Two Truths

The Buddha recognised and at the same time denied the fact of reincarnation. He recognised it as fact and he denied it as ideal. Because facts are transitiory; they come and go.

There was a time when there was no reincarnation; there will be a time when it will no longer be. Reincarnation commenced only after the Fall and it will cease with Reintegration. It is therefore not eternal, and therefore it is not an ideal.

There are therefore two truths: the one is actual and temporal and the other ideal or eternal. The first is founded on the logic of facts; the other on moral logic. Now, Psalm 85 designates actual truth (emeth) by the word truth (veritas) and truth based on moral logic (chesed) by the word mercy (misericordia). The Psalm says:

Mercy (chesed) and truth (emeth) will meet;

Justice (tsedek) and peace (schalom) will embrace each other.

Truth (emeth) will spring up from the ground (meeretz).

And justice (tsedek) will look down from the heavens (mischamaim).

Psalm 85, 10 – 11

Here is the problem of ‘double truth’ in its entirety – and here is the moving prophecy that the two truths, the factual and the moral, will at some time meet and that their revelation in man – justice (tsedek) and peace ( schalom) – will embrace each other!

But they will meet only slowly and, given the actual state of affairs, they often still contradict one another, at least in appearance. This is why St. Paul had to say that “the wisdom of the world is folly with God (I Corinthians iii, 19). And this is why also the divine wisdom is often folly before this world….

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter V, The Pope

Imaginary Height

The argument from Moscow is always the same: If God exists, he must know that we, the communists, dethrone him. Why does he not give a visible sign, if not of his power, at least of his existence? Why does he not defend his own interests?! This is in other words the old argument: Come down from the Cross, and we will believe in you.

I cite these well know things because they reveal a certain dogma underlying them. It is the dogma or philosophical principle which states that truth and power are identical; that which is powerful is true and that which is powerless is false. According to this dogma or philosophical principle (which has become that of modern technological science) power is the absolute criterium and supreme ideal of truth. Only that which is powerful is of the Divine.

Now there are open and secret worshippers of the idols of power. (for it is an idol and the source of all idolatry) – also in Christian factions or in religious and spiritual circles in general. I am not speaking about Christian or spiritually-minded princes or politicians who covet power, but rather about the adherents to doctrines advancing the primacy of power. Here there are two categories: those who aspire to the ideal of the ‘superman’, and those who believe in a God that is actually almighty and therefore responsible for all that happens.

They build their individual towers of Babel, and experience, sooner or later, a salutary fall…They do not fall from a real height into a real abyss; it is only from an imaginary height that they fall and they fall only to the ground, ie, they learn the lesson that we human beings of today have all learned or have still to learn.

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

An Itinerant Hermit

The heart itself, or the twelve-petalled lotus, which alone of the centres is not attached to the organism, and which can go out of it and live – by the exteriorisation of its “petals”, which can be rayed outwards – with and in others, will become a traveller, a visitor and anonymous companion of those who are in prison, those who are in exile, and those who bear heavy loads of responsibility.

It will be an itinerant Hermit, traversing ways leading from one end of the earth to the other, and also ways through spheres of the spiritual world – from purgatory to the very feet of the Father. Because no distance is insurmountable for love and no door can prevent it from entering – according to the promise which says: “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew xvi, 18).

It is the heart which is the marvellous organ called to serve love in its works. It is the structure of the heart – simultaneously human and divine, a structure of love – which by way of analogy can open our understanding to the significance of the meaning of the following words of the Master: “And lo, I am with you always, to the end of time.” (Matthew xxviii).

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

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazelwood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread.

And when white moths were on the wing

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire aflame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name.

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk amongst dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

William Butler Yeats, The Song of Wandering Aegnus

Open the Closed Circle

Magic is the study and practice of the control of Nature’s secret forces. It is a science – pure, or dangerous – like all sciences….Papus

We have to add here only that this is true, and also that “Nature’s secret forces” are secret only for a limited time, notably until their discovery by natural science – which simply discovers and renders controllable the “secret forces” of Nature one after the other. It is therefore only a question of time until the pursuit of magic and that of natural science coincide and become identical.

But, on the other hand, it is also true that the closed circle of science, which is a prison and captivity for the spirit, applies also to personal magic. Magic, in so far as it is a science – and it is one – has the same fate as science, ie, captivity in a closed circle. And when Papus says further that, “Magic, we could say, is the materialism of t he future knights of Christ…“, he admits with this statement the fact of the captivity of magic as such – in a closed circle of a single aspect of the world, which he names “materialism”.

And he gives expression to his hope that in the future there will be an intervention from beyond this closed circle by future magicians (“knights of Christ”)….in other words, that future Teilhard de Chardins will do for magic what he has done for science: that they will open the closed circle and transform it into a spiral.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XVII, The Star

What soul isn’t in default?

Can you afford not to make the magical study which happiness is?

Do you hear the cock when he crows?

Do you know the charge, that you shall have no envy, that your life has its orders, that the seasons seize you too, that no body and soul are one if they are not wrought in this retort?

That otherwise efforts are efforts?

And that the hour of your flight will be the hour of your death

Charles Olson, from Variations done for Gerald van de Wiele

That felt like Spring

I collected my small portion of rice and went to sit with the others, who at that moment were eating in sombre silence whilst seated at long trestle tables in the open-air canteen. The scenery was not at all unpleasant and I wondered why everybody seemed so glum and grey. Our dining area was in the middle of quite a stunning panorama – long, gently rolling fields that stretched for miles to the East and West, low hills to the North and a lightly forested region some distance South. It was a clear sunny day that felt like Spring.

