Exploring the Elements: Air, Earth, Fire, Water

[Music] It's Mercury Retrograde. There's a clips energy on the loose, so I'm not going to try and be witty with my announcements today. If you want to support me in this podcast, head on over to my website MoonMattersAstrology.com. I have a mailing list. Sign up for it. My monthly newsletter is good for your health. I have a shop. Take a look around and see if there's anything you like. Or honestly, just do me a solid and leave a Spotify or iTunes review. Those things are so freaking helpful and I'm so grateful when I see new ones come in. If you feel nice or just want to do something to make my day and support me, then definitely sing my praises in those review sections. However, you decide to support me though. You have my eternal gratitude. Today, we're going to be taking it back to basics a little bit. It's long overdue that I made an episode about the elements. The elements are considered a basic or an intro-level thing, but I think that depends on how you use them and how deep you go with them. Because yeah, we can be like, we have water signs and air signs. Cool. But we can go so much deeper than that. So today's episode is going to be an intro to the richness of the elements and how they can deepen our astrological understanding. And honestly, just our connection to everything around us if you want to get a little woo with it. Today, we're going to be going over the elements themselves, their relationships to one another a little bit, modalities and aspects, terror associations with the elements, and just some overall significations for each of them. But let's start with the question of what is the importance of the elements? Why even make this episode? You might have seen the word "triplicity" used in reference to the elements in astrology. And "triplicity" is just a fancy-ass way of saying groups of three. I actually can't stand using this word to talk about the elements because it sounds stuffy and like, you know, like, "Oh, the triplicity of things." And also mostly just because my brain doesn't like numbers and it gets confused because there's four elements. And then it wants to think it's quadruplicity, which actually refers to modality. So if you ever got those terms confused, you aren't alone. So let's just clear the air. To clear the air, "triplicity refers to elements because they're a group of three." Quadruplicity refers to modalities because it's a group of four. Even though it's three groups of four and "triplicity" is four groups of three. And as you can tell, this really annoys me. So I just stay away from those words altogether for the sake of my brain, and I say elements and modalities, but I wanted to let you know that if that also confused you, you aren't alone. The elements are important because they're one of the first big categories that we break the zodiac signs into. There are four elements in total, and each element has three signs associated with it. Each of the signs will behave a little differently under the elemental umbrella because of things like modality, gender, and planetary ruler, but the element is the broad template from which the sign derives. A good bit of its qualities, from the majority of its qualities, do stem from that overarching umbrella of the element. When we understand the elements, we understand the motivations of the signs and the planets associated with them. We get to know what a planet or a sign likes and what it doesn't like. Knowing the elements gives us so much information about our charts, aspects, and the planets involved that I think we sometimes gloss over it because the elements can seem like such a surface level concept. But today we're going to explore why that's anything but the case. Knowing how earth and water connect and then how earth and air connect is going to give you such great insight because you can look at how they connect on an abstract elemental level, then on a modality or gender level, and then on a house and aspects level. There's layers to this and the elements kind of seep their way into every layer of this astrological cake. Then there's practices even outside of astrology that implement the elements. Tero is huge on this one. I'm sure most of you know that if you're into Tero, I'm sure most of you know that the suits correspond to the four elements and even derive the majority of their meaning from them. Then there's the major arconic cards that are designated to each of the elements in their totality and then even further. The court cards also have a relationship to the elements and I'll be touching on these concepts very briefly here. But if you want to know more about them, then sign up for my Tera webinars that I have going on. I do a much deeper dive there. Plus you get the class materials. Before we get too far into Tera talk, let's first talk about each element on its own. We'll start with air and then go through each element and then bring it all together for a more in-depth discussion and connections. While I'm talking about these, I want you to be thinking of your own key words, ideas and connections between the elements. I am by no means the be all and all of this. There's so many ways that you can connect the elements together. Each of our lived experience is going to change our view of them a little bit and you can just be really creative with it. And I think that something else I love about the elements is that they do relate to just the world around us. So you don't even need to be into astrology to understand how the elements connect. Because yeah, while they are heavily used in astrology and