frac_ture
"Portable Magic" by Donald Tyson – Chap. 9, “The Sixteen Significators”
I realize that starting off a study group for a book with an entry aimed at its ninth chapter might seem like an unorthodox move. This might lead to the assumption that nothing in the first eight chapters is worthy of comment or analysis. This isn't the case with this book, but until it reaches Chapter 9, the reader is mostly a passive recipient of information, much of it historical (the history, evolution, and structure of Tarot; the history of the Golden Dawn; various cosmologies and correspondences...). Only in Chapter 9, when the reader is tasked with the notion of learning to choose significator cards that will represent her/him and other people in the various exercises and procedures to come, does the reader begin to occupy a more active role. So while the background materials provided in the first 60 pages are informative and useful, they just don't really provide much to comment on in a group like this (although anyone should feel free to disagree and go write up entries for those earlier chapters if they so desire!).
I should mention here that in Tyson's system, a “significator” means a Court Card. This may be tough for some people to swallow, as many identify more with cards drawn from the other sections of the deck (ie., Majors or non-Court Minors). I can't personally say what kinds of results might be expected if one were to deviate from Tyson's method, and just insist anyway on using a Major Arcana card or a number card drawn from the Minors as a significator. Enter at your own risk, I guess! But forging ahead...
By this point in the book, Tyson has already explained what the four elements are (earth, air, fire, and water) and has described their basic characteristics (and he lists their suit correspondences), and he has also done the same for the Court Cards (he sticks with the designations of King, Queen, Knight, and Page). In Chapter 9, he begins putting some of this together, and he delves further into the basic traits of each Court Card (possible positive and negative characteristics are given for each of the sixteen), including their astrological correspondences, and he also raises and then basically dismisses the school of thought that holds that physical traits of a person should be used in determining significators. Regarding this last point, Tyson is very clear about preferring the Crowley way of putting the focus instead on personality traits (for whatever it's worth, I personally agree with this).
Tyson also spends a bit of time explaining how the Pages have a special function all their own: as a group, they act as a sort of mediating body or liaison quartet positioned between the Aces/Minor Arcana on one hand, and the rest of the Court Cards on the other. Even their astrological attributions are handled differently, and Tyson includes a diagram that's very helpful in making this all easier to grasp. It occurred to me that in a sense, this treatment of the Pages within the body of Court Cards is sort of like a microcosm reflection of how the Court Cards are treated as a whole within the entire Tarot 78-card deck: that is, they serve as a sort of bridge between the Minor Arcana and the Major Arcana. This struck me as one of those “As above, so below” moments that crop up in Tarot studies...
I wanted to put down some thoughts about choosing significators, as this can be tricky, and Tyson stresses how very important this task will always be when using his system.
It seems common to read about students of Tarot finding the Court Cards to be especially difficult to grasp well. Personally, until right around now, I thought that I had a pretty solid handle on them myself, and didn't quite see what the fuss was all about. In divination work, I thought I could interpret the appearances of the various Court Cards with very little wringing of hands and wrinkling of brows. And then came...the significators...
I've been simultaneously working my way through another book as well, called Psychic Tarot, by Nancy Antenucci with Melanie Howard. I landed on the chapter about Court Cards in that book at the same time I was digesting Tyson's chapter on the significators. Psychic Tarot provides exercises that ask the reader to determine significators for themselves, as well as for other important people in their lives. This is where my own grasp suddenly came apart. All at once, it seemed impossible to settle on a single card to represent a given person; most people are a mix of the energies of two or more Court Cards. The exercise is especially tricky, much like one of those multiple choice tests we've all taken, in which it seems possible to make a case for more than one choice as being acceptably “correct.” How to settle on just one card per person??!
With physical traits being shown to the door as a possible method, that does actually still leave a few helpful possibilities on the table.
First, there are the basic personality traits summarized by Tyson that can be of aid. For myself, this is about as far as I needed to go (choosing a Court Card for myself wasn't difficult – it's selecting cards to represent other people that's got me tying myself in knots...). Tyson devotes about three pages to breaking down these traits at the end of the chapter, and nothing there deviates in any substantial way from breakdowns of Court Card characteristics that I've read elsewhere.
