Bernice said:
Emperor is beholding something pleasing to him which could result in something of value. His staff is repeated in the 2 Cups and is doubled in the 4 Coins. i.e: 4 staffs, repeated number(4) which is summed up in the 4 Coins.
Is he going to put his 'all' into it?
Ground level continues from the Emperor to the 2 Cups, but the 4 Coins stands alone - no ground.
Creatures: Eagle low in Emperor, to griffons (?) high in 2 Cups. Emperor is considering enhancing or adding, to something that is already established, elevating it. He's considering getting something 'off the ground'.
Shield is repeated in Emperor and 4 Coins, but is higher (elevated) in 4 Coins and its' design appears less 'personal'.
It is something that will flourish (4 Coins foliage)
What was happening:
What can be imagined, can be realized. But the foundation must be sound (his shield), and the purpose must be honest & true (his staff).
Bee
Bernice, I would like to use your example to bring an idea to the ‘table’.
German artist Joseph Beuys defined five processes -grouping ten qualities for matter into binary opposites- he used to craft his sculptures:
ORDER-CHAOS
DETERMINED-UNDETERMINED
ORGANIC-CRYSTALLINE
WARM-COLD
EXPANSION-CONTRACTION
The bridge between any of these bipolar opposites was the concept of movement, which Beuys defined as: the artist's will at work, or, the channeling of organic energy.
I find interesting the use of the word movement as a substitute for change. Change is a word that makes people nervous, but movement has no such negative connotations. The artist as an agent of movement, or the diviner as an agent of movement, is a very attractive proposition.
Now, consider this: just as we have these five processes, we have the eight root metaphors we know as the basis for the I Ching:
HEAVEN-EARTH
FIRE-WATER
THUNDER-WIND
MOUNTAIN-LAKE
If we define a person as our "matter", we could see how the person, at any given time, can be represented by any of these eight root metaphors. This is, a person can be a mountain, or a lake, or a thunder, therefore adopting, by analogies, the qualities of that natural event. These qualities can also be extended at a symbolic level: a mountain would be a leader, or a hermit, or both; it would be male, active, and obstacle, and so on. But as metaphors, these natural events are somehow static. A mountain is a mountain, and it exist in tension with a lake. Now, when we contrast/combine these root metaphors with Beuys' estates for an sculpture, the combination render the I Ching's root metaphor into a noun, and Beuys' process metaphor become some sort of an adjective.
For Beuys, part of the process defined as 'a sculpture' occurred when matter moved from one of these estates into its opposite. Here, it is important to notice that Beuys used very raw, time sensitive, materials in his work: iron, copper, sulphur, fat, honey. Under specific circumstances, the artist's will, defined by Beuys as movement, will transform the sculpture's materials, taking it from one extreme to its opposite within the aforementioned bipolar opposites. (If we think on fat, for example, we will see that fat will naturally melt, becoming warmer, of a further undetermined shape, in a chaotic, organic, expansive way.)
Something very interesting is that most of the time, such materials were used as metaphors for these processes. This is, the transformation would be hinted by the material's own nature. The idea was to elicit in the viewer a certain feeling, or revelation.
Quite magical.
This interest me because we also work with 'raw', time sensitive, material: we work with people. The interesting thing is that these five bipolar processes are also metaphors, and a peculiar characteristic of these metaphors is that they have a dynamic quality. These are catalyst-metaphors. They suggest an action. So, we have a set of ten metaphors, grouped in binary opposites, and just as Beuys used these processes to modify matter, we can use them -as metaphors- to describe a person's situation and to suggest a certain movement towards its bipolar opposite. A person could be crystallizing, therefore needing to become more organic. A person could be expanding, therefore needing to contract. A person could be cold, therefore needing to warm up, a person could be in total order, therefore needing to break onto chaos, etc.
How do we know whether a person is contracting, expanding, etc?
That is what the pips are telling us.
When we look at the pips we can always notice if the sequence goes from ORDER to CHAOS, from DETERMINED to UNDETERMINED, from ORGANIC to CRYSTALLINE, from WARM to COLD, or from EXPANSION to CONTRACTION. On broader terms Wands and swords contract -in that they evolve by generating a solid shape in the middle of the card- while Cups and Coins expand -in that they spread across the card’s surface- Even so, we can see that Swords are expanding if we compare them with wands, and we can also see that coins have a particular point of view that makes them expand over a horizontal plane, while cups ‘pile up’ or expand on a vertical plane. All these are indications of movement, and such movement will give us, by analogy, an insight into the process a person is experiencing.
Shape becomes meaning, rhythm becomes message.
Back to Bernice’s example there is a clear sense of expansion from the Emperor to the 4 of coins, and specially, in the progression from 2 of Cups to 2 of coins. Bernice signals something vital: she makes a point on noticing the ground, or lack of ground, in the whole composition. I would see the 4C, not ass a lack of ground tough, but as THE ground. This is, as a category of groundness that goes beyond what The Emperor or the 2C represent, because the horizontal expansion the 4C represents takes the idea of being grounded way further. If you read back what she wrote you will see how this idea of grounded expansion is present there.