Memory

Beyond the three types of memory – mechanical, logical and moral – there is still the kind of memory that we have designated as “vertical or revelatory memory.”

It is not a memory of the past in the sense of the horizontal line: today, yesterday, the day before, etc, but rather in the sense of the vertical line: here, higher, still higher, etc. It is a “memory” which does not link the present to the past on the plane of physical, psychic and intellectual life, but which links the plane of ordinary consciousness to planes or states of consciousness higher than ordinary consciousness.

It is the faculty of the “lower self” to reproduce the experience and knowledge of the “higher self” or, if you like, the faculty of the “higher self” to imprint its experience and knowledge upon the consciousenss of the “lower self”. It is the link between the “higher eye” and the “lower eye”, which renders us authentically religious and wise, and immune to the assaults of sceptism, materialism and determinism.

It is this also which is the source of certainty not only of God and the spiritual world with its hierarchical entities but also of the immortality of our being and reincarnation, wherever it is a matter of reincarnation. “Dawn is the friend of the muses” and similar popular proverbs, such as “the morning hour has gold in its mouth” or “morning is wiser than the evening”, relate to the benefits of vertical memory from which one benefits in the morning, after the return of consciousness from the plane of “natural ecstasy” or sleep.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIII, Death

Quarternary of Traditional Magic

With respect to the magnificent quarternary of traditional magic: “to dare, to will, to be silent and to know,” it is formulated – mutandis mutatis – by the Master in the following way:

Ask and it will be given you; Seek, and you will find; Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, And he who seeks finds, And to him who knocks it will be opened. (Matthew vii, 7-8)

It is a matter of daring to ask, of the will to seek, of being silent in order to knock and of knowing when it is opened to you. For knowledge does not happen automatically; it is what is revealed when the door is opened. This is the formula of the synthesis of effort and grace, of the principle of work and that of receptivity, and, lastly, of merit and gift.

This synthesis enunciates the absolute law of all spiritual progress and, consequently, all spiritual discipline. It is the law which every Christian disciple, of every Christian spiritual school, obeys. And Christian Hermeticism, ie, the whole of traditional mysticism, gnosis, magic and occult philosophy, passed through baptism and transfiguration by the fire, light and life of Christianity, is in no way an exception here.

It should not be forgotten that Christian Hermeticism is not a religion apart, nor a church apart, nor even a science apart….it is the connecting link between mysticism, gnosis and magic, expressed through symbolism – symbolism being the means of expression of the dimensions of depth and height (and therefore of enstasy and ecstasy), of all that is universal (which corresponds to the dimension of breadth), and all that is traditional (corresponding to the dimension of length).

Being Christian, Hermeticism accepts the cross of the universality, the tradition, the depth and the height of Christianity, in the sense of the apostle Paul when he said:

That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God. (Ephesians iii, 18-19).

This is the complete formula of initiation.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter VI The Lover

There are Two Wings

There are two: one wing holds him in contact with the divine understanding, and the other with divine memory/inspiration. The two wings are therefore related to the contemplative and creative aspects of God which, in their turn, correspond to the divine image and likeness in man of which Genesis speaks.

The two Angelic wings are the Angel’s links with the eternal sabbath and the eternal creativity of God – or, in other words, with divine gnosis and divine magic. It is by means of the “gnostic” (or “left”) wing that the Angel is in contemplation of divine wisdom, and it is by means of the “magical” (or “right”) wing that he is active in his capacity as messenger or “Angel”.

This is the principle of polarity underlying the duality of the wings. The principle remains valid also for Angels – and for entities from other spiritual hierarchies – who have more than two wings (sixteen, for example). It will be the task of a future science of “Angelology” to grasp the reason or reasons for the plurality of wings of certain Angelic entities.

With respect to us, we have to restrict ourselves to a general explanation of the two wings of Angels, in reminding ourselves that it is a matter here of meditation on the fourteenth Arcanum of the Tarot, whose card represents an entity with two wings.

From tradition we know that there are also human beings endowed with wings….The astral and etheric wings of a human being signify a more-or-less advanced degree of recovery of the divine likeness in him. For certainly it was the lot of men before the original sin to have wings. He lost them subsequently. How are they recovered?

