The Tarot of Eli-LLC-Minor Arcana: Thoth Tarot-4 of Cups-Luxury & The Medieval Feathers Tarot- 4 of Cups

 

 

(Western Hermetic Luxury ritual at Magickeli.com)

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Above all things, know thyself!

#4. From the exhaustless riches of its Limitless Substance, I draw all things needful, both spiritual and material.

From the Golden Dawn Texts:

“In Chokmah is the Radix of blue and thence is there a blue color pure and primitive, and glistening, with a spiritual Light which is reflected into Chesed. And the Sphere of its Operation is called Zedekiah or Justice and it fashionith the images of material things, bestowing peace and mercy: and it ruleth the sphere of the action of the planet Jupiter. And all is the title of a God strong and mighty, ruling in Glory, Magnificence and Grace. And the Archangel of Chesed is Tsadkiel, the Prince of Mercy and Beneficence, and the Name of the order of Angels is Chasmalim, Brilliant Ones, who are also called the Order of Dominions. The Sephira Chesed is also called Gedulah or Magnificent and Glory."

These flowery and exalted words of Golden Dawn ritual adoration often veil a profound truth: Chokmah — Wisdom — is not external to you, but an inner inheritance encoded into your being as a reflection of the Supernal Triangle. The first three Sephiroth — Kether, Chokmah, and Binah — form the upper Trinity of the Tree of Life, the archetypal blueprint of consciousness. This “Tree,” often called the God Molecule, is not an abstract diagram but a living reality: your soul’s architecture, the sacred template of your very body and mind.

When we descend from the abstract Supernals into manifestation, Chesed emerges as the first crystallization of Divine Mercy and expansive order. Its sphere, under Jupiter (Tzedek), is where spiritual Light begins to structure itself into recognizable forms — “fashioning the images of material things.” Here, peace, grace, and beneficence flow downward into the worlds, bringing balance to the raw force of Chokmah and preparing the way for the form-giving discipline of Geburah.

Your physical body itself is a luxury of the Divine — a temple woven from the four Universal Elements. In the Minor Arcana, this descent of spiritual force is mirrored in the Fours, where the energies of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth find stability and expression in the material plane. Thus, the 4’s in Tarot represent not mere “mundane” conditions but the perfected synthesis of Spirit in form — the elemental foundation upon which all magical and spiritual work is built.

The Tree of Life, therefore, is both a cosmic diagram and an intimate map of your own being. The same radiant blue of Chokmah glistens in your higher mind; the mercy of Chesed flows through your compassion and acts of generosity; the dominion of the *Chasmalim shines forth whenever you align with the higher virtues of Magnificence and Glory.

+Chasmalim (חַשְׁמַלִּים) is the name given in Hermetic Qabalah — particularly in Golden Dawn and later Western esoteric texts — to the angelic order associated with the Sephira Chesed (Mercy / Gedulah) on the Tree of Life. Here’s a detailed explanation of their meaning and role:

1. Name and Etymology

• The Hebrew word Chashmal (חַשְׁמַל) appears in the Book of Ezekiel (1:4, 1:27) describing the fiery radiance surrounding the throne of God in Ezekiel’s vision of the Merkavah (Chariot of God). It is usually translated as “Amber,” “Electrum,” or “Brilliant Light.”

• In Qabalistic cosmology, this brilliance signifies the divine radiance that flows outward from the Infinite, tempered by mercy and expansive grace in Chesed.

2. Role in the Tree of Life

• The Chasmalim are the Angelic Choir of Chesed (the 4th Sephira). Their title means “Brilliant Ones” or “Shining Ones,” and they correspond to the Dominions in the Christian angelic hierarchy.

• They are said to mediate the pure blue light of Chokmah (Wisdom) as it reflects downward into Chesed, transforming abstract divine force into benevolent order and magnanimity.

3. Function and Attributes

• Function: The Chasmalim oversee the harmonization of divine law with mercy, ensuring that the structures of creation remain imbued with compassion rather than rigidity.

• Sphere: They operate under Tzadkiel (Tsadkiel), the Archangel of Mercy and Justice, and their planetary influence is Jupiter (Tzedek) — expansiveness, beneficence, and abundance.

