Any group of seven in occult work automatically connects to the seven planets, but apart from the Green Man, there are no astrological attributions to work with. Some clues are found in Madame Blavatsky’s books, but a clearer explanation of the origins is in Darcy Kuntz’s The Golden Dawn Tarot and Arthur Edward Waite.
Kuntz introduces John O’Neill (1837-1895) who believed among other things that
… the primordial tradition ran on a North-South axis from the Northern Pole and not on a East-West axis as traditionally taught. He also believed that the seven occult Planets were in fact the seven stars or the Big Dipper which circle the Northern Celestial Pole and not Planets at all.
“The Night of the Gods” inspired W.B. Yeats, and that the primordial tradition is in an ancient Welsh version of Parsifal. Waite, as we know, had a passion for all things Celtic. Waite met Pamela Coleman Smith (artist of the Rider-Waite tarot) when she was working on her play ‘Where There is Nothing’, which became ‘The Unicorn from the Stars’ (1907).
We have a pattern emerging – the seven planets of Ursa Major (The Great Bear), the North Pole, Parsifal, and ‘the twenty-one and the one which is nothing’. Clearly, the concept that the Fool be treated separately from the other cards was already entrenched. However, these ideas were not, and are still not common currency. Waite, the architect of probably the most popular Tarot deck that spawned a thousand imitations, intended to keep it that way:
I saw to it therefore that Pamela Coleman Smith should not be picking up casually any floating images from my own or another mind. She had to be spoon-fed carefully over the Priestess, that which is called the Fool and over the Hanged Man.
Waite, Shadows of Life and Thought, 1938.
The implication here is that even if PCS knew, Waite endeavoured to make sure she never incorporated them into her tarot artwork, nor that this was the direction his studies was taking him. This quotation also hints that the Priestess and the Hanged Man have particular properties similar to the Fool.
The North Pole and the Princesses
The Big Dipper, The Plough, the Great Bear, or Ursa Major is the constellation whose stars point to the North Pole. The Pole Star varies over extended lengths of time due to Precession. The Tarot have been given astrological attributions as is well-known, but there has been a tradition of rulership. The Princesses are unique in Tarot, in that they are given rulership over the quadrants of the world:
There is an ambiguity between the Aces and the Princesses. Elsewhere in the Golden Dawn book (Llewellyn edn.) Regardie remarks on the “… five divisions of the Tarot”. In Hebrew, “Throne” is equal to Chariot, an implicit reference to the Merkaba Vision in Ezekiel and a symbol of Binah, the Mother.
Crowley points to the ambiguity between Malkuth and Kether where
The Princess of Disks…represents the Earthy part of Earth. She is consequently on the brink of transformation… Her crest is the head of the ram, and her sceptre descends into the earth. There its head becomes a diamond, the precious stone of Kether, thus symbolizing the birth of the highest and purest light in the deepest and darkest of the elements.
Book of Thoth
Kether’s association with the Aces is obvious, but there is more to the Princess of Disks. The Sceptre extends beyond the card, while the tip with the diamond appears to end below her feet – the perspective is all wrong unless she is standing on something, as she is holding the sceptre almost at her side. The diamond is at the bottom, which could be seen an inversion of the Tree , or the Princess above Kether. It is my view that the Princess is holding the central axis of the Earth.
Draco the Dragon
Behind the trees is a geometrical shape suggestive of a Pyramid, although in the commentary Crowley discusses the significance of the Holy Mountain. In the top right-hand corner, is the shadowy spiral of Draco: Head of Draco The Throne of the Ace of Cups Forepart of Draco The Throne of the Ace of Swords Hindpart of Draco The Throne of the Ace of Pentacles Tail of Draco The Throne of the Ace of Wands
Of course, the Aces in Book of Thoth of them have nothing like a dragon on them. For the Princesses, however, there is a different story.
Lining up the Princesses from left to right, we see that the figures on the Cups and Disks face forward, while the Air and Fire Princesses have their backs to us while they face the top left hand corner. The Princess of Cups is on the same diagonal, while only the Princess of Disks stands vertically. All the cards have convoluted aspects. The Princess of Cups has the swan, turtle and fish. The Princess of Swords suggests an S-shaped swirl about her head; the Princess of Disks we have dealt with, while the Princess of Disks has the tail of a tiger (the same one that is biting the thigh of the Fool, but the tail is not visible) wrapped about her neck, and the S-shaped flame is the tail..
Israel Regardie introduces Elemental Dignities:
Fire and Water be contrary, and also Earth and Air be contrary. And the throne of the Element will attract and seize, as it were, the Force of that element, so that herein be the Forces of Antipathy and of Sympathy, or what are known chemically as attraction and repulsion.
Regardie then combines the elemental order of Draco to YHVH, the mechanics of which defy analysis, at least for myself.
The constellation Draco encircles the North pole – the snake holds its tail in its mouth, symbol of the Orobouros. Crowley has a similar motif in the Two of Disks:
About them is entwined a green Serpent (see Liber 65, chapter iii, verses 17-20). His tail is in his mouth. He forms the figure Eight, the symbol of the Infinite, the equation 0=2.
When Draco holds its tail, we have the YHVH order restored.
The primordial tradition of North-South axis from the North Pole is alive not only within the Golden Dawn tradition but in the writings of Waite and Crowley.
The Great Bear and The Magus
In some versions of the Book of Thoth, there are three versions of the Magician card. Kenneth Grant points out that there is a Bear behind the Magician in one version. This is none other than the Great Bear, Ursa Major, which has seven stars, and as I have shown relate to the Fool. The Bear influences the Fool upon the Magus. Kenneth Grant, student of Aleister Crowley, has written extensively on this Typhonian Tradition in Outer Gateways. Grant’s prose style is not easy, but now we have the key to this system, namely the Fool.
In the Opening of the Key Spread, the Princesses represent the Seven Palaces of Assiah, but since there are seven stars in the Great Bear, we may infer another connection.