16 subelements of emotion

Always Wondering

Actually, the INs including INTJ are not as rare as is officially claimed. I don't know where they did their original research to get their results, but if you google MBTI Polls, you'll find that people on the net come in strongly as INs in every field surveyed.

Check out our own poll here at Aeclectic:
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=12143&highlight=MBTI+Poll

INTJ is third from the highest, although there are almost twice as many INFJs.

I had no idea people paid such attention to these things. It is interesting. The Tattvas are also. I've got to wrap my head the 16 first.

AW
 

Barleywine

Clarification on the Clarification

One clarification: in the Golden Dawn system, Water is related to the Eagle—one of the symbols of Scorpio, a Water sign, and Air is related to the Man's head as the figure of Aquarius, an Air sign.

Lon Milo DuQuette, on page 110-111 of his "Understanding the Aleister Crowley Tarot," notes that the order of the four Kerubs around the periphery of Atu V, The Hierophant, is changed from the traditional sequence. Bull/Taurus/Fixed Earth - Lion/Leo/Fixed Fire - Eagle/Scorpio/Fixed Water - Man/Aquarius/Fixed Air, running counter-clockwise from the lower left corner to the upper left corner, is changed so that the positions and astrological references of the Eagle and the Man are switched. This is apparently because, in Crowley's vision of the 23rd Enochian aethyr, he reveals that the Eagle is now associated with the sign of Aquarius and the Angel (Man) is now related to the Sign of Scorpio. No explanation for this is given and, although I've read The Vision and the Voice a couple of times, I can't find any commentary for the visionary text to elaborate on it (this may be elsewhere in Crowley's oeuvre). It is implied in Crowley's transcendent vision, so I must have subconsciously remembered that when I made my initial attribution for the Tattvas and the "elemental parts" of the sphinxes in Atu VII. Now I'll have to go and see how this restoration plays out in The Chariot and in the Court cards.
 

Teheuti

Barleywine - Thanks for finding this. I had no idea that Crowley didn't follow the traditional sequence. You are right - these images are switched on the Hierophant and Universe cards also, as stated in the 23rd aethyr,: "The Beast and the Scarlet Woman are attributed to Leo and Scorpio. They are the two-in-one Chief Officers of the Temple of the New Aeon of Heru-Ra-Ha. (Note the Eagle Kerub in the 23 Aire is Aquarius. Scorpio is the Woman-Serpent. This is important, for the old attribution is of the Eagle to Scorpio."

Yet, there is an Eagle in the Death card (Scorpio) and in the Prince of Cups (Airy Part of Water?).

Now I'm really confused.

Mary
 

Aeon418

I had no idea that Crowley didn't follow the traditional sequence.
Crowley did follow the 'traditional' sequence he recieved from the Golden Dawn. But his visionary work sometimes threw up puzzling things that seemed to indicate that the symbolic framework he was using was wrong. (Just like Tzaddi is not the Star. ;))

Here's Jim Eshelman on the crux of the problem.
Jim Eshelman said:
No... long story. Basically a tracing of the four kerubic figures to their oldest representations on Babylonian boundary stones, and in the context of early Egypto-Babylonian astronomy, shows that they were misunderstood entirely through the Medieval times and on up through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

I don't think it's a switch at all. I think people had it {******} up for 1,500 years or more. The real error is in mistaking the eagle as having anything to do with Scorpio, when the only eagle in the sky is Aquila - in equatorial juxtaposition to Aquarius. Similarly, the "man" figure isn't Aquarius but, rather, Ophiuchus - shown in Babylonian boundary stones as half human, half scorpion - and existing in the sky juxtaposed to Scorpio.

There are other details, but that's the biggest part of it. Crowley never had the astro-archaeological data, but was beginning over time to encounter the actual symbolic and archetypal patterns in his visions, and began to see the logic in them.
Like Jim says, Crowley connected with the archetypal patterns behind the Kerubs and found that the symbolic map he had inherited from the Golden Dawn did not match up with them. But the trouble is that this mis-match (if that is what it is) is pre-Golden Dawn, and is woven into countless other things. To disentangle it all is obviously a big job, but I think this is one of those areas where Crowley was pragmatic and just used the symbol set he was already familiar with.

Basically Crowley knew something was wrong with the traditional sequence. He got Harris to paint on the cards. But that is about as far as he went with it. Someone else is going to have to clean up the mess called 'tradition'.
 

Barleywine

Like Jim says, Crowley connected with the archetypal patterns behind the Kerubs and found that the symbolic map he had inherited from the Golden Dawn did not match up with them. But the trouble is that this mis-match (if that is what it is) is pre-Golden Dawn, and is woven into countless other things. To disentangle it all is obviously a big job, but I think this is one of those areas where Crowley was pragmatic and just used the symbol set he was already familiar with.

Basically Crowley knew something was wrong with the traditional sequence. He got Harris to paint on the cards. But that is about as far as he went with it. Someone else is going to have to clean up the mess called 'tradition'.

Thanks for quoting Jim's comments; they definitely shed more light on the subject. I think if Crowley had lived another 30 years he would have sorted all of this out (at least to his own satisfaction, but we would probably still be gnawing on the bones).

My astrological texts put a slightly different but entirely complementary "spin" on the Scorpion-cum-Eagle duality. Scorpio is considered to have a three-fold nature represented by the Scorpion, the Serpent and the Eagle (no mention of Man, but then Man is the "field of operation" upon which these forces work). It's an allegory about degeneration and regeneration, death and resurrection, in which the Eagle takes on the aspect of the Phoenix, the Scorpion symbolizes the self-destructive/procreative release that consumes the Phoenix, and the Serpent the medium of transmutation (watery, as a snake's movement mimics the undulation of waves) by which the Phoenix rises from the ashes (sounds like the Kundalini force to me). The Serpent symbolizes the primal urge to transcend the baser excrescences of one's nature, uniting the lowest with the highest. The Scorpion, bent on eliminating anything superfluous, stokes the flames of self-immolation (or perhaps it perturbates the waters, exciting dissolution), the Serpent, released by the consuming fire (or buoyed by the up-rushing Water), flows upward to find the Sun, the Eagle/Phoenix, loosed from its material bonds, soars into the Air, looking for another Scorpion to invest. Interestingly, although the Eagle can be a carrion-eater (cleaning up after the Scorpion?), the ancients believed the Phoenix fed on Air. These qualities echo the respective Scorpion/Man (Ophiucus) and Eagle (Aquila) correlations to Scorpio and Aquarius that Jim described. They also demonstrate consistency with Crowley's revisions to the Hierophant and Universe cards, and, to a large extent, his use of the symbolism in Death and the Prince of Cups.

Esoteric astrologers are fond of the phrases "a higher octave" and "a higher arc." Hence, Aquarius is a "higher octave" of Scorpio since they are successive "Fixed" signs placed in "Succedent" houses (a double-serving of the "established force" idea) , in a balanced arrangement on the "wheel" with Aquarius farther along the path to self-realization. Aquarius universalizes (Air) what Scorpio releases into solution (Water) through a refining (evaporative?) process. Due to the all-pervading quality of Air, the Eagle in Aquarius has a loftier vantage point and a more trans-personal (11th-house) focus than the Scorpion in its namesake sign; the latter is still crawling on the surface, involved in 8th-house matters (renewal and release; elimination; extraction of essences; sex and regeneration; restoration - in short, the pursuits of Man in his element).

Or so it seems to me . . . :)