Living at the intersection of occultism, fiction and philosophy, I travel the planes at a moderately quick pace. I read, I do magic, I cook for hubby. Confused by the number of things I talk about? Good, confusion is a nice thing ;)
I keep coming across people on the Internet who dabble either in magic or spirituality (generally alternative spirituality) who lament that after a while they still feel miserable. Although my heart breaks for them, I think there is great confusion surrounding the place of spirituality and, let’s say, alternative practices.
One of the very few perks of rigid orthodoxy is that it exists beyond individual’s will, so that each practitioner needs to adapt to it rather than adapting it to themselves.
Once the idea of orthodoxy crumbled, at least in the West, spiritual and other practices became a supermaket of parts that each person could adapt to their own whim, picking and choosing what currently fit their mental narrative.
Although with some discernment this power of personal choice can yield great results, what in practice often ends up happening is that spirituality is reduced to a crutch for personal prejudices about oneself, others and the world.
In the end, each individual flavor of postmodern spirituality is more an inkblot test of what the person would be better off discussing with a therapist than a workable spiritual path.
What’s more, the expectation of finding a definitive cure for life is always dangerous: firstly, because life is not an illness; secondly, because spirituality is not a good substitute for therapy or other forms of support; and thirdly, and most importantly, because anything that promises to turn our life into happy trip is always to be looked at with skepticism. No serious spiritual or magical doctrine can promise that.
The life of someone who always smiles and is always happy is not balanced. If anything, it’s creepy. There is a time for happiness and there is a time for sorrow. A balanced person is someone who responds to life in an adequate manner depending on the concrete situation. Look at the traditional descriptions of wisdom in Daoism or ancient Western philosophy, and you’ll always note that the wise person is the one who always reacts in the adequate manner, with as little influence from their personal demons as possible.
It is unfortunate that these practices are often the go-to for people who would benefit from other types of help. Sometimes they simply cannot afford official help, and this is another conversation, so they simply look for something they can afford and promises them miracles.
If I were to start talking to you using just nouns, verbs and a small number of adjectives, your understanding of what I say would probably decrease, but not massively. The reason for this is that the lacking connecting words would probably be supplied by your mind. The context of what I say, furthermore, would allow you to pick mostly the right words based on your past experience, so while there would be a few problems here and there, you’d mostly be able to follow along.
In divination, we often find ourselves with blanks fill in between nouns, adjectives and verbs, which are generally represented by whatever the basic units of meaning are (cards in cartomancy, geomantic figures in geomancy, etc.) And while divination IS a language, the difference is that we have necessarily less experience with it than with natural languages, and that its vocabulary is necessarily more ambiguous.
Taking playing cards as an example, we essentially have only 52 words to play with, with the result that those 52 words must necessarily carry more possible shades of meanings than regular words in complex natural languages. These shades of meaning are generally given by the extended applications of the card’s main significations and other metaphorical takes on them.
The potential for errors, therefore, increases significantly, and that’s even before we take into account the fact that the connecting words are usually missing, and need to be supplied by our own interpretation. Finally, another factor is that the sentences of divination have much less context.
I often get questions by people who have been trying to get into divination but never seem to get a straight sentence out of their oracles. To be honest, it is an art, and like all arts it requires a ‘feel’ that can only be developed by banging your head against the obstalce long enough. However, another problem I often notice is that people tend to have excessive expectations of the type of answers they can get out of the oracle, especially at the beginning.
My philosophy is that I need to be only as specific as my current understanding and experience allows me to be. When you have a spread in front of you, don’t think you need to read a passage from Dostoevsky from it. Think more like having to make sense of the ramblings of a toddler. “Uhhh, something to do with three brothers and a question of faith” is good enough. In fact, it is much better to remain a bit vaguer than filling in the blanks the wrong way, which could potentially mislead the querent, especially since it is way to easy to let fantasy take over and take the interpretation in the wrong direction, and divination is NOT fantasy.
