Jupiter's Element - Fire or Air?

I'm a Thoth Tarot user, so my main use of Astrology is for the archetypal meanings behind the signs & planets. I was read Snuffin (2007) "The Thoth Companion: The Key ot the True Symbolic Meaning of the Thoth Tarot" about two months ago and something he said came back up recently. On page 172 Snuffin attributed the card Fortune & Jupiter to air. Both seemed to be a colossal astrological faux pas, but it got me thinking.

I relied on Jupiter = fire because 10/Fortune (or 10/The Wheel of Fortune) is a fire card. However, not all elements line up perfectly (esp. in ancient astrology) where airy Mercury rules earthy Virgo and Jupiter had domain over watery Pices. So what is It? Fire? Air? Depends? What's the general conensus?

Two systems

Tarot and Astrology are two systems which some believe both overlap and are separate. I've studies and practiced both for four decades. I recognize that much that has developed within astrology has happened since the 1500s, the same span of time in which Tarot gradually developed. Hence they share some cultural background and both systems were practiced in parallel by some of the same people. Artists and writers used both as settings for their work.

However, they are two different systems. It is my view that the tarot users are not always very knowledgeable about astrology and have played loosely with with the senior system. Given that there are two schools of thought in Tarot as to whether Wands are air or file related, we should accept the fact that each deck developer chooses to use symbolism as they see fit. Let them keep their use of symbolism in the Tarot system.

Astrologers have enough problems of their own without bringing Tarot into the mix. If the cards work one way for you and not the other, that's OK. It is, afterall, the INTENT of how you will use them and the INTENT of getting answers with Tarot that makes it work. My opinion. Dave

Dave,

Good points. I like how Astrology mixes it up with Mercury (air planet) ruling Virgo (earth sign) as it adds complexity & nuance, but I'm just trying to get this basic point. Intent is very important and my Fortune card will stay fire, but do any astrologers worth noting say Jupiter is an air planet?

Michael

When practicing planetary magick, or when looking at the Temperaments in a chart (in traditional astrology), Jupiter is said to be 'warm and moist' - which are the characteristics of Air. So someone who has a lot of Jupiter in their chart also has a lot of Air element (sanguine temperament, warm and moist).


No Tarot is needed to understand that. But if you want to associate Tarot with Astrology, then you can turn to the Golden Dawn.

The Golden Dawn adopted traditional astrology and traditional correspondences with the Tree of Life, and applied it to their Astrology-Tarot Correspondences. Rabbinical and Hermetic Kabbalists had already made correspondences between the sephirot on the Tree of Life, the paths between the sephirot and astrology - and so when the Golden Dawn placed the tarot arcana on the Tree of Life, they lined up with astrological symbols as well.

Jupiter had been associated with Chesed, the fourth sephira, for some centuries. The Golden Dawn associated Chesed, and hence Jupiter, with all the fours in the Tarot. It also made Jupiter correspond to the Wheel of Fortune by virtue of that card being placed on the 21st path, which was traditionally the path associated with Jupiter (Jupiter, therefore, is associated with one sephira and one path) - the path between Netzach and Chesed.

I have never seen the Wheel of Fortune with a fire correpondence - in the Golden Dawn method, a major arcana is associated either with a planet, with an element, or with a sign. And as we see above, the traditional elemental/temperamental association for Jupiter is warm and moist - i.e. Air.


ETA: nothing to stop you associating Fire with the Wheel, of course, but then you'll have to find another astrological correspondence for the Wheel as well.

Sophie and Dave have covered the main points here. I'd just add a couple of observations. Firstly it's a modern misconception that sign rulership reflects the intrinsic nature of the planets, it does not - rulership depends on the position of a planet relative to the Sect ruler (Sun by Day, Moon by Night). Intrinsinc nature can be modified by the planet's phase position relative to the Sun but only changes significantly (according to some authors) in the case of Mercury and Venus. Incidentally, seeing you mentioned 'airy' Mercury, it's worth pointing out that Mercury was only seen as Hot and Moist by some authors when he was oriental and when occidental he's Cold and Dry. Indeed Lilly only allows Mercury as Cold and Dry by intrinsic nature.

It's possible to argue for Jupiter as Firey, in the sense that he rules the Fire Triplicity by Night (Sun rules by Day) and the same argument could be used for Mercury, which rules the Air triplicity by Night.

