OMG, here I am two and a half years later! Now with my IDS study of this card! I'm still working on it! And I've done a small bit more alchemical studying, so maybe this will make more sense!
Here it goes!
Art is “my” card--I’m a 5--a Hierophant trying to be an Art!
I hate to get all purist, but I’m pretty happy with Art meaning THE Art, alchemy. The extension to art as in creative art DOES work very well, however. (I think I’m just jealous!) Combining unlike things to create something new and full of life—hey, same thing! Ok, I’m convinced . . .
Lovers and Art are a related pair. They are Gemini and Sagittarius, which are “across” from ( I guess the correct astro term is “opposed to”) each other. Now the Empress and Emperor are now TRULY united (and interchanged)!
Crowley said magic is the art and science of making things happen in accordance with the will.
Lovers is science (analysis=solve); Art is art (synthesis=coagula).
Ok, I have a problem with “solve et coagula.” I understand when people say/think that solve means divide, like you can dissolve a company, marriage, government, etc. BUT, chemically, when something is dissolved, like salt in water or sugar in coffee, it is COMBINED so closely that you can’t see that they’re two different things, the taste, too. So when I think literally, solve as divide is confusing. Jumping ahead, “rectification” or at least distillation is ACTUALLY dividing, separating liquids by their boiling point. But coagula is definitely joining. So maybe it should be “rectify and coagula.” <Rant/musing over, back to our regularly scheduled Art card.>
Let’s look at all the joining and interchanging in Art. The Empress and Emperor are now one person with interchanged color heads and arms. S/he is pouring water and fire together into the pot. The pot is boiling over water and fire, too. The lion and eagle have grown and exchanged colors. (Leo and Scorpio are also “across” from each other.) Maybe they are grown as in sexually mature, ready to mate. Because I think the E & E are, too. They are combining red blood with white semen.
Pre-scientific Europeans thought a baby was formed of menstrual blood that was somehow “organized” and given its life force by semen. (Feminist rant aside, this is a good guess, but now we know the blood is just a cushion for the baby!)
I think it’s just odd that Crowley and his commenters go on about male blood and female gluten. How can they be so tied to red=male white=female to not realize red blood and white semen makes so much more sense?, besides the fact that everything else is interchanged anyway! (Book said female gluten is (natural!) sexual lubricant, but what is male the blood? If there’s male blood involved, I’m afraid somebody’s not doing it right!)
ANYWAY, mechanics aside!, the Art person is creating a child, something new and full of life, the hidden stone!
The arrow in front of the person shows the Tree of Life path of Art/Sagittarius, straight up from the Moon (Yesod) to the Sun (Tiphareth), another joining of female and male, water and fire. This path is shown on the 9 of Wands. This is also implies the marriage of the soul to the HGA--in other words, connecting your normal, everyday self (Moon) to your Higher Self (the best you can be!) (Sun).
Her dress is green with bees and snakes to show life force and nourishment. Bees=feminine, snakes=masculine, too.
Duquette says it is a low-cut neckline with 6 breasts showing. Snuffin says it is a lamen showing the 6 middle sephiroth, 4 through 9. (The lamen is the weapon of Tiphareth. So what’s a lamen and how is it a weapon?) Crowley does say they are breasts, showing that the Art woman is Diana of Ephesus. So obviously lots more nourishment! (Digression: I remember reading something about early church history connecting the official declaration of Mary as “Mother of God” with the city of Ephesus, and speculation that it was because the city was so steeped in mother worship to begin with. I just googled and found out that tradition says that Mary lived her last days in Ephesus with John the apostle, and her house is a pilgrimage site there.)
Diana is the huntress, and her bow is the rainbow (and the moon). (It’s also a harp in the Priestess.) (Sagittarius has a bow and arrows, too!) A rainbow is a REAL combination of water and fire--that takes place in the air and is seen from earth! Let’s get all 4 in here! The combination of rain and sun is also life and growth. The rainbow also symbolizes a promise (to Noah) and a bridge between heaven and earth. Crowley also connects it, through the coat of many colors, to a savior (Joseph). He also says Jesus. Does anyone know a story about JESUS and a coat of many colors?!
