M.H. Benders wrote:

I’ve read a good deal of the essay [The Small Cards of the Tarot – EH] last night. It’s pretty good, exact and precise. There is one thing that suddenly caught my attention and which I have been pondering over. Why is it that the fire & water trumps

From your comments below, presume you mean small cards, not trumps.

follow the natural order in regard to the descend of the element (The start of fire is the youngest sign, aries, the end of fire the oldest fire sign, Sag.) whileas with the Air & Earth trumps this natural order is not adopted? Seems strange to let Capricorn be the start of Earth and Virgo the last manifestation of it. Do you have any idea why Crowley didn’t use the natural orders? Was it because he felt that attributing peace to Gemini would be really weird (it would, definatly) and likewise attributing change to Taurus doesn’t sound like a good plan either?

It’s because in each element the cards are attributed to the signs in the cardinal-fixed-mutable order. Capricorn is the cardinal sign of earth and Libra is the cardinal sign of air, so these go with the twos, threes and fours, and likewise for the fixed (Taurus and Aquarius) and mutable (Virgo and Gemini) signs. The cardinal signs are supposed to represent the first appearance of the element, the fixed signs their establishment, and the mutable signs their fading away, so that’s the actual rationale behind ordering the small cards in that way.

The “natural order” in which they appear in the Zodiac could be an alternative way of arranging them, I suppose, but because the cardinal-fixed-mutable pattern is such an established part of the symbolism one would have to question whether there is any real significance in this order. For one thing, note that entry into the cardinal signs of fire, water, air and earth coincide with the vernal equinox, the summer solstice, and autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, respectively. Because of this, you could argue the cardinal elements do indeed represent the natural “first” signs of each element, if you measure “first” as being the beginning of each of their respective astronomical seasons, rather than in terms of the straightforward linear order of their appearance after Aries, since the four positions of the Sun have such obvious astronomical significance. Each astronomical season commences in a cardinal sign, progresses through a fixed sign, and ends with a mutable sign, although all three signs in each season belong to different elements, and the season takes its elemental attribution from the element of the cardinal sign which begins it.

As an aside, for anyone unaware, the elemental and triplicity attributions are not arbitrary. If the signs are laid out in a row from Aries to Pisces, then they are alternatively attributed to cardinal-fixed-mutable in that order, and also to fire-earth-air-water in that order. See http://www.erwinhessle.com/resources/zodiac.php for more. This also explains “why” the cardinal-fixed-mutable order does not coincide with the linear “natural” order, since you’d have to break that repeating pattern to get them to fit.

Also note that the elemental attributions this results in (spring to fire and east, summer to water and south, autumn to air and west, and winter to earth and north) do not agree with the generally accepted occult attributions of air to east, fire to south, water to west and earth to north. The easiest way of understanding the traditional attributions is to reflect that everyone (everyone in the northern hemisphere, at least) agrees that earth goes to north, the cold barren wastes of winter. Fire is also naturally attributed to south, which is where the sun always appears north of the Tropic of Cancer (the Tropic of Cancer being the latitude at which the Sun appears directly overhead on the longest day, when the Sun enters that sign). Air goes to spring and the east, because it represents new life, and water gets west, which is remaining.

With the astronomical attributions, fire goes to spring, east, representing the energy required to break free from the grip of winter, the new life force, and the beginning of the Sun re-asserting itself as the days once again become longer than the night. Water goes to summer, south, representing summer storms and the almost oppressive stillness of some hot summer days, as well as the incubation and nurturing of growing crops. Earth still takes north, so this leaves air with west, referring, amongst other things, to the harvest (which is the separation of crop from ground, air representing analysis and the blade) and the “birth” or separation of new crops. Note that the active signs of air and fire (air and fire are represented by upward pointing triangles) go with the equinoxes, and the passive signs of water and earth (water and earth are represented by downward pointing triangles) go with the solstices. That is, the active signs represent periods of change, from cold to hot in the case of fire, and from hot to cold in the case of air, whilst the passive signs represent the stable period of heat in the case of water, and the stable period of cold in the case of earth. Obvious this only applies to the cardinal signs of each element. Also the two primary elements of fire and water get attributed to the first two seasons of spring and summer; in the astrological attribution, the elements appear in the fire-water-air-earth order which coincides with the tetragrammaton and the natural order of having the father and the mother appearing before the children, or the planting and the growth appearing before the harvest. The traditional occult symbolism does not exhibit these qualities.

I’ve always found the astronomical elemental attributions more fitting than the traditional occult ones for these reasons, especially if you are working with astrological or “natural” symbolism, but it’s not particularly important which one you use at the end of the day. The chief difficulty with adopting the astronomical attributions if you are engaging in almost any type of ceremonial magick is that all your rituals are going to be “wrong,” but it wouldn’t be particularly difficult to fix them if you were so inclined for most cases, although you’re going to have problems with the Enochian and other such well-developed systems where changing one aspect is going to throw a lot of things off.