On Lots and Trickster Gods
The Lots of Fortune and Spirit are lesser-known aspect of one’s chart.
Using the lots is a technique developed in the Hellenistic astrological tradition, but they are commonly referred to as the Arabic Parts or Lots, since they featured prominently in the Medieval astrological tradition.
There are many, many lots that have been introduced and developed over the centuries, ranging from the aforementioned Fortune and Spirit to ones such as the Lots of Aloofness, Imprisonment, Mastery, Ordinary Intellect, even the Lot of Pomegranates. If you ever need to delve deeper into your relationship with Sweet Foods, well…there’s a lot for that too.
However, the most commonly used lots are known as the Seven Hermetic Lots. These are the lots calculated from the seven visible planets (the Sun and Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) and are the Lots of Fortune, Spirit, Eros, Victory, Necessity, Courage, and Nemesis.
Before I get any deeper into what I am trying to say here, I’ll attempt to explain what lots actually are. Each particular lot is not any kind of celestial body, but rather a mathematical point in a chart calculated from the positions of two celestial bodies specially chosen to represent the topics of that lot based on their combined significations.
Astrological lots are tied into the age-old practice of casting lots: cleromancy.
Cleromancy is a form of divination whereby a decision is made, an outcome determined, a leader chosen, by a seemingly random practice. Rolling dice is a form of casting lots. Flipping coins is casting lots. The lottery is casting lots. The Bible mentions 77 instances of lots being casted.
When a group of people use lots to shed light on something, the reasoning behind it has a lot to do with two concepts. The first is related to randomness and impartiality; once a lot is cast, it would be difficult to argue that the outcome was affected by human intervention. This tribal leader was not selected via nepotism, but rather an impartial polished stone (or dice, or cards), acting as a disinterested party—washing its metaphorical hands of sticky human desire—made the decision for everyone.
The second concept is more esoteric and thus more powerful—it has to do with Tyche.
Tyche, or Fortuna, in full regalia.
Tyche is the ancient Greek goddess of fate, chance, and fortune (known as Fortuna by the Romans). In days of yore, when no real cause could be attributed to huge events (floods, droughts, a variety of other cataclysmic weather patterns, politics), it was often attributed to the will of Tyche.
Tyche was frequently depicted wearing a mural crown (a headpiece representing a city’s walls), the mark of a tutelary deity—a god or goddess chosen to be the patron or guardian of a city. She carries a cornucopia, its bounty barely contained, as well as a scepter or other symbols of royalty. She is also winged in many depictions. However, Tyche was just as often shown blindfolded and carrying a wheel or other objects symbolizing chance, uncertainty, risk, the winds of fate.
Her nature, being truly impartial, was so dual that it was essentially whole.
A 20-sided die inscribed with ancient Greek letters from the Ptolemaic period (2nd century B.C.–4th century A.D.)
It is said that the legendary Palamedes, one of the only humans Odysseus couldn’t trick, dedicated the first set of dice to Tyche at her temple at Argos.
When one casts lots, one cedes power to what can only be called the will of God. These seemingly random acts are intended to act as a vessel for whichever force, spirit, or deity you believe has their hand deeply embedded in the affairs of mankind.
In astrology, the Lots bear this meaning in a chart. They represent the lot you were given in this life.
The Lots of Fortune and Spirit are calculated using this premise; the Lot of Fortune is associated with the body, and the Lot of Spirit with the soul and mind. To calculate the Lot of Fortune in a day chart, you take the distance from the Sun to the Moon and project it from the Ascendant, the most personal point in any chart. (In a night chart, it’s the distance from the Sun to the Moon.) To calculate Spirit in a day chart, you reverse the Fortune formula—it becomes the distance from the Moon to the Sun projected from the Ascendant, and vice versa for a night chart.
The theory behind these simple formulas is actually quite elegant and beautiful. In most ancient texts, the light of the Sun was tied to a person’s mind and soul, while darkness was associated with the physical body. So, in the Fortune calculation, the luminaries are arranged in such a way as to represent the descent from light into darkness: the Sun to the Moon in a day chart, and the Moon to the Sun in a night chart. Therefore, the Lot of Fortune in one’s chart is intrinsically tied to chance and circumstance—things you don’t have any control over. Conversely, Spirit is associated with rising into the light from the darkness, and its calculation reflects that.