However unless you go for a simple system like Triplicity rulerships it's impossible to reflect the intrinsic nature of the planets in a Tarot deck. The reason being that the Tarot Cards surrounding a 'planet' card are random (statistically speaking) but the position of the planet relative to the Sun is anything but random.

I'm not sure I go along with Dave's aside on the development of Astrology (mainly because as an aside he doesn't go into it). 1500 to 1700 was the final phase of Traditional Astrology. Thereafter it went into serious decline and although a few practioners remained it was not till around 1900 that it was resurrected. Modern Astrologers were largely cut off from the tradition - hence the confusion over rulerships. During the period of the last 100 years when most decks have been designed, Tarot and Astrology were often practiced together and it's not surprising that there has been cross fertilisation. Between 1500 and 1700 as far as I'm aware, the only leading Astrologer to take a real interest in Tarot was Jerome Cardan.

Minderwiz said:

Between 1500 and 1700 as far as I'm aware, the only leading Astrologer to take a real interest in Tarot was Jerome Cardan.

Click to expand...

That's true. The Golden Dawn made their astro-tarot correspondences based on the Hermetic Tree of Life, which had kabbalistic-astro correspondences already well established. All the GD needed to do was to find a place for every card on the Tree of Life - this they did, and it gave rise to the astro-tarot correspondences used by the GD.

Minderwiz & Sophie

Thank you for your reply. I understand from D3 (Decker, Depaulis, & Dummett, 1996: "A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origin of the Occult Tarot") the GD leaned heavily on E. Levi, who integrated all Western Esotericism together under the Tree of Life (ToL)/Qabalism (hence why he renamed himself from Louise Alphonse-Constance to the Jewish Eliphas Levi) and then the Tarot as a practical, "grounding" book for it all.

D3 even get testy to his comment that a person could learn all in the universe by studying the cards by quipping, "To think all our scientists need to do is spend ten quid instead of all that money." They miss Levi's point, but as you show he still did go too far. A Procrustean bed comes to mind (or whoever that Greek guy was that Hercules killed who would stretch people out or lop off limbs so they fit perfectly on his bed) - a wonderful myth by the pre-moderns about the dangers of fitting others to our preconceptions.

I did try to go back and got three books on "Real Astrology," as John Frawley calls it, which takes lots of shots as well as explaining things. Because of leaning on Levi, only the classic 7 planets make it into Tarot and so I need to spend my limited time on applicable subjects. However, the Procrustean bed is brought into play when you're crunched on time.

I initially got the correspondence from Greer (2006) 21 Ways in the appendix, but closer looks shows Greer is merely stating what different groups have said & I ran with the GD line of thinking. She credits the card as fire by the Golden Dawn (possibly because on the ToL it is opposite the Hanged Man, so activity = fire because passivity = water - a perfect foil to balance things as pointed out by Wang, 2004, "The Qabbalistic Tarot"), Earth by Levi, and Air by C. C. Zain/Church of Light. The later, who called his group "the religion of the stars" (i.e., a religion of Astrology), may be the closest Astrologically for that reason alone.

Dave is right about intention, but I want to play with this...what if Jupiter = Air regardless of the Fortune card? It wouldn't have changed many of my interpretations except where it landed next to an earth card. What if the card is one element, the planet another?

I think these Astrological complexities nuance Tarot well. Sometimes the "earth = pragmatic + dull" can just leave you cold and dry...

Jupiter has been 'warm and moist' (air) for centuries and remains so for traditional astrologers. But it was only attributed to the Wheel of Fortune by the Golden Dawn - as you mention, there are other attributions possible for the Wheel on the Tree of Life. If it's important to you that the Wheel be Jupiter, then it can't really escape being Air if you choose to work within the conventions of astrology... If it's not important that the Wheel be attributed to Jupiter, then you can find another place for it on the Tree of Life, with a different astrological attribution. That will have a knock-on effect on the whole of the other attributions, of course.

At the end of the day, all these are conventions. They work in the same way that language works: because enough people agree that they shall. They aren't laws of nature. I have found it works beautifully well. You might find another, equally elegant, system.

Ptolemy lists Jupiter as Hot and Moist, and therefore 'Airy' and this continues as the basic quality thereafter. Greenbaum quotes Abu Mashar and Al Biruni as giving the same qualities, though Biruni modifies it to moderately Hot and moderately Moist. Bonatti specifically says Jupiter 'produces heat and humidity' and is 'airy and sanguine'.