Skeptics might argue that this is way of trying to be right at all costs. It isn’t. It is, in fact, a perfectly philological method. I once did a reading for someone where I remember telling her something to the effect of “the cards seem to highlight something in the past connected with a person you were involved with and money issues with legal ramifications”. It turned out her ex had wasted most of their money in secret, and run away with the rest, triggering a divorce and other legal troubles. I could have filled in the blanks more thoroughly, but, at least based on my understanding at the time, I would have had to shoot in the dark.
The point is: do not feel you have to fill in all the blanks at all costs. You will always be able to be as specific as you need to be. Everything else is vanity.
(Note: this is a collection of the meanings attributed to the cards by some occultists in the past centuries. It does not reflect my own study or opinion of the cards. It is only meant as a quick comparative reference as I develop my own take.)
The Nine of Swords from the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) tarot deck
Paul Foster Case (and Ann Davies)
The time period is the second decanate of Gemini, June 1 to June 10, under the rulership of Venus. Well-Dignified: faithfulness, obedience, unselfishness, patience; fortunate news about legal affairs or partnerships, especially if the outcome has been delayed or in doubt; aid or gain through relatives, short journeys or writings, but not until the Querent has passed through a period of uncertainty or worry; ultimate good fortune, resulting from a series of events which at first present unfavorable appearances. lll-Dignified: despair, cruelty, unfaithfulness; want, loss, misery; bad outcome of legal affairs; disagreements with relatives; unfortunate journeys. Keyword: Worry. (From the Oracle of Tarot course)
A. E. Waite
One seated on her couch in lamentation, with the swords over her. She is as one who knows no sorrow which is like unto hers. It is a card of utter desolation. Divinatory Meanings: Death, failure, miscarriage, delay, deception, disappointment, despair. Reversed: Imprisonment, suspicion, doubt, reasonable fear, shame. (From The Pictorial Key to the Tarot)
The Nine of Swords from the Rider Waite Smith Tarot
Aleister Crowley
The Nine of Swords is called Cruelty. Here the original disruption inherent in Swords is raised to its highest power. The card is ruled by Mars in Gemini; it is agony of mind. The Ruach consumes itself in this card; thought has gone through every possible stage, and the conclusion is despair. This card has been very adequately drawn by Thomson in “The City of Dreadful Night”. It is always a cathedral—a cathedral of the damned. There is the acrimonious taint of analysis; activity is inherent in the mind, yet there is always the instinctive consciousness that nothing can lead anywhere.
[…]
The number Nine, Yesod, brings back the Energy to the central pillar of the Tree of Life. The previous disorder is now rectified. But the general idea of the suit has been constantly degenerating. The Swords no longer represent pure intellect so much as the automatic stirring of heartless passions. Consciousness has fallen into a realm unenlightened by reason. This is the world of the unconscious primitive instincts, of the psychopath, of the fanatic.
The celestial ruler is Mars in Gemini, crude rage of hunger operating without restraint; although its form is intellectual, it is the temper of the inquisitor.The symbol shows nine swords of varying lengths, all striking downwards to a point. They are jagged and rusty. Poison and blood drip from their blades.
There is, however, a way of dealing with this card: the way of passive resistance, resignation, the acceptance of martyrdom. Nor is an alien formula that of implacable revenge. (From The Book of Thoth)
The Nine of Swords from the Thoth tarot deck
Golden Dawn’s Book T
FOUR Hands, as in the preceding figure, hold eight swords nearly upright, but with the points falling away from each other. A fifth hand holds a ninth sword upright in the centre, as if it had struck them asunder. No rose at all is shewn, as if it were not merely cut asunder, but utterly destroyed. Above and below are the Decan symbols Mars and Gemini.
Despair, cruelty, pitilessness, malice, suffering, want, loss, misery. Burden, oppression, labour, subtlety and craft, dishonesty, lying and slander. Yet also obedience, faithfulness, patience, unselfishness, etc. According to dignity. Yesod of HB:V (Illness, suffering, malice, cruelty, pain). Therein do HB:a’aNVAL and HB:MChYAL bear rule.