• Color and Symbolism: In Golden Dawn correspondences, their color is deep blue or blue-violet, radiating brilliance — the “pure blue” seen in Chokmah but tempered into grace in Chesed.

• Elemental Reflection: Though associated with Water (Mercy), their brilliance connects to the Astral Light and the plasmic energies of Spirit descending into form.

4. Mystical Meaning

• The Chasmalim embody Mercy in Action — the expansive love of the Divine that gives without condition and builds structures of peace.

• In meditative vision, they may appear as beings of intense light, sometimes described as fiery yet serene, clothed in blue-violet flames of mercy.

• Their work is the balancing of force with form — taking the raw impetus of Chokmah (Wisdom) and shaping it into the structures of love and beneficence that permeate Chesed.

5. Magical and Meditative Use

• In Pathworking or Tarot meditation, invoking the Chasmalim during work with the Fours (Four of Wands, Cups, Swords, Disks) opens you to stabilizing grace and a deeper understanding of how Divine Mercy manifests in daily life.

• They are particularly called upon in rituals for expansion, protection, abundance, and higher justice (as opposed to punitive justice, which belongs to Geburah).

However, within you — and surrounding you — abides the Plasmic Soul: an infinitely deep, timeless, and nonlocal field of consciousness. This Soul is not bound by space or linear time; rather, it permeates every cell of your being and radiates beyond the physical body into the subtle dimensions. In truth, you are woven of the very fabric of the Ten Sephiroth — ten emanations of energy-consciousness through which the Divine contemplates and creates Itself.

To know this is to realize a profound axiom of Hermetic Qabalah: you are your own Tree of Life. The Sephiroth are not distant spheres scattered across the heavens, but living states of awareness encoded into your soul and body. Each Sephira manifests in you as a psychological and spiritual quality — Mercy, Strength, Wisdom, Understanding, Beauty, and so forth — and together they form the holographic map of your Divine Image.

Therefore, the practice of inner meditation and scrying the Tarot cards is not mere fortune-telling; it is the alchemy of Self-knowing. Each card becomes a portal into these ten energy states, inviting you to witness how the Macrocosm (the greater universe) and the Microcosm (your inner universe) are mirrors of one another. The adage “As Above, So Below” becomes not poetic metaphor, but experiential truth: the more deeply you travel inward, the more expansively you touch the stars.

You feel like a body — but in truth, you are not. The body is designed to feel you: the infinite frequency of Life-Energy that you are. You are a Being of starlight, woven of radiant frequencies that emanate from the Central Sun of the Galaxy — the inexhaustible Source of Consciousness. This Light, called Prana in the East, Ruach in Qabalah, and Chi in Taoist alchemy, streams through the nervous system, animating the physical form and allowing Spirit to taste sensation.

The body, then, is not your prison but your sacred instrument — a divine sensing device through which your immortal Self operates in the temporal world. It exists for you to dwell in, to feel, and to experience the miracle of manifestation. The Divine Name within you — I AM — is your true identity; the body is the vehicle through which that Name breathes and speaks in time and space.

Your Psyche-Soul, centered in Tiphareth (the 6th Sephira on the Tree of Life), resides beyond the four-dimensional limitations of matter. From this Solar Heart, it transmits through higher dimensions, projecting itself into the realm of sensation. What you call “me” is an installed avatar — a holographic expression of the One Mind, animated by your unique fractal of Divine Consciousness. Your imagination — the power to create images — is the signature of this celestial lineage.

To realize this is to see flesh not as profane, but as Light’s greatest luxury. The body is a chalice into which the Infinite pours itself. It is the nexus where the Macrocosm and Microcosm embrace; where the eternal dances in the temporal; where Spirit learns to touch, taste, and fall in love with its own creation.

Quantum Theory and the Holographic Universe

Modern quantum theory — especially the holographic principle — proposes that what we experience as a three-dimensional universe is, at its deepest level, a projection of encoded information on a two-dimensional boundary. This means that reality, as we perceive it, is a hologram: every part contains the whole, and the whole is encoded in every part.

