Ruby Jewel
deleted.
Daily "Behavioral Architecture" Spread
Barleywine
Yes, we will have to agree to disagree. I satisfied myself with what's going on in the GD system a long time ago through many other books besides Crowley's, but I'm not really prepared to discuss it (mainly because I no longer remember exactly what I learned and am too lazy to go back and dig it up!) The 1/3-2/3 offset of the courts to the decans has a plausible basis for it. Just don't ask me to explain it. I'm sure some of the others here who are up on it can do so. In the meantime, these charts that Richard created a while ago show it better than I could explain it. (Note that the abbreviations are confusing; Kt/Knight in Thoth = King in RWS, K/King in GD = Prince/Knight in Thoth/RWS.) I believe Zephyros also posted a teaching thread on this a while ago.
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Ruby Jewel
Oops I see you got me before I could delete this mess (laugh). I agree with you, it is too much of a cluster....to try to deal with it. But at least I see you understand what I was trying to say. I do see the logical offset in the 1/3-2/3 offset of the courts because the last decan of a house coincides with the first decan of the new sign.....if you think in astrological terms, there's no confusion....not sure why they make it so confusing, but I'm not going to worry about it. It works perfectly for me in conjunction with astrology and I don't feel compelled to take it beyond that.
Barleywine
Here are two pages from Jim Eshelman's Liber Theta (which you can get as a free dowmload from the College of Thelema) that does a fair job of explaining the cross-linking of the court cards to the signs. (Once again, in talking about "Knights" and "Princes," he's describing the Thoth Knights, which equate to RWS Kings, and the Thoth Princes that correspond to the RWS Knights.)
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Ruby Jewel
Thanks..I'll check out the links. It appears to me that nothing really changes in terms of the court cards except that the King gets renamed as the Prince. And since the Prince is the fixed house and the Knight remains as the mutable houses, the only difference is the renaming of the King to Prince. The Book of Thoth puts Knight of Wands as 20 degrees Scorpio to 20 degrees Sag, which is predominantly the 9th house, mutable. the Prince of Wands is 20 degrees Cancer to 20 degrees Leo...predominantly the fifth house, which is fixed....so nothing changes but the name of the King. And, as I was saying, this puts your rising as the Knight of Wands instead of the King according to your system....correct? Of course, if I had my way I would put your rising as the Prince of Cups...particularly since it fits into the last decan of Scorpio in the astrological configuration, which coincides perfectly with the way I see the tarot. Your Rising would fall right in the middle decan of the 8th house....did you ever try that for a fit? Can't hurt.
Ruby Jewel
So, you are saying that he switched the roles of the Knights instead of the names? and the Knights now act like Kings instead of Knights....and the Kings take on the role of the Knights?....I can see calling a King a Prince because the Prince would naturally become the King. But the Knight does not change for me...he comes from the lower classes and rises to the top of the game....but he does not become the King as a natural progression....as does the Prince. So, changing the name works for me, but switching the role of the King to the Knight does not, particularly because the mutable/fixed energies did not change.
Ruby Jewel
So, from what I gather from this link is that everybody stays in the same place between fixed, mutable, and cardinal houses, but the missing "guna" of the three Gunas gets added to the personality which will give a balanced personality? So, then Queen of Wands which begins in the first decan of 12th house Pisces, she would also take on a fixed guna of Taurus because the King/Prince of Pentacles has the first decan in the first house of Aries. And all this connectedness links the entire zodiac together....everybody partaking of all three gunas. But this was already obvious because the first decan of Taurus comes under the Queen of Wands. What I don't understand is why the Queen takes on a predominantly fixed nature when she is predominantly a cardinal house.
Barleywine
He makes the point that the Knights replace they Kings at the top of the heap because they are mounted and active, representing Fire and the Yod in Tetragrammaton. This active energy is the key to understanding the swap. I don't think he changed the role of the King so much as the mode of expression, making it fit his model of the Father-Mother-Son-Daughter lineage.
Barleywine
I treat this primarily as a symbolic model aimed at bringing the "qualities" of the planetary decans into the tarot; I don't pay any attention to the calendar dates and just think of it as the "natural" zodiac starting with 0 degrees of Aries on the 1st House cusp. It's more a philosophical concept than an empirical one. I think Eshelman has it right in suggesting meditation rather than analysis as the best way to approach it. In practice, technical astrology has nothing much to do with tarot; it's "pasted on" as you mentioned in the other thread, but it does have uses in card interpretation.
The "shadow" decans are always behind the main pair in the zodiac, so the Queen of Wands has two Fire decans in Aries and one Water decan in Pisces; she doesn't reach Taurus, so she is predominantly Water of Fire, with an underlayment of Water of Water. Thus, she is mainly Cardinal with a hint of Mutability. Following her, the Prince of Disks represents mostly Air of Earth (two Taurus decans), with an underlayment of Air of Fire; so he is mainly Fixed with a hint of Cardinality. Regarding the Princesses, they are a backdrop, along with the Aces, for an entire quadrant of signs, centered on the Fixed sign in each set, and represent "Earth" of each sign in the quadrant. All of this makes for complex "personalities" for the court cards that come closer to mirroring human nature.
It seems to me that Eshelman was getting a bit scrambled with mixing the astrological modes with the Gunas, but I don't really understand them very well. He had me scratching my head with some of his statements.
To bring this back on topic, my Ascendant of 25 degrees of Scorpio falls in the third decan of that sign in the "natural" zodiac, which is picked up by the fiery Knight/King of Wands as its "shadow" Water decan. What I find interesting is that the planetary decan is Venus in Scorpio, represented by the 7 of Cups, but from a personality standpoint that Knight of Wands doesn't lie very far beneath the mild-mannered surface.
Ruby Jewel
This is also my understanding of the decans. It isn't so much that the Queen of Wands takes on the energy of Taurus, but that Taurus participates in her energy and she rules his first decan....which gives her a bit of all 3 gunas. I assumed the "shadow" decan was the first decan of a sign that begins in the previous house...thanks for verifying as I wasn't positive. For me, this whole orientation works just like the tarot, and I have used it for some time without paying attention to the dates or degrees, except the ones I know from astrology. I have no problem with changing the King to Prince. He stays in the same place, and for me the guna and the house determine the energy of the court card in accordance with astrology and what I know of the elements. Unless something I read clarifies or extends my base of knowledge, I tend to forget it. For instance, as a mutable energy, the Knight stays basically the same...active and changeable and elusive. Whereas the Prince/King is fixed, dependable, and authoritarian. In order for that to change for me, the guna would have to change....and I don't think I could consider the Knights energy as appropriate for the King....but the Prince is "groomed" to be like the King....so it works for me. And I realized from reading Crowley and Wang that the Princesses/Pages are considered Earth...I have always realized from Papus that Pages are transitional cards....and the Aces being new beginnings. All in all, I don't see any differences other than the name change of the King. I like reading Crowley's characterizations because they are easily integrated with my own preconceptions for the most part, and add new facets of insight.
Regarding Venus in Scorpio, I'm not so sure she is happy because she is in her detriment/fall in Scorpio, which I think would make her very weak. Perhaps that is the down side of the 7 of Cups. I think where we differ on your rising sign is not in its placement within the decans, but in calling the Knight the King. The King, as the Prince, is back in the 4th and 5th houses as I see it. You see, I don't see the Knight as having changed by renaming the King....and certainly the houses didn't change. So, you see, I am saying your rising sign is the Knight of Wands, Sagittarius....and you remind me of one....with your penchant for wisdom and philosophy. I find it most interesting that Pope Francis is a Sagittarius.
