Notes on Tarot Meditations

7/29/2019 Notes on Tarot Meditations

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The Magician

Pure Act.Perception of Correspondences.Spontaneous and Effortless ConcentrationCordialityGeniality

The Priestess

The mirror that is Consciousness.

Reflection of pure act.

The Empress

Sacred Magic/ Theurgy

Divine Authority (Crown) for use of Magical Power (Scepter) towards the liberationin order to ascend (Eagle)

The Emperor

The vow of obedience

Authority (not forced).The certainty of knowledge.Practical Hermetic Philosophy.

The Hierophant

The vow of poverty

The act of benediction.Prayer rises, benediction descends. (veins bring oxygen, arteries rid us off carbonicacid)Spiritual respirationVERTICAL-HORIZONTAL1.Puification – Love of Nature2.Illumination – Love of Neighbours

3. Mystical Union – Love of beings of the spiritual hierarchies



Moral logic instead of logic of facts.

5 limps = 5 dark currents

head/heart = the desire to be great

right hand = the desire to takeleft hand = the desire to keepright foot = the desire to advanceleft foot = the desire to hold on to at the expense of others

3 vows = head/heart, hands, feet. (obedience, poverty, chastity)

The Lovers

The vow of chastity

The practical doctrine of the hexagon:The three vows or the three temptationsObedience / power Poverty/ richnessChastity/ debauchery

Doubt is twofold inspiration

Faith is a single inspirationCertainty is vanquished doubt, it is faith regained.

Archangels are the spirits of nations.Principalities are time spirits.

Germany’s phantom/egregore is the Wolf Russia’s is the Bear France’s is the Cock. The Catholic Church’s is the Fox.Antichrist is the phantom/egregore of the whole of humanity.

The Chariot

It is the mastership understood in the sense of temptation as well as achievement. Thetrial of mastership is ego-inflation, megalomania.

Work and worship constitute the conditio sine qua non for practical esotericism inorder to hold in check the tendency towards megalomania.

The Chariot is the triumph achieved by the Self, the successful outcome of the processof individuation.



The Chariot can signify either a sick person suffering from megalomania or a manwho has passed through katharsis, the first of the three stages on the way of initiation.

One becomes master of the four elements fire/air/water/earth, which

in the domain of thought are manifested as creativity, clarity, fluidity and precisionin the domain of feeling are manifested as warmth, magnanimity, sensitivity,faithfulness.In the domain of will are manifested as intensity, scope, adaptability, firmness.(also the four virtues of catholic theology, plato’s four cardinal virtues, four qualitiesof Sankarachaya and the projection of the sacred name YHVH in human nautre)

Humility, being the law of spiritual health, implies consciousness of the differenceand distance between the center of human consciousness and the center of divineconsciousness.

The Justice

The Chariot taught us how inner equilibrium (health) is attained, the Justice teaches ushow to maintain it. The 9th Arcanum –the hermit- teaches us the “middle way”, thatof balanced spiritual development.

Law is interposed between the freedom of man and the freedom of God. Law does notact, it can only react.

Justice manifests itself in the domain of judgement.

The Hermit

The lamp creates light. The mantle creates silence. The staff creates certainty.

The lampLets light shine in the darknessThe mantleIs the faculty of separating oneself from collective moods, prejudices and desires of race, nation, class and family –the faculty of reducing to silence the cacophony of collectivism vociferating around oneself in order to listen to and understand thehierarchical harmony of the spheres.The staff The sense of realism, which is so developed that one stands in the domain of realitynot on two feet, but rather on three, i.e. he advances only after having “touched” theground through immediate experience and at first-hand contact, withoutintermediaries.

The triple concordance of that which is CLEAR, in Harmony with the Total, is theobject of Immediate Experience.



The traditional interpretation of the 9th Arcanum is Prudence.Prudence is constant awareness of being between two kinds of darkness –the darknessof “the white point” of absolute synthesis above, and the darkness of “the black point”

of the subconscious below.Prudence is at the same time “mobile concentration” proceeding from one color toanother in the equatorial region between the two opposite poles. It is wrapped in themantle of their synopsis not as a knowledge that is ever-present in the mind, but rather as the background of each particular branch of knowledge.

On Faith:Intense Faith –Hope, Faith-belief and faith-confidence can remove doubt (as in thecase of mad people) but they are not enough to move a mountain.

A force that can move a mountain must be equal to that which piled it up. There it is

evidently a question not only of the intensity of certainty, but rather the intensity of the certainty of truth.

The Wheel of Fortune

The world God created meets with the world of the Serpent and thus make our world.The world of the Serpent is the world within the world. Everything that belongs to theSerpent’s world enfolds, while the rest unfold.

(animal intestines/brain – plant’s foliage)

The brain is the organ of selection – the process of natural selection in one organ.