divination, it's just a very spiritual concept in general, a very human concept in general. They relate so much to the human experience. We come into contact with them all the time. They're the really tangible part of our spiritual world and they can be really fun and sacred to work with. So as I'm going through this and you're sitting there listening to this, just try to think on your own and let what comes up come up for you. Let's start out by laying the groundwork for each element. Air is masculine in nature. The zodiac signs under this element are said to be masculine signs, which means they have a more solar or outward expression. Remember, we're not talking gender in the societal gender here. I say it every time and I'm going to always say it every time. I think I just need to make an episode on gender, which to be announced, yeah, TBD. We'll see when that happens. Since air is masculine in nature, it tends to move and initiate action rather than be the recipient of it. You often see the color that represents air as yellow or orange, and this is one of the hardest to give a color to because it's air. So more often than not, I see this as yellow or something in that vein, but it could be any color. I just know that that's typically how I see it. The air signs are Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius, which means the planets associated with air are Mercury, Venus, and Saturn. And we'll see overlap with these planetary associations. So planets will be associated with more than just one element naturally. Mercury's nature is both wet and dry, hot or cold. It can be anything it needs to be to suit the situation. Then you have Venus, who is generally warmer and wet in nature, and Saturn, who is more cold and dry in nature. The planets take their corresponding dispositions and use the element of air in a way that suits them. So this is why we have Gemini, who is known for duality because it has Mercury who can switch settings at any time. But then we have Aquarius, who is more cold and factual, and then Sweet Libra, who is still logically driven, but wants to make sure everyone is heard. They all bring their own personal touches to the element. I'll say that Libra is sort of the odd one out because Venus is of the feminine gender of the nocturnal sect. So it feels a bit out of place and a masculine sign, but it embodies it in a way that brings tenderness and inclusivity because it's domiciled. The biggest signification of air is the mental world. This element stands for all things intellectual thinking, abstract, or communicative. The element of air is our thoughts, our inspiration, and the words we speak both verbal and nonverbal. Any form of communication falls under the realm of air. We usually look to Mercury in the chart to see about communication style, but all the air signs have a hand in that. Someone can be inundated with Aquarius energy and have just as much of a penchant for knowledge and facts as someone with a domiciled Mercury. It's just going to express in a Saturnian rather than Maccurial Way because it's Saturnian air. Air shows us how we think, what we think about, and how we communicate that energy with the world. Breath is also huge for this element. I think air gets overlooked as an important life-sustaining element because we take for granted that we can breathe, that we just do it. I think we over-intélectualize air a lot. Then the practice of pranayama, which is basically breath work, you're learning to control your breath and use it in a meditative way. Prana means life, energy, or life force, and yama means control. So there's a whole practice to learn to control your life force through your breath. Overall, the element of air is intellect and communication, but it's also the life force and spirit that resides within us. It's our ability to use reason, make rational decisions, and create ideas that other elements can implement in the physical world. While air itself cannot be seen in the physical world, it. can be felt and the impact of it can be seen. So think of Twister's tornadoes or hurricanes. Air can be a powerful and dangerous thing. And even if it has no physical form, it has the ability to control the physical world nonetheless. So let's scale it down from a tornado in the physical world, but make it a tornado in your mind. The anxiety tensions anger, you let swirl in your mind, it has the ability to control you in the material world. This is why practices like Pranayama meditation and mindfulness have such a beneficial impact on our physical health and physical world because they quell the tornadoes of our mental world. We work with the element of air constantly, even if we aren't aware of it. It's not just our thinking and communication. It's also the ability to reason, problem solve, our memory, and the bliss we feel after a deep inhale and exhale. Air is just as spiritual and divine as the other elements. So again, do not over-intellectualize the air signs. They do that enough themselves. Welcome back to air when we make other connections, but now let's move on to fire. Fire is masculine by nature. This means that all the air signs and all the fire signs are masculine signs by nature. They're more outwardly assertive and solar in their expression. The way they move through the world is said to be exerting energy rather than taking it in. We can even see this in the elements themselves. Air and fire tend to be quick flashes that can be uncontrollable and subject to switching at any moment. That's just the nature of them without any provocation or outside conditions affecting them. So these are the two