After doing a reading for William Stoner, I decided to do another one for another stoic figure in American literature: Don Gately from Infinite Jest. Now Don Gately is one of the main staff members at Ennet House, the halfway house for recovering addicts in Infinite Jest. He is a former burglar and addict who now works as a live-in staffer. He supervises the residents, enforces the rules, keeps the house running, and provides a constant physical and moral presence, who never ever has the ambition to be an intellectual champion. Probably the most interesting character in the whole book.
Ascendant/East – Two of Cups
In the cardinal method, the card placed on the Ascendant defines the figure’s function and mode of presence in the world. It names what the figure is. Don Gately is the Two of Cups, a minor arcanum of simple and fertile bonds. It is almost primitive, showing two individuals who recognise each other and say “stay here”. Its decan is Venus in Cancer, where Venus has triplicity in Water and feels comfortable, considering that Cancer is a feminine sign too which fits the esse of Venus.
The card represents love as shelter, as protection, as maternal containment. Gately is someone who stays. He sustains the presence of the other. It is the function of womb, where something can remain alive. This is paradoxical in a figure who appears rough, physically imposing, and outwardly brutal. In him, that rough masculine exterior serves a Cancerian function. He embodies the womb that receives and holds. This is a form of love closer to agápē than to romance.
Imum Coeli/North – Queen of Pentacles
The Imum Coeli represents Gately’s roots in relation to the world and the card deepens what was said above in a very specific way. Now, the Queen of Pentacles is perhaps the most nurturing court card of all, combining two descending elements. She is the Water (as all Queens are) that nurtures and humidifies the soil (Earth). The maternal touch again is quite obvious. Earth without this Queen is pure barrenness.
So, Gately’s roots are based on care, routine, repetition, body, food, bed, schedules, simple rules. The Queen of Pentacles governs the concrete world as an act of love. She makes sure the house exists and is there to welcome those who need it. The fire stays lit, there is soup on the counter, there is continuity. This is what the AA centre is for those people. This is what Gately embodies. He saves through weight and through presence. He saves through stability and through the capacity to be there every day doing the same thing, like a monk. This card in this place reveals that his function is uterine and matricial.
Descendant/West – King of Swords
The King of Swords on the Descendant stands in direct contrast to the Queen of Pentacles. Here the elements are ascending and mutually reinforcing. Air and Fire work together. Thought moves towards action. This is the dominant regime of the world of Infinite Jest. The Other appears to Gately in this form. The Others are figures of mind, of rule, of decision. They operate in the domain of speech, judgement, and command. They cut, they define, they organise. This is an active, directive, executive structure. It is also a regime that can become cold, procedural, and mechanical. It can reduce life to rules, formulas, and scripts. It can become a machine that functions without warmth.
This is also the regime of the programme, of the steps, of the slogans, of the rules, of the verbal formulas that structure life in Ennet House. This is the opposite pole of the fertile, receptive, sustaining structure shown at the Imum Coeli. Gately holds the field where descending and ascending elements can coexist.
Medium Coeli/South – Justice (Arcanum VIII)
Two times in a row, in readings about Stoic characters, Justice appears as the final seal in the Medium Coeli, the 10th house of Destiny. And look at the relationship between the card in the Ascendant and this one right here. Venus in Cancer still operates in the Minor Arcana, in the sublunar world. But Arcanum VIII is something entirely different. Venus here is the cosmic ruler of adjustment, of balance, of equilibrium in Libra. The scales always tell the truth.
Also, remember that any house in astrology actualises itself ten houses from it. The 1st in the 10th, the 2nd in the 11th, the 3rd in the 12th, etc. Using my cardinal reading method, based on the zodiacal cross, the first and final cards are always profoundly tied. In astrology, the relationship between the Ascendant and the Medium Coeli is the strongest one too, since the native (1st) meets their destiny in the 10th. In this reading, you can see how Venus moves from being present in a minor and assumes her judicial throne in a major card.
His entire life, after surviving what he survived, is organised around one thing: keeping a scale in working order in a world of extreme imbalance. Addiction is pure excess, hubris, disproportion, inflation of desire. Justice is the card that exists to restore proportion where everything has overflowed.
Justice is also a card of impersonality. It is not “every case is a case”. It is submission to a form that stands above individual stories. The programme. The steps. The rules. The schedules. The repetition. Gately is a servant of a structure. And his destiny was to become more and more that: less a person, more a function. Less psychology, more form. It is a levelled, regulated. A life of watching the scale every day so that it does not tilt again.
Kύριε ελέησον