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIV Temperance

The Star of Hermeticism

It was neither the straw of the crib, nor the animals that were present, which guided and enabled the mages from the East to find the Child, but rather the “star” in heaven. Similarly, in Hermeticism one will find only straw and animals if one is not guided by its “star”, which exists only for intuition. Now, it is the nineteenth Arcanum of the Tarot, which invites us to occupy ourselves quite especially with the “star” of Hermeticism in the heaven of intuition. What is this “star?” The Zohar says:

“And God made the two great lights….originally, when the moon and sun were in intimate union, they shone with equal luminosity. The names JEHOVAH and ELOHIM were then associated as equals…and the two lights were dignified with the same name: MAZPAZ MAZPAZ….The two lights rose simultaneously and were of the same dignity. But….the moon humbled herself by diminishing her light, and renounced her place of higher rank. From that time she has had no light of her own, but derives her light from the sun.

Nevertheless, her real light is greater than that which she radiates here below; for a woman enjoys no honour save in conjunction with her husband. The great light (the sun) has the name JEHOVAH and the lesser light (the moon) has the name ELOHIM, which is the last of the degrees and the close of thought. Originally she was inscribed above among the letters of the sacred name (YHVH), which are four in number; it was only after diminishing herself that she took the name ELOHIM.

But her power is manifest in all directions….EL being “the dominion of the day,” IM” being the “dominion of the night,” and HE in the middle being the remainder of the forces (“the stars”), participating in both dominions.

It is left to us only to cite another passage from an ancient source – from the eleventh book of Apuleius’ Transformations – in order to have all the elements necessary to grapple, sufficiently equipped, with the problem of the “star” of Hermeticism and “The Sun” of the nineteenth Arcanum of the Tarot. Apuleius summarised his great vigil at the temple of Isis – the “arcana of the sacred night” (noctis sacratae arcana) in the following way:

I approached the very gates of death and set one foot on Prosperine’s threshold, yet was permitted to return, rapt through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining in its brilliant radiance; I entered the presence of the gods of the under-world and the gods of the upper-world, stood near and worshipped them.

Let us now seek for reality, having in view the above-cited passage from the Zohar and the statement made by Apuleius.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIX, The Sun

Resurrection

The resurrection is the final victory not only over death (as the separation of the soul from the body) but also over sleep (as the separation of the soul from the world of action) and over forgetfulness (as the separation of consciousness from the world of past memories).

This means to say that resurrection signifies not only the re-establishment of the integral unity of the spirit, soul and body of the human being, but also the uninterrupted continuity of his activity and the uninterrupted continuity of his consciousness – the whole of his memory.

Now, the emergence of complete memory of the entire past is equivalent, for consciousness, to the last judgement, where the whole past is reviewed in the light of conscience. It is conscience itself, the soul itself, which will judge itself.

And it will then find that it is guilty under all the headings of accusation of divine law which live in the completely awakened conscience. And there will not be a single soul that will justify itself before its own awakened conscience. It is not authorised to justify itself. Justification lies in the realm of the Divine and it is only the Divine that is authorised to justify.

Thus, there will at first be the realisation of the complete equality of all members of the human community in the consciouness of their errors and their faults. This consciousness will be common to great initiates, high priests, heads of nations, and simple workers in the diverse domains of human effort in the past.

This great experience to come of human equality – in the light of completely awakened conscience – is prefigured in the penitential rite of the Mass, during the prayer at the foot of the altar, where priest and congregation say together: Confiteor Deo omnipotenti et vobis, fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et omissione: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Unknown author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XX, The Judgement

Don Juan

Don Juan is not purely and simply a blasphemous dissolute, he is rather a hierophant of this small god of great power known in antiquity under the name of Eros or Amor (Love). It is the magic of Eros that he represents, and it is the mysteries of Eros over which he presides in the capacity of a priest.

Don Juan was neither a blasphemous dissolute nor a false-hearted seducer, nor even a brutal adventurer, but rather an obedient and courageous servant of this childlike divinity who loves and commands elan, enthusiasm and ardour, and who detests and forbids the weighing, measuring and calculating of reason with its laws of utility and advantage, circumspection and respect for convention and, lastly, its priority of a cold head over a warm heart.