Next, there are the astrological correspondences – if you can't draw a bead on your (or someone else's) significator from the personality traits, taking a look at the Zodiac associations might help to firm things up. For me, the Court Card that most parallels my personality (the Knight of Cups) is also the one that corresponds to my Zodiac signs (my sun, ascendant, and three planets are all in early Scorpio, which is much of what ties to that specific Knight). Tyson's chart will be very helpful here, as it's an easy visual read to see which Court Cards will link to your own Zodiac sign(s).
It's also possible to simply go with the Court Card toward which you feel the most strongly drawn. Sometimes certain cards just resonate, and it's not possible to boil the “why” of that down into intellectually satisfying reasons – these are more intuitive feelings. Obviously, these things are in a way the bread and butter of Tarot, so it's perfectly fine to say, “I'm choosing the Queen of Wands as my significator because IT JUST FEELS RIGHT TO ME.”
Finally, I have an odd method I sometimes use that flows out of the ties between Tarot and the Tree of Life. If you're like me, you find this area of exploration totally fascinating and illuminating...and then again, there seems to be a faction of Tarot people who have zero use for Kabbalah, Tree of Life, Sephiroth... If you're one of these latter individuals, you can happily skip the next few paragraphs and not miss very much!
Here's the method, though... It hinges on certain Tarot/Tree of Life correspondences and on your own “personal Tarot cards” – that is, your Soul Card, your Personality Card, your Zodiac Card, or any other card that you feel is bound up with “the essential you” (and if anyone reading this doesn't know what I'm referring to with these terms, or how to determine those specific cards, please feel free to PM me). When I mention those Tarot/Tree of Life correspondences, I mean that the four suits/elements and the four Court Card ranks are all “assigned” their own “home spheres” on the Tree of Life:
Wands and Kings (which are both associated with fire) are housed in the second sphere, Chokmah.
Cups and Queens (both water) reside in the third sphere, Binah.
Swords and Knights (air) dwell in the sixth sphere, Tiphereth.
Pentacles and Pages (earth) inhabit the tenth sphere, Malkuth.
Major Arcana cards are assigned to the various pathways that connect up all of the spheres. To my way of thinking, a person's personal cards can indicate pathways that might just be helpful in determining significators. I'll use myself as an example here:
Both my Personality Card and my Soul Card come out as the Lovers. The Lovers card is attributed to the pathway that connects Binah and Tiphereth. Looking at the suits and ranks housed in those two spheres, it could be said that the Lovers pathway could equate to either the Queen of Swords (Queens in Binah linked to Swords in Tiphereth) or to what I feel is my own significator, the Knight of Cups (Knights in Tiphereth linked to Cups in Binah). This reinforces yet again my own determination of significator, and maybe this kind of analysis would be helpful to others?
Tyson provides a diagram of the Tree of Life on page 72, although he does omit the attributions of the suits there.
Obviously this method won't provide easy answers for all sixteen Court Cards. For one thing, the Pages and Pentacles in the tenth sphere are at least two pathways removed from the other ranks and suits (although it might be possible to establish links if a given person's personal cards correspond so as to enable that...for example, if your Personality Card is the World, and your Zodiac Card is Temperance, you can make a case for there being a pretty solid connection between Malkuth and Tiphereth by way of Yesod, which would tilt things toward the significator being either the Knight of Pentacles or the Page of Swords, based on the attributions of suits and Court Card rankings I listed above). Also, certain Court Cards will have no pathway at all, as their rank and suit are housed in the same sphere (for example, the King of Wands, whose “King” component and “Wands” component are both located in Chokmah).
For handy reference:
1) as described above, the Lovers path connects Binah and Tiphereth, so this path could be held to reference both the Queen of Swords and the Knight of Cups
2) the Empress path connects Binah and Chokmah, so Court Cards that could be said to be linked to that path would be the Queen of Wands and the King of Cups
3) the Emperor path connects Chokmah with Tiphereth, so Court Cards “defined” by this pathway would be the King of Swords and the Knight of Wands
This means that those whose personal cards include the Empress, the Emperor, and/or the Lovers might find some fairly quick and easy possible answers here in terms of arriving at a significator.
Hopefully that extra bit of “testing” might come in handy for someone reading this!
Anyway, I've now arrived at my own significator for use in working through the rest of the book, and have reached the run of chapters in which Tyson starts to detail the various “symbolic tools of Tarot magic,” each of which includes introductory exercises, so more entries to follow!!
Oh, and P.S. Tyson advises using a smaller deck for his system, so after some deliberation, I'm using a miniature Rider-Waite-Smith deck from here on out...
