I always maintain that the Golden Dawn were not great astrologers, largely because the XIX century astrology they had access to was not very good. Still, for the purposes of deriving symbolism for magical operations, their take was acceptable.

One thing that has always fascinated me about the Golden Dawn’s take on astrology was how they tried to synthesize it into their tarot system. Aside from the attributions of Zodiac signs and planets to the Hebrew letters and of the Hebrew letters to the major trumps, they also assigned the thirty-six decans to the thirty-six minor cards two through ten and, in different ways, to the aces and court cards as well.

This way of allocating the symbolism was not unique to them, but (as someone who doesn’t like to mix cartomancy and astrology) I must say that it probably produced the most coherent system.

Crowley generally doesn’t stray too far from the GD interpretation of the minors, but there are a couple of exceptions, the most obvious of which is the Ten of Cups.

For the GD, the Ten of Cups is an excellent card (which is what inspired Waite’s take on it). Crowley, however, disagrees on account of the decan assigned to the card, which is the third decan of Pisces, ruled by Mars. This leads Crowley to argue that this is a card ruled by two disarmonious symbols (Pisces and Mars) and so it produces bad results.

The problem with Crowley’s take is that he constantly, throughout the book, mistakes decan rulership with the influence of a planet in a sign. This is wrong. Rulerships represent affinities of a planet with a sign or subdivision of the sign.

For instance, Aries is ruled by Mars, which means there is an affinity and so when Mars is in Aries it is said to be well-dignified, at least according to the astrological practice that developed in the middle ages. The Sun is also exalted in Aries, which means there is also an affinity. Then we have the three decans: the first ten degrees ruled my Mars, the second ten by the Sun and the last ten by Venus.

Now, Venus is in detriment in Aries, which means there is disharmony between Venus and Aries, so Venus is ill-dignified in it. She is like a dainty ballerina stranded in a war-torn country. It’s not her place. However, in the last ten degrees of Aries, Venus has subrulership by decanate. This means that, even though she is the anti-venusian environment of Aries, she has a small room where she is a bit more comfortable, though not by much: it’s as if our dainty ballerina had been hired to entertain the troops in the barracks. She’s still in the wrong place, but in a less uncomfortable subplace.

Therefore, when Crowley says that Mars is not compatible with Pisces he is saying something that is irrelevant: by definition, the fact that Mars rules the third decan of Pisces means that Mars is at least a bit comfortable in the last ten degrees of the sign. This is because the last decan of Pisces has some kind of Mars-like quality to it: it is the part of Pisces that expresses through Mars.

This is not to say that his system is more right or wrong than the GD (one can stretch symbolism in almost any direction by abusing it long enough), but his misunderstanding runs through the whole minor arcana section, and I thought it would be interesting to bring it up.

MQS