The Left Angle Cross of Dedication (Version 2)

Full breakdown

The 29/30 polarity carries pain with it. See gate 29 sitting opposite gate 30 and it plays out something like: 'fine, we understand — we understand there's so much desire. I know you need to hear yes. Fine, I'll pay for your dental work.' These people keep taking on commitments rooted in an inner desire that, if they follow through, their own expectations on the other end will finally be met.

When we first looked at Dedication, we saw it through gate 23 and its devotion to explaining, to reaching insight and putting it into words for others. Here it's different — it's simply devotion to insight itself. Because this cross is interpersonal, Juxtaposition doesn't get silence here; these people share their insights without worrying whether they can actually articulate them.

Essentially, they blurt out their 'realizations,' which can be genuinely funny — they expect you to do the explaining. Someone says, 'I know the world is... blah, blah, blah,' but won't explain it, because they want to hand you the insight itself. That has a mutative effect on you, because it's a mutative channel — you walk away turning it over in your head: 'why did he say that? How does he know?' They make you do all the work. Six years later you might come back and say, 'what you told me turned out to be true, because it works exactly like this, this, and this.' And of course, the person with 43/23 says 'I know' — whether or not they actually knew at the time.

An individual has a hard road ahead until they manage to convince someone to accept their difference from everyone else. In the end, we live in Solomon's world, a tribal, collective world, and mutation always feels like a threat. These are great people precisely because they carry disruption and dissolution with them, leaving their mutative knowledge hanging in the air and walking off with, 'well, have fun with that.' They leave it behind and force everyone else, regardless of structure or Type, to try to work out what it means. It's a wonderful thing, honestly — I carry 43/23 myself and think it's marvelous: go stir them all up, don't tell them a damn thing.

Understand something else: this is a very old tradition. Not long ago, real knowledge was held close, accessible to very few. No priest in ancient Egypt would tell ordinary people when the eclipse was coming — you wouldn't, because then you'd no longer be the priest with power, standing before the crowd in a dramatic pose saying, 'behold.' These people devote their power to cultivating their insight in you as a disruptive act of mutation.