Fortune’s game
“I started to think in literary terms, or movie terms, about the meaning of the lots, since at least in a rough-hewn way, we came to the conclusion that Fortune was the audience, or the eye of God, and Spirit was more like an actor, playing for the audience, or God. I had one interesting thought and that is if you looked at the planets’ distance from the Sun the first is Mercury (related to Fortune), the second is Venus (related to Spirit), the third is Mars (related to Fortune), the fourth is Jupiter (related to Spirit), and the fifth is Saturn (related to Fortune).”—Seth Kupchick, from a private 2015 email
Dear Seth,
When I read your observation about the hermetic lots and the order of the planets from the Sun, I envisioned the order upon the Thema Mundi. There, with Cancer rising, the moon has place of honour, establishing the world—of which the Thema Mundi is the chart—as “a place of Fortune.” This is further made clear by Saturn’s reign over the opposing place, in the Capricorn descendant. “Come!” cries the barker, “Encounter your nemesis, the limit of what you would dare!”
After the Moon comes the Sun; and then, as your observation makes clear, each planet affiliated with the Lot of Spirit is flanked on either side by one of Fortune’s agents. The whole of Spirit’s calvary is in fact contained by Fortune’s regiments—held down, we might say, with the Moon and Saturn keeping the lid on either side, from birth (Asc) to death (Des). The game is rigged in fortune’s favour.
Especially in this “new age” of ours (despite the increasing signs of its dilapidation), one might understandably ask why Cancer and not Leo rises in the Thema Mundi. Why is the sun held down, below the horizon? But the picture is an honest one. What avenue does Spirit have to express itself in a newborn? It’s all just gurgling hunger and fluid management. Tube care. And then, in the end, when death overtakes us, again, what avenue for expression does Spirit have? This entire realm we call the world, through which we pass but momentarily, is Fortune’s realm through and through. Made of anangkē, that interlinking fabric of infinite cause and effect through which the waves of Fortune play, Spirit appears and—in its time allotted—makes at most a temporary impression upon the fabric of Fortune, which the infinitely rebounding waves of cause and effect are destined to eventually wipe clean.
So, while Fortune is mastered by Spirit, it remains forever sovereign, never losing its nature despite Spirit’s best efforts. The door in and the door out are both manned by Fortune. Spirit may be supreme, but its visitations are measured in time, and time is marked by Fortune. Spirit is like a “john” who enters the brothel and is catered to by the mistress of the house. While he’s there it’s all about him, and she appears ever pliable to his will (more or less, of course). But when his time is up, she disengages; she readjusts things, and his presence is in most cases soon forgotten.
The tenth house overcomes the first. Whereas the first and seventh belong to the Moon, the tenth is member to the solar court and arguably its most celebrated seat. Every spirit aims to overcome Fortune. The protagonist aims to overcome circumstance. This is the hope of every soul, choosing a life before the prophet of Lachesis—“that I may overcome circumstance and put one up on the scoreboard for Spirit!” But as every tyrant throughout history, regardless the extent of power and success achieved, has had to realise, the game is rigged. No matter how many times you bend the dice in your favour, the house always wins. Spirit is not at home in the world of Fortune, but merely a visitor.
Quite naturally, whatever reflects, aids and abets the desires of Spirit must be thought of as beneficial to Spirit—that wilful, voluntative entity experiencing the caprices of Fortune. And whatever challenges or stymies it can only be thought of as malefic, hindering Spirit’s ability to realise its desire. Mercury “goes both ways” but only in the same way a cop can be “good” or “bad”. Ultimately, he’s Fortune’s agent, regardless of how helpful and facilitating he may be. He’s working for the house.
In any movie, it’s the protagonist we’re encouraged to identify with. When we see the billboard for Rocky, we imagine ourselves as Rocky, beating all the odds and coming out on top. That’s Spirit. (“That’s the spirit!”) Spirit is the protagonist, and that’s what we sign up for. And it belongs to the movie every bit as much as the circumstances of Fortune it encounters. In Plato’s tale of Er we’re told that after having chosen a life (after having scanned over the movie billboards and bought a ticket), the soul is assigned a daemond which is “the guardian of the life and fulfiller of his choice; the genius that was chosen.” That’s Spirit (genius = genie = spirit); the daemon is Spirit. It’s the protagonist belonging to the life chosen, whose voluntative desires drive the life forward.