However, love has not only its right to exist, but also its transcendental metaphysics, philosophy and mysticism. Don Juan was more than a victim or dupe of love – this apparently capricious goddess. He embraced her philosophy and mysticism and was therefore her conscious collaborator, her hierophant initiated into her mysteries. And it is thus that he has become an archetype – the archetype of love for its own sake, the lover par excellence.

Don Juan lives through the energy of amorous influence for the energy of amorous influence – by nourishing it and maintaining it like a fire which should never be extinguished. This is because he is conscious of the value of this fire and of the mission that htis fire has in the world. In the eternal conflict that there is between law – of right, of reason, and of the divine – and love, he takes the side of love, for which courage is necessary.

And it is thus that Don Juan represents an idea, an archetype, an arcanum. He represents the young man on teh Card of the sixth Arcanum of the Tarot “The Lover”, who has chosen the fire of love as such and multiplicity instead of the unicity of the love of his eternal sister soul – since Babylon, the woman appointed to the mysteries of erotic magic, has convinced him.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XXI, The Fool

Walking on Water

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea rose because a strong wind was blowing.

When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat. They were frightened, but he said to them: It is I; do not be afraid. (John vi, 16-20).

And Peter answered him: Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water. He said: Come! So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out: Lord, save me! Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying: O man of little faith, why did you doubt? (Matthew xiv, 28-31).

Jesus Christ walking on water reveals still another mystery than that of the sun of the spiritual world, the centre of celestial gravitation. For not only did he stand on the water – which would suffice to reveal and demonstrate this truth – but he also walked on the water, ie, he moved in a quite definite direction in the horizontal sense. He walked towards the boat where his disciples rowed.

There, in his walking towards the boat, it is already contained in germ – essentially revealing it – his whole work, temporal and eternal, ie, his sacrifice, his resurrection, and all that is implied in his promise: “Lo, I am with you always, until the end of the world: (Matthew xxviii, 20).

The boat with his disciples is, therefore, and will be until the end of the world, the aim of the I am walking on the water. His enstasy, his profound centreing in himself, does not distance him from the navigation of the agitated sea of history and evolution, and does not make him disappear into the other sea – the calm sea of nirvana – but rather, on the contrary, it entails that he walks, until the end of the world, after the boat with this disciples.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XII, The Hanged Man

The Body, the Soul and the Tower

There is in man – notably in his soul, and not in his body – a seed of evil of his own, without which temptation coming from outside would not exert any action on him. Because temptation would be impotent if it did not find a terrain already prepared in the human soul.

The unfortunate misunderstanding locating innate human evil in the body instead of in the soul is due to a tendency towards a materialistic interpretation of our Biblical story of paradise and the Fall. It is the body which, rightly. has more reason to be ashamed of the soul inhabiting it, than the latter of the body.

For the body is a miracle of wisdom, harmony and stability, which does not merit scorn but rather the admiration of the soul. For example, can the soul boast of moral principles as stable as the body’s skeleton? Is it as indefatigable and as faithful in its sentiments as, for example, the heart, which beats day and night? Does it possess a wisdom comparable to that of the body, which knows how to harmonise such opposing things as water and fire, air and solid matter?

Whilst the soul is torn by opposing desires and feelings, this ‘contemptible’ body knows how to unite opposing elements and make them collaborate: the air that it breathes, the solid matter of food, the water that it drinks, and the fire (warmth) that it produces unceasingly within it….and if this does not suffice to change scorn into respect, admiration and gratitude, the one can recall, if on is a Christian, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, inhabited this flesh and that he honoured it to the point of uniting himself with it in the Incarnation.

