Liberating Action

I am an anonymous author and I remain so in order to be able to be more frank and sincere than is ordinarily permitted to an author.

The aim of sacred magic, as we have said, is represented by the shield that the Empress holds in place of the book which the High Priestess holds. Sacred gnosis has as its aim the communicable expression (or ‘book’) of mystical revelation, whilst the aim of sacred magic is liberating action, ie, the restoration of freedom to beings who have partially or totally lost it.

The eagle in flight depicted on the shield signifies this emblem of sacred magic, which could thus be formulated: ‘Give freedom to he who is enslaved’. And this includes all the works mentioned by Luke:

Jesus cured many of diseases and plaagues and evil spirits, and on many that were blind he bestowed sight. And he answered the: Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. (Luke vii, 21-22).

This is the aim of sacred magic; it is nothing other than to give freedom to see, to hear, to walk, to live, to follow an ideal and to be truly oneself – ie, to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the ability to walk to the lame, life to the dead, good news or ideals to the poor and free will to those who are possessed by evil spirits. It never encroaches upon freedom, the restoration of which is its unique aim.

It is more than pure and simple healing which is the object of sacred magic; it is the restoration of freedom, including here freeing from the imprisonment of doubt, fear, hate, apathy and despair.

Meditations on the Tarot, Letter III, The Empress

Key to the Apocalypse

The key to the Apocalypse is to practise it, ie, to make use of it as a book of spiritual exercises composed of twenty-eight exercises. For as the Apocalypse is a revelation put into writing, it is necessary, in order to understand it, to establish in oneself a state of consciousness which is suited to receive revelations.

It is the state of concentration without effort (taught by the first Arcanum), followed by a vigilant inner silence (taught by the second Arcanum), which becomes an inspired activity of imagination and thought, where the conscious self acts together with super-consciousness (teaching of the third Arcanum).

Lastly, the conscious self halts its creative activity and contemplates – in letting pass in review – everything which preceded, with a view to summarising it (practical teaching of the fourth Arcanum).

The mastery of these four psychurgical operations, symbolised by The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress and The Emperor, is the key to the Apocalypse. One will search in vain for another.

Unknown author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter IV, The Emperor

Papus: Magic is the science of Love

Magic is crowned, since her task is the sublimation of Nature, as indicated by the shield or coat-of-arms with the eagle in flight, that the Empress holds instead of the book of the High Priestess.

Josephin Peladan defined magic as “the art of the sublimation of man”, no other formula is superior to his. This is exactly the emblem – or aim – of magic, if one understands by “sublimation of man” that of human nature. Peladan had a very profound understanding of the emblem of magic: the shield with the eagle in flight. All his works bear witness to this. Together they represent a magnificent flight; they aim, as a whole and each taken individually, at the ideal of the sublimation of human nature.

It is because Peladan bore the emblem of magic: the flying eagle, that this is so.

Isn’t it to have the emblem of magic before one’s eyes that one is invited “to throw the eagles of one’s desires to the wind”, because happiness “raised to the level of an ideal, freed from the negative aspects of oneself and of things….is the sole triumph of this world?” It is the same emblem – the shield with the eagle – that Papus had in mind, in actual fact, when he defined magic as:

The application of the strengthened human will to accelerate the evolution of the living forces of nature.

He preceded this definition with another:

Magic is the science of love.

For it is precisely “the accelerated evolution of the living forces of Nature” that the eagle of the shield of the Empress represents; “the science of LOVE” is the sceptre of the Empress, which represents the means by which the aim of magic is attained.

Unknown author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter III, The Empress