masculine elements and the zodiac signs associated with them naturally will then hold down the masculine polarity. Fire is usually represented with the color red or a really red orange color. Again, both fire and air have a more alarming color scheme assigned to them because they're action-oriented and forceful. And then this really got me thinking, so we're gonna take a little tangent here. Have you ever wondered why the McDonald's logo is red and yellow? Because truly it's a hideous color combo and it has nothing to do with catch-a-man mustard like you might assume. You can look up the psychology of colors and you'll actually see that they relate a lot to the elements that we assigned to them. Red is a very stimulating color and it triggers us to take action while yellow has a feeling of friendliness but also functionality. The two colors combined when you bring them together or the two elements combined, bring the subconscious feeling of speed, utility and making quick decisions. They're both colors that say, look at me much like fire and air tend to do. Enough of my aside about the psychology of fast food, chain colors and their subconscious triggering of the elements and let's just go back to what fire means. But I think if you look into fast food chains, you will see that the elements are kind of used and the colors associated with the elements are used in a way that the marketing would want you to use them, so to speak. The signs associated with fire are aries Leo and Sagittarius. This means the planets associated with fire are Mars, the Sun and Jupiter. Mars is hot and dry in nature. The Sun is warm and somewhat dry in nature and Jupiter's nature is warm and wet. All the planets here are warm and then their dispositions change from there depending on how arid they are or not. You'll notice the malefic planets tend to be a lot more dry and the beneficues tend to be wet or humid. Each of these planets will use the element of fire in their own way. Aries is known as the hot head, the rage and a cage. Mars takes full advantage of the dry fiery landscape. Aries is like Smokey the Bears' worst nightmare. There's always a chance for fires in the land of aries because of the dry landscape. Then there's Leo. This is a really sustainable and safe place for the element of fire. There's the ability to get hot and burn things, but it's also about warming others and making people feel cozy. Then last we have Sagittarius. Sagittarius uses the element of fire in the most chaotic way because it's about the illumination of the world and also expansion of the fire. They all use fire to fuel their own endeavors and that's a big signification for fire, fuel. So let's start there. We know the element of fire is about passion, creativity and intuitive action, but to have any of those things we need a source of fuel, fire differs from air in the sense that it can't just go. Fire needs fuel to continue burning, to continue creating, to continue being passionate. So a really big thing about the fire realms in our charts is finding what fuels us. Fire can have a burst of inspiration with a little provocation from air, but we need to make sure we're giving it the proper fuel in order to keep that passion and enthusiasm alive. Generally speaking, the element of fire is our passion, assertiveness and overall vitality, which those are all things associated with the sun, Mars and Jupiter. If you're looking to your birth chart for how you assert yourself, you're definitely going to be looking at Mars or maybe the sun, but seeing the fire houses and what they have going on is also going to speak so deeply to the fuel, your passions and enthusiasm runs on. Fire is authoritative and commands respect because honestly, it's kind of scary. Fire has the ability to both comfort us and bring us cozy nights around a campfire with friends, and then it also has the ability to scare us by accidentally starting a fire on the stove or just burning down a whole town. Fire is malefic in nature due to its desire to burn, destroy and be unpredictable. While it does destroy, it can also be cleansing, extracting or distilling experience. There are a lot of rituals that deal with fire. The myth of the phoenix and being reborn or being cleansed by fire, the myth of Prometheus and stealing fire from the gods. The element of fire is innovative, divine and inspiring. Fire encompasses heat and motion. Fire is always in motion and will continue to burn until the fuel source runs out. This means we need to be careful about the sources we feed our fire. We need clean, burning and sustainable fuel to ensure that the parts of us governed by fire run efficiently and don't head towards burnout. The three types of fire are martial fire, solar fire and jupiterian fire. I have placements in all three of these fire realms and I can say that I have to be very cautious with what fuel I use as inspiration or to power my creativity and intuition. I can't use something that's too wet or it'll never catch. And then I can't use something that's too dry because it'll overindulge and burn up insanely fast. So even if you don't have planets in your fire realms, you can still use them to think about the broad idea of your life and your inspiration, your creativity and how fire impacts it. Overall, the element of fire is action. It's our passions, how we assert our life force. It's what we do with our breath, the element of air. Air sustains fire by fanning the flame and allowing us to continue our conscious manifestation of life. That's another thing about fire. It's very much in the here and now. It's a conscious manifestation