So, we could say that in examining the Spirit lots versus the Fortune lots (which I’d suggest should be considered in assembly), we are actually considering the protagonistic versus circumstantial characteristics of a life. It becomes a kind of character study, but not a static one—for character is only measured meaningfully as revealed through the eventualities of time, which is Fortune’s play. This is the sense in which life is bios.
So who are we in all this? And I mean especially as students of astrology. Are we but predestined characters, protagonists of more or less predetermined fate? On the one hand it might seem that way, as though the protagonist in a movie were suddenly written in to discover the movie’s own script: “Here, dude, have a look at your chart.” What choice does he have? But, on the other hand, no matter how immersed we become in a movie, identifying with the protagonist—whose fate indeed is “in the can”—we can’t really say we are him.
If we back it up a step to the souls that gather before the prophet of Lachesis; are we to identify with them? They have a degree of free will, which they exercise in their choosing of a life. That choice is not entirely unlimited, though. Lots are cast, and not by the souls but by the prophet. Only afterwards, in the order of their lots, are they able to exercise their choice—which some do more wisely than others. So, even in the Myth of Er, the radical free will proposed in this tiring new age has no foundation. (Surprise, surprise…) The soul’s only jurisdiction of choice is in the movie it selects among those available when its turn to select arises.
In the same way a film’s protagonist reflects the viewer who chooses to watch it, Spirit reflects the soul, but from a lower, more materially bound order. And in the same way the circumstances encountered by the film’s protagonist conspire by their containment of him to reveal his character, Fortune reflects the principle of constraint experienced by soul at a higher order. The soul doesn’t get to choose any life, any time it wants. Although possessing the faculty of choice, there is only one moment in the cycle of living and dying it gets to use it in a meaningful way. The souls arrive upon the field from whatever heaven or hell their previous lives have lead them to, there meeting up with old friends and acquaintances for some chit-chat before the cycle starts anew. Only after Lachesis’s prophet casts the lots determining the order in which they will be allowed to select—and thus determining the selection from which they will have to choose—do the souls meaningfully exercise free will.
I suppose there is a whole discussion to be had regarding how to understand one’s current life. As much as we may recognise the fatedness of life (“It’s in the can!”), it seems impossible that while in this life our choices do not matter. My own speculation is that, in much the same way each time period in zodiacal releasing is made up of lower order, self-similar reflections providing infinite cycles in minor scale of the order at major scale, we constantly return before Lachesis throughout the span of life we call “our life” but in minor form, from moment to moment (be they hours, days, months or years), at the resulting end of our choices, and that not only does this give us opportunity to practise wiser choosing, but that in exercising wiser choice at minor levels the fabric of fortune itself is subtly transformed at higher levels. As a sort of proxy for the soul, Spirit affects the fabric of Fortune, and thus Fortune eventually shimmers in reflection. But this is quite different from the “I create my own reality” radical free will of the deflating new age. It isn’t a control of fate, but the cultivation of a kind of relationship with fate that makes of it an agreeable familiar (as opposed to a disagreeable stranger).
Just as in the Myth of Er, where the life is chosen within the containment of a prior allotment, the Thema Mundi places Spirit, the soul’s lower-order proxy, within the containment of Fortune, reflecting back up to the higher order of soul its similar containment. It’s always fortune’s game. And yet it reflects our choices.
Thinking of the lots in this way, here are some descriptions that came to mind:
- Fortune = allotment (that containing us which we don’t control)
- Spirit = selection (that which we choose from within our containment)
- Necessity = plot (following Seth Kupchick’s formulation)
- Eros = desire
- Courage = challenge
- Victory = hope
- Nemesis = limit
Astrology Fate & Freewill the Lots Spirit & Fortune Zodiacal Releasing