透特塔罗

The number Four (Chesed) is here manifested in the realm of the Intellect. Chesed refers to Jupiter, who rules in Libra in this decanate. The sum of these symbols is therefore without opposition; hence the card proclaims the idea of authority in the intellectual world.

• The Four Swords in St. Andrew's Cross: The hilts of the four Swords are at the corners of a St. Andrew's cross. Their shape suggests fixation and rigidity — the mind locked into position.
• The Rose of Forty-Nine Petals: Their points are sheathed in a rather large rose of forty-nine petals, representing social harmony. Here too is compromise — the peace of convention rather than the peace of truth.
• The Rigid Formation: The entire arrangement suggests order imposed from above rather than emerging organically — law, convention, and the authority of established thought.

The Four of Swords is called Truce. It represents the establishment of dogma and law concerning the intellect. It represents a refuge from mental chaos, chosen in an arbitrary manner. It argues for convention.

Minds too indolent or too cowardly to think out their own problems hail joyfully this policy of appeasement. As always, the Four is the terminal: in this case there is no true justification for repose; its disturbance by the Five holds no promise of advance — its static shams go pell-mell into the melting-pot, the issue is mere mess, usually signalized by foetid stench. But it has to be done.

The Four of Swords represents the archetype of Mental Convention — the psychological state in which the mind, overwhelmed by the sorrow and complexity revealed in the Three, retreats into the safety of established beliefs, agreed-upon frameworks, and the authority of received wisdom. It is the intellectual equivalent of the armistice: not genuine peace but a temporary cessation of hostilities.

In Jungian terms, this is the experience of identification with the collective — the individual who, unable to bear the weight of independent thought, adopts the beliefs of their culture, their institution, or their peer group as a refuge from the terrifying freedom of genuine thinking. The rose of forty-nine petals (social harmony) sheathing the sword-points shows that the sharp edges of the intellect have been blunted by convention: the mind no longer cuts but is contained, wrapped in a compromise that sacrifices truth for comfort.

As the Chesed (Mercy) card of the Swords suit, the Four represents the first manifestation of Air below the Abyss — thought that has solidified into an institution. In Jungian terms, Chesed in Air is the dogma: the organized system of belief that provides structure and stability to the intellectual life but at the cost of genuine inquiry. Jupiter's influence gives this card its quality of authority and benevolent order — the sense that the established framework is not merely convenient but right, sanctioned by a higher power. But the Four is always the "terminal" — the dead end that must eventually be disrupted by the Five.

Jupiter in Libra combines the expansive, meaning-making planet with the sign of balance and social harmony. In Jungian terms, this produces the archetype of the benevolent establishment: the institution (church, academy, legal system) that genuinely provides order and meaning but does so at the cost of suppressing dissent and original thought. Jupiter in Libra is the judge who believes in justice, the professor who believes in truth — but whose justice and truth have become fossilized by their own success. The "policy of appeasement" Crowley identifies is the Ego's strategy of buying peace by surrendering the intellect's most dangerous and most valuable capacity: the ability to question everything.

The Four of Swords in psychological work signals a period of mental rest and conventional safety — but warns that this truce is temporary and that the mind's authentic questions, though suppressed, have not been answered.