Etteilla
Bachelor Upright. This card, as far as the medicine of the spirit is concerned, means, in its natural position: Celibate, Celibacy, Virgin, Abbot, Priest, Monk, Hermit, Religious. – Temple, Church, Monastery, Convent, Hermitage, Shrine. – Worship, Religion, Piety, Devotion, Rite, Ceremony, Ritual. – Recluse, Recluse, Anchorite, Vestal. Reversed. Founded distrust, Well-founded suspicion, Legitimate fear, Distrust, Doubt, Conjecture. – Scruple, Fearful consciousness, Pure, Timidity, Shyness. – Shame, Shame.
When it comes to searching for philosophical-magical inspiration from pre-Christian times, many occultists look at Plotinus and Proclus, two of the most important among Plato’s successors. After Plato, they are the most noteworthy representatives of Platonism, and if Platonism is up your alley, as it is right up mine, you’ve probably looked into them.
Proclus, who was one of Plotinus’ successors as head of the Academy, and was also the last noteworthy Platonist, is especially popular among those who seek inspiration for magical work. The reason is that, unlike Plotinus, Proclus did have a strong interest in religious and magical practices as well as being an important philosopher.
My personal preference, though, is Plotinus. I discovered his work, the Enneads, in my late teens and read it all throughout college. Unlike Proclus, Plotinus was a pure philosopher, with no interests outside of philosophy. Yet his writings have inspired many generations of theologians, occultists, hermeticians and devotees.
Writing at a time when Christianity and other early odd religious beliefs held sway, Plotinus managed to single-handedly revive philosophy as an exalted pursuit that connected the mind with the divine realm. Although he did not appear out of nowhere (his predecessors at the Academy had already laid the groundwork), his genius does tower over anything and anyone who lived in his time.
Plotinus had the aspiration to simply explain Plato’s work, and as a matter of fact we often find assertions in his writings that he is doing nothing more than saying what Plato has already said. But this is not true. His philosophy sought to coherently explain the whole of reality starting from the initial unity, and to trace the steps that mortals can take to re-experience that unity in their ascent back to the One. Although one could argue that the same aspiration is present in Plato, and especially in his esoteric doctrines, the two philosophers are still very much distinct, as is to be expected, considering how many centuries separate them.
From a philosophical standpoint, Proclus is not a cipher like some others of Plotinus’ successors. In fact, he was a gifted philosopher, who would have probably contributed much more, had he lived a couple of centuries earlier. Yet most of the innovations he introduced in the Platonic doctrine feel like complications rather than meaningful developments. His (over)zealous attempts at systematizing and consolidating the entire wisdom of the Greeks, from religion to philosophy to magic, may appear impressive at first, but soon one realizes that they are just the last ossification of the dying world of classical antiquity.
His systematic fervor, so appreciated by Hegel, finds a neat little place to everything that the Greeks had produced, yet at the cost of sucking them dry of their lymph. Everything is there–the gods, the beliefs, the art, the spirituality, the science of the time–yet only as an empty husk, as a relic with a tag underneath in an intellectual museum.
What many occultists today admire in Proclus is his commitment to theurgy. And from that standpoint, Proclus is definitely an important source of inspiration for us. Yet even that was a product of the crisis of the Greek worldview and of Proclus’ spiritual weakness (or rather, of the spiritual weakness that was typical of his time).
Plotinus, still firmly rooted in the Greek tradition, had no place for rituals. Union with the divine was certainly the aim of his philosophy, but his method was and remained that of philosophy, that is, pure inner moral, intellectual and spiritual cultivation. It’s not that he didn’t believe in the gods or in magic. He simply thought the method of philosophy was superior.
But by the time Proclus came to prominence, the old Greek confidence in the sole power of the human mind had crumbled under the attacks of early Christian or Christian-inspired irrationalism. Everywhere Proclus looked, people were scrambling for a source of salvation outside of themselves, because they felt small and powerless in an uncertain world. Come to think of it, we don’t live in much different times today.
Nothing that belongs to history can ever be retrieved and applied 1:1. But it is certainly permissible to look for inspiration. From a philosophical standpoint, there is no contest: Plotinus’ philosophy is still very much alive, if one knows how to get to its pulp, how to work with it, where to trim, where to add, where to change a part. By contrast, Proclus’ philosophy feels rigid, like a sculpted sarcophagus lid trying to capture the likeness of the dear departed.
