“The cosmic duty of the elements is to mix with each other in infinite combinations and proportions in order to knit manifest creation together.”
– Lon Milo DuQuette in Tarot Architect

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This quote brought me back to my earlier essay about the four elements as “natural forces,” an analysis that aligned with and expanded upon Aleister Crowley’s similar observations about the court cards in The Book of Thoth. My focus now (as it was then) addresses the interaction of different elements when paired among the cards of a tarot reading.

The principle of “mixing-and-matching” elemental properties across individual cards in a spread is particularly useful when performing “pips-only” readings as I sometimes do for purely mundane questions. In these readings, the relative abundance or scarcity of any element can “doctor the recipe” by compromising the balanced application of the overall energies in the matter at hand. Equilibrium can be “hijacked” by disproportionate emphases on specific attitudes or behaviors that steal the spotlight.

I became somewhat fanciful in my extrapolation from Crowley’s rudimentary ideas as shown in the link below, so brace yourself for a little more of the same. Suppose, for example, that a spread is crammed with Water cards but contains few or no Earth cards; from an emotional accord perspective, this may signify “standing in quicksand” that offers no firm ground to sustain constructive rapport. The other way around, we’re at least able to make “mud-bricks” to erect a barrier against hurtful intentions or maybe even build a bridge over troubled waters. Too much Fire and too little Air will eventually snuff out combustion, while an Air-to-Fire ratio skewed toward Air might cause an “uncontrolled burn.” Imbalance between Fire and Earth could mean destructive volcanism or destabilizing seismicity on one hand and stunted growth on the other. Fire that lacks cooling Water parches the land, but too much Water will drown Fire. Restless Air dominating placid Water threatens unsettled conditions, but Water may sink into a becalmed lethargy when stimulating Air is absent, while Air overriding Earth can raise a befogging murk (“blowing dust in the eyes,” as it were) and the opposite produces an indolent stagnation.

The goal in a reading is to turn these “naturalistic” vignettes into expressions of human behavior or situational bias. I suggest bringing them to bear on practical questions by including only the elemental suit cards (“pips” and courts) in the pull, then looking for a preponderance or absence of the various elements in your spreads and drawing conclusions about the querent and/or the situation accordingly. In order to preclude “elemental gridlock” of matched pairs, any spreads used should contain an uneven card-count numbering five, seven, nine or more. But I should digress briefly before closing.

DuQuette mentions the “fifth element,” Spirit, and notes that it is represented by the not-entirely-untainted Aces of the Minor Arcana, and the four court cards are further embodied in those Aces as a kind of “family” facilitating the elemental mixing process that affects even the Aces. In keeping with my “recipes for self-realization” metaphor, I’m going to adjust that scenario to involve a “head chef” (the RWS King or Thoth Knight), a “sous chef” (the Queen) and a “kitchen staff” (the other two court cards). These five are the transcendent movers-and-shakers of their suit that symbolize a higher purpose.

I can see two ways to make this concept of Spirit work within the four-suit model I’ve presented here. One is to set the four Aces aside along with the trump cards when performing the shuffle, then once an elemental preponderance has been identified in the spread, take out the corresponding Ace and place it in a predesignated position within or outside the layout as a purveyor of spiritual reinforcement. The other approach is to leave the Aces in the deck, then when the cards have been dealt, calculate a “numerical essence” trump-card for the group that stands for the archetypal Spirit behind the reading. It won’t matter if this card doesn’t reprise the dominant element because, even though the Golden Dawn assigned all of them elemental qualities, either directly or indirectly according to astrological sign or planetary rulership, the trumps exist above the mundane level I’m setting for this operation and can provide a cross-cutting environmental backdrop for the situation.

To wrap this up, take a look at the full complement of “natural forces” in the linked post.

Elemental Modifiers as Natural Phenomena