{The Christmas Horseman}[3rd January 1988]

[Redbook4:285-286][19880103:1211f]{The Christmas Horseman}[3rd January 1988]

19880103.1211

[continued]

[W] has been ill since Christmas – a kind of flu – and [d] and [s] off-colour. This used to happen to either or both of us, as it does to others, around Christmas in London: we put it down to the sudden relaxation when work ended on 23^rd December, after the stress of getting work and domestic arrangements completed on time.

I have always been a bit uncertain about the Four Horsemen* in the Circles; but, so far as it goes, here they are again:

			(Mid Winter)
			+C†I~ (4) Pale Horse Death (by disease)
		(3) Human Face (TXIII)	| \	(4) Eagle in flight
(Equinox)	G~ (2) Red (Bay) Horse Civil War(?)	. –	\ | ☼ | \	. – .	M~ (1) White Horse Conquest.	(Equinox)
		. (2) Bull	(Hades) \ |	(1) Lion
			Famine (3) Black Horse A~
			(Mid Summer)

The Pale Horse and its rider have traditionally been associated with disease, presumably because of the colour (bearing in mind that the Horsemen seem to embody, in this context, the negative aspects of their cardinal points; but in a different sense for the two polarities: on the vertical polarity, it is the lack of what should be there at least on the Inner Circle; on the horizontal polarity, it is the extreme of what one would expect there on the Outer Circle).

Disease might seem more likely in hot weather, but Christmas (and Winter) does seem to be the time. Famine might be expected in Winter, but seems to make itself felt in practice soon after crop failure, i.e. in late Summer: harvests seem to be reasonably OK or near-total losses. The seasons to avoid for War – whether external or internal – were traditionally mid- to late Summer, when labour was required for the Harvest; and Winter, when mobility (and even survival) was impaired.

*[(of the Book of Revelation)]

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