AUTHOR’S NOTE: Although I had been using the Golden Dawn’s “Elemental Dignities” (EDs) casually since 1972 and thought I had a firm grasp of the fundamentals, something about their application still bothered me.

My doubts were exacerbated almost ten years ago when I spent quite a bit of time and effort dissecting the Order’s tarot curriculum, Liber T, in preparation for a lecture on EDs at a regional tarot meeting. (See the essay attached to my 2017 post, Demystifying Elemental Dignities, in which I called them “more seasoning than core ingredient.”)

That work caused some perturbations in my understanding of the concept, but I subsequently read Christopher Hyatt’s treatise in Israel Regardie’s Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic and Liber Theta, the College of Thelema’s Thoth-based rewrite by Jim Eshelman, both of which seemed to confirm my earlier assumptions. So I let my reservations go and continued using EDs sporadically as I always had, with some minor adjustments.

Recently I received a belated awakening on the subject after reconsidering a few examples of my previous analysis. This epiphany brought with it the renewed awareness that the only cards directly involved in the elemental correlation are the two “modifiers” that lie on either side of the “principal” card sitting between them. In practice, the disposition of those modifiers will be mutually: 1) friendly; 2) unfriendly; or 3) neutral, and the principal card will receive the “fallout” of their interaction in the form of a strengthening, weakening or steady-state current of energy (below I call it an “atmosphere”), regardless of its own elemental nature that will only be swayed by the input, not engaged in its generation.

In short, the middle card is not part of the equation but receives its blessing or curse. My “alliteration alarm” is going off, but I could also say it is precipitated upon but doesn’t participate in the <cringe> precipitation. (Note that in the case of neutrality between the modifiers there is no change in the status of the principal card.)

For example, if the principal card is of the Fire element (let’s say the 8 of Wands) with two Water cards abutting it or a Water card on one side and an Earth card on the other, those modifiers are quite friendly with one another and would strengthen the pursuance of the 8 of Wands even though it is elementally hostile to the Water cards and neutral to the Earth card.

If, on the other hand, the 8 of Wands is adjacent to a Water card and a Fire card, the modifiers are unfriendly in their dealings so it would be weakened in its execution by their adversity, even though it is elementally attuned to the Fire card.

The third instance would be the 8 of Wands surrounded by a Water card and an Air card, which according to Liber T are “neutral and supportive” of one another but the pairing is anemic, so it has no effect on the 8 of Wands even though the latter is on good terms with the Air card. There just isn’t enough “oomph” to motivate it.

I had always thought that the principal card, because of its sensitive position, had to be an active player in the concatenation of elemental forces, but the wording in Liber T leaves little doubt that it isn’t so. I believe that MacGregor Mathers muddied the water when he started talking about the principal card being “well-dignified” by friendly modifiers, “ill-dignified” by unfriendly modifiers, or ignored by neutral modifiers, all “according to its nature, for good or ill.”

That last quote had me thinking that the principal card has a contributing role after all, but in hindsight I think Mathers was only saying that an inherently nasty card would be made meaner (not kinder) when strengthened (i.e. well-dignified) by the effect of cooperative modifiers, and it would become less vicious in its dastardly attitude when weakened (i.e. ill-dignified) by the impingement of uncooperative modifiers, without having those harmonious or discordant qualities redefine its elemental signature due to their close contact. Nothing about the card is transfigured, it is only “tweaked” in its performance.

The implication is that the modifiers’ influence occurs at arms-length and all it does is create an “atmosphere” in which the principal card can take on greater potency or suffer a depletion of power for whatever its current mission happens to be. In this model, mutual “friendliness” of the modifiers makes a harsh principal card harsher and a mild one even more mellow by raising their intrinsic strength, while modifier “unfriendliness” would siphon off the antagonistic vigor of a disruptive principal card and make a constructive one less energetic in its operation.

It’s like there is a “firewall” between them and only the essence of their combined influence bleeds through, not the elemental “full monty” that would transform the landscape. Thus, there is no need to deliberately parse the middle card’s degree of sympathy with individual modifiers of different elemental persuasion (although I still think it has some merit in a linear interpretation).

When I read Liber Theta, I received the impression that maybe Mathers was onto something with his “according to their nature” premise because Eshelman alluded in his examples to the qualities of all three cards involved in the sequence, not only the elemental relationship between the opposing modifiers and its impact on the middle card. But Mathers’ examples in Liber T were not robust enough to thoroughly demonstrate his assumptions and thus convince me that he knew what he was talking about.

At any rate, by way of example I liked Eshelman’s indirect conclusion that a Fire card with another Fire card to its left and an Earth card to its right in a “neutral” configuration would still partake of the emerging “energy boost” of the Fire card before being let down slightly by the Earth card, on balance coming out ahead and not just flat in the “potency sweepstakes.” That’s how I’ve been using it, and it seems to make a lot more sense that way.

For completeness, I should mention the elemental distribution for the modifying pairs:

Fire is Friendly with Fire and Air, unfriendly with Water and neutral with Earth
Water is friendly with Water and Earth, unfriendly with Fire and neutral with Air
Air is friendly with Air and Fire, unfriendly with Earth and neutral with Water
Earth is friendly with Earth and Water, unfriendly with Air and neutral with Fire