Similarly, if one is a Buddhist or Brahmanist, one should not forget that Buddha and Krishna, also, inhabited this flesh and that it served them well in the accomplishing of their respective missions. Negative ascetisism, directed against the body and not for celestial things, is the practical consequence of the materialistic interpretation of paradise and the Fall. However, the fact alone that a Cherubim “was placed at the east of the garden of Eden, with a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis iii, 24), suffices to drive away any shadow of a doubt: here it is a matter of a plane higher than the terrestrial plane, and it was therefore souls who committed the original sin – and the body had nothing to do with it.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XVI, The Tower of Destruction

Heaven-Earth Balance

In the last analysis it is KARMA which is the law governing the adjustment of mutual debts between beings. But the working of the “heaven-earth” balance surpasses the justice of karma; it is that of the justice of grace.

“Gratia gratis data….” the sun shines on the good and wicked alike. Is this morally right? Is it the justice of grace here which is higher than the protective, distributive, punitive justice of the law? This is so. There is the sublime “other justice” of grace, which is the meaning of the New Testament. For the Old Testament is to the New Testament as karma is to grace.

Grace also makes use of the balance, ie justice. It is the balance whose one scale is on the earth and whose other scale is heaven. The Lord’s prayer reveals to us the principle of the justice of grace and the operation of weighing by means of the “heaven-earth” balance.

There it is said: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And then the Master adds: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew vi, 12, 14 – 15).

The sun shines on the good and wicked alike. But it is certainly necessary to open the windows of a dark room in order for light to be able to enter there. The light of the sun is in no way created or merited by us. It is a gift, pure and simple – gratia gratis data. Nevertheless, it is necessary to open our windows in order for it to enter into our abode, just as it is necessary to open our eyes in order to see it. The practical meaning of the “heaven-earth” balance is that of cooperation with grace. Human effort is therefore not for nothing in the domain of the working of grace.

Neither election from above (Calvinism) nor faith alone below (Lutheranism) suffice for the requirements of the “heaven-earth” balance. Chosen or not chosen, having faith or not, it is necessary for us, for example to “forgive those who trespass against us” here below in order for our trespasses to be forgiven above.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter VIII Justice

The Guardian Angel

There is certainly something added to man’s functional organism to play in it the role of a counterweight to the leverage of vicious inclinations and habit which have become established since the primordial Fall. This is the guardian Angel.

The guardian Angel accompanies as a faithful ally the divine image in man, just as vicious inclinations have made their way into the human functional organism which was, before the Fall, the divine likeness. The guardian Angel undertakes the functions, destroyed by original sin, in the likeness, and fills the breach wrought by them. He substitutes himself for functions destroyed through the Fall.

In praying to God “to deign to send from heaven his holy Angel to guard, cherish, protect, visit and defend all those who are gathered together in this place,” the Angel acquits his charge in five ways: he guards, cherishes, protects, visits and defends. He is therefore a “flaming star”, a luminous pentagram, above man.

He guards memory, ie, the continuity of the great past in the present, which is the preparation for the great future. It is the guardian Angel who takes care that there is a connection between the great “yesterday, today and tomorrow” of the human soul. He is a perpetual “memento” with regard to the primordial likeness, with regard to the eternal mission assigned to the soul in the cosmic symphony, and with regard to the special room for the soul “in my Father’s house, where there are many rooms” (John xiv, 2).

If it is necessary, the guardian Angel awakens recollections of the soul’s previous earthly lives, in order to establish continuity of endeavour – of the quest and aspiration of the soul from life to life – so that particular lives are not merely isolated episodes but constitute the stages of a single path towards one sole end.

The guardian angel cherishes the endeavour, quest and aspiration of the soul engaged on this way. This means to say that he fills in the breaks in the psychic functional organism due to the disfigurement of the likeness, and makes up for it failings – given the soul’s good will towards it. For support never signifies substitution of the Angel’s will for that of man. The will remains free, always and everywhere. The guardian Angel never touches on man’s free will and resigns himself to await the decision or choice made in the inviolable sanctuary of free will – in order to lend his assistance immediately if it is just, or to remain a passive observer reduced alone to prayer if it is not.

Just as the guardian Angel is sometimes constrained not to participate in the soul’s activity – this activity not being in accord with the divine image of the soul – so also he can sometimes take a greater part in human activity than usual – this activity being of a nature not simply permitted but also called for. Then the guardian Angel descends from the point of the ordinary post into the domain of human activity. He then visits the human being.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIV, Temperance