Four: Exploring the Opening of the Key Spread

Four in the Tarot Workshops

The Opening of the Key Spread appears in its bare bones in The Book of Thoth without comment by Aleister Crowley. You might think that that is the end of it, but the Tarot Workshops have revealed a far greater complexity beyond the mere use as a tarot spread.

The first stage of the OOTK spread is the key. The four stacks represent YHVH or Tetragrammaton, and the four elements. However their true attribution is in the four levels of creation, Atziluth, Briah, Yetsirah and Assiah. Crowley says:

The Elements are four in number; although they are harmonized and balanced and made to revolve, there is an irreconcilable difficulty in their perfection. It is impossible to arrange four numbers in a ‘magic square’, so that all the sides and all the diagonals add up to the same number. Two is the only number of which this is true. Such is the mathematical formula of expressing the doctrine of what was called the Accursed Dyad.

Book of Thoth

While 4 is an very stable number – solid, reliable, etc – look at the Fours Minor cards, it is also incredibly dynamic – it cannot stay where it is put! One way to create stability is with the four cardinal directions, but there is a lack of agreement as to the attributions.

The Fourth position

When i started the Tarot Workshops I used a simple device for working with the number four. Pick 3 tarot cards and interpret. The outer cards influence the inner card. There are two solutions – we can add a fourth card, or we add our own interpretation without the aid of a fourth card. Both are valid. The question then is where does the interpretation without a card come from? This question is difficult to answer, but the simplest is “Malkuth is in Kether but after another way”, but requires elaboration.

We can see the Four as the nuclear family – Father, Mother, Son and Daughter, and in order to avoid incest the Daughter comes from elsewhere. Crowley comes back to this point many times in the Book of Thoth. We might think that there is also a straightforward correspondence between YHVH and the Court Cards:

  • Yod – Father
  • Heh – Mother
  • Vau – Son
  • Heh – Daughter

But actually the model is this:

  • Yod
  • Heh – Father and Mother
  • Vau – Son
  • Heh – Daughter

These are the primary attributions of the Court cards, and no wonder Tarot readers find these cards so difficult to comprehend.

Four As Ten

Ten is the summation of four: 1+2+3+4=10, the number of the tetraktys as well as the sephiroth on the Tree of Life, for which a whole book can be written upon. But there is an earlier fundamental version:

  • 0 – Father
  • 1 – Mother
  • 2 – Son

This corresponds to the AIN, AIN SVP, AIN SVP AVR in Kether. So now we have the Courts corresponding to the Three negative Veils, Kether, the Supernal Triangle and to YHVH in several ways before we even place them on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

The dynamic nature of these cards is reflected in the Formula of the Tetragrammaton and to sex magick (The Star Sapphire, Chapter 36 of Book of Lies), which naturally became topics for subsequent Workshops.

The dynamic nature of four, where 3 has to become 4, and 10, and in so many levels, needs to be contained, and we already had one clue – space. Four can be on a plane, or it is the square below the abyss. Four marks the transition and power of crossing the Abyss through the Princess. Astrologically, four marks the Fixed or Kerubic signs which contain, and the pyramid which appears as the Sphinx.

Four in Magick

Book IV by Aleister Crowley

Tetrabiblios (Four Books) by Ptolemy