“Except for its sensory functions the brain has no other part than to mime, in the fullmeaning of the term, the mental life” (Henri Bergson, Mind-Energy)

The brain is therefore an organ effecting mimicry, choosing what it is going to mime.It mimes accordingly. Now, relevant mimicry is precisely what the Book of Genesisunderstands by cunning when it says that “the serpent was more cunning than anyother wild creature the Lord had made.”

(Yannis: that is why the serpent was “chosen” to have its own world? Because of itsefficiency to mime the world God created? )

It is, as it were, the “psychological” principle of the serpent, just as enfoldment andmovement in a closed circle is its dynamic principle.

To be cunning is to mime wisdom, after having eliminated the essential –its light- andthen to make use of it for one’s own ends.

(Yannis: Woman –Serpent is the astrological sign of Cancer)



“…but the Serpent said: There is no freedom for the world, in so far as the circle of the world is not closed. Because freedom is to be in oneself, without interference fromoutside, especially from above, on the part of the Father. The world will alwaysfollow the will of the Father and not its own, in so far as there is an opening in thecircle of the world, in so far as the Sabbath exists.

And the Serpent took his tail in his mouth and thus formed a closed circle […]And the Serpent said to the beings of the world moving on this side of the closedcircle, […] Here is your way –you will commence by my tail and you will arrive atmy head. Then you will have traversed the length of the circle of my being and youwill have within you the entire closed circle, and thus you will be free as I am free.

But woman guarder the memory of the world opened towards the Father andthe holy Sabbath. And she offered herself for the rending of the closed circle inherself in order to give birth to children issuing from the world beyond it. […] Thusoriginated the suffering of her pregnancy and thus originated sorrow on this side of

the world of the Serpent.And hostility came between woman and the Serpent, between the generations

of woman, giving birth with pain, and the generations of the serpent, giving birth with pleasure. The former will crush the head of the Serpent and the Serpent will woundthe heel of the woman. For woman moves in a contrary sense to the movement of theSerpent, and her head reaches the tail of the serpent, and her heels touch the head of the serpent. This is because in the world (which is the current of the Serpent) sufferingis its counter movement. It was through the counter-movement of suffering that thereoriginated the counter-current (of the sons of woman) which is the thought born fromsuffering and from the memory of the world of the Sabbath.

There are three continuities in evolution:a) Biological or hereditary (personality/destiny)

b) Psychic continuity or reincarnation (soul/will)c) Spiritual continuity or the work of salvation (Monad/providence)

The Strength

Force is the Arcanum of the natural integrity of being, or power without effort.(Virginity: spirit-soul-body = the force that keeps them together)

Every Hermeticist will sooner or later meet the Blessed Virgin. This meeting signifies protection against a very serious danger. For he who advances in the sense of depthand height in the “domain of the invisible” one day arrives at the sphere known byesotericists as the “sphere of mirages”. It is this zone which prophets and theApocalypse designate “Babylon”. The soul and the queen of this zone is in factBabylon, the great prostitute, who is the adversary of the Virgin.

With respect to qualitative force, it would be appropriate to say that “unity is force”, because one is strong only in so far as there is unity of spirit, soul and body, i.e. in so



far as there is virginity. It is inner conflict that renders us weak: the fact that we servetwo or even three masters at the same time.

The Hanged Man

Terrestrial gravitation, “the flesh”, pushes mankind towards the ideal enfoldment, i.e. possession, power and enjoyment, whilst celestial gravitation, “the spirit”, drawsmankind towards the ideal of radiation, i.e. poverty, obedience and chastity. (thesuperman vs the righteous man –yannis: sun in leo vs sun in aries)

The Hanged Man is the soul of the Spiritual man. Suspended between heaven andearth in complete solitude, not able to receive help from either.

The “spiritual man” first (knows and) acts, then understands. (R1 stuff: Obedience isthe perception of the will) But the will is an active force; it is not naturally an organ of

perception. The transformation from “my will” to “thy will”, through love, is whatone calls “obedience”. It is through obedience that the will is able to perceive.

Practical Hermeticism therefore applies itself to educating thought and imagination(or memory) to keep in step with the will. This is why it requires constant effort of thought and imagination combined, in order to think, meditate and contemplate insymbols –symbolism being the sole means of rendering thought and imaginationcapable of not being suspended when the will submits to revelation from above and

enabling them to unite with it in its act of receptive obedience, so that the soul notonly has a revelation of faith, but also participates in this revelation with itsunderstanding and memory.