I ate quietly for some moments, thinking nothing in particular, when I heard a faint but unmistakable humming sound emanating from beyond the Northern hills. As the noise grew loud enough for them to perceive, my dining companions leapt from their seats and began running wildly in all directions – evidently looking for places to hide – for many of them took refuge under the tables, in the absence of any other form of shelter. This was desperate too and I wondered what on Earth was going on. Looking up into the sky, things suddenly became clearer – approaching like a poisonous fly was what looked to be a World War II aircraft. Everyone seemed to think it was about to bomb us.

I looked around in hopeless dismay, wondering what we were supposed to do – we were so exposed we wouldn’t stand a chance if the pilot picked us out for destruction. I looked up again, willing him to go away, and by some extraordinary stroke of luck, the plane passed right over our heads in the direction of the forest and disappeared from both view and audible location. For the first time I heard voices of hopeful animation from the others, as they came out from their hiding places in evident relief.

But then – to our helpless terror – we heard the noise once again, this time bearing down with renewed vigour from the Southern forests that may have been our only chance of survival – had we only the time to reach them. As the plane passed by from the other side at lightening speed, I looked up just in time to see and actual bomb dropping out of the sky, literally, right above my head.

Nothing more or less than a split second later I was engulfed by a terrible and blinding white light and white heat, and the only things I could see around me were a few melting shadows of other people, flailing round as if in slow motion. The horror was totally unbearable – with dreadful livid certainty I felt the skin melt from my body and heard the shriek of my dying body as if it were already metres away from where I actually stood.

No more was possible, I staggered blindly once again, finding no plausible direction in which to turn, and just as the end drew near I heard the voice whispering once again: “Do not be afraid, you will not remember this, you will not remember this pain, this pain is only in the flesh”.

Small mercy, but still I was grateful for this pure voice of hope, slender as a feather in the wind, strong as the wings of a dove, obliterating all sensation, annihilating my last grip on mortality.

Retinue of Wisdom

Feminine forms are dancing

Beneath the red-robed figure in the sky,

Who walks with a retinue of wisdom.

From the wedding of water with fire

Breath takes the air of inspiration,

Watery fire fills with life,

Vivifying the dark Earth station;

Bringing from the deep space light.

Dark Divine Wisdom Becomes Resplendent

it is said that Angels are in perpetual contemplation of God. They are, if one understands by contemplation the state of being in permanent contact with the Holy Trinity and of being blinded by its light. It is the ‘dark contemplation’ of which St John of the Cross spoke which is that of the Angels. They do not see God; they are united to him substantially.

With respect to guardian Angels, neither do they see one another, nor do they see entities of the other hierarchies – Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. For the presence of the transcendental divine light in them envelops in darkness their perception of the intermediary spheres between God and mankind.

It is the latter sphere that they see, or rather, the ‘spheres’ of their proteges. It is here that they make use of this clairvoyance, which the human being – who has lost it – has need of for the protection it affords. It is here also that the Angels display the geniality of synthetic and profound understanding – without parallel – which has merited them, on the part of human beings, with the attribute of ‘omniscience’.

They are not omniscient, but the facility with which they orientate themselves in human things and grasp at them – at contact with which their ‘dark’ divine wisdom becomes resplendent – has so impressed human beings who have had the experience of consciously meeting with them that they have been led to consider them as omniscient. It is to this impression that has been gained of Angels that the word ‘genius’ owes its original meaning, namely that of superhuman intelligence.

But – and this is the tragic side of Angelic existence – this geniality shows up only when the human being has need of it, when he makes room for the flashing forth of its illumination. The Angel depends on man in his creative activity. If the human being does not ask for it, if he turns away from him, the Angel has no motive for creative activity.

He can then fall into a state of consciousness where all his creative geniality remains in potential and does not manifest. It is a state of vegetation or ‘twilight existence’, comparable to sleep from the human point of view. An Angel who has nothing to exist for is a tragedy in the spiritual world.

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

Cosmic Conscience

The “I” is the member of the human being that continues on from incarnation to incarnation. The result of each incarnation continues to live in the “I”, forming what is often called a “string of beads” in Indian symbolism, of which the individual “beads” are the “I” being of various incarnations, while the “string” represents the continuity of consciousness from incarnation to incarnation.

Thus, the “I” being of former lives lives on and represents the “inner” past that is inseparable from an individual. This miracle of healing indicatees a power that affected not only the present but also the past “” being – the “I” that passed through death with the responsibility for the previous life course.

“I” consciousness of the past, which preserves its activity from the previous incarnation and in which many human beings live and act, is called consciousness of the “dead” in the Gospels, and those who live under the “I” impulse of the past are simply called “The dead”. Thus, healing the paralysed man involved more than merely the present “I”; the “dead”, in particular, heard the “voice of the Son” and experience a conversion in his past consciousness. “For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will (John 5:21).

These words of Jesus Christ have a direct connection with the healing and refer to it. And words that follow express it even more clearly: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live” (John, 5:25). True, only a few of the dead had heard this voice – a fact expressed, for example, in these words: “Let the dead bury their dead.” (Luke 9:60). This is the fundamental challenge to which we must respond if we wish to gain spiritual hearing. It is a summons to conquer ourselves again and again and, shutting out all personal impulses, repeatedly listen in silence to the voice of conscience.

The sounds that the spiritual world uses to speak are moral and spiritual voices, not fixed “vibrations” for the purpose of being caught by a sensory organ. Those voices can be heard only after the soul has adapted to the voice of conscience; those who are prepared to follow the dictates of conscience without hesitation are thus prepared to hear the voices of cosmic conscience.

Christ and Sophia, Valentin Tomberg