AUTHOR’S NOTE: When I joined Aeclectic Tarot in 2011 I met two traditional “seven-planet” astrologers whose opinions greatly affected my thinking on psychological profiling with the natal horoscope (and, by extension, with the tarot cards).

I had been a “New-Age” psychological astrologer since 1972 but quickly realized that the “complexions” (aka qualitative humours or temperaments) of classical astrology are sufficient for most character analysis. In practical, day-to-day terms all we really need to know about other people is how they are going to relate to us (and more importantly, what they might try to do to us if we let them); their deeper psychological traits are only of interest if we intend to make a long-term commitment to them at a personal level. We could say that, for all useful purposes, their outward comportment is far more important to us than any internal complexes they might harbor. Although modern astrologers love talking sagely about the latter, the former is what we have to deal with in the vast majority of casual situations.

The classical planets, signs and houses (perhaps with a trace of the three modern “generational” planets) coupled with the four elements of Empedocles (Fire, Air, Water and Earth) as expressed, respectively, in the four humours (Choleric/Hot and Dry; Sanguine/Hot and Moist; Phlegmatic/Cold and Moist; and Melancholic/Cold and Dry) come fully loaded with pertinent insights. The last four neatly summarize the first impression we get from new acquaintances, and taken as a whole these factors provide a perfectly adequate matrix of characteristics that can be applied to human beings in almost any scenario without getting too anal about it.

One of my earliest inspirations, psychological astrologer Robert Hand, turned to Hellenic astrology some time ago, and I found that Elizabethan astrologer William Lilly made profound use of the humours and temperaments in his work. I recently came across a statement by C.S. Lewis in his Medieval cultural history The Discarded Image that puts it into perspective:

‘Like the Planets, the Complexions need to be lived with imaginatively, not merely learned as concepts. They do not exactly correspond to any psychological classification we have been taught to make. But most of those we know (except ourselves) will illustrate one or other of the four tolerably well.” (By excluding “ourselves” Lewis seems to be acknowledging that the human species has a “blind spot” when it comes to self-contemplation.)

In the Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley made similar observations about the tarot cards: “It will not be sufficient for (the student) to intensify his studies of the cards as objective things; he must use them; he must live with them. They, too, must live with him.”

The impression I get is that none of this is to be approached from a purely abstract, psychological angle; it is “nuts-and-bolts” stuff at its most pragmatic. We should not indulge in mind-reading exercises with either astrology or tarot, but instead use them to position ourselves for engaging the subjects of our scrutiny on a face-to-face basis. I would much rather have a visceral tip-off that an expected contact will occur with someone who is choleric (impulsive and most likely hot-headed) rather than learning in an academic way that he or she has Mars in Aries in the 1st House.

As my brother, also an accomplished astrologer, recently said: “We should try to keep it simple.” I’ve long felt that natal astrology is a better tool than tarot for judging character, but even that has its drawbacks if we treat it with too much clinical deference and don’t try to “live with it imaginatively.” Regarding tarot, Crowley’s description of the “moral characteristics” of the court cards (basically proto-psychological vignettes) is one of the best resources for coming up with personality profiles that are more anecdotal than analytical, more “water-color portrait” than “stat sheet.”