It is satisfying as all get-out to interpret a Lenormand reading and/or a horary chart that accurately describes the location of a lost item, and then find the item. But sometimes a lost item stays lost. So when you ask where a lost item is, are you asking only for a description of its location? Or are you also asking if you’ll find it, even if you don’t say that in so many words? A reading I did a few months ago suggests the latter.
My friend J. has a friend who had lost a set of keys to a home safe. J. asked me about the keys on her friend’s behalf. The Lenormand reading and the horary chart both gave meaningful answers, but as of this writing, the keys haven’t been found. And even if they do turn up someday, for all practical purposes, it’ll be too late. J’s friend was going to have new keys made. Once that was done, the original keys may as well stay lost.
The Lenormand reading
I took my “usual” approach to doing a lost items reading. (“Usual” meaning I’ve done this maybe three or four times now: so much experience!) I choose a card ahead of time as the significator of the lost item, shuffle the deck, look for it in the deck, and lay out the card before it, the significator itself, and the two cards after it. The one card before would show the past; it’s the equivalent of “When did you last see the keys?” The two cards afterwards should show the present/future location of the lost item. Choosing the significator was easy: lost keys cry out to be represented by 33-Key.
It never occurred to me that the Key might be the last card in the deck. Which it was.
Here’s that issue I was talking about. I’d asked where the keys were. The most straightforward reading of this was that the keys had no present or future location. (The past location, 20-Garden, which suggested they might’ve been in the garden or at a gathering, didn’t help any.) It was possible that the keys had been destroyed, and that would answer the explicit question Where can she find her missing safe keys?. But the keys only needed to be permanently lost, nothing as dramatic as utterly obliterated, if the reading was answering the implicit question Will she find her lost keys? No “future” for the keys: the answer is No.
I admit I didn’t trust my intuition. And I hadn’t realized that there were two questions involved; I was only thinking of the explicit one. Since it seemed unlikely that the keys had been destroyed, they should be somewhere, so I took the first two cards from the top of the deck to find out what that somewhere was. The first card was 23-Mice. One interpretation of the Mice is that the keys had been stolen; another was that they were permanently lost.
Eventually, I do figure these things out. Especially when the cards are practically hitting me over the head with an answer. 🙄
The second card was 34-Fish. It suggests the keys were near J’s friend’s financial materials, which makes sense given that they were the keys to one of her home safes. But as they do seem to be permanently lost, we’ll never know. The Mice may have been the absolute end of the reading (“Look,” the cards grumbled, “we told you they had no future, and then we told you—again—that they were lost. How much more of an answer do you need?!”), and it wouldn’t matter what the next card was.
The horary chart
To make this post easier to read, I’ve separated the Lenormand reading from the horary chart reading. But at the time, I was going back and forth between them, so I hadn’t reached that conclusion about the Lenormand reading before I’d started working on the horary chart.
Choosing the significator
This was one of the times I went with intuition when choosing the significator. I could have used derivative houses, but it was turning into a long chain. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the best I can say here is that it didn’t feel right. Mercury is the natural ruler of keys, and like choosing 33-Key in the Lenormand, it seemed much more reasonable to use it as the significator of these keys.
The considerations before judgment
First off, let’s see the general condition of the chart:
- Radical Ascendant? Check.
- Void-of-course Moon? Yes. Hmm.
- Saturn in the 7th house and/or the ruler of the 7th house afflicted? Yes to the latter: Mars is the ruler, and isn’t comfortable in Taurus.
- Moon in the Via Combusta? No.
Void-of-course means that the Moon (or a planet) will not make an exact aspect with any other planet before it moves into the next sign. It may still be in aspect to one or more planets, approaching and separating, but nothing else will match it exactly before it goes into the next sign. The tag line for the void-of-course Moon is “nothing will come of it.” Whether that’s helpful or not depends on the question asked. I wouldn’t say it’s all that encouraging in a lost items question, not unless you wanted the item to stay lost.
Among other things, the 7th house represents the astrologer who’s interpreting the horary chart. (That’s me.) Saturn in the 7th house or an afflicted ruler of the 7th suggests the astrologer will have problems with the chart or suffer a delay in understanding it. Or, in my case, be a bit oblivious to her own intuition.
