Aries III
Finishing up a fiery beginning
I’m finding if I wait until I think I completely understand something to write about it, writing doesn’t happen. So appears to be this decan walk. I’m late to finish up our first triad, in Aries, and my roadblock seems to be my lack of previous immersion with the Thoth deck. I don’t think you have to understand the Thoth deck, and Crowley and the Golden Dawn, but ignoring it isn’t right either.
The Thoth Deck was developed bu Aleister Crowley in the 40’s, and like the Rider Waite Smith deck was illustrated by a woman, Lady Freida Harris. However, it didn’t receive wide distribution until the late 1960’s, after both Crowley and Harris were dead. The relationship between Crowley and Harris, and Waite and Smith couldn’t be more different due to the financial arrangements between the collaborators. As I’ve written about in the past, Pamela Colman Smith received little money for all her work on the Waite Smith deck, while Harris essentially funded and retained 33% interest in the Thoth deck. This is both an example of the complicated relationship between class, money and art, and is also reflective of the difference between turn of the century gender culture, and post WW II gender culture, and the roles of women.
The Four of Wands in both the Rider Waite Smith deck and the Thoth deck symbolize a sense of security, celebration and “completion.” If we look at the Thoth series, and refer back to my two previous posts, we see a cycle, moving from masculine (Dominion), through the duality of the Sun (Virtue), to a sense of safety, a feminine energy (Completion). I’ll be interested to see if the other triads follow a similar pattern.
For me, the Four of Wands is the first stop on this decan walk where I can rest and breathe and feel secure and stable in my year. There has been so much fire, and there still is, but the fire of Mars, as T. Susan Chang puts it in 36 Secrets, is passed through with Venus, who rules this decan and can reside in a “day palace…she has a chamber, an apartment, a pied-a-terre there.” And in her chamber, she will have a party. Chang points out, it is the wedding party not the long marriage, and I love that idea. It is a moment in time to celebrate, knowing it is impermanent.
Think of the idea of a party or a time of celebration. It is a fabrication outside of average living, a commemoration of where we have come though, a time to say yes, it is ok to have a good time, knowing that it will not last forever. It is somehow human to get together for births, deaths, graduations, weddings, to say we leave our regular lives to come together, and say this is important. We mark this day. It is both beginning and ending and as Crowley states, completion. I like this idea.
So as we move now to the fourth decan and Taurus season, a season rooted firmly in the earth, I’ll reflect on the fire of Aries season, the Martian battles I waged and fought, and recognize there can be
an end to them. There is no wedding, that’s for sure, but there is a sense that I am done fighting for now.
Here I’ll borrow from Chang who quotes a poem from Lucille Clifton I’d like to share with you.
Enjoy your week. I’ll be back soon with the Five of Pentacles.
xo Hanna