In physics, this emerges from black hole thermodynamics and string theory — suggesting that all the data describing what happens in our universe could be stored on a vast “cosmic film” at its boundary. This aligns astonishingly with Hermetic Qabalah, where each Sephira is a fractal reflection of the entire Tree of Life: “As Above, So Below.”

Hermetic and Qabalistic Correlations

1. Hologram = Sephirotic Reflection
   In the Tree of Life, every Sephira contains the entire Tree within itself (the concept of “Trees within Trees”). Chesed contains the image of Geburah, Tiphareth, and so on; likewise, your soul — though localized in Tiphareth — contains the pattern of the entire cosmos.

2. Wave-Particle Duality and Form
   Quantum mechanics shows that energy (Light) behaves as both wave and particle — potential and manifestation. Hermetically, this mirrors the descent of Light from Kether (pure potential) into Malkuth (manifest form) through the Four Worlds (Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, Assiah).

3. Observer Effect and “I AM”
   The act of observation collapses the quantum wave function into a specific outcome. In Hermetic language: the “I AM” (Kether–Tiphareth axis) projects its will and thereby crystallizes a universe. The magician, knowing this, consciously chooses which possibilities to collapse — the essence of ritual and visualization.

4. Fractality and the One Mind
   A hologram means every part contains the whole — just as each soul contains the totality of the Divine. In Qabalah, this is the spark of Yechidah (the singular soul) — the infinite reflected perfectly in the finite.

Manifestation as Holographic Projection

In practical terms, your physical body and the external world are holographic projections of higher-dimensional energy (Ruach, Neshamah, Chiah, Yechidah). The “Central Sun” (Kether) projects downward through Chokmah (Wisdom) and Binah (Understanding), creating layers of reality — each one a more condensed hologram of the previous.

Your imagination (Tiphareth) is the key to consciously engaging this holographic field. Every thought-form is a “light interference pattern” projected into the astral (Yetzirah), which later coagulates into sensory experience (Assiah). Thus, magic is conscious holography — altering the interference pattern to manifest new outcomes.

The Ultimate Hermetic Insight

When Qabalah and quantum physics converge, the teaching is clear:

• The universe is not “out there.” It is projected through you.

• Every layer of reality — body, psyche, spirit — mirrors the All.

• To know the Self is to know the pattern; to master the pattern is to create reality.

THE 4 OF CUPS-Luxury, in the Thoth Tarot, is called Luxury or Lord of Blended Pleasure. The Planet is the Moon, and the sign is Cancer. The Angels of the Decan are: Hayayel and Mevamayah.

The Four of Cups represents Chesed (Mercy) operating in Briah, the Creative World, where mental archetypes and divine blueprints begin to shape the astral currents of Yetzirah. Here, Chesed — the fourth Sephira, often titled Gedulah or The Architect — exerts its harmonizing, benevolent influence upon the unconscious mental realm.

Astrological Context: Moon in Cancer

• The Four of Cups corresponds to the Moon in Cancer, where the Moon is at home and naturally dignified. This alignment brings deep emotional receptivity, psychic sensitivity, and mood-driven awareness.

• In this placement, the alternating lunar tides — waxing and waning — are mitigated by the natural rulership of the Moon in Cancer. Emotional cycles still ebb and flow, but with a slower, gentler rhythm.

Psychological and Spiritual Implications

• When Chesed’s mercy filters through the Moon in Cancer, the soul experiences nurturing introspection. There is a desire for security and inner peace, yet also a risk of emotional inertia — becoming overly passive, stagnant, or indulgent in comfort.

• The mental-emotional field (Briah–Yetzirah) here can be overwhelmed by external moods and psychic impressions. Sensitivity is heightened, and the boundary between self and environment becomes porous.

• The challenge is to act rather than react — to consciously channel emotional awareness into constructive imagination, rather than being pulled into the tides of others’ feelings.

Hermetic Qabalistic Symbolism

• Chesed as Architect: Chesed’s structure provides form to emotional waters, building a stable container for compassion. The fourfold structure symbolizes the stabilization of love and mercy into tangible experience.