And the chart says…
Mercury is at 29° 49′ Aries. That’s right at the end of Aries (each sign has 30º), and horary texts have explanations for significators that are right at the end of signs and what that means for lost items. But in this chart, Mercury is also void-of-course. See everything above about about the VOC Moon, and apply it to the keys themselves. Mercury isn’t connected to anything, symbolically, so the keys aren’t connected to anything or anyone, including J’s friend. They’re in a void somewhere, not to be found.
Conclusion
No keys. No future for them, according to the Lenormand reading. No ties between them and anything else according to the horary chart. It’s good to know that these readings can tell you if you’re ever going to find a lost item, but I wish the problem had had a happier answer.
With that kind of background, you’d think the Four of Wands would depict selfishness or a reluctance to be with others. Instead, the Waite-Smith card shows people celebrating together. Perhaps this is about the completion of a project or task, since the Golden Dawn name for this card is Lord of Perfected Work and Crowley called it Completion. One keyword I use for the Four of Wands is community, and that’s the antithesis of this textbook description of Venus in Aries. Now, sure, there are other ways to interpret the combination of Venus and Aries. Perhaps this scene of dancing outside on a warm, sunny day shows Venus’s sociability fueled by Aries’s energy. Dancing itself—beautiful, done for pleasure, often done with other people—has a lot of Venus to it, and as physical activity, could draw on Aries/fire energy.
Like Aries, Cancer is a cardinal sign, but its element is water, and cardinal water suggests that Cancer takes action emotionally. Already this sounds like a more compatible environment for Venus. Cancer has been traditionally considered friendly to the Moon (the emotions) and Jupiter (benevolence), but Venus, too, seems more at home here than in Aries. Cancer’s focus is on nurturance, which is necessary when something has just been “born”—a baby, a project, a relationship—Cancer’s energy shines at the beginning of things.
The Seven of Cups is one of those cards that differs noticeably between the Waite-Smith and Thoth decks. In the Waite-Smith Seven of Cups, the card is about being presented with a number of options and needing to choose one. The figure in the foreground faces multiple delights: riches, glory, power, and more. But the card is called Lord of Illusionary Success, suggesting that none of them will bring him true happiness. In pursuing one or more of them, will the man overlook genuine, if not nearly as flashy, happiness close at hand?
Compared to the Thoth Seven of Cups, however, the Waite-Smith card is all sweetness and light. Crowley and Harris’s depiction of the Seven of Cups hits you over the head with what happens when pleasure goes bad. The card is called Debauch. It has the Thoth deck’s standard symbol set of flowers, cups, and liquids, but here the liquid is fluorescent green glop, likely poisonous—really, would you want to touch it, much less drink it? True, the lilies look healthy and none of the cups are broken: things are not as bad as they could be, but that’s not saying much in this card. Here is a particularly nasty manifestation of Venus in Scorpio: pleasure going well beyond the point at which it’s pleasant and sliding into debauchery. As the Thoth Six of Cups is called Pleasure, the path from pleasure to debauchery to indolence (the Eight of Cups) is a theme of the Cups suit.
If there’s a relationship in the Five of Swords, it’s that between the victor and the vanquished, and the only pleasure is the pleasure of beating others. The Golden Dawn called this card Lord of Defeat, which pretty much sums up the Waite-Smith picture. Indeed, any existing relationships between the three people in the picture may be the casualties of this battle. The victor has control of the swords, and seems happy, but in a card with Venus as its astrological correlation, it’s probably not good that he’s cut himself off from the others in the picture. For that matter, the two who lost are turned slightly away from each other. They aren’t going off together to console each other or plot revenge against the victor, but are alone in their misery.