of our power and our ability to transform, transmute and illuminate the world around us. It has a lot of whimsy, but it also has a don't fuck with me attitude. Again, it can be a campfire or it can be a forest fire. Next we're on to earth. Earth is feminine in nature. This means that unlike air and fire, it's going to be more passive, receptive and inwardly illuminative. The feminine polarity moves slower and a lot more deliberately, which that's a word I love for these feminine, these lunar signs deliberate. Earth is about deliberate, decisive action. When I say they're passive, I don't mean they're passive and that they won't make a move. I mean they're passive in that they make the right move, the calculated move. Green is the color associated with the earth signs for obvious reasons. The element of earth is the element of the physical world. It's dirt, grass, trees, mountains, but it's also our physical body, the tactile sense, and anything that we create that has physical bounds. We're taking the ideas and passions of air and fire and beginning to make something of it in the physical realm. The zodiac signs associated with earth or torus, vergo and capricorn. This means the planets associated with earth are venous, mercury and satir. Now, doesn't that sound familiar? Those same three planets traveled together in the air group as well. Only this time, venous is the one feeling most at home because it's in a feminine sign and domiciled. Mercury is like whatever I'm still cool. And then Saturn still feels okay because this is domiciled territory. Saturn and capricorn is the nocturnal or feminine expression of the sign. And Saturn and Aquarius is the diurnal or masculine expression of the sign. And this is strictly speaking about the domiciled expression. If Saturn wasn't Leo, it would be a diurnal expression but it wouldn't be domiciled so it would be entirely different anyway. Venus is warm and wet in nature. So earth is an amazingly fertile place for it to be. Lots can grow here when Venus is involved. Mercury can go either way so this is why vergo can be so adaptable. And then Saturn being cold and dry makes capricorn a very barren feeling place. Like stuff can grow here, but it takes a lot of time. makes a lot more work in diligence with the landscape and honestly it's more man-made structures. It's the backbone of society. Each of the signs are bringing their own agenda to the element of Earth and we can see it play out naturally in the world around us when we think of Capricorn Energy versus Torian Energy. They instill very different images of landscapes. So what is the element of Earth about then? Earth is tactile, deliberate and purposeful. It makes use of the materials at hand and creates art beauty and utility all in one. The element of Earth is really good at optimizing any situation. Just go take a walk in the woods sometime and look at how nature just makes do with what it has. It's like, oh you put this thing here? I'll just grow around it. I'll just grow through it. No problem. I love seeing pictures of trees or plants that have taken over man-made buildings or when roots push up through concrete on the sidewalk. It's like the element of Earth is unbothered and just goes about its business without any fuss. The element of Earth is resourceful, powerful and key to manifesting our desires, dreams, and passions in the physical space. Earth tends to be practical so it needs fire's passion and air's ideas. They have this really awesome synergistic relationship that allows them to feed off one another. Passion, idea, fuel, create, build, repeat. This is about stability and patience as well. It wants to create something that has longevity or some kind of importance, especially Capricorn. I know people tend to look down on the money significations that the earth signs get, so instead of money just think of it as resources. The element of Earth is resourceful. It uses those resources to provide itself and the world around it with what it needs. Earth is quite literally the backbone of existence and reality as we experience. Now, I'd argue that reality actually lives in the realm of air and the reality we experience here on Earth is brought on by air, but that's another podcast for another time. As far as all things, practical, physical, life, nourishing, and sustaining, it's all about the element of Earth. Without Earth, we would never be grounded. We might look to the planet of Saturn in our birth chart to see where we're grounded and what stability means to us, but we can also look at all the earth houses to see places where we put down roots or where we find comfort in the material world. While Earth is about creation and manifesting ideas in the material, it can also be stubborn and create unnecessary boundaries. Earth can be a movable and resist change. It takes a lot of energy and effort to uproot Earth and redirect it, so we need to be careful with the seeds that we play and cultivate because once they take root and the longer we cultivate them, the longer it is to pull those roots out. Landslides and earthquakes are the destructive side of Earth. When utilizing Malefic Energy, Earth can either feel like a prison or like the bottom is falling out. At the end of the day, the Earth element grounds us and reminds us of the tactile world. It's the one that allows us to have this physical human experience and it's the element that reflects our inner world, back at us through the things that we create in the physical. I feel like I could go on about each element endlessly and I know there's parts of each that I'm missing or glossing over, but