From a magical standpoint, one would think that Proclus, given his interest in the topic, would have more to offer than the scoffing, eyebrow-raising Plotinus. Yet a look at Renaissance magic, heavily inspired by Plotinus’ philosophy, tells us otherwise. In fact, though Plotinus’ Enneads are a challenging text, the reader often comes across evocative bits full of beauty and wonder that may be easily adapted to prayer, ritual and other magical aims.
The fact is that Plotinus’ philosophy is a living thing that captures something universal, so it is a good framework for other pursuits, including occultism, while Proclus tried to supplement philosophy with magic because he had no confidence in it, so even his view of magic is remedial and somewhat desperate.
I do not mean to be overly critical of Proclus. He did what he had to, given the circumstances he found himself in. Plus, there is much in his work that can be salvaged, if one has the patience to wade through the abstractions. But what one cannot get from Proclus, or at least what I cannot get from him, is the sense that the cohesive picture he presents is still alive, whereas Plotinus’ system is considerably harder to recontruct, and less cohesive than Proclus’, but feels animated by a flame that was alive before him, was alive in him and will be alive forever.
The 45-card method, which is the one I’m trying to specialize in on this blog, despite being acquainted with and using the other methods as well, tends to be rather more obscure than the better-known 50-card one. One possible reason is that Maria Luigia Ingallati’s niche-defining book discusses the latter, and has consequently inspired others who follow her school.
Another separate source for the 50-card system is Germana Tartari’s book, whose approach I follow when using the 50-card deck, having been her student and now friend. Tartari’s book was also met with good success, further cementing the 50-card system in people’s imagination.
But before Ingallati made the Bolognese tarot available to a wider public there were a couple of books on the 45-card method, and Lia Celi’s Il Manuale di Cartomanzia (The Cartomancy Handbook) is one of them. The book was first published in 1999 and is very difficult to come by (don’t ask me how I got my copy. Or maybe do ask me, who knows.)
The subtitle of the book, “How to read tarot cards without boring yourself to death” serves as a good introduction to the style in which the book is written. Lia Celi is not a card reader, but a writer and journalist, and this is immediately evident in the refreshingly irreverent tone of the book. She did collaborate with some card readers to put together this book.
The second thing to notice is that, if you were to buy the book based on the front or back covers, you’d never know it’s about the Tarocchino Bolognese, as the title, subtitle and description simply talk about tarot cards and cartomancy, and even the cover art pictures regular tarot cards (I believe Sergio Ruffolo’s tarot).
The third thing to take notice of is that this is, broadly speaking, a good book. Honestly, it would be worth a read even if you had no interest in cartomancy, simply because it is guaranteed to tickle your funny bone on more than one occasion. And this is probably how the book was commissioned in the first place: as a fun and exotic read for the beach, aimed mostly at young women who may or may not choose to pursue cartomancy as a passion.
Given these presuppositions, Celi’s work has no right to be this informative. Pretty much everything you need in order to start using the 45-card system is offered to you in easily digestible bits: the various traditional methods on how to acquire, christen,1 study, shuffle and lay out the deck, the individual meanings of the cards (which are often easy to remember thanks to Celi’s sharp humor), a decent, if small, selection of traditional combinations, some of which I recognize from my own source, some practical advice on how to deal with various types of querents, and a final interview with the daughter of a card reader who is just setting out to practice the art herself, and who offers some advice. Clearly, Celi did her homework and did not skimp on looking for good information.
The card selection the author discusses is the same as the one I know, with one exception: she uses the Nine of Coins as the card of tears, while I use the Seven. Also, the meanings of some of the cards differ. For instance, she says that the Star is chiefly the card of health, while for me it is chiefly the card of business. Still, she does say that the Star is good for work and study, and even my own source taught me that the Star represents medications and healing in the right context. Besides, it is perfectly normal for a tradition like that of the Bolognese Tarot to differ a little from source to source.
The spreads Celi illustrates tend to be on the shorter side: a three-card spread, a four-card cross, a variation of the thirteen-card spread and a pyramid spread of fifteen cards that may be adapted to various questions.