That said, the Nine of Pentacles doesn’t appear to be about pickiness and perfectionism any more than the Four of Wands was about selfishness in relationships. The Waite-Smith Nine of Pentacles shows a woman in a vineyard, alone except for the bird that she’s holding and a snail on the ground. Cards with just one person in them are common in this deck, but except for this card and the Seven of Cups, the Minor Arcana associated with Venus show people in relationship. Like the Seven of Cups, the Nine of Pentacles portrays the pleasure and enjoyment side of Venus rather than the relationship side. The Golden Dawn title of Lord of Material Gain reinforces the idea that the focus here is on earthly pleasures. But in this card, Pamela Colman Smith shows pleasure in moderation to be a good thing. The woman’s body language is relaxed: her hand rests lightly on top of a pentacle and she trusts the other eight to be there. Compare this with the Four of Pentacles where the man clutches one pentacle to his chest while pinning another two down with his feet. Venus and Virgo combine to show contentment in the Nine of Pentacles. Perhaps this is Virgo’s acute awareness of the material world: the woman knows what she has, knows that it’s enough for her, and knows how to appreciate it.
Whichever sign the Sun is in shows the kinds of experiences that the self needs in order to grow. In Aries, that means taking risks and doing things that call for courage, usually as an individual rather than with others. In the Waite-Smith Three of Wands, we see a man looking out over a harbor in which three ships are sailing. One common way to interpret this scene is that the man is a merchant whose ships are either setting out on a voyage or returning from one. Either way, the success of the venture is not yet known. The man has put plans into action and committed himself, and this is risky. He’s far from the ships and the people on them, showing that he’s acting alone.
Over on the astrological side of things, the association for this card is the Sun in Scorpio. Scorpio is fixed water: feelings that change slowly, if at all. Since those feelings are so stable, they have time to build in intensity and grow deeper. So the Sun in Scorpio shows that the sense of self grows through intense emotional experiences. Unlike the Three of Wands, there’s more than one person in the Six of Cups, and two of them are interacting with each other. This card isn’t about acting alone, but maybe that’s because it’s a Cups card, and emotions have so much to do with relating to others.
The Ten of Swords is the final result of the Swords suit: intellect taken to its conclusion. I’ve heard a couple of explanations for why the Swords suit ends so unpleasantly. One is related to the Tree of Life, saying that air and fire (Swords and Wands), are weighed down as they approach the earthiness of the final sephirah, Malkuth, while water and earth (Cups and Pentacles) feel more at home. Another says that the nature of the intellect is to dissect everything, until at last there’s nothing left to dissect except itself, and that’s the end. Whatever the reason, at Ten, the suit has bottomed out. A man lies facedown on the ground, with the swords stuck in his back. The sky above him is unnaturally black, although the clouds give way to a golden sky on the horizon. However horrible things have gotten, this is as bad as it gets, and there’s nowhere to go except up.
There are several ways to interpret this card. Perhaps it’s the love of material goods and power that limits your life to acquiring and keeping. Perhaps it’s maintaining useful and necessary boundaries with others. I like Barbara Moore’s observation that this is a card of “gathering power,”* which makes me think of batteries, savings accounts, and other earthy ways to store reserves. To me, that fits with an oddity in the picture: the way the man is holding one of the pentacles. If you wanted to hold a large coin, wouldn’t it be natural to hug it to your chest with your arms across it? Instead, his arms encircle the pentacle, reminding me of energy circling and building in power.
The Crowley Thoth Four of Disks (Power) focuses more on the security and stability aspects of this card than the inflexibility and rigidity. Or rather, how those qualities are depicted can alter their interpretation. Rigidity and inflexibility in a person are generally seen as negatives, which may be what was intended in the Waite-Smith picture. Rigidity and inflexibility in a fortress, on the other hand, are usually considered selling points. (That’s a picture of a fortress as seen from above, with a moat surrounding it, and one road leading in.)
The Sun in Virgo suggests that the self develops through diligence and material service. Although this man is as isolated as the one in the Four of Pentacles—both sit alone, with a distant city in the background—the man in the Eight of Pentacles is using the material energy instead of saving it up, and the pentacles he’s making may someday be put to practical use.