The Hermeticist is also a Hanged Man. For him, too, faith predominates at the beginning and for a long time subsequently. This is because it is a difficult task,exacting inner asceticism for a long time, to render thought and imagination capableof being present and upright by the altar where the fire of faith is kindled and burns.But with time the gap between the certainty of faith and that of knowledge becomesnarrower and narrower. Until the day arrives when they participate in it on equalfooting with the will. This is the spiritual event that is designated Hermetic Initiation.

And here is how this is to be achieved:One moralizes thought in substituting moral logic for formal logic. One makes anentrance for moral warmth in the domain of “cold thought”. At the same time, oneintellectualizes the imagination by disciplining it and submitting it to the laws of moral logic.(=the “exact imagination” of Goethe, i.e. dispensing with imagination which playsaccording to free and arbitrary association, and instead applying it to work inaccordance with the associations dictated by moral logic –in harmony with the laws of symbolism)



“Moral Logic” introduces warmth in to the light of thought, so that the latter becomessolar, instead of lunar, which is what it is when it has only light alone and is cold,without warmth.

The will becomes an organ of perception and execution towards God, as the zodiac isin the macrocosm; thought becomes warm and luminous, as the sun is in themacrocosm; the imagination becomes reflecting towards truth as the moon is towardsthe sun in the macrocosm.(obedience=the sacrifice of will / poverty= the sacrifice of thought / chastity= thesacrifice of imagination)

Twelve is the number of modalities of the will and its action;Seven is the number of basic modalities of feeling and imagination (R7 cancer);Three is the numerical law of thought and word (R3 Saturn);One is the number of the Self who thinks, feels and wills.

The sum of 1,3,7,12 is 22 in 1. This is why there are 22 Major Arcana.

(Yannis: 3+4=7 / the trinity in the four elementsR1,R2,R3 {R4 R5 R6 R7}

Creator Savior Sanctifier {Fire/radiation, air/expansion, water/mobility, earth/stability}

3*4 = 12 / the trinity through the four elements = The 12 signs )

Death

Forgetting, sleep and death are three manifestations differing in degree of a sole principle (the principle of subtraction) or force which effects the disappearance of intellectual psychic and physical phenomena. Forgetting is to sleep as sleep is todeath. Or again: forgetting is to memory as sleep is to consciousness, and sleep is toconsciousness as death is to life.

When Nature forgets us, then we die; when we forget ourselves, then we fall asleep;and when we lose active interest in something, then we forget it.

Natural forgetting reduces man to animality. Natural sleep reduces man to vegetality. Natural death reduces man to minerality.

Memory is of 4 kindsMechanicalLogical } Horizontal Kinds, Memories of the PastMoralVertical or Revelatory Not a Memory of the Past



(from Lazarus’ tale)The operation of recall to life –or resurrection- comprises three stages:That of coming (reaching the last door between the recaller and the recalled)That of taking away the stone (removing the doubt /depression, fatigue, despair)

That of recall (the force of love through effort and suffering)

There is no freedom outside of the miraculous and man is man only in so far as helives from the miracle, through the miracle and for the miracle.

Temperance

Man was created in God’s divine image and likeness.

The divine image of man is the freedom of will.The divine likeness of man is God’s virtues and it was destroyed when man fell.

The GUARDIAN ANGEL undertakes the functions destroyed by original sin, in thelikeness, and fills the breach wrought by them. (Yannis: i.e. human system=animalman +Guardian angel?)

The Guardian angel accompanies as a faithful ally the Divine Image in man (Man’sfree will), just as vicious inclinations have made their way into the human functionalorganism, which was, before the Fall, the divine likeness.

The Angel guards, cherishes, protects, visits and defends. He is therefore a flamingstar, a luminous pentagon above man. (Yannis: Venus’s symbol)

He guards memory. (Continuity of endeavor)He cherishes the endeavor, quest and aspiration.He visits when he is permitted and called for.He protects the human being, by means of warnings/informationHe defends man as an advocate before Divine Justice, as a mother would defend her child (this function is aimed above)

Guardian Angels are the manifestation of high and pure maternal love (Yannis:Venus)

The human being would be shattered by the additional impulse coming from theMonad (the image/free will), which would be an irreparable catastrophe. Now, it is a

just measure in the relationship between the image and the likeness that has to beguarded and which is, in fact, guarded by the Guardian Angel. This is why traditionhas given the name Temperance to the 14th Arcanum of the Tarot. For it is a matter here of the measure in the fluidic relationship between the image and the likenesswhich is necessary for life and health.



Just measure in the fluidic relationship between the absolute radicalism of the monad(image/free will) and the relativism of the phenomenal personality (thelikeness/virtues) constitutes the fundamental principle of spiritual, psychic andcorporeal health.

Tears, sweat and blood are the three substances of the threefold mystery of man.

a) to be touched from above is “tears” b) the effort to conform to that which is above is “sweat”c) the consummated marriage of grace from above and effort from below is

“blood|”.