again, this is just an intro to the elements and I want you to use this as a springboard for your own ideas and interpretations of them. We've come to the final element, water. Water is also feminine in nature, so it shares that in common with Earth. Water and Earth signs tend to get along really, really well. Just like air feeds fire, water feeds Earth, and in turn, Earth gives water a place to feel held and safe. They have a really beautiful, reciprocal relationship and it feels so nurturing and fertile with harmony and love. Since water is feminine, it's also comprised of deliberate actions. It's emotionally and intuitively deliberate. Even water are both intuitive, but water is a lot more deliberate and considerate within tuition, whereas fire is like, "Just got the download fam I gotta go." Water also makes decisive decisions, but again, it's emotional decisiveness rather than Earth, which is more concrete material world, decisiveness. The color associated with water is blue, again no surprise there. This is a color that evokes intuitiveness, openness, calm, serene spaces, and it's inviting in a very non-threatening way. Water itself has no form, but you can still see it and interact with it more than air. This is a lot like our emotions. You can't actually see joy or anger as a tangible thing on its own, but you can see joy or anger when someone is feeling it and embodying it. You can interact with emotions as if they are tactile, even though they have no true form, just like water. The water signs are cancer-scorpio-empeicies. This means the planet associated with water are the moon, Mars, and Jupiter. Again, this group should sound familiar. Like we had for fire, we have a luminary, then we have Mars and Jupiter. Fire and water have more in common than people think. They're both intuitive, emotional, and passionate, and they both tend to use emotional thinking, rather than rational thinking, but they embody it in completely different ways. Again, water is deliberate emotion and intuition. Fire is more, take it as it comes, use it on the fly. Here we're seeing the nocturnal expression of Mars and Jupiter. Mars can feel a little odd in water because of the feminine polarity, but it actually really enjoys being able to move in secret and strike without warning. The masculine and feminine polarities of the signs don't make or break how the planets act or impact dignity, but it does tell us what part of the psyche the planet is deriving action from. The moon is slightly warm and very humid. Mars is hot and dry, and Jupiter is warm and wet. So even when just looking at the dispositions of the planets, we can see that Mars is sort of the odd one out here, but again, Mars has dignity and Scorpio, so it's just nocturnal dignity rather than diurnal dignity. It goes against the natural disposition of Mars just a little bit, but again, not enough to make or break dignity in any way. The element of water rules the emotional landscape, emotion creativity, empathy, intuition, and compassion, or nurturing energy all reside within that realm of water. Water itself is formless, just as emotion and intuition is formless. We can sense water in a lot of ways, but the shape it takes is always dictated by the vessel it's given. If we ourselves are an angry vessel, we'll get angry water. If we're a nurturing vessel, we'll get nurturing water. Water takes the shape of what we give it not the other way around. Emotions are extremely powerful, but we have to remember that we're the vessel housing them and we can decide how to use them, work with them, what we learn from them, and how we use that water to nourish other areas of our life. Creativity is really big for water as well. I think it's one of those things where it becomes an amazing outlet for the emotional and intuitive parts of water. I mentioned the relationship between water and earth, but let's talk about water and air. This is one that gets overlooked or missed because it's like, well, how does water and air fit together? If I go to analogy for water and air is a boat or a kite, water needs air in the sails to get the boat moving, air can inspire water and help guide it towards more concrete shores. When water is on its own, it's formless, and more importantly, it's flexible. Water can seep through cracks, film massive craters. It can cause floods. It can cool us off. It can relax us. It cleanses us. It's a life-sustaining element in so many ways, but can also be an extremely destructive force. Floods, tsunamis, and hurricanes are all examples of what can happen when we don't pay attention to water. When we let water become too formless and don't give it the proper attention it deserves, and it's when we ignore our emotional and intuitive landscape, it will get our attention one way or another. Water can also become stagnant and be a place where things go to decay or break down. As I'm talking about this, I'm really getting the image of in your house even, so let's not say it's a natural disaster, like a tsunami, but it's a house in your pipe that's just slowly leaking, and it's going to slowly keep dripping, and that water over time is just going to slowly erode and degrade. It's that water that we're not paying attention to that we don't notice, that unconscious thing going on behind the scenes that can have detrimental impacts if we don't pay attention to it. As much as water is life giving, it's also life altering. This shows us how water is attached to the life, death, and rebirth cycle. Just as we can be cleansed by fire, we can be cleansed by water, water is sacred, just as all the elements are. But