Although both the Waite-Smith and Thoth cards are called (Lord of) Prudence, the Eight of Disks has a different feel to it. A plant doesn’t have to practice flowering to get it right—that comes naturally. This plant protects its flowers with its leaves so that they won’t get knocked off before it’s able to fruit. The meaning of the Eight of Disks goes more with the definition of prudence as “caution or circumspection as to danger or risk” while the Waite-Smith Eight of Pentacles seems more in keeping with “skill and good judgment in the use of resources.”**
With all of that energy behind it, you might expect the Two of Wands to show an action-filled scene like the Five of Wands does, but the Waite-Smith deck’s illustration is deceptively still. A man stands on a rampart, looking over the lands below him. In his right hand, he holds a globe; in his left, a wand. The other wand of the card is bolted to the wall behind him, which stabilizes the wand, but at the same time, restrains it. The man is dressed in shades of brown, suggesting pragmatism and groundedness; his red hat symbolizes thinking about action. The Golden Dawn title for this card is Lord of Dominion, and it seems as if the man is surveying his domains. “Dominion” itself is a neutral term, but the device of flowers on the wall suggests that this is a positive card. The red roses signify action and desire, which might be problematic on their own (as in a lust for power), but they’re paired with white lilies, signifying purity. With the drive of Mars in Aries, the man has achieved much in terms of wealth and power, but his energy seems constrained (his still pose, the wall that separates him from the rest of the world, the wand bolted to the wall, the white lilies crossing the red roses). He may be restless, planning his next project and preparing to take action.
Somewhere along the line, I’d learned “self-defense” as a keyword for this card, and I still think it’s a fair summary of this scene. But in reading about this card, I happened upon Joan Bunning’s description of it as “going after what you want” and “asserting yourself.”* These are fine descriptions of Mars generally, but it wasn’t what I expected for the Seven of Wands. After all, isn’t the man backed up to the edge of a cliff? Why would you challenge someone from such a difficult position? But Bunning explains that taking a stand triggers resistance in others. To assert yourself, to express yourself, to do anything that makes you stand out from the masses—the essence of Mars in Leo—is to draw attention to yourself, and some of that attention will be hostile. The moment you take a stand, the cliff’s edge and the opposing wands will appear.The Golden Dawn’s title for the Seven of Wands, Lord of Valor, makes it clear that you will need courage and strength to defend yourself, but stand firm (fixed fire) and you could very well succeed.
In the Waite-Smith Five of Cups, the person (man? woman?) is isolated in their grief and loss. The ground around them is brown and lifeless. They could walk over to the city on the far side of the river and be with other people, but for whatever reason, they have chosen not to. They are focused on the three cups that have spilled, not the two upright cups behind them. Most people have an opinion about those cups, perhaps that the person should stop dwelling on the spilled cups and remember that they still have upright ones, or that the person needs to grieve the loss right now and deal with what remains at a later time. I tend more towards the latter interpretation. With the upright cups so close to the mourner, I suspect they know perfectly well the cups are there, but the time isn’t right to pick them up and move on. The Golden Dawn called this card Lord of Loss in Pleasure, but Aleister Crowley called it Disappointment. Neither seems quite strong enough to me; maybe if the Golden Dawn had called it Lord of Loss and left it at that?
Pisces is a mutable water sign; emotional flexibility and pliancy to the max. Scorpio dealt with conflict by refusing to budge, even if it broke; Pisces flows away and avoids it, which can sometimes mean escaping into fantasy and illusion rather than coping with reality. The Ten of Cups in the Waite-Smith deck shows a happily-ever-after ending for the Cups suit. The adults admire a rainbow, while the children dance, all in a picturesque landscape. The Golden Dawn title, Lord of Perfected Success, fits this scene well. Perhaps we’re supposed to realize that this is an ideal, not reality—after all, rainbows are optical effects, and cups don’t appear in them any more than pots of gold sit at their ends. Also, this is one of the Waite-Smith deck’s “stage cards.” The happy family isn’t in the landscape they’re admiring, but on a plain floor in front of it. Perhaps the lush countryside is no more than a painted backdrop. This possible illusion may connect the Ten of Cups to Pisces, but I admit I just don’t see Mars in this card.