A diagram illustrating the Chaldean Order of the Planets from Peter Apian’s Cosmographia, c. 1539.
(As an aside—the Moon is associated with the physical body for a specific, also quite beautiful, reason: its place in the Chaldean order of the planets. The Chaldean order is a system of hierarchy derived from the relative orbital velocity of each of the seven visible planets, in this order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. The Moon is last in the order because it is the closest to Earth. The Chaldean order is used in a lot of really complicated ways, but all you need to know right now is that, in theory, the planets essentially represent the transmission of something—call it divine energy, the desire of the universe, whatever. In order for this energy to make its way to Earth, it travels from the beyond and makes its way through the planets in Chaldean order, ending with the Moon, which then acts as an emissary delivering this energy by playing a role in physically manifesting it on Earth. That’s why the Moon in particular represents the physical body.)
Fortune and Spirit are the two most prevalent Hermetic lots, but the others also have this concept at their core, except they use Fortune and Spirit in their calculations. For example, to find the Lot of Eros, you use the distance between the Lot of Spirit and Venus; for the Lot of Courage, you use Mars and Fortune; for the Lot of Victory, it’s Spirit and Jupiter, and so on.
But this isn’t actually what I wanted to write about. What I want to write about are trickster gods.
The seven hermetic lots are named that because they are attributed to the mythical figure of Hermes Trismegistus, or Hermes the Thrice-Greatest. We don’t know if Hermes Trismegistus was a real person at some point or a composite of several mythological figures. He is closely associated with both the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, and his major contribution to the world is a series of ancient writings called the Hermetica, which cover a variety of topics, including—obviously—astrology, but also alchemy, philosophy, theology, cosmology, magic, and pharmacology. The Hermetica were written over the course of several centuries (from approximately 300 BCE to 1200CE); the philosophy of Hermeticism was born from these texts.
First Latin edition of the Corpus Hermeticum, 1471 CE.
Hermes himself is one of the twelve Olympian gods of the Greek pantheon, and arguably the most well-known of the hundreds of trickster gods that populate human collective memory.
Clever, fleet-footed Hermes, with wings on his ankles, was known to cause mischief wherever he went, and yet he was the only Olympian trusted by the other gods to deliver messages to the mortal realm. Hermes rules thieves, gamblers, merchants, sailors, and those who live by their wits. He rules luck and wealth and language. He traveled down from Mount Olympus on dawn’s rainbow, and whenever one received a message from Hermes, one had to proceed with caution. He was also responsible for transporting all the souls freshly released from their corporeal forms down to Hades—the Underworld.
Hermes, from D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, my very favorite book as a child.
Explains a lot.
Hermes is the Olympian communicator, the transmitter of information from the divine to the human realm. Information in and of itself is pure—it’s only through its transmittal that mistakes are made, miscommunications are experienced, and before you know it you’re sailing off to fight a decades-long war for no reason.
However, Hermes’ ability to move freely between worlds is the essence of his godhood. He is a liminal deity, and lives in the spaces between our thoughts and actions.
The thing that I have been chewing over as of late is the fact that out of twelve Olympian deities, one is a trickster god. One-twelfth of the divine as imagined by the ancient Greeks was devoted to this energy. In the Norse pantheon we have Loki, and in West Africa, Anansi, along with many, many others across culture and history that I am not yet knowledgeable enough about to name. Some aren’t gods, such as Reynard the Fox or Puck from a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Regardless of how you lay it out, there is a deeply rooted acknowledgment of, and reverence for, this trickster god energy.
Souls on the Banks of the Acheron by Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl, 1898. Here Hermes performs his darkest task: leading all souls to Hades.
Why are tricksters such a clearly important element of the divine?
Tricksters subvert authority, they break rules; disrupt the social order; they cause mix-ups that have far-reaching consequences. They cross boundaries and deliver messages. They are always clever and often childish; they can be friendly or spiteful; in a lot of ways, they encapsulate the many-layered nature of the human psyche. Tricksters are a whirlwind of those human urges that communities across the span of time have sought to repress and control.
