Book T Minors: Capricorn

Always Wondering

Myrrha said:
Wouldn't this sort of drive you mad if you are also working in a spread with elemental dignities? You could have a beneficent planet in its fall but well dignified in the spread...:bugeyed:


--Myrrha
It's a good question.
I was relating to your bug eyes. :D I often feel like this.
I got lazy with the quotes. :| No pressure from me. I'm new too.


AW
 

Teheuti

Myrrha said:
I would have thought the Greater Beneficent would still have a beneficent effect, just not as strong an effect because of being in his fall. Rats. I've been trying to make sense of this very card (Two of Pentacles) in the Cosmic Tarot (with reference to the Thoth) and this could be where I've been not getting it.
Just lost a long response so I'll make this short. Jupiter and Venus are not always "good". Jupiter blows things up, lacks discimination, etc., etc.

The 2 of Pentacles fluctuates, wanders. Its actions are, in the long run, unproductive behavior.

Wouldn't this sort of drive you mad if you are also working in a spread with elemental dignities? You could have a beneficent planet in its fall but well dignified in the spread...:bugeyed:

The major problem is a misunderstanding of essential dignities. The strongest of elemental dignities stipulates other cards of the same suit. However, most people don't read Mathers very closely (if at all), where he says that when cards are of the same suits/elements, they are “very strong for either good or evil, according to their nature.” People just don't get the "or evil" part of this.

For instance, what happens, according to astrological principles, when the 2 of Pentacles appears with the 9 of Pentacles (Venus in Virgo)? Both Beneficients are in their "Fall." Yes, we have gain and material increase through, or with, harmonious change. There's a ton of "luck" here but probably no development of character as the money wasn't made through one's own efforts. Rather it suggests that money or resources would be spent readily and frivolously with little being produced. I could also imagine owning fancy, expensive possessions that, when damaged, you readily throw away and buy another, rather than fix, as they have no inherent value to you. The combination suggests it's a strong factor, and the weakness of the decanates suggest there's some kind of danger. It could be like winning the lottery but ending up with nothing to show for it once the period of "gain" is past.

Added: The Venus in Virgo decanate is usually seen as leaning toward excessive savings and avarice: "penuriousness." From this pov, when combined with Jupiter in Capricorn, it could go to the opposite pole like those with inherited wealth who are tight-pursed out of fear that they might wake up poor one day--but, again, because they know that they themselves have produced nothing of substance.

Mary
 

Myrrha

Teheuti said:
The 2 of Pentacles fluctuates, wanders. Its actions are, in the long run, unproductive behavior.

OK, that is helpful. I was thinking of “change” as a real change from one thing to another. This idea of fluctuating and wandering does fit the image on my Cosmic Tarot Two of Pentacles very well. I see the ship coming in as a good sign and Book T talks about "alternations of gain and loss" so sometimes you do win. But this can't be relied on. Also, sometimes you dont win. In the Cosmic it is a funny card and sometimes the man in it seems to have one attitude and sometimes another. So it isn't so much that the change it speaks of is a bad change it is that it isn't a reliable or directed one and so in the long run this card offers little more than chance.

This part of the post was edited a few times as I thought about it.


Teheuti said:
The major problem is a misunderstanding of essential dignities. The strongest of elemental dignities stipulates other cards of the same suit. However, most people don't read Mathers very closely (if at all), where he says that when cards are of the same suits/elements, they are “very strong for either good or evil, according to their nature.” People just don't get the "or evil" part of this.

For instance, what happens, according to astrological principles, when the 2 of Pentacles appears with the 9 of Pentacles (Venus in Virgo)? Both Beneficients are in their "Fall." Yes, we have gain and material increase through, or with, harmonious change. There's a ton of "luck" here but probably no development of character as the money wasn't made through one's own efforts. Rather it suggests that money or resources would be spent readily and frivolously with little being produced. I could also imagine owning fancy, expensive possessions that, when damaged, you readily throw away and buy another, rather than fix, as they have no inherent value to you. The combination suggests it's a strong factor, and the weakness of the decanates suggest there's some kind of danger. It could be like winning the lottery but ending up with nothing to show for it once the period of "gain" is past.