So what is missing? Well, as in most books, what’s missing is the practical part. We have only brief mentions of how the cards interact with one another, so that if I didn’t come from a background in cartomancy and didn’t have access to first-hand information, I don’t know if I would be able to pick up a deck and start reading after finishing this book. Still, Celi’s Cartomancy Handbook is a good addition to your library if you are interested in the Bolognese tarot.
Where to find: This is the book’s amazon page. Unfortunately the book is unavailable, so your next best shot is ebay. However, the lord does work in mysterious ways…
MQS
The traditional practice of ‘christening’ the deck or having it blessed so that, according to popular superstition, it starts working properly. In reality the deck works anyway and only in particular situations (such as curses or difficult periods) does it need to be blessed. ↩︎
This one’s a quickie. A friend of mine who tends to take things way more seriously than she should asked if the boyfriend had really misplaced the small gift they had bought for her mother or if he had hidden it out of spite (he doesn’t like her mother). Knowing the dude I was quite sure she was overreacting. Still we asked the Sibilla:
Vera Sibilla reading: was that on purpose?
The Thought card is indicative of someone’s inner reality (their thoughts, plans, character, proclivities, etc). Since we asked about the boyfriend’s intention, the thought is his. The Belvedere card is usually associated with the arrival of something. However, it is also the card of sight. Next to the Ten of Clubs, which is a card of carefreeness, this seems to point to an oversight.
It turned out the gift had been left in the car, where it had lodged itself between the the two front seats. As silly as the reason for the reading is, it’s nice to have the cards confirm our suspicion.
I don’t know about you, but at the ripe old age of 35 I’m an old fart who remembers the wild west days of the Internet, when people tried cool stuff just because they could. In the last few years I’ve noticed a shift, which probably started in the early 2010s when governments and corporations decided the internet wasn’t something to be vilified as they had done up until that point, but a space to be sanitized, homogenized and monetized.
I am not one to decry money as evil: money is simply an equivalent for one’s work that may be exchanged for the equivalent of another person’s work. In this sense, money has deep metaphysical properties and implications.
What I did notice, however, is that now, wherever I go, someone is trying to sell me something, even if it’s just a free, safe, “binge-worthy” series of videos designed to hook me in so that they may make money out of my attention.
And the more safe formulas get proofed and tested for grabbing people’s attention as quickly as possible, often with AI to provide the missing accelerationist flavor, the more the content that is peddled can be identified as slop. The existential ennui of someone who browses the internet in the year of our Lord 2025 with a smidgen of self-awareness is not to be undererstimated.
I’m bringing this up because I recently received an (automated) email on the account I use for my youtube channel where I was invited to take a course for blowing up my channel, which included such thoughtful advice as “make bad content” (their words, not mine). And honestly, that might very well work, if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t give a rat’s tutu about drawing big numbers and am perfectly happy with my little corner.
Essentially, slop has been acknowledged as the fastest and most effective way to plug oneself into a premade template of ‘Internet success story’. This, in itself, is not a revolutionary discovery: crap has always existed and has always had success, and the reason why we often don’t know about the crap that existed in the past is that crap tends to be forgotten in the long run, unless it’s so bad it becomes an acquired taste.
What is new is the psychotic speed at which this is happening as attention spans get shorter, the number of people competing for them gets higher and the tools for achieving the result get more powerful.
From a metaphysical and esoteric standpoint, slop is simply the elevation of the lower aspects of the human consciousness to the status of aim to be pursued, with a result that might very well be seen as a form of anti-initiation.
The word initiation tends to conjure images of hooded figures bestowing grace on a supplicant. While the ritual aspect of it is not insignificant, the idea of initiation is far broader and it applies to many fields, not just esoteric, as a path that forces the person’s spirit to acquire, develop or balance certain qualities that allow it to adapt to the ideals of that path.
An anti-initiation, in this sense, is a process whereby the human spirit ossifies, rots and collapses in on itself, having lost any semblance of a guiding light and being only stirred into motion by the gravitational pull of its own ass.