The 14th Arcanum therefore teaches the spiritual exercise dedicated to the mystery of tears. (this is what flows between the two vases –the image and that of likeness-

which are held by the guardian angel of the card the Temperance)

“Tears” –like “sweat” and “blood” – signify, both as an expression and as a fluidicsubstance, more than the physical body-fluid secreted by glands in the eyes. Theysignify also the subtle fluid of a spiritual and psychic nature, which emanates from theheart. (i.e. the 12-petalled lotus). The expression “to have tears in one’s voice”already points to inner tears, and the expression “to lament one’s weakness” goesfurther in the same direction.

Inspiration is the principle acting in tears. Just like weeping, inspiration takes place inthe guise of “flowing between two vases”. It results from the simultaneouscollaboration of the “higher eye” and the “lower eye”.

Higher ↨ ↔ Inspiration

Lower

The “technique” of vision differs from that of inspiration in that in vision it is not a

matter of the simultaneous collaboration of “two eyes” but rather of the passiveimprint that the lower self, alone, receives from above. As it is not a matter of “twounderstandings”, it can be that the lower self (personality) experiences a visionwithout understanding it.



Higher .↓

Lower . → vision

Higher .→ Intuition↑

Lower .

Concerning intuition, this is due, likewise to a single active principle. Here the lower self identifies itself with the higher Self, i.e. it raises itself to the latter and effacesitself to the point of becoming a passive and mute presence. Then it is the Higher Self alone which is active.

In intuition is accomplished the mystery of bloodIn vision is accomplished the mystery of sweat.In inspiration is accomplished the mystery of tears.

There is, truth to tell, no technique in the intimate and spiritual domain of inspiration, just as no technique exists in the domain of vision and intuition. In these domainseverything is essentially moral. For, in order to “think together”, one thing beforeeverything else is required, and this is humility. It is humility alone, due to poverty,obedience and chastity that renders us “inspirable”.

“In the beginning was the Word” is the law not only of the world but also of therealization of inspiration in each individual biography. And the entire community of Hermeticists lives under this law, under the law of inspiration.

Everyone lives under this law. The community of Hermaticists is distinguished fromthe rest of mankind only in that it is borne –in an irresistible way- to be conscious of itand to know what happens both to them and to the rest of humanity. They hunger andthirst for comprehensive knowledge of that which the latter simply undergo.Hermeticists do not bring any privilege with it; on the contrary, rather, it is an addedduty with which they are changed, notably the inner duty to understand the totality of

miracles and disasters that is life and the world. This duty makes them appear presumptuous or childish in the eyes of the world, but it is the Arcanum of inspiration –the winged entity pouring living water from one vase into another- that renders themsuch as they are.

The Devil

It is the Arcanum of counter-inspiration.It will introduce us to the secrets of the electrical fire and the intoxication of counter-inspiration.



Love is the vital element of profound knowledge, intuitive knowledge. One cannotlove evil, evil is therefore unknowable in its essence. One can understand it only at adistance, as an observer of its phenomenology.

The card does not suggest the metaphysics of evil (the fall, the serpent etc) but rather

an eminently practical lesson as to how it happens that beings can forfeit their freedom and become slaves of a monstrous entity which makes them degenerate byrendering them similar to it.

The theme of the card is of the generation of demons and of the power they have over those who generate them. It is the Arcanum of the creation of artificial beings and of the slavery into which the creator can fall, becoming a slave of his own creation.(the hierarchies of “the left” are the ones that test us)

The Tower As the 15th Arcanum is related to demoniacal evil, so the 16th Arcanum is related tohuman evil, i.e. to evil that does not come from outside, but which certainly has itsorigin within the human soul.

(How the mighty are fallen)

When one builds A Tower of Babel, he specializes in something he takes pride in, thisway reaching an impasse regarding his/her personal human growth. The thunderboltfrees one from this impasse.

Construction vs Growth

The Star

The 17th Arcanum is the Arcanum of growth (the universal sap of life) just as the 16th

was that of construction.

A tower is built. A tree grows. Growth is flowing, whilst construction proceeds byleaps and bounds.

The agent of transformation from the ideal to the real.

The agent of growth (water/principle of continuity) vs. the creative electrical agent(fire)

The light-force that emanates from the star is hope. Hope is what moves and directsspiritual evolution in the world, as natural instinct of biological reproduction movesnatural evolution.



The spiritual exercise of the 17th Arcanum is to see together –to “contemplate”- theessence of biological growth (the agent of growth) and the essence of spiritual growth(hope)

It is a matter of coming to an intuition of “water” above and below.

What is required for mankind’s evolution to continue?

Hope –hopeMaternity – true creativity } their unity is the agent of growthHeredity - tradition

The Moon

Notes on Tarot Meditations

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