Not all gods are morally righteous and upstanding. Trickster gods are usually not the ones we turn to when seeking solace or assistance, but they are nonetheless included among the godly ranks, and that can only mean that their characteristics contribute some kind of essential energy or function, something needed in the world. Something to fear and accept, to regard with awe and resignation. The quick twist of fate’s wheel, a burst of wind bearing the erratic distribution of fortune, both good and bad. The will of Tyche. Luck is blind—or rather, luck is blindfolded.
Carved figure of Eshu.
I have encountered what can only be disguised as trickster god energy time and time again these past few months. Maybe I am more in tune with it at the moment, or even seeking it out or manifesting it; regardless, I see it everywhere. I see it beaming out through internet trolls; I see it in dating apps, panhandlers, Craigslist scam artists, phone calls asking you for your Social Security number; I even see it in art and music. I see it in my friends, and in myself at times, no matter how deeply I bury it.
Over ten years ago, a woman I once knew that practiced Cuban Santeria told me a tale about Eshu, one of the Orishas, known as the “personification of mischief.” She told me that whenever you see a panhandler or beggar, you should always give them something, because every once in a while, it is Eshu in disguise. I have never forgotten that. In a sense, it carries the tone of a nanny state, whereby we only align with our culture’s ethical mores due to fear of being caught; however, it also reminds us that we are constantly in danger of getting tricked—and if we’re tricked, our true natures will be exposed.
We need tricksters to keep it all flowing, to make us question our point of view, to incite us into action through shame, fury, enchantment. Through thrill-seeking. Through gambling, in every way you can gamble in this life.
We need tricksters to get us to rebel. We also need them to show us that the divine is not always, well, divine as we define it.
The Romans used the name Mercury instead of Hermes, but it is essentially the same god. Hermes/Mercury is the origin of the name of the planet Mercury. Mercury in a natal chart is our own trickster energy. When boiled down, extremely boiled down, Mercury’s function is to shape how our minds function and how we absorb and transmit information through all forms of language.
Both Hermes Trismegistus and the Olympian Hermes act as transmitters of sacred information, and so by association, so does Mercury itself.
And, you know, there is that age-old saying that “the mind plays tricks on you.”
“Mercury signifies the power to overcome the gap that exists between separate entities.”
Here are some additional thoughts on Mercury by the great Robert Hand from his book Horoscope Symbols:
“Mercury signifies the power to overcome the gap that exists between separate entities. The world as seen in normal human consciousness is a world of divisions. The first of those is the division between subject and object, I and Thou. I cannot experience what you experience and you cannot experience what I experience. We can never fully occupy another’s point of view, yet we are not wholly cut off. We can communicate, and communication is one of the chief Mercurial functions.
In this way, Mercury is an aspect of consciousness itself: it creates the relationship between subject and object that is necessary in order for consciousness to exist.
The second source of Mercury’s importance is that is represents the power of symbol-making. By extension, this includes all forms of data transfer.
All our knowing, experiencing, sensing, believing, or disbelieving is done through signs which represent actual facts, experiences, or entities in our minds. For example, our visual impression of a tree is not the thing itself. It is the brain’s experience of the impact of a pattern of light waves focused on the retina of the eye. What we see as a tree is only our experience of an aspect of the total reality of a tree. All other sense impressions are also patterns of this kind created by the brain’s receiving data from the sense organs.
Creating maps or sets of signs that correspond either to reality or to other groups of signs is a Mercurial function.
Mercury is neither the maps themselves, nor the languages, nor the mechanical media in which data is stored, nor is it any of the representational signs themselves. It is the process of creating the maps or the languages, of storing the data or the signs, and of making sure that maps created in one medium correspond to the original set of experiences, ideas, or signs that the map represents.
On the highest level, Mercury is associated with the Logos or Word, the aspect of divinity in which the will of God is translated into the particular forms and structures of the created universe.
Occultists have always considered the physical universe itself to be nothing more than a set of signs or a map corresponding to the divine nature. All knowledge and wisdom come through the Logos, whose planetary symbol is Mercury. Thus, as long as the process of knowing is recognized to be less important than that which is to be known, Mercury is one of the highest symbols of all.”