I realize that starting off a study group for a book with an entry aimed at its ninth chapter might seem like an unorthodox move. This might lead to the assumption that nothing in the first eight chapters is worthy of comment or analysis. This isn't the case with this book, but until it reaches Chapter 9, the reader is mostly a passive recipient of information, much of it historical (the history, evolution, and structure of Tarot; the history of the Golden Dawn; various cosmologies and correspondences...). Only in Chapter 9, when the reader is tasked with the notion of learning to choose significator cards that will represent her/him and other people in the various exercises and procedures to come, does the reader begin to occupy a more active role. So while the background materials provided in the first 60 pages are informative and useful, they just don't really provide much to comment on in a group like this (although anyone should feel free to disagree and go write up entries for those earlier chapters if they so desire!).
I should mention here that in Tyson's system, a “significator” means a Court Card. This may be tough for some people to swallow, as many identify more with cards drawn from the other sections of the deck (ie., Majors or non-Court Minors). I can't personally say what kinds of results might be expected if one were to deviate from Tyson's method, and just insist anyway on using a Major Arcana card or a number card drawn from the Minors as a significator. Enter at your own risk, I guess! But forging ahead...
By this point in the book, Tyson has already explained what the four elements are (earth, air, fire, and water) and has described their basic characteristics (and he lists their suit correspondences), and he has also done the same for the Court Cards (he sticks with the designations of King, Queen, Knight, and Page). In Chapter 9, he begins putting some of this together, and he delves further into the basic traits of each Court Card (possible positive and negative characteristics are given for each of the sixteen), including their astrological correspondences, and he also raises and then basically dismisses the school of thought that holds that physical traits of a person should be used in determining significators. Regarding this last point, Tyson is very clear about preferring the Crowley way of putting the focus instead on personality traits (for whatever it's worth, I personally agree with this).
Tyson also spends a bit of time explaining how the Pages have a special function all their own: as a group, they act as a sort of mediating body or liaison quartet positioned between the Aces/Minor Arcana on one hand, and the rest of the Court Cards on the other. Even their astrological attributions are handled differently, and Tyson includes a diagram that's very helpful in making this all easier to grasp. It occurred to me that in a sense, this treatment of the Pages within the body of Court Cards is sort of like a microcosm reflection of how the Court Cards are treated as a whole within the entire Tarot 78-card deck: that is, they serve as a sort of bridge between the Minor Arcana and the Major Arcana. This struck me as one of those “As above, so below” moments that crop up in Tarot studies...
I wanted to put down some thoughts about choosing significators, as this can be tricky, and Tyson stresses how very important this task will always be when using his system.
It seems common to read about students of Tarot finding the Court Cards to be especially difficult to grasp well. Personally, until right around now, I thought that I had a pretty solid handle on them myself, and didn't quite see what the fuss was all about. In divination work, I thought I could interpret the appearances of the various Court Cards with very little wringing of hands and wrinkling of brows. And then came...the significators...
I've been simultaneously working my way through another book as well, called Psychic Tarot, by Nancy Antenucci with Melanie Howard. I landed on the chapter about Court Cards in that book at the same time I was digesting Tyson's chapter on the significators. Psychic Tarot provides exercises that ask the reader to determine significators for themselves, as well as for other important people in their lives. This is where my own grasp suddenly came apart. All at once, it seemed impossible to settle on a single card to represent a given person; most people are a mix of the energies of two or more Court Cards. The exercise is especially tricky, much like one of those multiple choice tests we've all taken, in which it seems possible to make a case for more than one choice as being acceptably “correct.” How to settle on just one card per person??!
With physical traits being shown to the door as a possible method, that does actually still leave a few helpful possibilities on the table.
First, there are the basic personality traits summarized by Tyson that can be of aid. For myself, this is about as far as I needed to go (choosing a Court Card for myself wasn't difficult – it's selecting cards to represent other people that's got me tying myself in knots...). Tyson devotes about three pages to breaking down these traits at the end of the chapter, and nothing there deviates in any substantial way from breakdowns of Court Card characteristics that I've read elsewhere.