water seems to really hold the mantle when it comes to being involved with the life, death, and rebirth cycle. Water can also be subtly strong, think of how a stone gets worn down over time from water dripping or rushing over it. Water is deliberate, and it can be so incredibly powerful if we work with it and give it a strong vessel to inhabit. Remember, water doesn't dictate the vessel. the moon will always show emotion in our charts, but looking at the water houses will also reveal places where you're sort of emotionally bound or where you take really deliberate intuitive action. You care deeply about these areas and would do best to be really considerate with your action in those realms. Overall, the element of water indicates intuition, creativity, emotion, subtle power, flexibility, adaptability, and even wisdom to a degree. Water is sensitive, but it's only because it conforms to the vessel it's inhabiting, so it needs to be sensitive, it needs to be constantly aware of which way it's going next. Now that we've covered each element on its own, let's talk about how they work together functionally in a chart. We're going to be using aspects as a way to see how the elements link up. Before we do that though, we need to talk a little bit about modality or quadruplicity. There are three modalities, cardinal fixed and mutable. Each one corresponds to a certain portion of the seasons. Cardinal is the beginning of the season, fixed is the middle, and mutable is the end of the season. So for example, Aries brings spring. Taurus is the height of spring, and Gemini ushers out spring. Each modality has four signs that are associated with it, one from each element. So the cardinal signs are Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn, the fixed signs are Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius, and the mutable signs are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces. Now that we know a little bit about modalities, let's look at the major aspects to see how the elements come together or where they differ and how the elemental relationship plays a role in interpreting aspects. Also remember as we're going through this, that I use whole sign houses. So let's start with trines. Trines are really fun and easy to spot in the chart because they're all going to be the same element. All the waterhouses are trying each other. All the earthhouses are trying each other. All the airhouses are trying each other, and you guessed it. All the firehouses are trying each other. I use this method when I was doing my astrology and careers episode. All the career life houses are in a trine, which means they have an elemental link. You can do this with any area of your life by looking at the trines, especially if you're someone like me, and you have a lot of one element, you can look and see what area of your life that element in those planets are putting emphasis on. But even if you don't have an abundance of planets in one element, you can still just break these areas of your life down elementally and see what element presides over what area of your life. So let's talk about briefly. I'm going to list each of the trine houses and then give a little blurb as to what they relate to. So we have one, five, and nine. And this is identity and expansion, two, six, and ten, which is career and life path, three, seven, and eleven, which is relationships and outreach, four, eight, and twelve, which is foundations and private matters. Now let's move on to sex tiles. Sex tiles are the other harmonic aspect. So let's see what they look like elementally in the chart. Water and earth will always be in a sex tile. Air and fire will always be in a sex tile. Not only are those complimentary and elemental theory, like we've been talking about, but they're also complimentary in gender or they're sects, so that masculine and feminine, that diurnal and nocturnal kind of concept. The feminine elements are sex tile and then the masculine elements are sex tile. This is showing that synergistic relationship that the planets engaging in the sex tile understand each other on an elemental level and a gender polarity level. They understand how each other moves and the elements are naturally complimentary, so it's great energy being put out and being received. Your masculine or diurnal sex tiles are going to be the ones that are in theory more noticeable or conscious or more assertive and your feminine or nocturnal sex tiles are going to be more deliberate or the ones that take more consideration or more time to develop and show themselves. Let's move on to squares. This is our first dynamic aspect, so let's see what this looks like elementally. Squares are going to land on the two elements that are not naturally complimentary and both will also have opposing genders, where they do have common ground though is modality. So let's take my Libra Rising as an example. My Libra Rising is square the house of cancer, which is water and the house of Capricorn, which is earth. Both of these elements are of the nocturnal or feminine polarity and behave in a way that it's a little contrary to my Libra's masculine or diurnal nature. This doesn't mean that we can't find goodness, it just means there's tension that needs addressed. My ascending is square Saturn. I have to learn to harness my spirit in a more restrained way. I've needed to learn to temper my energy, but not squash it entirely, just learning to utilize it better. Saturn and Capricorn wants me to move more deliberately and drive my physical body, the ascending, in a way that makes good use of my natural energy. So with that