The Thoth deck is noticeably less romantic about the Ten of Cups. The Cups suit peaked at the Nine; the Ten is overstaying its welcome. The card is called Satiety, a word that can simply mean full and satisfied, but also means having had too much and the resulting feeling of revulsion. At first glance, all seems well: the ten cups are streaming light and are symmetrically spaced in the card in the form of the sephiroth of the Tree of Life. Look more closely, though, and you’ll see that several of the cups are tilted slightly and the structure is somewhat unstable. The force of Mars is a bit too much for Pisces, it would seem.
In the Waite-Smith Nine of Swords, the Lord of Despair and Cruelty, someone sits up in bed at night, suffering through anxiety-fueled insomnia. Nine swords hover near them, and there’s a scene of murder carved into the bed frame. Perhaps this person woke up from a nightmare, or perhaps they never fell asleep in the first place, kept awake by racing thoughts. But the nine swords are no more real than those ten cups floating in a rainbow. The worry and suffering is entirely in the person’s head: the whirling, sword-sharp thoughts of Mars in Gemini.
As you might expect, putting Mars in an earth sign produces tangible results. Capricorn is cardinal earth, a sign that builds in the real world, with structure and ambition. Used constructively, Capricorn is productive, industrious, and accomplishing, although it can also be controlling, rigid, and miserly. Mars does well here, with its energies turned towards material achievement. Glancing at the numerology of this card, 3 is the number of manifestation, and in the Three of Pentacles, what’s being manifested are real things.
Jupiter in Leo idealizes grandeur, drama, and attention, and this is what’s shown on the Six of Wands. In the Waite-Smith illustration, a man rides forth triumphantly, accompanied by followers. He wears a wreath on his head and another one hangs from the wand he’s carrying. Whether he’s departing to face a vital challenge or returning home, he’s the center of attention. The Golden Dawn named this card Lord of Victory, but the card itself is deliberately ambiguous about what this victory may be and if it’s occurred yet. In Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot, he says, “The card has been so designed that it can cover several significations; on the surface, it is a victor triumphing, but it is also great news, such as might be carried in state by the King’s courier; it is expectation crowned with its own desire, the crown of hope, and so forth.” Perhaps Our Hero is returning in triumph, but it’s also possible that he’s being sent off with great fanfare to what everyone hopes will be victory, but which isn’t guaranteed. Sometimes, confidence and faith in victory are what’s needed for victory: “expectation crowned with its own desire.” And that would fit Jupiter, which cannot conceive of defeat because it has never reached its limits. Limits, after all, are a Saturn thing.
It might seem odd that Jupiter, a planet that is comfortable in fiery, expressive Leo, feels at home in sensitive, retiring Pisces. There’s a lot of overlap between the two, though. Both Jupiter and Pisces are idealistic (and unrealistic). Influenced by Pisces’ compassion, Jupiter’s benevolence can be true charity towards the unfortunate, although this can also be a gullible combination. And Pisces dissolves boundaries, its infinite qualities a good match for Jupiter’s constant need to expand.
The Waite-Smith Nine of Cups anticipates a “better” (immaterial) happiness in the Ten of Cups. In the Thoth deck, the Nine of Cups is the peak of the suit. Crowley calls the card Happiness and leaves it at that. Nine cups are arranged in a neat and symmetrical 3 x 3 grid. Nine flowers pour water into the cups, which are overflowing. The card is mostly purple and gold, much livelier colors than the heavy dark greens of the Eight of Cups. As a more positive card, this seems a better match to Jupiter in Pisces.
In Leo, a fire sign, Jupiter was able to express its enthusiasm; in Pisces, a water sign, it was able to express its compassion. But Libra is an air sign, and air is emotionally detached, neither passionate like fire nor empathetic like water. When Jupiter is in an air sign, it gets no support for its natural exuberance. Planets in Libra behave harmoniously, pleasingly, and diplomatically, which tends to mute Jupiter, as though Libra were always telling Jupiter to use its inside voice and walk, don’t run.
