Elemental Dignities, or ED for short is a technique that examines how to match the four classical elements - Air, Fire, Water, Earth - to each Tarot card, how these elements interact each other, the meanings we can extract from their interactions, and how this can be used to create a contextual layer of meaning to any Tarot reading.
ED is generally useful in all readings, but it comes in especially handy when using decks that don’t have a lot of imagery on them to help interpretation. Really, this whole website came about because
So that was a lot of words, let’s look at some concrete definitions and examples of how all those words actually apply:
1 - The Elements
The four classical elements, their colors and attributions
Let’s start with the four elements and their properties:
Air
Fire
Water
Earth
Hot
Hot
Cold
Cold
Wet
Dry
Wet
Dry
Active
Active
Passive
Passive
East
South
West
North
Swords
Wands
Cups
Pentacles (Disks)
These sets of properties are useful tools for distinguishing the elements and how they interact with each other.
The colors associated with each element attempt are very useful for visual exercises, so you’ll be seeing them quite a bit throughout this topic.
Properties
Air, being an active element, has movement and change in itself. It’s logic, reason, thoughts. Wind, breath, justice, truth, clarity, creativity, ideas, the mind.
Fire, equally active, is fast and explosive. Drive, energy, passion, willpower, drive, ambition. All action, no thought.
Water is passive, it ebbs and flows. It’s emotions, feelings, intuitions, and like a pond or the ocean, it can be shallow or deep. It might seem like it’s not moving much, but it has mass and speed when it needs to, and you can drown without realizing it. It’s everywhere in this planet, in our bodies, it’s abundance.
Earth, equally passive, exists, it’s just there. It has the patience of ages and will never budge until it wants to. It’s security, wealth, foundation, pillars, stability, also prosperity, materiality, growth. All inactivity.
Compatibilities
Elements with one matching property - for eg. fire/air with hot/hot - are compatible with each other and support each other, when paired.
Elements with no matching properties are incompatible, and therefore weaken each other.
Compatibility table
Air
Fire
Water
Earth
Air
Friend
Friend
Friend
Nope
Fire
Friend
Friend
Nope
Friend
Water
Friend
Nope
Friend
Friend
Earth
Nope
Friend
Friend
Friend
2 - Elemental pairings
Elemental pairings and interactions
Let’s look at how elements interact with each other
Friends
Air and Fire are both active elements, moving fast and breaking things, favouring change and action. They feed each other and support each other.
Water and Earth are both passive elements, slow and steady, favouring stillness and inaction. They support each other, augmenting each other’s characteristics. Earth turns Water to mud, Water sharing its speed while Earth shares its stability.
Air and Water are friendly and neutral to each other, one active and another passive. They don’t fight each other, there’s no antagonism, but their support is not as strong as between active/active and passive/passive elements. Unstable, lacking structure. It can be rain, or fog, ideas fighting through emotions, emotions trying to win over ideas.
Fire and Earth are also friendly and neutral to each other. Fire will heat up the earth, slowly and steadily, but with no movement - an hearth slowly radiating heat.
Enemies
Air and Earth are incompatible with each other, therefore whenever they’re together in a reading, they’re going to be at odds, weakening each others influence. Earth will trap Air, not letting it go anywhere; Air will blow inefectually at Earth, unable to move it.
Fire and Water are incompatible with each other, therefore whenever they’re together in a reading, they’re going to be at odds, weakening each others influence. Water douses Fire, turning it into steam.