Rethinking the Chaldean Court
AUTHOR’S NOTE: During a recent online conversation, a question was raised about the reasons for the Golden Dawn’s arrangement of the court cards on the Chaldean zodiac. I had a plausible answer for the Princesses: basically there was no place else to put them in the grand scheme, so the GD came up with a reasonable — although decidedly mystical — justification for placing them around the poles with the Aces. But the placement of the Knights (aka Kings), Queens and Kings (aka Princes) had a rationale that I couldn’t immediately remember, except to acknowledge that the alignment never made a lot of sense to me as an astrologer.
When I learned astrology back in the early ’70s, one of the paradigms for the zodiacal modes (Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable) was that the Cardinal signs are “action-oriented,” the Fixed signs are “security-oriented” and the Mutable signs are “people-oriented” (that is, socially motivated). On the Chaldean wheel of the GD, the passive Queens were given to the Cardinal signs (or at least two-thirds of the Cardinal decans), the neutral (and adolescent, according to Papus) Kings/Princes were assigned mostly to the Fixed signs and the active Knights/Kings were left with two-thirds of the Mutable signs. I didn’t find this very compelling given my astrological background.
The Queens are described in Liber T as representing “brooding power,” and their keynote is “patience.” How then are they “active?” The Kings/Princes are depicted as embodying “power in action” and they are mobile, which doesn’t seem very “Fixed” to me. The Knights/Kings symbolize “potential power” and are more commanding and authoritative in their demeanor, so I really can’t imagine them as the glad-handing “minglers” of Mutability. This distribution seems altogether unsatisfactory when considered in light of Aleister Crowley’s enumeration of the “moral characteristics” of the tarot court.
It struck me that the Knights/Kings of the GD hierarchy should really be the exemplars of Cardinality since they are the “movers and shakers” of the realm, if only by decree and not necessarily by example. The composed and contemplative Queens are better suited as the paragons of Fixity, and the Kings/Princes (which Papus characterized as the neutral “issue” of the masculine Knights/Kings and the feminine Queens) seem to fit the nature of Mutability as being youthfully changeable and chameleon-like, owing primarily to their restless, peripatetic nature.
Another interesting wrinkle that came out of this is that the Princesses at the hub of the wheel, who were formerly paired with the Princes of their suit in the middle decan of the central Fixed sign of their quadrant, now line up with the Queens in that spot, doubling the emphasis of feminine energy on the Fixed axes. It creates a slightly different dynamic but not a displeasing one since we now have this receptive duality (energized by the Ace) sandwiched between two more assertive entities. I do I like the symbolism in this, which reminds me of two roses between a brace of thorns. I think it gives the Queens more power as the “gateway” for the Aces on the outer ring; if the Princesses are the thrones of the Aces, then the mature and stable Queens could be the vehicle for exercising dominion over the rest of their suit (I’m thinking “the power behind the throne”). In addition, it follows the “1–2–3” pattern — positive, negative, neutral — laid out by Papus, with the Princesses as “4” providing the linking factor between them. It just seems more coherent to me.
A side-question was asked about why the planetary sequence of the decans starts with Mars on the Spring Equinox rather than with the Moon as might be expected when considering Chaldean cosmology. The best answer I could come up with was that Mathers had 36 decans to deal with but only five sets of seven planets to parcel out among them, in which case one planet had to do double duty in the pattern. He had the bright idea that reinforcing the potent Mars energy at the eqiuinox would kind of “goose” the arrival of Spring. (More esoteric mysticism, methinks.) I decided to leave the planetary decans alone for now since what is there works well enough.
So I took the Chaldean wheel diagram that I had been using and modified it to accommodate my court-card assumptions. (I decided to keep the one-third/two-thirds, “cross-sign” split since I think I understand the idea of “bridging” energies.) Here is what it looks like. (Fire away, ye GD hard-liners!)
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on January 8, 2024.
