Cross of the Deal

Full breakdown

Gates: 35 Change, 37 Friendship, 40 Aloneness, 5 Fixed Rhythms. Gate numbers: 37/5, 40/35.

Arriving at the 4th line and the Cross of the Deal, we find someone fixed on making deals. Everything, for this person, is a transaction — and they're fixed on that, no matter what's actually going on in their life; underneath it all, it's still a matter of a deal.

If you have a 4/1 person in your life, don't fight it — you'll never change them. You can't change them, but you can break them. There's nothing they can do about it; it's simply their fixed fate. Meet someone with this Cross, and everything with them becomes a question of the deal, absolutely everything. Ask 'do you have a cigarette?' and the answer comes straight back: 'sure — what for?' Everything's a transaction, and there's nothing to be done about it.

Once you start to understand the nature of incarnation and the Crosses, you begin to see that even the eccentrics, the fools, the difficult people — all of them incarnate for a reason, and that's simply how it is. If you run into someone like this and they wear you down with deal after deal, what can you do? Recognize the joke buried in it. Look at how society itself is organized through the Cross of Planning, and you'll see this same extremism in its dealmaking, because that's genuinely what it is. We've built entire civilizations on these silent transactions — they're a large part of why we've been able to expand as fast as we have.