Added: The Venus in Virgo decanate is usually seen as leaning toward excessive savings and avarice: "penuriousness." From this pov, when combined with Jupiter in Capricorn, it could go to the opposite pole like those with inherited wealth who are tight-pursed out of fear that they might wake up poor one day--but, again, because they know that they themselves have produced nothing of substance.

Mary

I think I understand: If a card is negative (in your example it is negative because the planet is in its fall) it isn’t made less negative by being well dignified (elementally in the spread) but rather it is intensified, made even *more* negative. It is like the dignity empowers it to act even more but if its action is harmful in the first place it just ends up more harmful.

I hope I’m understanding it, these card interpretations are a little different from the ones I’ve heard before. I would have thought inherited wealth would be the Ten of Pentacles. Still, I think I see what you are saying about how the cards combine and bring out the worst in each other.

Thank you very much for answering, I appreciate it.

--Myrrha
 

Teheuti

Myrrha said:
Book T talks about "alternations of gain and loss" so sometimes you do win. But this can't be relied on.
There's a Golden Dawn paper on the Minor Arcana on my blog that could be very helpful to this study:
http://marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/the-golden-dawn-minor-arcana/
There's also a link in the first paragraph to a helpful Golden Dawn glossary.

The paper sums up the 2 of Pentacles as "Gives Harmonious Change but no product."


if its action is harmful in the first place it just ends up more harmful
You got it.

I would have thought inherited wealth would be the Ten of Pentacles.
You are right, it is. I didn't mean so much the inheriting of money, but rather was looking for a scenario for the combination of the 2 & 9 of Pentacles, in which the money might not have been produced through one's own hard work (easy come, easy go). Combined with a different card, the 9 of Pentacles can mean the "gain" comes from your efforts.
 

Myrrha

Thanks! I will go look at that paper.
--Myrrha
 

Myrrha

In the Cosmic Tarot Three of Pentacles (Mars in Capricorn) there is a blueprint on a table right in the foreground of the card. A design of the building they are constructing and a compass or protractor. They have a plan! No more wandering on the beach like on the Two of Pentacles. I guess Mars is like that. He knows where he wants to go and what he wants to build. EDIT: no, it is the restrictive energy of Capricorn that channels the energy of Mars in a useful way.

It isn't just the plan though, there is alot of activity and actual work going on in the card. Mars is energetic. Capricorn is driven and focussed. Book T says "realization and increase of material things". Realization= making it real from a plan.

--Myrrha
 

Myrrha

I'm in awe of the Thoth Tarot. Looking at the Two, Three and Four of Disks... it seems to show the basic concepts of astrology!? The Two of Disks shows the yin/yang. Masculine and Feminine signs.

Then in the Three it is the cardinal, mutible and fixed signs. (It actually shows the three alchemical substances -- maybe these are related to the idea of cardinal, mutible and fixed signs?)

Then, in the Four, the symbols for the four elements are shown, relating to the elements of the signs.

Why would this be shown in these particular cards? In the cards that have to do with Capricorn? The three cards together are like a schematic drawing of the building blocks of astrology. Maybe I am reading into this and Crowley really meant something else?

And then the colors: when you lay out the cards representing the planets next to the three that show the planets in Capricorn, so that the Wheel (for Jupiter) is next to the Two of Disks. The colors go together! They sort of feel similar. I am in awe that this deck can take complicated ideas and express them visually in a way that stirs the heart as well as the mind.


The Cosmic Tarot keeps the abstract shapes of the Thoth intact it just shrinks it down and puts it in the context of a human drama. The two circles on the man's shirt in the Two of Pentacles, the triangular arrangement of three circles forming the buildings window in the Three, and the four circles in the picture on the wall on the Four.

It could be the same person in all three (Cosmic) cards. With Jupiter in Capricorn he is wandering aimlessly on the beach trusting to luck. With Mars in Capricorn, the restrictive energy of Capricorn directs the raw energy of Mars. He gets direction, a plan, and begins to build something with energy and decisiveness. With the Sun in Capricorn he becomes concerned with maintaining what he has built, with power and control, and tells his daughter she has to join the family business instead of being a professional cellist.


--Myrrha