• Moon in Cancer: Suggests the womb-like archetype — the nurturing, receptive matrix through which higher mental archetypes gestate before birth into physical reality.

• Briah (Creative World): The realm of divine archetypes — here, the emotional longing for harmony must align with higher creative ideals rather than personal comfort alone.

Practical Insight (Meditation and Tarot Work)

• This card invites you to withdraw into inner stillness and re-examine what nourishes your soul versus what merely numbs it.

• The Four of Cups often signals apathy or emotional ennui — yet in higher work, this is a gestational pause, a time to prepare the heart for renewed inspiration.

• In meditation, scrying the Four of Cups can open perception to Mercy’s quiet blueprint — how divine compassion wants to flow through your life to create beauty and equilibrium.

To take this understanding further: 

In astrology, when the Moon is in the house of Cancer, it is considered to be in its home sign, as Cancer is ruled by the Moon. This placement is quite significant and brings forth certain characteristics and influences.

1. Emotional Sensitivity: The Moon represents emotions, and in Cancer, it enhances emotional sensitivity. Individuals with the Moon in Cancer are deeply connected to their feelings and those of others. They are intuitive and often rely on their emotions to guide them.

2. Nurturing Instincts: Cancer is associated with the archetype of the nurturer and caregiver. When the Moon is in Cancer, there is a strong instinct to nurture and protect. These individuals find fulfillment in taking care of others and creating a secure and comfortable environment.

3. Home and Family Focus: The Cancer Moon places a significant emphasis on home and family life. These individuals may have a strong attachment to their roots, finding comfort and security within their family and domestic surroundings.

4. Mood Swings: The Moon is known for its cyclical phases, and in Cancer, there can be noticeable mood swings. Emotions ebb and flow like the tides, making individuals with this placement sometimes appear moody or changeable.

5. Intuitive Decision-Making: Trusting their intuition, those with the Moon in Cancer often make decisions based on their gut feelings. Their instincts serve as a valuable guide in navigating life's challenges.

6. Empathy and Compassion: Cancer is a compassionate sign, and with the Moon here, there is a natural empathy towards others. These individuals are often understanding and supportive, making them reliable friends and confidants.

7. Creativity and Imagination: The Moon in Cancer enhances creativity, especially in areas related to the home and emotions. These individuals may have a flair for artistic expression and enjoy creative pursuits that allow them to channel their feelings.

Understanding the Moon's placement in a specific house provides insights into an individual's emotional landscape and their approach to nurturing and connecting with others. It's important to consider the overall birth chart for a more comprehensive understanding of an individual's astrological profile.

The Fourth Sephira, Chesed (Mercy/Gedulah), is often called The Architect, for it is here that divine archetypes begin to take form and structure. In this state of intelligence, you are endowed with the power to design your personality and sculpt your life consciously. Chesed’s energy provides stability, abundance, and the expansive order necessary for growth — yet this very stability can, paradoxically, lead to complacency.

In the Four of Cups, often subtitled Luxury in the Thoth Tarot, this complacency becomes the shadow of abundance. The soul, having attained comfort and emotional security, may lose its sense of wonder; what was once miraculous now feels “common,” and the gifts of life are overlooked. This mediocrity breeds stagnation, dulling the higher call of Mercy into passivity.

Alchemical Correction: Gratitude and Receptivity

The remedy lies in gratitude. By actively recognizing the blessings you have — emotionally, spiritually, and materially — you shift the Four of Cups from inertia to openness. Gratitude transforms luxury into magnificence, restoring Chesed’s true glory (Gedulah). This openness dissolves self-satisfaction and rekindles the architectural vision to expand further into the unknown.

When gratitude is practiced, Mercy flows freely — no longer hoarded or taken for granted, but circulating outward to enrich others. This opens the heart to future growth and to the Moon-in-Cancer flux: a dynamic emotional intelligence that nourishes both self and world.

Key Hermetic Insights

• Design of Self: Chesed empowers you to blueprint your life in harmony with divine order.

• Luxury’s Trap: Comfort can dull vision; stagnation arises when blessings become unnoticed.

