Lost Tarot Card: A Horary Certainty
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I recently discovered that the Devil card is missing from one of my favorite Tarot de Marseille decks, the Conver Ben-Dov (fortunately it’s the mass-market edition and is easily replaceable).
I did some digging and found a photo from 2020 showing that the card was present at that time. Because I sometimes do multi-deck readings and cards can accidentally migrate between decks when I put them away, I went through all those I’ve used in the last couple of years to see if the CBD Devil jumped out at me, to no avail. I also checked under and behind every piece of furniture where it might be lurking but found nothing. Finally, at my wit’s end, I cast a horary astrology chart for the occasion.
The Second House is the home of small movable objects such as a tarot card, and the house ruler, Mercury, is retrograde in Sagittarius, the sign of its detriment, in the Eighth House. The most likely piece of evidence here is that, although they are technically not combust or even conjunct according to traditional rules (they are in different signs), the Sun and Mercury are barely two degrees apart, indicating that the Sun, due to its blinding presence, might steal Mercury’s power to act. I would not expect anything represented by Mercury to be visible in this marginally occulted state, even though Mercury is slowly separating from the Sun due to its retrogradation. In his horary master-work, The Horary Textbook, John Frawley notes that, when such planets eventually separate by more than eight-and-one-half degrees, the lost item may magically reappear; this separation will occur on December 27, but I’m not optimistic about recovery for the reasons stated in the last two paragraphs below. At the most, Jupiter sitting on the Ascendant and trine to the Sun might give me false hope.
In addition to being retrograde and debilitated, Mercury is making no strong Ptolemaic aspects to any other planet (only a semi-sextile to Pluto, a “modern” planet and a Keplerian aspect that count for little in horary). Therefore Mercury could be considered “peregrine” and consequently of reduced potency. Two other planets of interest, Venus as Lord of the Ascendant (significator of the Querent, me) and the Moon as the general significator of lost items, are in close opposition, with Venus in Scorpio, the sign of its detriment, and the Moon — although it is exalted in Taurus — below the horizon, another indication of reduced visibility. Venus also sits at the midpoint of two malefic factors, Mars and the Moon’s South Node; looks like I’m screwed.
In examining essential dignities, it is possible to view afflicted Mercury in Sagittarius as the “sole dispositor by detriment” since, by its “ill dignity,” it disposits Mars in the same sign, and Mars in turn disposits the debilitated Venus in Scorpio, the red planet’s traditional sign of rulership; Venus then disposits the Moon and Jupiter in its own sign of Taurus, and the latter disposits Saturn in Pisces, Jupiter’s historical sign of rulership; finally, Saturn disposits the Sun in Capricorn, the sign ruled by the Greater Malefic. (The modern planets don’t figure into this analysis.) This creates what we might call a “negative-dignity” sole dispositor in Mercury, the premise being that all six of the other original planets come under the sway of the distressed significator. This is taking the long way around to get to my point that the weakened condition of the Lord of the Second House doesn’t offer a compelling argument for finding the missing card.
Finally, John Frawley alludes to the fact that anything in the Eighth House is likely to be “flushed” (he uses the metaphor of a toilet, which sits at the opposite end of the food chain from the Second House, where food intake occurs). In this particular instance, I can see the Eighth House as signifying a trash can or garbage truck. Furthermore, if we consider the missing card to be outside the home, the Eighth House is a succedent house indicating “at a middle distance between near and far” (not incidentally the location of the local landfill). There is a rational explanation for these seemingly random assumptions.
A few months ago I was shuffling the deck at my desk when the cards flew out of my hands. I seem to recall that some of them landed in my desk-side waste basket. I thought I was careful to retrieve all of them, but I didn’t do a card-count to make sure. Now I’m thinking that I missed one that went to the landfill shortly thereafter. Chalk it up to a lesson learned (the Devil gets his due), and now I’ll have to spend $21 for another copy of the deck.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 25, 2023.
