Ace of Chalices
Chalices
How This Card Is Derived
Papus gives no separate description of this card. It is derived from his system: Chalices is He (ה), the passive, receptive principle, acting in Briah, the creative world; the number 1 is Yod of the first series, the pure active origin of the suit. The meaning below is that combination read out — the passive, receptive principle taken at its 1st term — not a quotation from him.
Upright
The active origin of a passive suit, which is Papus's most interesting combination: something begins, and what begins is a capacity to receive. The Ace is the cup before anything has been poured into it — feeling at the moment it becomes possible, not yet attached to an object or a person. Openness with real force behind it. In Briah this is the first stirring of a sympathy that will shape everything the suit does afterwards.
Reversed
The opening closed before anything could enter — receptivity refused, usually because the last thing received went badly. Or feeling that begins and is spent in the same motion, the cup filled and emptied at once so that nothing accumulates.
Correspondences
- Suit
- Chalices — He (ה), Briah, the creative world
- Suit principle
- the passive, receptive principle
- Number
- 1 — Yod of the first series
- Numeric role
- the pure active origin of the suit
In a Spread
At the commencement, the matter begins in an openness rather than an act. In opposition, a susceptibility working against the querent's own intentions. At equilibrium the situation rests entirely on someone's willingness to receive. As the result: a capacity gained, not a thing gained — which Papus would say is the more durable of the two.