• Gratitude as Catalyst: Recognition of present abundance awakens higher receptivity and restores flow.

• Moon in Cancer: Heightened sensitivity offers emotional depth, but requires conscious direction to avoid passivity.

When contemplating the Crowley/Harris Four of Cups (Luxury), we see four golden cups forming a descending arrangement. The upper cups overflow with solar radiance, pouring abundant streams of light and pleasure downward. Yet the lower cups remain unfilled, their lack of overflow implying that while joy and satisfaction are present, they are tinged with reservation — pleasure with a caveat, sweetness shadowed by unease.

The lotus at the card’s center, whose multiple stems feed the cups, reveals another truth: the energy of luxury is divided. Too many diverse channels draw upon the same source, dispersing focus and fracturing stability. What begins as abundance subtly devolves into distraction; fulfillment is diluted into restlessness.

Four as Completion and Stagnation

The number Four in Qabalistic symbolism represents stability and completion, but also the dead end of a cycle. Matter, having fully crystallized (plasma condensed into solidity), can no longer ascend without transformation. The Four of Cups signals this critical juncture: comfort has calcified into apathy, and without conscious renewal, stagnation sets in.

In practical terms, this card is the embodiment of the adage:

“Familiarity breeds contempt.”

What was once miraculous becomes mundane; the extraordinary, when constant, becomes invisible. Luxury turns common, and gratitude fades into indifference.

Moon in Cancer: Emotional Flux

Astrologically, the Four of Cups corresponds to the Moon in Cancer — the Moon ruling its own sign. This grants profound emotional sensitivity and nurturing potential, yet also amplifies moodiness and susceptibility to psychic tides. The lunar ebb and flow creates cycles of pleasure and discontent; joy is fleeting, and the heart longs for more, yet struggles to value what is already present.

Cultural Reflection

This state of emotional apathy is particularly relevant in modern societies — especially in places like the United States — where abundance is commonplace:

• Hot and cold running water

• Pure drinking water

• Climate-controlled homes

• Plentiful food and transportation

These luxuries, once unimaginable marvels, are now taken for granted as necessities, leading to spiritual numbness. The Four of Cups warns: gratitude must be rekindled, or abundance becomes mediocrity.

Hermetic Teaching

Chesed, as the Architect, offers the power to design life in harmony with divine order. Yet when the design becomes static — when Mercy is hoarded rather than shared — the soul loses sight of its source. The cure lies in renewing vision through gratitude, turning inward to rediscover the miraculous in the ordinary, and taking conscious action to redirect the waters of luxury into meaningful flow.

Today is the day to bow in gratitude — to Gaia, the living Earth, and to the Divine Creative Source that breathes you into being.
Gratitude is the key that unlocks the gates of creativity and catalyzes inspired action.

Rather than succumb to the illusion of mediocrity — the false notion that today is “just another day” — awaken to the truth: this day has never been before, and you have never been exactly who you are now.

Declare inwardly:

“Today is a great day to be Me — a spark of the Infinite, walking the Earth as Light embodied.”

Each of us a Trinity of Wholeness, called- Spirit-Mind-Body. First and foremost, as a Spirit-Mind be grateful for the Body you have!

Medieval Feathers Tarot – Four of Cups

The Medieval Feathers Tarot’s Four of Cups presents a striking four-cornered arrangement of cups, forming a protective boundary around the home and heart. This imagery embodies the concept of family and household as a sacred circle, where each cup stands guard at a corner, preserving peace and shielding loved ones from intrusion or discord.

At the center lies the kiwi’s feather, a unifying symbol that ties the family together. This feather is a reminder: family is a living priority, a covenant of mutual care and devotion. It calls for nurturing the bonds of kinship — not only with blood relatives but also with chosen family, those trusted souls with whom you have built enduring relationships.

The Four of Cups here invites you to honor and support your family’s wellbeing — physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If estrangement or distance exists, this card encourages rebuilding bridges, initiating healing conversations, and restoring trust. Frequent, heartfelt communication becomes the medicine that dissolves miscommunication and strengthens connection.

