I have a love-hate relationship with the Opening of the Key - I'll admit it. Sometimes I find myself loving it and hating it for the exact same reason, such as its complexity. On one had that level of intricacy really intrigues me, and on the other it frustrates and confuses me. Using it in professional readings can be tricky as well; there are many times I've done it for clients and it has mentally led me in a completely incorrect direction, other times it's uncannily accurate. Is the inconsistency representative of inherent flaws in the spread and its technique? or is it simply inconsistency on my part? For something I have been studying and practicing for about four years now I never feel as if it's something I have a firm enough grasp on in order to master using it for other people. Oddly enough I can only seem to use it for myself, but these readings are often so brutally honest, accurate, and tremendously helpful that I still feel urged to try and use it for the benefit of others, even though this often undermines my level of confidence in myself as a tarot reader.
Perhaps my biggest complaint with this spread is its ironic vagueness. For a spread that will tell you minute details such as personal motives, emotions, drives, and subtle choices and their consequences, there is a terrifying paucity of information about it. This is not to say that no one in the modern era has tried to write about it. In fact, there are several resources available currently in the form of blogs, websites, and even a small number of books that either discuss the OOTK or try to teach its techniques of card counting and pairing. But despite these efforts, no one (to my knowledge) has ever been able to present a logical argument for the reason behind the OOTK. Yes, some may offer endless advice on elemental dignities, but not one writer has yet made an attempt to explain what the OOTK actually is and why it was designed the way it was designed, and it is my humble opinion that one cannot really understand how to use a tool until one first understands why the tool is the way it is. For instance, individuals with a high working knowledge of anatomy and physical development have a far greater chance of understanding which exercises to use in order to train their body in the direction they desire. Would you want to purchase a car made by someone who doesn't know how the parts in the car actually work, or why they're needed? Probably not.
And so we are left still puzzling over the overwhelming silence left by the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley in regards to this spread. Both parties left us the bare minimum of information - the steps and actual praxis - but neither really explained why the OOTK was so important or special. And clearly it is a very special device to them, otherwise they would have written much more openly about it. As with any mystery cult, the rituals considered most holy and most powerful are always kept most secret, so as to protect them from individuals who do not know better. Clearly this includes myself, as I have already mentioned my own difficulties and mishaps with the spread, but this has not stopped me from wanting to figure the mystery out, nor has it stopped me from trying to explain it all to others. I believe I have made some decent headway in this area, as I have never seen the explanations I have received written elsewhere.
Structure
In his famous work on the Golden Dawn's teachings and rituals, The Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie writes, "The more rigidly correct and in harmony with the scheme of the Universe is any form of Divination, so much the more is it likely to yield a correct and reliable answer to the enquirer. For then and then only is there a firm link, and bond of union, established between it and the Occult forces of Nature." Unfortunately this statement by one of history's most eloquent, experienced, and erudite occult scholars is overlooked today. How many times have you seen tarot "resources" advocate the creation of personal spreads based on random pictures or meaningless symbols? From a pure occult standpoint all this represents the unfortunate result of tarot's dissemination to people with neither the desire nor willpower to use it properly. (At least in my opinion. I accept the right of all individuals to use the tarot as Knowledge is not to be saved for the few but rather is available to all, but I do strongly - albeit sometimes ferociously - advocate the use of a more traditional, scientific, and historical method that is more in tune with the tarot's contemporary origins.) The Golden Dawn would not have looked to common culture for its symbols to base the structure of the OOTK on, but rather would have looked entirely to the Kabbalah, the cornerstone of all their beliefs and practices and the spiritual "file cabinet" for all other relevant symbols or myths across cultures.