The Thoth Four of Swords—Truce—differs a bit in meaning from the Waite-Smith version, yet it fits the astrological symbolism as well. As I mentioned, Jupiter idealizes peace and harmony. One of Libra’s weak points, though, is that it can be willing to accept the appearance of peace, even if the real thing is missing. The combination of Jupiter’s optimism and Libra’s reluctance to disturb the balance can result in a temporary “truce” rather than true peace. At first glance, Harris’s illustration is nicely symmetrical, with four swords meeting in the center of a large rose. But the center motif is a distraction from the jangled patterns in the background.
However out of place Jupiter may feel, its nature is to idealize and exaggerate the qualities of its sign, so here it magnifies Gemini’s love of details and rational approach to life. Unable to really commit to any one thing, Jupiter is lost in an ever-growing storm of facts, points of view, details, and trivia. There’s no organization here, just random thoughts, fragments of ideas, scattered data, etc. It’s a brainstorm rather like the Great Red Spot on the astronomical Jupiter: large and apparently never-ending.
In the Waite-Smith Two of Pentacles, a young man dances while juggling two pentacles connected by an infinity symbol. Behind him, in the distance, two ships ride the crests of high swells of water. Now this is one of those times that my interpretation of the card differs from other people’s. Some descriptions of this card (not all) give the card a lighthearted interpretation of fun and pleasure: the man is juggling and dancing, after all. The Golden Dawn named this card Lord of Harmonious Change, which sounds pleasant enough. But I’ve always figured Smith put those ships in the picture for a reason, and it seems as if their survival in in doubt. The expression on the man’s face looks like worry to me, although maybe it’s just concentration. To me, this card symbolizes a juggling act in the metaphorical sense: managing several things at the same time. In this case, the juggling act distracts people from noticing that things are barely holding together behind him. So far, the man hasn’t dropped the pentacles. Indeed, at the moment captured in the illustration, he’s got a firm grip on both of them. (Is it truly juggling if you never let go?) But in the card Crowley simply called Change, it seems that sooner or later this will come to an end. Jupiter in Capricorn tries to expand within limits, and this could mean having to juggle more and more until, inevitably, there’s too much to manage. Jupiter’s promise of infinity is not delivered on: the infinity symbol itself limits the movement of the two pentacles and makes it harder for the man to juggle them. All together, they look like cogs and a belt: a machine that doesn’t allow for true spontaneity—and the ships struggle on.
The Waite-Smith Five of Wands shows five boys waving large sticks around, perhaps in a mock battle. In keeping with that picture, the Five of Wands generally means conflict, competition, and arguing. Both the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley named the Minor Arcana; the name for this card is Lord of Strife. That’s certainly an apt name, given its usual meanings. But “strife” is related to “strive” which doesn’t just mean to argue, but also to put a lot of energy into something or to endeavor. Are the boys fighting, horsing around, or trying to achieve something? Someone had an inspiration back at the Ace of Wands and they’ve taken the first steps to make it real, but they’ve hit the first serious challenge at the Five. The boys in the Five of Wands are neither very young children nor grown men: the process is off to a strong start, but it hasn’t reached the end and the boys haven’t achieved Saturn’s maturity. Their efforts could fail: victory is never guaranteed. Right now, there’s just the struggle.
The Five and Ten of Wands share a suit and an element, but Leo and Sagittarius are different kinds of fire. Leo is fixed fire, “fixed” meaning a sign that’s stable, resistant to change, and inertial. Sagittarius is mutable fire: adaptable, ever-changing, and flexible, and it’s always on the move, seeking to expand its horizons. Sagittarius is religious/philosophical, optimistic, and open-minded, as well as tactless, restless, and self-righteous. Saturn in Sagittarius worries about being corrupted by new ideas and generally disdains everything foreign or strange. In constantly-moving Sagittarius, Saturn is a lead weight. But because Saturn is so thorough, it has the potential for wisdom and deep learning in Sagittarius.