example there, we're seeing that yes, there is a square, so it's that dynamic energy. There's a little tension, but it's because the two different elements, the two different polarities are trying to figure out, okay, how can we get this to work better? How can we get ourselves to align? The other dynamic aspect is oppositions. Now oppositions share the same gender polarity, so even though they're opposing each other, they can find common ground through the luminosity they prefer. Oppositions are always with the element, that's naturally very complimentary. So air will be opposing fire and vice versa. Water will be opposing earth and vice versa. Another thing the opposition share is modality, they will always be of the same modality, so they can even find more common ground there. We can use my ascendant for this one again because my ascendant is opposing my moon. So unlike the square, my ascendant doesn't need to change its mode of action. It can still embrace the diurnal masculine expression, but it needs to figure that out in the realm of my emotions. This opposition is about understanding myself and my emotions apart from other people, both my identity and my emotions are in the masculine sect, so I'm very conscious and aware of them. Conjunctions are the last one here and conjunctions are an easy one and there's not much to touch on because it's the same element, same sign, they just kind of get each other. The last thing I want to talk about today is in regards to tarot. The elements play a huge role in tarot and they really play a huge role in anything and everything, but especially in spiritual or philosophical realms, the elements just have a lot of importance. As far as tarot goes, there are a few different ways that the elements show up. The first and arguably the biggest is the suits. There are four suits in tarot, cups, wands, pentacles, and swords, and each suit stands for an embodies an element. Cups are water, wands are fire, pentacles are earth, and swords are air. Each suit takes on the signification of the element. This means that the suit of swords stands for all things intellectual and communication driven. We know when we pull the swords, we're working with the mental realm or how we speak and interact with others. Just as if we pull pentacles, we know we're working with the mundane material world. The pentacles stand for money, resources, manifestation, and the material, abundance, and even our physical body. Knowing the elements on a deeper level allows us to know tarot on a deeper level. We even see the usefulness of the elements throughout the major cards, especially in the magician, as he has all the suits laid out before him and they're what he uses to manifest his desire into reality. He needs to use and understand all the elements, all the suits, to be a true magician. The major cards all have planetary or astrological associations with them, but each major card also has elemental properties associated with them. The element associated with the card often reflects the sign or planet that's associated with it. I'm not going to go through each card right here right now. That's what my tarot lectures are for. If you're wanting a deep dive on tarot, make sure you sign up for those lectures. I don't have any pre-recorded audio lectures on tarot just yet, but we're working on that. The last place we see elements show up in tarot are the court cards. Each level of the court cards actually stand for an element, so it's like an element within an element. Pages are earth, nights are air, queens are water, kings are fire. Again, I'm just giving you a little teaser here. I'm not going super in depth with that. That's for my tarot lectures. So if you're interested on learning more, I hope to see you there. I feel like we won over a lot today, and I feel like there's still so much more to explore. The elements are never ending. The magic and wisdom they hold never ceases to amaze me because they just keep on giving more and more and more wisdom. The more and more I work with them. The elements seem like such a beginner's tool at first. You learn the elements and the signs associated with them, and then we just kind of forget about them. And we never circle back to see how they continue being important and how they continue to reveal wisdom and insight if we apply them. So it's like, yeah, it is a beginner's tool. But it's also extremely advanced and sometimes we miss that because we're rushing off to learn the next thing in astrology because there's a million and one things to learn. Remember to take the elements with you throughout your astrological practice and you'll always have a solid foundation to lean on. I'm sure there's insights and connections that I forgot to mention or haven't made yet myself. So I want you to think about the elements in an abstract theoretical way and then in an astrological and planetary way and see what connections you come up with. If you're in the discord then definitely drop your thoughts in there because I'd love to hear it. If you're not in the discord and you want to be just go over to my website, sign up. We'd love to have you there. If you want more astrological content before the next episode, consider signing up to become a patron of my work. I've got exclusive blog content monthly lunar mini horoscopes with terrible advice, retrograde guides and a discord waiting for you to join. You could also leave a super cute review on spotify our iTunes which I would be eternally grateful for. Head on over to my website, check it all out and thank you in advance for supporting me. Until next time, later days.