On the Lord of Divination: Air and Jupiter ☁️
Exploring divination by element and the planets that rule them
This essay is the final part of a continuing series exploring the Lord of Divination in astrology, a planet used to understand your relationship to the unseen.
If you are interested in learning about what that is, how to calculate yours and what, exactly, your Lord of Divination signifies, check out the introductory essay in the series. If you want to learn about Fire and Saturn, click here. For the essay on Moon and Water, click here. Read the essay on Earth and Mars here.
The Lord of Divination is determined through the triplicity lords of the 9th house. In this newsletter, we will be focusing on the divinatory practice of Air risings and their corresponding Lord of Divination, Jupiter. By whole sign houses, one’s first house and one’s ninth house, where the Lord of Divination is decided, always share the same element. Risings of the same element also have the same planet acting as their Lord of Divination. I use this pattern to explore what divination through the elements look like and what support/shape the ruling planet gives the element.
If you use quadrant houses, which may shift the sign ruling your 9th house, then use that too! Even if you don’t have an air rising, check your quadrant houses to see if your 9th house is ruled by an air sign, or if your Lord of Divination is in an air sign. In that case, this information will be relevant to you too.
Most of what I speak about will be framed using Gaston Bachelard’s books on the elements. Bachelard is a poet and philosopher, not an astrologer, but the elements are fundamental to human consciousness and why not get out of the strictly astro cave every once in a while? The language of the stars is spoken everywhere.
May this assay ground and deepen your understanding of the element ☁️
Speech Sounds
Elementally, air is hot and wet. The heat causes it to rise upwards in inspiration and the wetness makes it connective rather than solely goal-oriented. The humor associated with the air element is “sanguine,” also hot and wet.
This verse from “regimens of health” helps explain the sanguine temperament:
The sanguine…
Loves wine and women and all recreation,
Likes pleasant tales and news, plays, cards and dice,
Fit for all company and every fashion.
Though bold, not apt to take offence, not ireful
but bountiful and kind and looking cheerful.
Inclining to be fat and prone to laughter,
Loves mirth and music, cares not what comes after.Regimen of Health (source)
We see themes of gaiety, games and joyful exchanges, two sides of the air element combined. On the one hand, the air element is social and connective; they bring people together and want to take part in joyful exchanges. On the other, the air element is intellectual, concerned with “news, plays, card and dice”— that which involves contemplation and skill.
One way that air diviners touch the unseen is through knowledge, more specifically words. Indeed, Gaston Bachelard in “Air and Dreams” reminds us that “[s]peech” itself “is prophecy”. Things like sigils, written incantations or simply talking are all avenues for divination and magic if the air element influences your intuition. Rather than using images or tangible objects to divine, try automatic writing or simply speaking out loud, having a conversation with the spirits.
What are words other than a way to use your brain to communicate and connect with others? Like air itself words are ephemeral. The second you say something your mind can come up with the rationale for the opposite being true. But with the fluidity comes the ability to change reality.
Poetry of Movement
Something else that relating and cogitating have in common is their immateriality. You cannot touch the friendship or feeling shared between self and other. As soon as a word is uttered, it is gone from the physical world, no trace of the vocalization remaining.
Even the images of “aerial imagination” are at the risk of floating away too soon: Bachelard says they wish to “evaporate or crystallize” and airy dreamers must “seize” the aerial image “between the two poles of this constantly active ambivalence”. Air diviners may have to capitalize on an idea or piece of wisdom quickly because the words may all change the next day. This fleeting nature also speaks to the ruling principle of air. While the earth element finds it wisdom burrowing deeply into solid things, “[w]ith air, movement takes precedence over matter”. With the air element, the aim is less the accumulation or grounding of the tangible than the subtleties of motion. And with motion also comes action.
Whereas a more earthy poet will remind us of the downward pull of matter— “[i]n their verse, we will hear the heel strike the ground,” as Bachelard puts it. But a true airy poet or diviner aspires to leave no trace, instead focusing on the upward ascent: "What is good is light; whatever is divine moves on tender feet”. Indeed, our most transcendent self, the spirit, it known for its movement upwards, both an expansion past material borders and a great freedom. Airy diviners may get support from simply moving their body or day-dreaming, leaving the parameters of reality on the ground below. Don’t let sense or the limits of matter interrupt your wildest dreaming and the fantastical wisdom you receive from the air whisking past you. Following the idea fully upward may be what is needed to make the dream real.
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