Reversed Meaning

When reversed, the Four of Cups warns of apathy and emotional disconnection — a withdrawal from the people, hobbies, and experiences that once brought joy. This state signals the need for reevaluation and reconnection:

• What created this distance?

• Which passions need rekindling?

• How can you reintegrate joy into daily life?

The card encourages gentle persistence — return, step by step, to the people and activities that nourish you. Even small acts of reconnection can reignite vitality and belonging.

The antidote to the self-absorbed drama of mediocrity is a profound recognition: life itself is luxury. Every breath, every sensation, every thought is an inheritance of the soul’s infinite abundance. We are Psyches — living Souls — endowed with the power to shape any identity of “I AM.” Through this divine prerogative, we may assume countless forms, call them “life,” and animate them as living dreams in the theater of time and space.

Even while wearing the mortal mask of personality, the eternal Self — the Buddha-Soul, the Celestial Immortal — remains untouched, radiating energy into manifestation in its own holy Name. Thus, life is not merely endured but created; not a passive sequence, but a luminous act of artistry.

To awaken to this truth is to realize that we are not only dreamers of universes but also lucid participants within them. We do not merely imagine worlds; we step inside those worlds and live them — sensually, intimately, and joyfully. Every heartbeat is a dialogue between Creator and Creation, between Infinite and Finite.

This intimacy with one’s own dream — this capacity to feel, taste, and love one’s own creation — is the true luxury of the Soul. To recognize this transforms apathy into awe, mediocrity into magnificence. Gratitude then becomes natural, and every day whispers the mantra:

“It is a great day to be Me — Light embodied, dreaming and awake.”

All reality arises in Mind. “I AM” is the primal declaration — the spark of awareness that births universes. Because all is Mind, all is transformable; reality bends to assumption.

When we observe a thing, we do not see it as it truly is, but as we think it is. Observation collapses potential into form; belief sculpts energy into image. Thus, every act of perception is an act of creation.

We are, therefore, the most luxurious of creators — endowed with the power to be whatever we assume ourselves to be, and to sensate that assumption into in-form-action: Spirit incarnating as experience, thought flowering into tangible life.

To awaken to this is to wield the true Hermetic art: to assume divinity and thereby create divinity.

It is wise to remember: we all belong to each other. No one stands apart in isolation; the many worlds we each imagine and live are interwoven in a single Mind.

Do not mistake a unique perspective for superiority. To believe you are “smarter” or more “enlightened” than others because you have invented a different worldview is a subtle form of arrogance — a selfish divisionism that fractures harmony. In truth, the Mind that imagines your universe is the same Mind that imagines theirs; every life is a facet of the same infinite jewel.

Each of us creates our own mindscape and calls it “life.” Yet beneath these seemingly separate dreamscapes flows the same current of Consciousness, the One Psyche of the Divine Creative. The practice of gratitude — for each other and for all that exists — dissolves the illusion of separation.

To walk this path is to learn the power of dialectics: the meeting of opposites, the reconciliation of differing views, the transformation of conflict into higher synthesis. This is the alchemy of unity, where “I” and “Thou” merge into the living truth of “We.”

We all belong to each other — always.

When the 4 of Cups-Luxury or 4 of Cups card is thrown during a reading, it implies:

• For a time, say 4 wks or 4 months, the querent shall experience emotional luxury, which is the capacity to make other people feel emotionally satisfied, secure and peaceful.
• A period of contentment but this is the edge of completion, and a new vision of love is being seen. 
• Thus, there is both the gift and challenge of a fallow period.
• There may be boredom, and apathy with a sprinkling of discontent as the querent awaits inspiration.
• Here there is a type of balance that is caught between the worlds of thought and action.
• Domestic ideals (security, prosperity, emotional wealth).
• Daydreaming. 
• Resentment of the entire world leads you into apathy and isolation.

If ill defined by surrounding cards, it implies:

• Possessive inclinations.
• Restricting another person through an excess of affection.
• Loss of balance.
• Restricted emotions.
• New acquaintances and romantic relationships, ambition, and motivation for work, but be careful-this arcana is insidious, you can miss the chance because of self-pity.

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