Page:The mystic test book.djvu/32

28 The four suits represent the 4 seasons.

Chart showing the emblems arranged to illustrate the above arrangement will be found on preceding page.

In the spring of the year the birds mate. In the springtime of life or the first quarter, love is the master passion. The heart was therefore chosen as the emblem of the first quarter and the first season.

The next stage of life is represented by the trefoil or clover leaf of summer. Knowledge is best gained and retained in the summer of life, the second period.

Therefore the shamrock or "club," became the emblem of knowledge, intelligence, heat, argument, or even quarrels and law suits under some planets.

The third season, autumn, has for its emblem the diamond, representative of wealth. The third period of man's life is the one in which he is best able to gain wealth. In the fall of the year the crops are sold and the wealth of the harvest realized.

Winter or the fourth quarter of the Zodiac, is represented by the spade or acorn. By a strange and yet natural transformation, the acorn, which represented the symbolism of the death and burial of the physical form was changed among some nations to the spade which represented the same thing. But the acorn, when planted in the soil, sends forth a life principle which becomes a new tree in time. So it had a deeper signification than the spade, which symbolizes death without resurrection.

But the spade being an instrument of labor, it becomes a symbol of labor and death combined.

In addition to the quadratic division of the test book