Celtic Cross and Elemental Dignities

I'm just curious how you'd compare the elemental dignities with the celtic cross.

I just read up about them, and I'm not sure if I'd personally will use this method, but I'm still curious about them nonetheless.

If anyone can help me that would be great Thanks!

I wrote the following for one of the Yahoo Tarot groups:

... but the cross in the Celtic Cross is rife with triads that can be looked at elementally. If your cross is laid out as

.......6.......
...............
4.....1x2.....3
...............
.......5.......

then you can look at 413, 423, 615, 625, 416, 426, 613, 623, 315, 325, 514, 524, 463, 635, 354 and 546.

Depending on whether you think the current situation (1) or conflict (2) is more important (in general as a position), you could also make one of the positions the elemental base and look at the triads that don't involve the base.

For example, if you decide that 2 is the base, then you could look at 413, 615, 416, 613, 315, 514, 463, 635, 354 and 546 over the base of 2. So if 2 were Earth, 4 and 3 were Fire and 1 was Air, you'd have FAF/E. A would be weakened by the E base, but A is also strengthened by the two F cards (which are neutral to the base). But if you use traditional GD EDs, then the F/E interaction becomes friendly, so you have the two F cards strengthening E and also strengthening A, kind of playing both ends again the middle.

While I would look at the vertical lines in the cross, for some reason that I can't explain I wouldn't look at 789 or 8-9-10 in the staff elementally.

Rodney

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rwcarter said:

I wrote the following for one of the Yahoo Tarot groups:

Click to expand...

This is an interesting approach. I've mainly used elemental dignities in the First Stage of the Opening of the Key (elemental "packs," preponderances/deficits by element, modifiers to the Significator, and card pairing). In the Celtic Cross I've only looked at preponderances (or lack thereof), and the relative supportiveness of the "near future" and "outcome" cards from an elemental standpoint. This adds a nicely fluid way of treating relationships between the card positions and adds depth to the meanings.

ETA: I see no reason why this can't work for the staff cards as well, but I might use pairs (making six combos) instead of triplicities since there is an even number of cards.

rwcarter said:

I wrote the following for one of the Yahoo Tarot groups:

Click to expand...

Oh I see, so they work in triads. Before I was just trying to pair the whole thing, but that didn't make much sense, so this was very helpful

And if you wanted to, you can choose a base to work off of it too? that's really neat. I'll try it out as well.

Barleywine said:

This is an interesting approach. I've mainly used elemental dignities in the First Stage of the Opening of the Key (elemental "packs," preponderances/deficits by element, modifiers to the Significator, and card pairing). In the Celtic Cross I've only looked at preponderances (or lack thereof), and the relative supportiveness of the "near future" and "outcome" cards from an elemental standpoint. This adds a nicely fluid way of treating relationships between the card positions and adds depth to the meanings.

ETA: I see no reason why this can't work for the staff cards as well, but I might use pairs (making six combos) instead of triplicities since there is an even number of cards.

Click to expand...

So you pair the elementals of the "near future" and "outcome" cards mainly, and also pair the elementals in the staff? Do you use a base card as well, or do you just pair them as they are?

Cenozoic said:

And if you wanted to, you can choose a base to work off of it too? that's really neat. I'll try it out as well.

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See SuperTarot for more info on Elemental Dignities and Elemental Bases in particular.

Cenozoic said:

So you pair the elementals of the "near future" and "outcome" cards mainly, and also pair the elementals in the staff? Do you use a base card as well, or do you just pair them as they are?

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I've been pairing the two "result" cards (I use the old Eden Gray structure for the Celtic Cross) for many years, long before I came across the detailed explanations of elemental dignity that are available now. I've been looking for whether the near-term prediction would be amplified or diluted in some way by the final outcome, whether by element/suit, numerical value or hierarchical class. Regarding the staff cards, this is pure conjecture at present since I was just responding to Rodney's comment that he hasn't used the triplicity approach for the staff as yet (and I haven't used elemental dignities at all for it, except in a rather ad-hoc way). It struck me that it might be more comprehensive to take them in pairs than in threes. In that case, a base card wouldn't be applicable. In that way I could use all possible permutations of the four cards, not just the adjacent ones. Since the staff positions convey less of an interdependent continuum (at least in my practice), there seems to be less reason to impose a three-fold progression. In the cross arrangement, the modified "base" cards are all arranged around a centralizing theme, either axially or circumferentially, but the staff cards don't exhibit any such unifying symmetry. Or so it seems to me.

rwcarter said:

See SuperTarot for more info on Elemental Dignities and Elemental Bases in particular.

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This is my primary source as well. Tarot Eon and Tarot Elements are two other sites that cover elemental dignities, but they also refer to SuperTarot. Apparently, Paul Hughs-Barlow wrote the SuperTarot ED material, and he has a book, Tarot and the Magus, that covers it in more detail. This is what Amazon says about it:

"Tarot is greater than the sum of its parts, but the focus is usually on division: Major Arcana, Minor Arcana, and Court cards. Here the focus is on the commonality of the cards through the four elements. Paul Hughes-Barlow looks at the relationships between the cards to build up a detailed picture of a situation, allowing readers to gain in confidence and accuracy."

Any thoughts on the value of having this book?

rwcarter said:

I wrote the following for one of the Yahoo Tarot groups:

... but the cross in the Celtic Cross is rife with triads that can be looked at elementally. If your cross is laid out as

.......6.......
...............
4.....1x2.....3
...............
.......5.......

then you can look at 413, 423, 615, 625, 416, 426, 613, 623, 315, 325, 514, 524, 463, 635, 354 and 546.

Click to expand...

On further reflection, I will probably go at this in a more disciplined way, rather than trying everything all at once. The CC spread I use goes as follows, with cards 3 through 6 forming a clockwise "timeline:"

.......5.......
...............
4.....1x2.....6
...............
.......3.......

I use this because I dislike the "Stations of the Cross" connotations of many of the other models, including Waite's. I can see making triads of 1-3-4, 2-3-4, 3-4-5 and 4-5-6 to look at elemental commonality or divergence in a "going forward in time" sense, and 6-5-4, 5-4-3, 4-3-2 and 4-3-1 to work "backward in time" for a look at where a situation came from. I can also see going axially, both forward and backward, with the 1 or 2 card as the "base" card. I'm not sure yet, but it may be more productive to use the first and last cards as the "origin" and "outcome" of each triad, and the central, or "base," card as a pivot-point that influences and is influenced by the others. Just thinking "out loud" over ways I can best integrate these ideas into my current approach.

THANK YOU

Rodney

Thank you for this I am starting to read the element dignities and trying to understand how they interact with each other and this is most useful.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge.