The Mirror of Sienna

Astrologer working with Medieval/Renaissence Techniques. I specialize in Horary an Natal Astrology.

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The 40 Tarot Pips Are Enough

There’s a strong case for using the 40 pips only for proper prediction and judgement in Tarot. Divination must be as simple as possible, in all its forms. When you get proper experience under your belt as a horarist, you learn that the questions can be answered using almost always two or three significators only. There is no need for superfluous outer planets, asteroids and five hundred Arabic parts. Less is more is the cornerstone of divination forms. Too much information is not what you need when you are reaching the Divine for an answer. It just creates background noise. The principle of Occam’s razor can and must be applied to divination.

And the same is true for Tarot. A proper divination methodology that can predict mundane, everyday things in our life combines perfectly with the 40 pips. The 22 major are much too abstract, too grandiose almost, and they open way for what the new age crowd loves the most. Which is talking about internal processes, archetypes, karma and all that gibberish that does NOT predict anything about the future, it only keeps going around in circles about hypothetical inner issues without addressing the most pressing needs of life. I’m not saying they are useless, but I keep them to proper (and rare) spiritual probing, specific rituals, not to predict mundane occurrences.

On the other hand, the 40 pips works with the 4 elements via the four suits, the building blocks of manifestation in the material world. And we are in the material world, right? If we keep the 4 elements sidelined in divination, accuracy decreases dramatically. It’s also why horary astrology and geomancy are very much focused on the elements too. You can’t divine without Fire, Water, Air and Earth. More at The Mirror of Sienna.

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Training Our Will or Sacrificing It?

In modern occultist/magic circles, we keep finding this discourse on training the will. It always requires means of ascesis (which means training, by the way), such as performing the same rituals every day at the same hour, invoking protecting forces, banishing malevolent ones, ablutions, abstaining from alcohol, food, sex, earthly pleasures during specific periods. This discourse tends to keep the effort very much self-centred, as in ‘I will do this to sharpen myself and improve my skills in magic’.

But what if we do these ascetic exercises not only as self-improvement, but in the name of a higher spirit as a form of sacrifice? Sacrificing, etymologically, is turning something profane into something sacred. That’s it. If you pray even when you do not want to, you are sacrificing your time in the name of something above you. Your profane time, which you can spend doing anything else, becomes sacred. Simple as.

But, if we only see these things as self-improvement, the commitment required becomes entrapped within our selves. From my experience, the fuel to keep going at it requires more than just self-betterment.

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Horary: Does He Like Her?

I set out to analyse a possible romantic connection between someone I know. He is not a friend, only an acquaintance, but I have noticed that he is interested in a woman I also know. I assign him the 7th house, as he is the Other from my standpoint as querent. The cusp of the 7th is Aries, so he is signified by Mars, placed in Pisces in the 5th house, with dignity by water triplicity and, above all, located in the house of pleasure and sex, which points to a sexual interest. Or, at the very least, a flirty thing going on. I also give him the Sun as a significator of the male body in such matters, also in Pisces, without essential dignity, in the cadent 6th house.

As for her, I assign her the 1st house, as the 7th from the 7th. The cusp is Libra, so she is signified by Venus. Venus is right on the Descendant, which shows that she is literally on top of him, confirming what I have seen, as she tends to remain extremely close to him. Venus, as the general significator of women, reinforces her role. In Aries, however, she is in detriment, which shows discomfort with her own self in how she deals with this connection. She is not at her best in the context. The fact that she is oppositing her own cusp in the 1st says that the girl is entirely focused on him, forgetting even her own priorities.

Full analysis at The Mirror of Sienna.

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The Heterodox Sun of Aleister Crowley

The chart of Aleister Crowley is always an interesting one to analyse. His Ascendant is positioned at 7 degrees of Leo, associated in the Tarot decans established by the Golden Dawn with the Five of Wands, Saturn in detriment in Leo, a conflict between the principle of winter and devitalisation and the sign of Leo, the most egoic, life-affirming and solar of the zodiac.

This already tells us much about Crowley’s life, a polemicist and solar magician who enjoyed confrontation, opening cracks where there seemed to be solidity, and who took pleasure in those very battles symbolised by the number five, numerologically the figure that disrupts energies in search of establishing new balances after crushing the status quo. When this is positioned in the fixed Fire of Leo we have someone with an appetite for conflict and assertion.

By Alcabitius, the Sun is in the 4th house in Libra, placed directly upon the Imum Coeli. This makes it the most angular planet in the whole chart, with tremendous impact on his life. Even though it stands in the sign of its fall, where that solar ego becomes necessarily more relational, and even though it occupies the most subterranean house of the zodiac, therefore out of sect and contrary to the nature of the Sun, which prefers exposure in the upper half of the chart, it still remained an imposing Sun. The 4th house is also the house of things buried and Crowley spent much of his life searching for hidden traditions, in the etymological sense of the word occult, from the Latin occultus, the participle of occultare, meaning “to hide, to conceal, to withdraw from sight”, indicating that which remains veiled or concealed, awaiting revelation.

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Tarot: Should I Open The Thread?

Just today I was considering the possibility of opening up a thread on SkyScript to check something on my own natal chart. Then I looked at one of my Tarot decks and decided to do something I have been considering for some time. Splitting the deck in two: Minor Arcana to one side, Major to the other.

Mostly because I consider the 56 Minor cards to be a perfect tool for 95% of divination queries. The Major are an entire symbolic building in itself. Some experienced, old-school cartomancers even say that, when you have more than three Majors in a reading, the thing is already in the hands of the gods and not in yours. They are extraordinary for spiritual, ritualistic and magic-driven enterprises, but rather heavy-handed for mundane stuff. So I did split the deck, used only the Minor cards, and shuffled it to answer my question: should I open the thread?

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Cancer In The 10th House and The Chariot

I have been meditating on the significance of the 10th House in Astrology. The 10th House represents the teleology of the soul’s incarnation, the fulfilment by dekalog of the 1st House, the 1 that unfolds to the 10 and then returns to the 1, within the whole Neopythagorean and numerological itinerary this implies, also associated with the Kabbalistic Middle Pillar that connects the unity of Kether to its terrestrial manifestation in Malkuth, in a perennial movement between the eternal and the temporal.

And when that 10th happens to be Cancer? Things become particularly interesting. For instance, Numenius of Apamea, like other Neoplatonists and Hermetic thinkers, believed that the soul entered the flesh, the sublunary world, through the Tropic of Cancer, at the summer solstice, and then had to reascend through the Tropic of Capricorn, at the winter solstice, in a movement between the nearest planet, the Moon (translator of light and forms to the sublunary realm, the matricial womb associated with Yesod which receives within itself all the other sefirot in order to pass them onto Malkuth) and the most distant planet, Saturn, who represents the final portal before the soul’s ascent to the Ogdoad.

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The Hope and Waiting of the 8 of Pentacles

In Latin, spes is the noun “hope”. It names a state of orientation toward a future good. From this noun also comes the verb sperare. The verb means “to have hope”, “to trust”, and “to wait for with expectation”. The ideas of hoping and waiting belong to the same linguistic and conceptual field. One word names the condition and the other names the action that proceeds from that condition. When someone sperat (waits), they remain aligned with what is anticipated. Time passes, but the orientation remains.

The motto Spes mea in Deo est, “my hope is in God”, expresses this structure with precision. Hope appears as something placed, anchored, and sustained. It describes a stable axis rather than a passing emotion. The phrase implies duration. Hope continues while the fulfilment has not yet manifested. The Latin language presents hope as a form of active endurance. To hope means to stand in relation to what is awaited and to persist in that relation.

The 8 of Pentacles in Tarot expresses this dynamic. In the decanological tradition, it corresponds to the Sun in Virgo. It’s technical prudence, bound to continuous labour and progressive refinement. The classical image shows an artisan patiently engraving coins or discs, focused on detail and on the repetition of the gesture.

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Lent, Telos and the 10th House in Astrology

Tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, the period of forty days until Easter. The number 40 is an architecture in itself. It is the multiplication of 10 (the number of full manifestation) by four, the number of the structure of the created world, the four elements, the four gospels, the four cardinal directions, the four worlds of the Kabbalah.

There is a direct correspondence between this and astrology. The number 10 is related to the Hellenic concept of dōdekatropos, according to which each house of the chart finds its full expression ten houses from it. The 1st completes itself in the 10th, the 2nd in the 11th, the 3rd in the 12th, etc. The degree of the Ascendant reaches its full manifestation in the Medium Coeli. This dynamic appears too in the theosophical reduction 10 = 1 + 0 = 1. Unity expands downards to the extreme point of manifestation in the multiple and returns to Itself. It is the Middle Pillar dialectic between Kether and Malkuth.

This resurfaces with clarity in the forty-day period that culminates on Easter Sunday. In John 19:30, Christ, at the moment of death, hands over the spirit to the Father and pronounces the Greek word Tetelestai (τετέλεσται), commonly translated as “It is accomplished” or “It is fulfilled.” The verb derives from the noun telos (τέλος), which signifies end, goal, consummation, or purpose. The form tetelestai is perfect tense in Greek, an action brought to completion whose effects persist.

The path of the Christ-Logos in the fourth gospel reproduces this logic behind the 1-to-10 and then 10-to-1. From the beginning, the Logos descends into the world, assumes flesh, and enters the elements. When Christ pronounces Tetelestai upon the cross, He declares that the form has passed through the four elements and reached its fulfilment. He accepts destiny.

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Horary Astrology: How Am I Feeling Today?

Horary Astrology can be applied to any kind of question, including those that concern our inner state. Today I feel particularly unmotivated. It is not simply a case of a blue Monday, but more like depletion. I decided to analyse myself through a horary chart.

The Ascendant is in Leo, so I am signified by the Sun. That Sun is in Aquarius, in the 8th house. Aquarius is the exact opposite of Leo, the solar sign. So the Sun is in detriment in Aquarius, describing my state of reduced vital intensity, as if my flame were low and subjected to rigid mental structures rather than operating from a living centre.

The Sun is in the 8th house, one of the most difficult, associated with fear, loss, and death. There are no applying aspects to the Sun, pointing to a current state of isolation, without a clear movement out of this condition.

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The Etymology of Information

The word information comes from the Latin informare: in- (within) + formare (to give form, to shape, to mould something). This is seen in philosophy. For Plato, Forms or Ideas are intelligible models of reality. For Aristotle, everything that exists is composed of matter and form. Matter is what something is made of. Form, which he calls morphé, is what organises that matter according to a principle. It is the morphé of language that makes scattered sounds become language rather than noise. Knowing meant receiving form in the intellect. To know (gnosis in Greek, cognoscere in Latin) was to be inwardly configured by the structure of what is known.

For many centuries this understanding was experienced daily. In medieval Europe and in the Byzantine world, for example, architecture, icons, music, the liturgical calendar and the organisation of urban space constantly oriented attention towards the above, to what transcends the individual. Even someone who was illiterate was not, etymologically speaking, uninformed or disinformed. On the contrary. They were deeply informed by those forms that structured daily life.

In modernity, this logic has been inverted. We remain surrounded by rites and symbols, but most of them are horizontal. Advertising, entertainment, social media, news cycles and consumption function as corrupted daily liturgies. Instead of opening vertical axes, they trap us within the plane of constant horizontal circulation and navel-gazing.

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The Corruption of Saturn in Aries

This is not an exercise in mundane astrology, nor a set of banal observations about what “Saturn in Aries may mean for the you and the world”, relying on the worst habits of psychological astrology. This short article concerns the ousía, the essence of the planet itself, its proper substance, and the way that substance is altered according to the sign in which it is placed. The difference between what Saturn is by nature and how that nature is respected or corrupted.

So, what is the ousía of Saturn? Saturn is the greater malefic. There is no point in resorting to modern catechisms about karma and "lessons". Saturn ages, sickens, restricts and uses time as an instrument of death. This is its essence. The ousía, the intrinsic nature of Saturn, is to limit and to kill. If there is any silver lining in this is that Saturn is also the planet capable of liberating the soul from the body’s imprisonment.

When Saturn is in signs that suit it, like Capricorn, Aquarius, or Libra, this killing function is conducted with more order and restraint, less brutally than we may otherwise expect from its nature. Even then, it must be located in a house oriented towards life, such as the 2nd, which nourishes and sustains the 1st. If Saturn is in the 12th, which is its house of joy, it operates directly against the life of the native, since the 12th is cadent from the Ascendant. So, again, Saturn has its joy in killing. And in Aries that killing becomes corrupted.

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The Hermit and Hylomorphism

Éliphas Lévi claimed that Arcane IX, The Hermit, symbolises initiation. There are solid grounds for this, and we can extend this reading to the Aristotelian concept of hylomorphism. To begin with, this card is associated with Mercury. Some say that, in the Rider-Waite, the monk is Hermes Trismegistus. Be that as it may, the presence of Mercury, and in particular the association with Virgo, opens several doors. Mercury in Virgo has domicile and is exalted. It is a sign in which it operates with total freedom. Analytical, meticulous, judicious, precise.

Mercury-Hermes is also the god of the mantic arts, of translation, manuals, and symbols. There is no initiation without knowledge of technique (technē, from Greek téchnē, meaning art, craft, or skill in making, rooted in tektōn, “builder” or “carpenter,” something constructed through learned method rather than inspiration alone) and of how important this is. But this is already symbolised more by the Arcane I, The Magician, where we have Mercury as knower of the four elements, operative, more Geminian even.

In Virgo, this knowledge points more inward than outward, close to the Rosicrucian motto Timor Dei, Gnosce te ipsum, Amor proximi. The second step seems to be what this card heralds: knowledge of oneself, awareness of what one is, of one’s limits, flaws, errors, and also of one’s virtues. Very often this knowledge implies a descent inward. Virgo is Earth, and Earth is a denser, harder element, which points downward, toward the interior of something. It is cold and dry, melancholic, closer to stone than to fertile soil. More than simply descending, we need to excavate and walk towards the centre of ourselves

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Mars - The Enemy of Fernando Pessoa

At first Fernando Pessoa has in his birth chart a financial configuration that is good or, at the very least, reasonable. Why? The 2nd house of movable resources, obviously money above all, is Sagittarius ruled by Jupiter. The greater benefic in Pessoa’s chart is placed right in the 1st house. It is true that Jupiter has no major dignities in Scorpio and retrograde. Even so, it remains the planet of luck and good fortune.

And, when it is in the house of greatest manifestation of a chart, its force always plays in favour of the native’s life, protecting it. Since Jupiter is in the 1st and rules the 2nd, it unites the vitality of the native, the incarnation, and that which sustains it (the 2nd house signifies everything that nourishes the body and existence, which is why it is also associated in medical astrology with the mouth through which food enters).

So what would justify the constant precariousness in Pessoa’s life, with even moments of destitution according to several friends who were close to him?. However, with Scorpio rising, Mars is the ruler of vitality, life and ingenuity, and of Jupiter itself. We always want to see the malefics in good zodiacal condition in a natal chart, especially a destroyer like Mars. Above all, someone ruled by Mars wants to see the red planet in a state that allows it to do what it does best: destroy obstacles, enemies, cut through impediments, and open paths.

Mars in Pessoa does none of this. It is in Libra, the sign of its detriment. Mars hates the signs of Venus because she represents the principle of Love, while he represents the principle of disunion, divorce, and cutting. Mars has to keep the knives in his pocket, removing the native’s capacity to go after what he wants. He destroys the native, not the enemies. Everything worsens because of the house in which it is found: the 12th. It is the worst house of the entire zodiac, the house that is cadent from the Ascendant itself, and therefore anti-natural.

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Where Do Our Ideas Come From?

When the Portuguese philosopher António Telmo said in an interview “the ideas I have come from the angels”, he was making a precise ontological claim: thought is not private property of the ego.

The human intellect operates as a receptive organ. Just as the eye does not create light but receives it, the intellect does not manufacture fundamental ideas. It apprehends forms that exist on a higher plane of reality and brings them down. This plane may be called intellect, the Nous, the angelic world, the realm of forms, the Divine mind. The vocabulary varies but they point to the same source.

This places the human being in a radically different position from the modern one, where they become an interpreter, a translator. An imperfect copyist of a library that infinitely precedes him.

So, when António Telmo formulates the idea, he is rejecting the Cartesian paradigm. He does not say “I produce ideas”. He says “ideas come to me”. The centre of intelligence, instead of being sealed inside the skull, it is open to Being.