Now, there are of course five operations in the Opening of the Key, the first being governed by the four elements, the princesses, and the aces; the second by the 12 Astrological Houses and the court cards; the third by the 12 Signs of the Zodiac and the zodiacal trumps; the fourth by the 36 Decanates and the the pips; and the fifth by the 10 Sephiroth and the planetary trumps. But what do these represent on an allegorical level? Certainly they are simply practical as they reflect the structure of the tarot itself, and astrology is the only other method of divination directly compatible with the tarot. But symbolically they are all associated with the Feminine, the original Nothingness from which all things derive. The four elements are associated with the material universe and the sephira of Malkuth, the Virginal Bride who is the diminutive reflection of the Greater Feminine. The belt of the zodiac, even though attributed to Chokhmah on the Tree of Life, is often associated with the body of Nuit, the Feminine Nothing, as well. Allusions to this are made in both Waite's and Crowley's depiction of III The Empress, the former in her crown of twelve stars, the latter in her girdle as Crowley explains via The Book of Thoth. And lastly, the ten sephiroth represent the full expansion, expression, and development of the original Ain principle, or Nuit. Therefore structurally we have as a basis the Great Feminine, Nuit, the Nothingness from which all things come and in which all things move and have their being.
Perhaps the reader will at this point find it intriguing to remember the opening pages of Crowley's Book of Thoth in which he suggests an equivalence between the tarot's nature and that of the universe as an expression of expanded Nothingness. The OOTK therefore not only structurally reflects the Universe, but also by association the tarot itself. The conclusion is that the OOTK is already at this level of analysis a consummate system of divination by the standards of Israel Regardie and vicariously the Golden Dawn itself, as it is based not on any singular symbol but on the entire body and range of possible symbols - Nuit - and is therefore in alignment with both the Universe and the tarot itself.
Next we must explain why there are five operations and not four or six. We might suggest four as a superior choice because of the four elements, or six because of the balance and harmony of Tiphareth, the sixth sephira. But the Golden Dawn (GD) choice five instead, and the obvious reason for this is that there are in fact five elements in the Hermetic system, not four. The GD includes spirit in the category of elements and therefore uses the pentagram as a symbol to represent the four elements governed by the fifth element of spirit. Spirit, additionally, is associated with Kether, the monad or Point, and also with the magical virtue "to go." The number five therefore is associated not only with the Masculine counterpart to Nuit, but is also associated with motion and time. Thus in conjunction with the structure of the operations themselves we have a perfect union of Ain (Nuit) and Kether (Hadit by the Thelemic system). The OOTK is not arbitrarily stuck together but is rather a symbolic representation of events, what we would consider life itself, the playing out of events in the body of God through a span of time. For without motion nothing could really live or exist in reality.
Card Counting, Pairing, and Elemental Dignities
It is worthwhile to consider the fact that tarot spreads created in the 18th and 19th centuries were not always positional. Like the OOTK they were usually based on strings of cards. Paul Huson's book Mystical Origins of the Tarot provides us with several examples coming from Etteila's personal practice and that of his contemporary Julia Orsini (pg. 271-276). In these methods cards are spread out in "strings" and are read essentially chronologically in succession. Both of these readers and interpreters being highly influential we can assume that occultists and tarot academics of the 19th century looked to them for divinatory technique, and that spreads in this period were similar in style. It seems to me at least that positional spreads were not really in vogue at all until the publication of Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1910.
While the OOTK clearly borrows this method it stands out from the pack because of the GD's use of card counting, pairing, and elemental dignities which are not found in any other prior or contemporary methodology to my knowledge. In fact these techniques remain fairly esoteric today as the majority of readers ignore them entirely and prefer to use positional spreads that make simple statements such as "X card = X meaning." They do not take into account any interaction of forces, choosing instead to see cards as isolated islands of influence that when thought of as an archipelago, if you will, makes up a situational narrative. The reader through the use of their intuitive compass must impose some sort of fluidity upon this rigid structure; the fluidity is not inherent. And what is life but the interaction and interplay of various forces and influences within a system through a span of time? The structure of the OOTK provides us with the latter half of this equation and card counting and pairing within each operation provide us with the former.