Next, there are the astrological correspondences – if you can't draw a bead on your (or someone else's) significator from the personality traits, taking a look at the Zodiac associations might help to firm things up. For me, the Court Card that most parallels my personality (the Knight of Cups) is also the one that corresponds to my Zodiac signs (my sun, ascendant, and three planets are all in early Scorpio, which is much of what ties to that specific Knight). Tyson's chart will be very helpful here, as it's an easy visual read to see which Court Cards will link to your own Zodiac sign(s).
It's also possible to simply go with the Court Card toward which you feel the most strongly drawn. Sometimes certain cards just resonate, and it's not possible to boil the “why” of that down into intellectually satisfying reasons – these are more intuitive feelings. Obviously, these things are in a way the bread and butter of Tarot, so it's perfectly fine to say, “I'm choosing the Queen of Wands as my significator because IT JUST FEELS RIGHT TO ME.”
Finally, I have an odd method I sometimes use that flows out of the ties between Tarot and the Tree of Life. If you're like me, you find this area of exploration totally fascinating and illuminating...and then again, there seems to be a faction of Tarot people who have zero use for Kabbalah, Tree of Life, Sephiroth... If you're one of these latter individuals, you can happily skip the next few paragraphs and not miss very much!
Here's the method, though... It hinges on certain Tarot/Tree of Life correspondences and on your own “personal Tarot cards” – that is, your Soul Card, your Personality Card, your Zodiac Card, or any other card that you feel is bound up with “the essential you” (and if anyone reading this doesn't know what I'm referring to with these terms, or how to determine those specific cards, please feel free to PM me). When I mention those Tarot/Tree of Life correspondences, I mean that the four suits/elements and the four Court Card ranks are all “assigned” their own “home spheres” on the Tree of Life:
Wands and Kings (which are both associated with fire) are housed in the second sphere, Chokmah.
Cups and Queens (both water) reside in the third sphere, Binah.
Swords and Knights (air) dwell in the sixth sphere, Tiphereth.
Pentacles and Pages (earth) inhabit the tenth sphere, Malkuth.
Major Arcana cards are assigned to the various pathways that connect up all of the spheres. To my way of thinking, a person's personal cards can indicate pathways that might just be helpful in determining significators. I'll use myself as an example here:
Both my Personality Card and my Soul Card come out as the Lovers. The Lovers card is attributed to the pathway that connects Binah and Tiphereth. Looking at the suits and ranks housed in those two spheres, it could be said that the Lovers pathway could equate to either the Queen of Swords (Queens in Binah linked to Swords in Tiphereth) or to what I feel is my own significator, the Knight of Cups (Knights in Tiphereth linked to Cups in Binah). This reinforces yet again my own determination of significator, and maybe this kind of analysis would be helpful to others?
Tyson provides a diagram of the Tree of Life on page 72, although he does omit the attributions of the suits there.
Obviously this method won't provide easy answers for all sixteen Court Cards. For one thing, the Pages and Pentacles in the tenth sphere are at least two pathways removed from the other ranks and suits (although it might be possible to establish links if a given person's personal cards correspond so as to enable that...for example, if your Personality Card is the World, and your Zodiac Card is Temperance, you can make a case for there being a pretty solid connection between Malkuth and Tiphereth by way of Yesod, which would tilt things toward the significator being either the Knight of Pentacles or the Page of Swords, based on the attributions of suits and Court Card rankings I listed above). Also, certain Court Cards will have no pathway at all, as their rank and suit are housed in the same sphere (for example, the King of Wands, whose “King” component and “Wands” component are both located in Chokmah).
For handy reference:
1) as described above, the Lovers path connects Binah and Tiphereth, so this path could be held to reference both the Queen of Swords and the Knight of Cups
2) the Empress path connects Binah and Chokmah, so Court Cards that could be said to be linked to that path would be the Queen of Wands and the King of Cups
3) the Emperor path connects Chokmah with Tiphereth, so Court Cards “defined” by this pathway would be the King of Swords and the Knight of Wands
This means that those whose personal cards include the Empress, the Emperor, and/or the Lovers might find some fairly quick and easy possible answers here in terms of arriving at a significator.
Hopefully that extra bit of “testing” might come in handy for someone reading this!
Anyway, I've now arrived at my own significator for use in working through the rest of the book, and have reached the run of chapters in which Tyson starts to detail the various “symbolic tools of Tarot magic,” each of which includes introductory exercises, so more entries to follow!!
Oh, and P.S. Tyson advises using a smaller deck for his system, so after some deliberation, I'm using a miniature Rider-Waite-Smith deck from here on out...