The cauldron is gold. Like the hidden stone is hidden right in front of us! It has an equal-armed cross showing all 4 elements combined equally, not just fire and water. And it has a crow on a skull. I just see that as all life comes from death. A lot of veggies have to die to keep me going! And they come from dead veggies and animals, etc. And putrefaction is an alchemical operation that calls for introducing new life (the yeast or whatever) to the dead matter. The books go into alchemical stuff about the dross at the bottom of the pot is called the caput mortem. Hey, maybe that’s the stone that was rejected by the builders?! But Crowley would say that’s aeon of Osiris thinking.
The egg of the Lovers (and Hermit and Magus) sure has grown, too! Duquette suggests Art is taking place within the egg! And behind it are stars. It looks like outer space. So we are in the interior of the earth?
Which brings us once again to VITRIOL. I feel like I don’t fully understand (or even kind of understand!) this yet. In a way, I’m always working away at it. Like a koan. Maybe I will find the hidden stone and become enlightened. Stranger things have happened I guess.
Vitriol is the universal solvent. So why are we trying to dissolve everything? Putrefaction again? Dissolving the old life to create a new life? Easy for you to say . . . Every second a new world is created. You never step into the same river twice, etc.
Vitriol is made from the union of the three alchemical qualities(?), Sulfur (Emperor), Mercury (Magus), and Salt (Empress). We have E&E combined. The arrow represents Magus (the true will). (Now I’m just parroting what I read, but I’ll get it someday!) I have tried to get what these three things are and how they are different than the elements, and it finally hit me that they are the qualities in astrology—Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable. Well, cardinal, mutable, fixed. So it’s starting to make more sense, at least that they’re not the elements.
Rectification we decided is distillation, purifying of two liquids of each other. Even Crowley was talking about purification. So is rectification separating and then mixing in the proper proportions?
Crowley’s idea of purification is “without lust of result” “unassuaged of purpose.” In Buddhist terms, action without residue. An enlightened person can do anything because she is not attached to the action. She just does what needs to be done. Bodhisattvas help people because people need help. They don’t get points for it! But regular people DO get points for helping people. They are still attached to the results of their actions. When bodhisattvas in training do a good deed, they also dedicate the merit of the action to the benefit of all beings. It’s like a 2 pointer, but also a 0=2; they have secondarily unattached themselves to the result.
The picture and article linked earlier in this thread mentions that the VITRIOL phrase has 7 words and so can be correlated with the 7 metals/planets and alchemical operations. (And chakras, but I’m not going there this time!)
Here are 2 ways we can do it: in alchemical metal/planet order (not Chaldean “regular” planet order) or how the words align with the metals/planets in the picture. I am including the alchemical operations that Houck associates with the metals/planets. (Yes, Alchemy for Dummies, but it’s really very good! Especially for this dummy!)
Straight order (I think this works best, especially occultum=moon, lapidem=gold!)
Visita Lead Saturn Calcination
Interiora Tin Jupiter Dissolution
Terrae Iron Mars Separation
Rectificando Copper Venus Conjunction
Invenies Mercury Fermentation
Occultum Silver Moon Distillation
Lapidem Gold Sun Coagulation
Picture order
Visita Silver Moon Distillation
Interiora Copper Venus Conjunction
Terrae Tin Jupiter Dissolution
Rectificando Mercury Fermentation
Invenies Lead Saturn Calcination
Occultum Iron Mars Separation
Lapidem Gold Sun Coagulation
Hmm, none of these match up distillation with rectificando, so this might be another chakra-like debacle. But I’m still thinking about it.
In a reading: Union of opposites to make a new, third living thing. Inner growth by leaps and bounds. Synergy—the result is more than the sum of its parts! And, yes, art or the art of living!