Has it ever struck you how polar card counting and pairing are? I know for me it dawned on me one day that card counting was so clearly "chaotic" and counting was quite "orderly." It seems like a fairly obvious observation but it is one that eluded me for several years, and until now I have never been able to explain why this is necessary. It wasn't until I made the other obvious realization that, in counting from the significator, we are tracking that person's journey, and by association I couldn't help but think about "the Fool's Journey." That all too omnipresent description of the tarot trumps that has vaguely irked me for years was finally good for something other than an often trite, New Agey interpretation of the Greater Arcana. For by associating card counting with 0 The Fool it became only logical to associate card pairing with VIII Adjustment (Justice), the feminine counterpart to the Fool. As a duo, the Fool, the letter Aleph, and Adjustment, the letter Lamed, create the Hebrew word AL. They are a perfect expression of the Thelemic formula 0=2, and represent the two basic functions of the spirit, whose virtue is, again, "to go." The Fool represents unbridled energy outpoured, while Adjustment represents its mitigation and restriction as governed by form, which is also inherently dualistic. Perhaps by extension we can also see solve et coagula, the only two processes available to the universe, as represented by these somewhat. (Of course this is more accurately reflected in VI The Lovers and XIV Art respectively, but these in turn can be seen as masculine and feminine, and therefore can be interpreted as inverts of 0 and VIII on a lower arc.)
I found this to be quite an interesting discovery as I then arrived at the next logical conclusion: put together, card counting and pairing constitute these two basic functions of the spirit. It's as if each operation is analyzing the actual course of action taken by the spirit. What, then, represents the spirit itself though? Or rather its origin? The answer is the significator, which represents a point-of-view, that is to say, Kether. The significator acts as an anchored POV throughout the OOTK. In fact, it's the only aspect of the reading that remains entirely static and "eternal," or "immutable." In this light, we can easily remember the other associations of chaos and order on the Tree of Life and realize that card counting is associated with Chokhmah and card pairing with Binah, Father Chaos and the Mother of Form. Put together we recognize the Supernal Triangle, which is all an expression of the same monadic source. Therefore, card counting and card pairing are coequal and should not be read one following the other chronologically as in Regardie's example in The Golden Dawn, but rather simultaneously as Crowley suggests. Each operation is a representation of how a particular POV (an individual, the querent) manifests itself through space and time, as Kether is ineffable and only understandable through its expression in Chokhmah and Binah.
There are, in fact, countless POVs in the OOTK - 78 in fact. Crowley writes elegantly about the way each card has a personality, a unique character and method of functioning, and so we must take that uniqueness into account.
Now, the final piece of the puzzle lies in elemental dignities. These constitute the amount of effect a card counted to has in the reading. This makes perfect sense because the elements represent the law and organization of the material universe, and determine the way in which forces interact with each other. Magic, after all, is the ability of individuals to use willpower to shape the elements as they see necessary, necessity of course being determined by the nature of one's True Will. Ability to shape the elements allows one's will to manifest itself more prominently. It's why even though we may want something very badly and channel all our willpower into making it a reality it may not ever materialize. Elemental dignities are therefore necessary if one is going to evaluate the efficacy of any POV in the OOTK, which is essentially what we are doing when we count cards. We are tracking which POVs actually manifest themselves in a random, seemingly whimsical manner and in what degree. Card pairing, on the other hand, represents their interactions in a more orderly way. Both methods describe the same narrative and seek to describe the actions of Kether, the significator. This would explain why Crowley chose to pair from the signficator and not from the ends as the GD does. To pair from the ends represents an alternate philosophy, one that is more fatalistic and sees the individual caught up in a whirl of forces outside of their control, whereas pairing from the significator demonstrates a belief that the individual is the source and cause of all that occurs to them, and therefore has power over them.
Conclusion
Though I feel like this is a good start, it is a start only. There is much more to be unpacked here. I am also sure that many will criticize me for using Thelemic logic for explaining a Golden Dawn system, which I can understand. However, I don't believe the OOTK makes much sense without the Thelemic system, which, for the most part, rounds out much of the Kabbalistic philosophy already espoused by that group. I don't think that the two need to remain segregated but rather can inform and aid each other as is necessary. Ultimately there is no proof to back up the conclusions presented in this piece, and they can only ever represent opinions, but it is my hope that the reader will at least see the logic behind them and deign to entertain their possible validity. Everything I have concluded about this has come to me through the aid of the Spirit, and so I take no credit for it. I hope that I have presented it in a way that is in accordance with its Will, and that my work will benefit at least a few.
