The Root of the Root of Your Self

Don’t go away, come near.

Don’t be faithless, be faithful.

Find the antidote in the venom.

Come to the root of the root of your self.

Molded of clay, yet kneaded

from the substance of certainty,

a guard at the Treasury of Holy Light –

come, return to the root of the root of your self.

Once you get hold of selflessness,

you’ll be dragged from your ego

and freed from many traps.

Come to the root of the root of your self.

You are born from the children of God’s creation,

but you have fixed your sight too low.

How can you be happy?

Come to the root of the root of your self.

Although you are a talisman protecting a treasure,

you are also the mine.

Open your hidden eyes

and come to the root of the root of your self.

You were born from a ray of God’s majesty

and have the blessings of a good star.

Why suffer at the hands of things that don’t exist?

Come to the root of the root of your self.

You are a ruby embedded in granite.

How long will you pretend it isn’t true?

We can see it in your eyes.

Come to the root of the root of your self.

You came here from the presence of that fine Friend,

a little drunk, but gentle, stealing our hearts

with that look so full of fire; so,

come, return to the root of the root of your self.

Our master and host, Shamsi Tabrizi,

has put the eternal cup before you.

Glory be to God, what a rare wine!

So come to the root of the root of your self.

The Root of the Root of your self, Rumi

Absolute Confidence in the Cosmic Force

There may be certain precursors to successful magical procedures, including perfect spontaneous timing, heightened and receptive consciousness to the point of unconscious subordination to divinity, absolute confidence in the cosmic force. Free will united with obedience to the higher intelligence. It may also be more conducive to positive results if magic is conducted whilst the magician is in motion. It seems less likely that stasis would be more of an optimum state than movement if there is an intention to bring about transformation within it.

Although the potential is there in everyone and although the preconditions for success are not impossible to understand, one may, in theory, simply chance upon the optimum conditions for making magic. This is the chaos theory (I think). In the Western world, the probability that success in this area may be brought about by chance may well be greater than the probability of their being actual magicians, which is not to say such individuals do not exist. Or individual. Maybe there is but ONE magician, whereas surely there must be an infinite number of chances. It is difficult to determine because most people have fallen out of sync with the rhythm of the universe and there is evidence to suggest that there can only BE one at any given moment. Maybe the spirit of magic, the soul of creation, moves transiently through each of us with unfathomable reason.

If we have fallen out of sync with the rhythm of the universe, does this then mean, I wonder, that there is another universe with perfect timing at this moment – how close is the zeitgeist of the earth to the plan of a higher intelligence? Does it randomly coincide – at which point we would presumably be at a peak of civilization – or must we achieve a particular state of collective being if we are to join forces with the cosmic instigator?

The Gift of Black Perfection

The Arcana of the Tarot, I must stress, are spiritual exercises. And the ninth Arcanum, the Hermit, is one of them.

One undertakes the essential thing about this exercise, namely the endeavour to draw light from darkness, ie, an effort aiming at knowledge which appears to you to be not only unknown but unknowable.

In fact, every serious antimony signifies psychologically: “the light that I possess is polarised at two poles; between these two luminous poles there is only one darkness”. Now, it is from this darkness that the solution to the antimony, the synthesis, must be drawn. It is necessary to create light from darkness. One could say that it is a matter of an act analogous to the Fiat lux (“let there be light”, Genesis i,3) of the first day of creation.

Experience teaches us that there are two kinds of darkness in the domain of consciousness. One is that of ignorance, passivity and laziness, which is ‘infralight’ darkness. The other, in contrast, is the darkness of higher knowledge, intense activity and endeavour still to be made – this is ‘ultra light’ . It is a question of this latter ‘darkness’ in instances where it is a matter of resolving an antimony or finding a synthesis.

Modern Hermetic literature takes account of the ‘neutralisation of binaries’, ie, the method where one finds the third term, or neutral term, for the two terms (‘binary’) corresponding to the active and passive principles….The method of ‘neutralisation of binaries’ is generally considered by Hermetic and occultist authors as the traditional method of Hermeticism.

Meditations on the Tarot, Unknown Author, Letter IX, The Hermit