illustrated above). This is what elemental dignities are really all about. Its much the same as in astrology thinking of a planet within a sign or house. You can then see how they both affect each other, and how that changes the expression of the meanings of both.

In astrology you have a planet within a sign, and you base your information on that. (There is more of course, but that is leading to a discussion of charts and aspects etc) In tarot we have not got a "chart" in the same way, but we can see the interaction of cards based on their proximity to each other in a spread.

If learning a specific approach to elements/astrology etc. is too much at this time, maybe you could try to focus on how a card affects its neighbours, based on your own understanding of the cards.

If you scroll down on this page you'll find all the elements and crap we talked about above.

http://www.worldtarotnetwork.com/Astrology/astrotarot.htm

Cheers

Helvetica said:

Nowhere in The Book of Thoth (or in Lon Milo DuQuette, for that matter) do I see mention of Uranus, Pluto & Neptune. They are not (of course) in the Sepher Yetzirah. So why is there mention of them at all in relation to the Thoth? And if it is an attempt to update the Thoth - on what basis were these new planet attributions made?

For other discussion points - Crowley attributed XX-Aeon to Primal Fire. The Empress represents the alchemical element& principle of Salt - which must be energised by Sulfur (represented by the next Atu, The Emperor). My understanding is that Salt is an Earth element.

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I found mention of Pluto, Neptune and Uranus in both the Book of Thoth and in Duquette's book. In BoT it is under the discussion of XXI, Universe (page 119 in my version of the Book). BTW, Uranus used to be called Herschel and Crowley associates it with the Abyss. In Duquett's book the associations appear on the Tree of Life Diagram in Chapter 9, but he doesn't discuss the assignments of the outter planets.