The conflict between planet and sign is less dramatic in this card, where realistic, pragmatic Saturn meets the water sign of Pisces. Fire expresses its frustrations explosively, but water chooses the path of least resistance and drains away. Pisces is sensitive, empathetic, and imaginative, as well as escapist, prone to addiction, and martyred. Like Sagittarius, Pisces is idealistic, and we’ve already seen that idealism and Saturn are a bad combination. Nor is Saturn comfortable with Pisces’s mutability any more than it was with Sagittarius’s. In Pisces, Saturn flounders, looking for solid ground and fearing being swept under and dissolving. So it shies away from Pisces’s selflessness, mysticism, and deep emotion. But there’s still the potential for selfless love and sensitivity to others through empathy.
I haven’t been discussing cards from the Crowley-Harris Thoth deck because its Five and Ten of Wands have essentially the same meaning as the Waite-Smith’s. But the Thoth deck was also designed with astrological correspondences in mind, and its Eight of Cups has a distinctly different feel to it. In Indolence, we have eight damaged cups balanced on the leaves of a sickly white lotus in a stagnant pond under a sky of ominous thunderclouds. Pisces is symbolized by moving (mutable) water, but the water in this card is almost entirely still except for a bit flowing from two cups. Perhaps the Thoth Eight of Cups is a depiction of what could happen if the man didn’t leave his unsatisfactory situation: Saturn deadening all feeling until little is left except someone going through the motions of living.
Of the five Saturn cards in the Minor Arcana, this one has given me the most trouble in seeing the connection between the astrological associations and the card. Libra is one of the signs in which Saturn is on its best behavior. The air signs motivate planets to act rationally. This is fine with Saturn, which prefers objectivity to intuition or feeling. Libra can be just, harmonious, and compromising, but also indecisive, superficial, and passive. It’s the sign most associated with one-on-one relationships and partnerships, and planets in Libra are concerned with relating to others. Because Saturn is Saturn, and there’s always some fear and opposition where it’s concerned, this isn’t a completely blissful combination. After all, air isn’t much more amenable to taking solid form than fire is. Saturn in Libra resists compromise and wonders if other people have earned consideration—or whether it itself deserves consideration from others. Still, Saturn is generally comfortable with Libra’s emphasis on justice and fairness, and Saturn in Libra has the potential for an excellent sense of justice and the ability to have fair and gracious relationships with others.
You know how I’ve said that Saturn tries to bring things into form and reality, and that fire, water, and air really don’t care for that? Well, now Saturn is in the most solid of the earth signs, and I find the Seven of Pentacles to be one of the least negative Saturn cards, at least if you’re considering the Waite-Smith version. Taurus, a fixed earth sign, is practical, stable, and persevering, with a love of the sensual, although it can also be materialistic, stubborn, lazy, and reluctant to change. That’s not a perfect match for Saturn, which prefers austerity to sensuality and hard work to laziness, but there’s a comfortable overlap. The struggle for Saturn in Taurus isn’t getting earth to take form—earth does that naturally—but holding onto it. Here Saturn fears loss, both of security and of material goods (which Taurus tends to see as the same thing). Saturn in Taurus disdains luxury and it doesn’t trust simply enjoying life. But it’s possible for Saturn here to develop a good sense of self-worth and to learn to enjoy material rewards in moderation.
In the Waite-Smith card, a farmer leans on his hoe, gazing at six pentacles on a bush and a seventh on the ground. He has put in the work, and now could be waiting for them to ripen enough for harvesting. The bush looks healthy, so it seems to be just a matter of being patient, and patience is one of Saturn’s lessons. This fits some of the traditional meanings of the Seven of Pentacles, which can mean evaluating your efforts and expecting a reward for your efforts. But perhaps the pentacle-bush doesn’t meet the farmer’s standards and he’s resigning himself to failure. That seems more in keeping with the Golden Dawn’s name for the card, Lord of Success Unfulfilled, and it’s Crowley’s name for the card, Failure. This is another card in which the Crowley-Harris version has a noticeably different feel to it. Against a background of dead gray leaves are seven gray disks with symbols of Saturn and Taurus on them. Even the sickly lotus in the Eight of Cups had more life than this; the Thoth Seven of Disks is a dead end. Taurus is normally a fertile sign (both versions of the card feature plants), but the poisonous lead weight of Saturn is more than it can deal with in the Seven of Disks.