I am not a prude and I am not a no-fun Fräulein Rottenmeier. I enjoy some of the products of our current age, and I accept the rest with some irony (what else is left?) I am merely observing an interesting trend. It is often repeated that initiation (any initiation) is for the few, but it seems to me that is becoming something for the fewer.
Many people who think they are communing with the gods are simply reacting to crap that their subconscious slings at them. This may or may not have therapeutic value, but it is not magic, since metaphysical forces cannot be psychologized away just so someone can have the safe thrill of believing outside of consensus reality while also appearing sane.
And this is where a fine line needs to be trodden. If on one hand we have the excess of trying to rationalize everything and reduce it to consensus reality, on the other hand irrationalism is just as destructive, and the idea of believing in crap exactly because it is absurd (credo quia absurdum) can lead us down really dark paths, and not the curling-up-with-a-vampire-novel type of dark.
Sometimes I get outraged messages by people who whine that there is no recipe for magic, so I should let them believe what they want. People are absolutely free to believe what they want, but I am also free to call it how I see it. Those people, it is worth noting, tend to be of the soapboxing-on-social-media variety who constantly try to educate others on what’s right and what’s wrong, yet they often fail to realize that they nurture a worldview within which there is no space for right or wrong, true or false.
This type of worldview, in part, is due to the fact that there is no space for magic in our current worldview, and so as soon as one dabbles in it, they immediately find themselves outside of all current definitions of what is reasonable, and so they end up embracing the role of the crazy ones, often subconsciously. And hey, being crazy can be fun at times, and sometimes it can be a good front to protect ourselves, but it needs to be done with some awareness.
Plus, if we take the time to research the history of occultism, both in the West and elsewhere, we find that there are different paradigms that are fruitful from a magical standpoint without having to give up rationality, which is a part of the human make-up, and as such is worth cultivating.
An occultist, a hermetician, a magus, in so far as they act in their magical capacity, are more spaces than individuals: they are liminal spaces between worlds. In order to become that space, we often need to let go of certain convictions, and many of our limits of all kinds will be pushed. This is where working on oneself can be useful and complement occult training.
But this need to go beyond our initial limits (the old adage “you cannot seek initiation and remain the same”), could lead us to believe that irrationalism is simply the last frontier: that reason is simply just another limit to overcome, just another trap of our ego. This, by the way, is what’s behind the kind of zealots who poke snakes with sticks because God told them he would protect them.
Traditionally, in most schools, aspirants to initiation are taught how to screen the perceptions they have during their experiments to see if they are talking to something outside of themselves or not (and if the thing outside of themselves is benign).
One of the first things to apply is logic: if the thing tells you to jump off a window and they will catch you, it’s either a larva with a sense of humor or, more probably, your cupio dissolvi hard at work. If the thing tells you something that goes against reason or contradicts what cannot be doubted (“you won’t fall if you throw yourself from a bridge”), that’s also a red flag. If the thing tells you stuff you know or if it flatters you, it’s just you.
I’m not one to try to scare others unnecessarily: many times, nothing dangerous happens, in part because existence is not as dark as some make it out to be (nor as light as others make it out to be), and in a much larger part because we are often shielded from danger by our own incompetence.
That being said, getting rid of one of your human faculties (reason) instead of cultivating it sensibly can be something you end up paying for dearly. Irrationalism may appear like a way to get read of the ego, but it is often just the last refuge of the ego that cannot stand to be corrected, since reason is so good at countering its poppycock.
(Note: this is a collection of the meanings attributed to the cards by some occultists in the past centuries. It does not reflect my own study or opinion of the cards. It is only meant as a quick comparative reference as I develop my own take.)
