Clarification on Thoth elemental dignities

slithytoves

Hello!

In doing a practice reading using the Celtic cross, I wound up with 6 wands, 2 disks, 2 cups, 1 sword. I've been trying to wrap my head around the concept of using elemental dignities rather than reversals. I understand how they operate in a triad, but not so much in a larger spread. My instinct says that the abundance of fire in close proximity with the only watery cards, and a small scattering of positive/neutral to fire cards pushing it more that direction, would make the cups be read as ill dignified/reversed. Is there more to it than that? I can't seem to find clarification on the workings of dignities outside of triad examples.
 

Barleywine

The Celtic Cross doesn't lend itself very well to the use of elemental dignities for the reason you note: EDs work best in triplets, with a center focus (or "principal") card and a modifier on each side. I also use them to some extent in pairs, but not in large spreads. You can download a free copy of Liber Theta from the College of Thelema that sheds more light on the subject; I think Jim Eshelman also has additional material on the web site.

Sounds like you're talking more about preponderance than ED in your example: an abundance or absence of one or more qualities. In your case it's a surplus of Wands and a shortage of Swords. (By the way, do you always have 11 cards and not 10 in your CC?) One way to look at this is that an abundance of any element is self-actualizing and self-perpetuating, while an absence shows an area you have to work at to command the energy in a useful way. In your case this may show an excess of enthusiasm and optimism (Wands) and a lack of due deliberation (Swords).

The CC breaks down into two main components, the "cross" and the "staff," but both have an even number of cards that resist a coherent approach to ED. I reconfigured the CC to make it more ED-friendly; you can find that in my sticky spreads index in the Tarot Spreads forum. In my model the only card that doesn't serve as the focus for a triplet is the outcome card.

Trying to put together a snapshot of strengthening and weakening influences in a CC is difficult because there are no "natural" focus cards. I suppose you could chose the more prominent cards in the spread (for example, any Major Arcana) and just look at the ED combinations for those.
 

gregory

I know NOTHING. But you might get more responses if this thread were moved to the Thoth forum...
 

AnemoneRosie

In my brain the CC is broken down into two parts - the six card double cross, and the four card staff. As mentioned above the even numbers don't work very well for EDs and so instead I break it into the two parts to balance one against the other (with more weight given to the six-card crosses).

I'd need to know where the elements are located in order to make sense of your draw.
 

slithytoves

The Celtic Cross doesn't lend itself very well to the use of elemental dignities for the reason you note: EDs work best in triplets, with a center focus (or "principal") card and a modifier on each side. I also use them to some extent in pairs, but not in large spreads. You can download a free copy of Liber Theta from the College of Thelema that sheds more light on the subject; I think Jim Eshelman also has additional material on the web site.

Sounds like you're talking more about preponderance than ED in your example: an abundance or absence of one or more qualities. In your case it's a surplus of Wands and a shortage of Swords. (By the way, do you always have 11 cards and not 10 in your CC?) One way to look at this is that an abundance of any element is self-actualizing and self-perpetuating, while an absence shows an area you have to work at to command the energy in a useful way. In your case this may show an excess of enthusiasm and optimism (Wands) and a lack of due deliberation (Swords).

The CC breaks down into two main components, the "cross" and the "staff," but both have an even number of cards that resist a coherent approach to ED. I reconfigured the CC to make it more ED-friendly; you can find that in my sticky spreads index in the Tarot Spreads forum. In my model the only card that doesn't serve as the focus for a triplet is the outcome card.

Trying to put together a snapshot of strengthening and weakening influences in a CC is difficult because there are no "natural" focus cards. I suppose you could chose the more prominent cards in the spread (for example, any Major Arcana) and just look at the ED combinations for those.

Thank you! I had understood the concept to mean you could use dignities in any spread as a substitute for reversals. That's also why I didn't post it in the Thoth specific forum, I thought the concept was more widespread than just the one tradition. That makes things a little clearer. It also explains why it felt so strange to call a whole suit ill dignified in the reading. I feel like I saw a reading on YouTube (polyphonic tarot to be specific) where he was talking about the elemental relationship as I had thought dignities worked, but perhaps he was actually doing what you described and I conflated the two concepts.

I don't normally use the cross, I've been doing 7 or less card spreads to solidify concepts and build confidence but decided to go for it and see what shook out. The extra card was using a significator with a "covers you" and "crosses you" card rather than just the 2 cards in the center.

I'll have to do some more reading into how to judge whether ill or well dignified without reversals. Sounds like a topic I'd find in past threads if I have trouble, I feel like I should spend some book time before asking more questions, haha.

I'll check out your spread! Thank you for your help!
 

slithytoves

In my brain the CC is broken down into two parts - the six card double cross, and the four card staff. As mentioned above the even numbers don't work very well for EDs and so instead I break it into the two parts to balance one against the other (with more weight given to the six-card crosses).

I'd need to know where the elements are located in order to make sense of your draw.

Interesting!

The spread was laid as follows

All 3 center cards wands, and in future position. Cups is in the past, Disks court in the crown, Swords in the root. The staff was laid disks, cups, wands, wands court from the bottom up. Can I ask how would you interpret those elements in relation to each other, and how would that affect whether they were ill or well dignified, if at all?
 

AnemoneRosie

As you noticed above this isn't really the way that EDs "work" and so I sort of toss aside the ill/dignified aspect of things. Instead, I just weight them. So here I'd say that the central cross and the future lean it towards being quite fiery, tempered by the presence of the other elements. So primarily fire, with a nod towards the presence of others.

Then in the staff it starts to become a little more balanced, although the echoes of the fiery energy continue to resonate.
 

Barleywine

I had understood the concept to mean you could use dignities in any spread as a substitute for reversals. That's also why I didn't post it in the Thoth specific forum, I thought the concept was more widespread than just the one tradition. That makes things a little clearer. It also explains why it felt so strange to call a whole suit ill dignified in the reading. I feel like I saw a reading on YouTube (polyphonic tarot to be specific) where he was talking about the elemental relationship as I had thought dignities worked, but perhaps he was actually doing what you described and I conflated the two concepts.

Elemental Dignities as understood today come from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but can be used in any system that assigns the four classical elements of Empedocles to the cards. It's basically a method for weighting or adjusting the potency and ease of expression for any given card in a spread by relating it in terms of elemental "friendliness" or "unfriendliness" to its immediately adjacent neighbors. I personally don't use it to try creating any kind of "gestalt" overview the way I do with preponderance. There would never be an entire suit that's ill-dignified, but a spread where every card is out-of-sorts with its neighbors would be a disjointed and ultimately weak one from an ED standpoint. Not that it would be totally ineffective or invalid, just that it would be scattered and operating under a handicap. I use both ED and reversal: the former modulates the figurative "force field" exerted by a card (producing in combination with its partners what I like to call a "power profile"), the latter alters the mode of delivery and receipt of the energy. One is a matter of projection, the other more of perspective. I should also add that, although ED seems fairly simple and straightforward at first glance, when the Golden Dawn introduces terms like "according to their nature" and "for good or evil," the concepts of strengthening and weakening get murkier fast!