General comments on Elements

“It seems hardly possible to define these terms [i.e. Earth, Water, Air, Fire] in such a way as to make their meaning clear to the student. He must discover for himself by constant practice what they mean to him. It does not even follow that he will arrive at the same ideas. This will not mean that one mind is right and the other is wrong, because each one of us has his own universe all to himself, and it is not the same as anybody else’s universe…. There is no right and wrong about any matter whatsoever. This is true, even in matters of the strictest science. The scientific description of an object is universally true; and yet it is not completely true for any single observer.” (Thoth, 17–18).

Crowley also seems to take the view that Earth is some combination of the other three Elements, due to the conflation with Hebrew thinking, and maps the set of three Elements onto Hindu thinking:

“The Ancients conceived of Fire, Water and Air as pure elements. They were connected with the three qualities of Being, Knowledge and Bliss, previously mentioned. They also correspond with what the Hindus called the Three Gunas—Sattvas, Rajas and Tamas, which may be translated roughly as ‘Calm’, ‘Activity’, and ‘Slothful Darkness’. The alchemists had three similar principles of energy, of which all phenomena are composed: Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt” (Thoth, 18).

We should stay away from such conflations, since they will tend to cause us to misconstrue the component parts of the various systems involved.

Regarding Invocation and Understanding Tarot Cards

“By Invocation is meant the aspiration to the highest, the purest form of the part of oneself that one wishes to put into action” (Thoth 44).

Since “in order to understand any given card, one must identify oneself with it completely for the moment” and “one way of doing this is to induce or compel the Intelligence ruling the card to manifest to the senses” (Thoth 44), our idea of meditating on the card is a very suited one to the purpose.

We should begin by calling upon the ruler of Earth, and then focus in more closely on the card. This particular focal point could be given a name (and likely does have one in the traditional system), but as we are learning Tarot mainly for the sake of understanding traditional systems and building up grist for our own mill down the road, we can dispense with that, and instead simply aim to become identified with the nature of the card. One way to do that is to seek to “enter” the card as though it were a door.