The Nine of Cups from the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) tarot deck
Paul Foster Case (and Ann Davies)
The time period is the second decanate of Pisces, March 1 to March 10, under the subrulership of the Moon. Well-Dignified: complete realization of desires; almost perfect pleasure and happiness; wishes fulfilled; physical well-being. lll-Dignified: vanity, conceit, egotism; foolish generosity or ostentatious expenditure; the person to whom the card applies is too easily led; one spoilt by prosperity. Keyword: Desire fulfilled. (From the Oracle of Tarot course)
A. E. Waite
A goodly personage has feasted to his heart’s content, and abundant refreshment of wine is on the arched counter behind him, seeming to indicate that the future is also assured. The picture offers the material side only, but there are other aspects. Divinatory Meanings: Concord, contentment, physical bien-être; also victory, success, advantage; satisfaction for the Querent or person for whom the consultation is made. Reversed: Truth, loyalty, liberty; but the readings vary and include mistakes, imperfections, etc. (From The Pictorial Key to the Tarot)
The Nine of Cups from the Rider Waite Smith tarot
Aleister Crowley
The Nine of Cups is called Happiness. This is a peculiarly good card, because happiness, as the word implies, is so much a matter of luck: the card is ruled by Jupiter, and Jupiter is Fortune.In all these watery cards, there is a certain element of illusion; they begin by Love, and love is the greatest and most deadly of the illusions. The sign of Pisces is the refinement, the fading away of this instinct, which, begun with dreadful hunger and carried on with passion, has now become “a dream within a dream”.
The card is ruled by Jupiter. Jupiter in Pisces is indeed good fortune, but only in the sense of complete satiety. The fullest satisfaction is merely the matrix of a further putrefaction; there is no such thing as absolute rest. A cottage in the country with the roses all around it? No, there is nothing permanent in this; there is no rest from the Universe. Change guarantees stability. Stability guarantees change.
[…]
The Number Nine, Yesod, in the suit of Water, restores the stability lost by the excursions of Netzach and Hod from the Middle Pillar. It is also the number of the Moon, thus strengthening the idea of Water. In this card is the pageant of the culmination and perfection of the original force of Water.
The Ruler is Jupiter in Pisces. This influence is more than sympathetic; it is a definite benediction, for Jupiter is the planet of Chesed which represents Water in its highest material manifestation, and Pisces brings out the placid qualities of Water. In the symbol are nine cups perfectly arranged in a square; all are filled and overflowing with Water. It is the most complete and most beneficent aspect of the force of Water.
The Geomantic Figure Laetitia is ruled by Jupiter in Pisces. For its meaning consult the “Handbook of Geomancy” (Equinox Vol I, No.2). Laetitia, Joy, gladness, is one of the best and most powerful of the sixteen figures; for the Solar, Lunar, and Mercurial symbols are, at the best, ambiguous and treacherously ambivalent; those of Venus portend rather relief than positive beneficence; Saturn and Mars are seen at their worst; and even the stable-companion of Laetitia, Acquisitio, has its unpleasant aspects, and even its dangers. But the consonance of Laetitia with this card amounts to little less than an identity; the wine is poured by Ganymede himself, unstinted vintage of true nectar of the Gods, brimful and running over, an ordered banquet of delight, True Wisdom self-fulfilled in Perfect Happiness. (From The Book of Thoth)
The Nine of Cups from the Thoth tarot
Golden Dawn’s Book T
A WHITE Radiant Angelic Hand, issuing from a cloud holding lotus or waterlilies, one flower of which overhangs each cup; from it a white water pours. Cups are arranged in three rows of 3. Jupiter and Pisces above and below.
Complete and perfect realization of pleasure and happiness, almost perfect; selfpraise, vanity, conceit, much talking of self, yet kind and lovable, and may be self-denying therewith. High-minded, not easily satisfied with small and limited ideas. Apt to be maligned through too much self-assumption. A good and generous, but sometimes foolish nature.
Yesod of HB:H (Complete success, pleasure and happiness, wishes fulfilled).
Therein rule the Angels HB:SALYH and HB:a’aRYAL.
Etteilla
Victory Upright. This card, as far as the medicine of the spirit is concerned, means, in its natural position: Victory, Success, Achievement, Advantage, Gain. – Pump, Triumph, Trophy, Preeminence, Superiority. – Spectacle, Arrangement, Equipment. Reversed. Sincerity, Truth, Reality, Loyalty, Good faith, Frankness, Naiveté, Candor, Openness of heart, Simplicity. – Freedom, Science, Overconfidence, Familiarity, Boldness, Looseness, Debauchery
