AUTHOR’S NOTE: In its Liber T tarot curriculum, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn presented elaborate and prescriptive rules for the analysis of elemental associations between cards of different suits in a tarot reading, an interpretive technique known as “Elemental Dignity.” The classical premise was that Fire and Air are “friendly” to one another, as are Water and Earth, while Fire and Water are mutually “unfriendly” and Air and Earth are similarly uncooperative. The interaction of Fire and Earth or Water and Air was considered neutral and supportive when those elements were paired, producing a modestly agreeable state of alignment that I’ve dubbed “complementary opposites.”
The cards in a spread were taken in three-card sets, with the middle card becoming the “principal” focus of the combination and the immediately adjacent cards to its left and right serving as “modifiers” that increased or decreased the potency of the principal card “for good or ill according to its nature” (e.g. a fortunate or unfortunate “principal” card could be either strengthened or weakened in its customary operation according to the elemental friendliness or unfriendliness of its modifying neighbors). I’ve written a couple of detailed essays on the subject (linked below for reference) but my thinking has evolved some since that time.
In practice, I’ve found the use of Elemental Dignities as prescribed in Liber T to be a bit too inflexible and even excessively anal at times since the practice doesn’t take into account a preponderance of cards of a given element beyond the rigid left-middle-right structure. In Liber Theta, his Thoth-based rewrite of Liber T, Jim Eshelman attempted to introduce a more rational approach that acknowledged other ways of handling what I’ve come to call “elemental affinity.”
For example, in the Golden Dawn canon, when a Fire card sits between another Fire card on one side and a Water card on the other, the two mutually-antagonistic modifiers were supposed to cancel one another out, leaving the principal card unaffected. This never made a whole lot of sense since it seems that a pair of Fire cards could “gang up” on the lone Water card and outrank its negative influence, either by preempting its “hostile takeover” before it has a chance to settle in (Fire-Fire-Water) or banishing it after the fact (Water-Fire-Fire). This is only logical, and it strikes me as consistent with the scenario in which two robust positive cards can outshine a negative companion of weaker disposition: in short, two Fire cards will “evaporate” the quenching power of one Water card regardless of their position in the sequence. The same assumptions can be applied to the other elementally-incompatible combinations before or after the minority suit has its say: two Water cards will drown one Fire card; two Air cards will desiccate one Earth card; and two Earth cards will drag down and sit on one Air card.
When the two modifiers are of an identical element that is either amiable or hostile toward the principal, they will cooperate to influence the latter “for good or ill” according to their overriding temperament (e.g. two adjacent Water cards will uplift a central Water or Earth card and slightly encourage an Air card but will thoroughly squelch a Fire card). When they are mutually “friendly” in disposition (i.e. Fire and Air or Water and Earth) where one gets on well with the principal and one doesn’t, the amplifying or intensifying impact on the beneficial or detrimental inclination of the principal card will be moderated accordingly. When they are elementally “neutral and supportive” (i.e. Fire and Earth or Water and Air) that stimulus will be milder still. In larger spreads, a preponderance of any element (or elements) will have decisive consequences for the distribution of energy within the pattern even if they aren’t arrayed in coherent sets since the overall complexion affects the inherent nature of the cards more fundamentally than any incidental concentration.
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 