This is the same logic that sustains the question “what is this?”. Because if ideas are not mine, then the thing possesses its own identity. I approach it in order to discover, not to project my meaning onto it. By contrast, modernity begins from the opposite assumption. Ideas are generated by the brain. Thought is a neurological secretion. Therefore everything I think is mine. Therefore the world becomes a screen onto which I project internal content.

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The Twisted Mars of William Burroughs

Today is the birthday of William S. Burroughs. The author of Naked Lunch takes us to the realm of addiction, American and Mexican skid rows, and twisted pleasure as an existential axis and as a method of exploring reality, metaphysics and magic. Let’s take a look at his chart.

The stellium in the 12th house is immediately visible. But the 5th house tells us something too. The 5th house is pleasure, sex, luxury, entertainment, play, vital discharge. In Burroughs, the 5th house is Cancer, a cold and moist sign, tied to sensation, bodily memory, attachment, and emotional needs. Pleasure functins similiar to anaesthetic here.

Mars is in this house. And Mars in Cancer is in fall. He does not like it a bit. The hot and dry planet, whose nature is to cut, separate, act, and fight, finds itself in a sign of opposite temperament. The martial energy becomes distorted and corrupted. Also, Mars is retrograde. This indicates repetition, return to the same point, like a drunk soldier who shows up at the same cabaret over and over again. Applied to the 5th house, it is pleasure as a closed circuit and that generates dependency.

Mars also rules the 9th house in Scorpio. The 9th house is God, metaphysics, philosophy, meaning, doctrine, intellectual pursuits, and teachers. So, the same planet that shapes addiction also governs Burroughs’ relationship with higher knowledge. Spirituality combined with sewers. When Mars is in the 9th, or rules it, the native hates organized religion. That’s a classic in traditional astrology.

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Ascetism, Will and the 8 of Swords

I have been meditating on the 8 of Swords, as I mentioned in a previous article. While also reading about the question of Will, in spiritual, magical, and theological contexts, I keep finding the same rule. Will requires the reduction of options and possibilities. In the Spiritual Exercises of Loyola, in the Rule of Saint Benedict, or even in military life, there is always a surrender of personal will to a method, a rule, a spiritual guide, or a superior. This always comes with a strong mental or physical training, turning the person into an ascetic in the original sense of the word, an athlete of the spirit.

The 8 of Swords is a minor arcana in the mental and rational plane. Its decan is Jupiter in Gemini. So we have the planet of expansion, which is hot and moist, in a sign that is also hot and moist. The result is excessive. Jupiter loves to expand everything it touches and, in mutable Gemini, that expansion becomes a flood of options. The mind multiplies paths endlessly, unable to focus.

All classical methods aim to reduce those inner frictions. The vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, for example, are meant to free the one who accepts them. The paradox is fewer choices bring more freedom. It is the exact opposite of what modernity teaches, where more options = more happiness.

The 8 of Swords is a card of anti-asceticism, a mind trapped by excess. When it appears, its message is simple: Do as the ancient athlete did. Narrow your focus, reduce the noise, and move forward.

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7 of Cups and the Meaning of Fetish

The word fetish enters modern European languages through the French fétiche, derived from the Portuguese feitiço, which in turn comes from the Latin facticius, meaning something made, fabricated, artificially produced. In the Portuguese colonial encounters along the African coast, feitiço designated objects believed to be charged with magical power, capable of acting upon the world and the psyche. Fetish was seen as a psychic totem.

Within magical traditions, this is described by egregore. An egregore is a thought-form. When fed by repetition, emotional charge and sustained attention, it acquires autonomy. What begins as a mental creation conditions its creator, demanding energy, like a symbolic parasite.

In the Tarot, the card that represents this mechanism is the Seven of Cups. Astrologically, it corresponds to Venus operating on emotion and sensation. So far, so good. Venus works with the five sense and she does like pleasure.

However, in the Seven of Cups, Venus is in Scorpio. This is where the dynamic becomes troublesome. Venus is in detriment in Scorpio, a fixed Water sign, dense and possessive. So Venus does not only experience pleasure, but becomes enthralled, spell-bound by it and its sources. She now loves the sudden chemical discharge, the rush of self-indulgence. Scorpio also governs the sexual organs and the term venereal derives directly from Venus. Together they create an explosive recipe.

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