the "a" word

when i started on this project, i thought, how deep do i want to go into astrology. of which i then knew practically nothing, and of which i have since learned not much more.

i decided early on i would place the attributions on the cards, so that anyone who wanted to go that direction would have a ready reference. but it is not just the seven planets and the zodiac. there is this whole business with planetary dignities -- rulerships, exaltations, triplicities, terms, detriments, falls. how much of that did i want to include.

to which of course the answer would have to be, only as much as turned out to be meaningful to me.

one of the first things i noticed is that the zodiacal signs are arranged in four groups of three, the four groups corresponding to the four elements and then each element presented in its "cardinal," "fixed," and "mutable" forms, which one might think of as corresponding roughly to thesis, antithesis, synthesis, or maybe as commencement, opposition, and equilibrium.

or maybe in terms of the three gunas, essence, activity, and inertia, though possibly not in this sequence.

duquette does an excellent job of explaining how, at least in the thoth system, the thirty-six "small" cards are assigned to "decantes," or ten-day intervals, throughout the zodiac. twos, threes, and fours to the "cardinal" signs, fives, sixes, and sevens to the "fixed" signs, and eights, nines, and tens to the "mutable" signs."

the system starts with aries, which is the sign of the spring equinox. the cardinal fire sign. the two, three, and four of wands. then four months later leo, the fixed fire sign, the five, six, and seven, and four months later saggitarius, the mutable fire sign, the eight, nine, and ten.

then there are planetary attributions, which appear to correspond with the ptolemaic "face" dignities, the lowest form of "essential" dignity. these start at zero degrees leo and run through a repeated cycle of seven, the outer planets, then the sun, then the inner planets, and finally the moon.

these seem arbitrary, but they apparently do have something to do with the meanings the qabalists attributed to the small cards. again see duquette.

so for example the seven of swords, one of my favorites, would be assigned the third decante of aquarius, fixed air, mid-february, and the moon, which has no dignity in aquarius other than "face." seven on the qabalistic tree is netzach, corresponding to venus, but with an elemental attribution of fire. the third chakra.

crowley calls this combination "futility," and mathers calls it "unstable effort." in my own readings the seven of swords has come up as verbal manipulation, sometimes lying.  the waning part of the oppositional phase.

anyway, i may put all of those attributions on the small cards. and in fact i may decide not to go with illustrations on at least the pips themselves. maybe rename some or all of the cards to reflect my own thinking, but then let the attributions and correspondences speak for themselves.

and even though i myself have not gone very far down this path, i think because most of the major arcana are assigned planetary or zodiacal correspondences i will indicate these as well. but i am not sure how deep i want to go with the so-called planetary "dignities."

the dignities begin with "rulership," with the sun in leo at midsummer and the moon in cancer, and the five planets known to the ancients distributed on each side in sequence outward, so that each rules one house by day and another by night. each of the so-called "masculine" planets "prefers' his day house, while the "feminine" venus and the "androgynous" mercury each "prefers" the night house.

a planet is in "detriment" in the sign opposite its rulership.

"exaltation" and "fall" are a bit trickier. the sun is "exalted" in the nineteenth degree of aries, which is about three weeks after the spring equinox. i dunno why. mercury is "exalted" in the fifteenth degree of virgo, because that is where it first escapes the "rulership" of the sun in leo. or something. and so on.

a planet is in "fall" in the house opposite its "exaltation."

if these distinctions begin to make sense to me, i may include them.  for now, i think "rulership" and "exaltation" ought to be enough. what i am trying to do here is to identify patterns of correspondence, not construct a horoscope.