The Onus of Elemental Discord: Earth/Air and Fire/Water

AUTHOR’S NOTE: While helping a friend with a relationship reading, I was visited by an epiphany regarding the elemental incompatibility of Earth and Air cards. The reading was a series of twelve monthly projections for the year beginning on the Spring Equinox. The spread logic I used was that each month holds a two-tiered arrangement of cards, one tier (above) populated by either a trump card or a court card and the other tier (below) by a numbered “pip” card.

A trump card in the upper tier shows the overarching purpose (or the big-picture “why”) of the predicted outlook for the month while a court card suggests the trans-personal or psychological “human dimensions” of the matter (either the “who” of social interaction or specific character traits of the querent). The pip card in the lower tier reflects the pragmatic consequences (the “what”) of engaging the identified purpose or human condition expressed by the first tier. The pip card shows “where the rubber meets the road” in terms of potential occurrences in the mundane sphere.

Three-way elemental friendliness of the cards in both tiers to each other and to the primary element for the month as reflected by its zodiacal sign reveals whether the cards will be energized “for good or ill” according to their inherent nature. (This would mean any cooperative triplicity of Fire and Air or Earth and Water.) Conversely, any “mixed bag” of elementally friendly, neutral and/or hostile cards indicates that circumstances will take more effort to advance if positive or to successfully restrain if negative.

My observation regarding those months with a combined Earth and Air emphasis was: “Earth wants stability while Air is restless and can be irritable. The combination suggests standing in shifting sand, making it hard to gain traction and resulting in stalled momentum.” This is different from the impression of “standing in quicksand” that can arise when Earth and Water (which are elementally friendly) are combined in an unbalanced way signified by too much of the latter; in that case the elemental interaction is a bit too enthusiastic.

It’s easy to see why Earth and Air are at odds (even more so than Fire and Water, which at least produce industrial steam and residential hot water as long as they’re separated by Earth in the form of a metal or ceramic barrier). Air is fluid and adaptable; it rises effortlessly while solid, obdurate Earth hugs terra firma and keeps its head down. The only time Earth is motivated (or at least “stirred up”) by Air is during a dust storm (although Fire in the form of sunlight must first parch the soil). In other words, when their interaction isn’t completely inert it can be destructive. Fire and Water are volatile together and, when allowed to come into direct contact, one can be quenched or the other “flashed” to water vapor depending on their proportion in the mix. Water neutralizes where Fire consumes, while Earth and Air just give each other the “cold shoulder.” Neither combination is easy to deal with in a constructive way, although Earth and Air are at least self-limiting in their joint effect most of the time.

Almost seven years ago I examined Aleister Crowley’s premise that the elemental correspondences for the court cards can be re-imagined as natural forces (lightning, rain, wind, earthquakes, etc). The comprehensive table I came up with can be used with any of the cards.

Elemental Pairings as Natural Phenomena

Fire modified by Fire (+/+): a fire-storm; an explosion; a lightning bolt; a melt-down (Sun-Mars-Jupiter)
Fire modified by Water (+/-): cooling/extinguishing; steam formation; sweat; a wet sauna (Mars/Moon)
Fire modified by Air (+/+): an intense flame; a cutting torch; a blast furnace; a “flame-out;” an uncontrolled burn (Mars-Jupiter/Mercury)
Fire modified by Earth (+/-): steady combustion; smoldering; a dry sauna; a controlled burn (Mars/Venus-Saturn)
Water modified by Fire (-/+): evaporation; cloud formation; condensation; thawing; boiling; a thunder-storm (Moon/Mars)
Water modified by Water (-/-): saturation; flash- flooding; a cloudburst (Moon-Venus-Jupiter)*
Water modified by Air (-/+): turbulence; aeration; waves; a water-spout; a hurricane; a tsunami (Moon-Jupiter/Mercury)*
Water modified by Earth (-/-): turbidity; solidification; freezing; glacial flow; tidal action (Moon/Venus-Saturn)
Air modified by Fire (+/+): Summer; hot weather; South wind; thermal convection; a tornado (Mercury/Sun-Mars)
Air modified by Water (+/-): Spring; wet weather; fog; rain; East wind; a low-pressure system (Mercury/Moon)
Air modified by Air (+/+): Autumn; dry weather; West wind; a high-pressure system (Mercury-Venus-Saturn)*
Air modified by Earth (+/-): Winter; cold weather; North wind; a polar vortex (Mercury/Saturn)
Earth modified by Fire (-/+): plate tectonics — mountain formation, a volcano, an earthquake, a subduction fault, plastic deformation; metal smelting; kiln-drying (Saturn/Mars)
Earth modified by Water (-/-): erosion; irrigation; hydraulic fracturing; mud; quicksand (Venus/Moon-Jupiter)*
Earth modified by Air (-/+): drought; desertification; a dust storm (Saturn/Mercury)
Earth modified by Earth (-/-): compaction; stabilization; settling; cultivation; artificing (Saturn-Venus-Mercury)

The “+/-” notation shows the positive or negative (as in “active or passive,” not “good or bad”) alignment of the elements in each set and their associated planetary totems. Where elemental notation is mixed, the planetary symbols before the “slash” (/) are attuned to the “plus” or “minus” alignment shown before the “slash” in the elemental notation; those after are ascribed to the second elemental polarity.

In some cases (marked with an asterisk), a traditionally positive or negative planet has been aligned with an element of the opposite polarity, reflecting the exaltation of that planet. Also note that Mercury and Venus rule both an Earth sign and an Air sign while, traditionally, Mars ruled both a Fire sign and a Water sign, Jupiter ruled both a Water sign and a Fire sign, and Saturn ruled both an Earth sign and an Air sign, so I did some elemental mixing-and-matching here. But I believe the value in this table lies in the functional descriptors, not in the planetary attributes that are only supplemental.

Any card and its elemental correspondence (including the planetary trumps via the signs their planets rule) can be related to any other card in this way.

Here is a link to the 2020 blog post on a related topic:

https://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com/2020/07/05/friends-enemies-and-accomplices/

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on September 26, 2024.