However by the time of Garcaeus in his 1574 book Astrologiae Methodus makes a new distinction. Jupiter is Hot and Wet when oriental (from the conjunction with the Sun to it's opposition) but thereafter was simply wet - that would put it more towards Water than Air. The distinction based on phase seems to have continued thereafter (and Garcaeus was probably not the originator) Lilly also repeats this distinction in Christian Astrology Book III.

I'm not sure that Lilly actually used it in practice, in the example he gives Jupiter is Oriental. And not all 16th and 17th Century Astrologers used it, Peter Stockinger quotes Nicholaus Rensberger (1568 work) as putting Jupiter as simply Hot and Moist (The Tradition Journal issue 3).

So for some 1600 years Jupiter was not seen as Fiery in any context. However, as I mentioned above, Astrology then moved into a deep decline and it was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that signs of a revival began to show. Strangely (or not) given the earlier post, Eliphas Levi had an influence on this, through his works and the increased interest in Magic, Qaballah and Alchemy (if only from a 'romantic' point of view for some). Nick Campion takes this mid 19th Century period as the the beginning of Astrology's journey to becoming the 'lingua franca of the New Age movement'

It seems possible that the Golden Dawn's (if one can talk of them as a united group) Astrological assignments came more from their own perceptions of Alchemy, Magic, and Qaballah than any link with Astrology as such - none of them were trained Astrologers because there no longer were the mechanisms of training. I'm definitely not qualified to make an assessment about their perceptions of the Hermetic Arts and the extent to which they represented an accurate reflection of Western practices of the past.

Now I'm not claiming that before then Astrology had nothing to do with Magic or Alchemy. It's certainly true that Astrologers did practice the other Arts in previous centuries, John Dee being a notable example. Even Lilly admits to acquiring Ars Notoria a well-known grimoire attributed to Solomon in 1634 and seemingly used it to intervene magically for an unmarried and pregnant young woman in that year. He claimed to then have given up magic and concentrated on Astrology but that might simply have been a device to avoid the unwanted interest of church and state in those activities. My point though is that up to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Astrologers were taught Astrology through a well structured and established educational system (To be a doctor of medicine you needed to be an Astrologer).

Given the centuries of perception of Jupiter as Sanguine, I would find it very odd to discover that Magical practice would be to see Jupiter as Fiery up to the Eighteenth century, at least in terms of the Western Tradition.

Thanks to you all again!

Spelling is awful through the whole post, sorry about that!

I think you've both made your case - Jupiter is airy, which makes sense. "Expansive," the chief quality, sounds airy and a lot like Chesed/Hesed (like Chanukkah/Hanukkah - it leads with a Heth, say "hate" for pronounciation) the fourth Sefirah follows suit. It's often called "mercy," but "lovingkindness" as in the Greek agape for "unconditional love" and is overflowing. It gets reined in by the lesser malefic as a balance, "to restrain the grace" if you will. All that to say, "Jupiter = air" should work nicely.

I also think Fortune will live too. The word "Fortune" in the sentence before is a link and you'll see in the Harris-Crowley deck (alright...Crowley-Harris, but Harris held the purse strings and used his name to get it moving) it has lots of lightning, which fine for air as it did for fire. Air also has motion, so it's still a foil to The Hanged Man that symbolizes in-action/contemplation (among other meanings).

I'm going to give it a whirl, I'll see how it works as air. It will move the count from 5 to 6 for air cards in the trumps ( now there'll be 5=water, 6=fire, 5=earth), which is actually more balanced. It will give air what it desparately needs on the Tree of Life, a second Sefirah (water still only has one & fire still has three with Kether being undecided)! I think this could actually be an improvement.

Oh BTW, Hermeticism had a bad time until the Golden Dawn, Levi, & co. gave it a shot in the arm. Kosomo [the Great] Medici had his chief translator cease his work on the Republic to work on the stuff my Hermes Trismegistus/Trismegistaritus ("the thrice great/blessed"), who was reputed to be a great priest-mage in Egypt before Plato and later turned into a god. Kosmo thought the works of Hermes, or the Hermetic teachings, were earlier and therefore had the prisca theologica ("the pristine theology" uncorrupted by particular world religions). It came out in the early 17th century CE that well-meaning disciples had written in the name of Hermes Trismegistus (an honoring in pre-modernity) stuff that was written in the 2nd-3rd century CE. Regardless of the good intentions, it got abandoned and appeared debunked. Some modern Hermetic stuff (i.e., the 7 laws in the Kybalion) seems to be a consolidation effort by a Chicagoan free mason in 1896 with some additions, as in possibly the law of attraction.