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Page 1 of 41944 · PDF PAGE 179
The four Sixes are thus representative of their respective elements at their practical best. The Six of Wands is called Victory. The outburst of energy in the Five of Wands, which was so sudden and violent that it even gave the idea of strife, has now completely won suc‐ cess. The rule, or lordship, in the suit of Wands is not quite as stable as it might have been if there had been less energy displayed. So, from this point, as soon as the current leaves the middle pillar, the inherent weakness in the element of Fire (which is this: that, for a…
1944 · PDF PAGE 178
The Four of Swords is called Truce. This seems rather on the lines of “the strong man armed, keeping his house in peace”. The masculine nature of air makes it dominant. The card is almost a picture of the formation of the military clan system of society. As to the Disks, the heaviness of the symbol rather outweighs any considerations of its weakness. The card is called Power. It is the power which dominates and stabilizes every‐ thing, but manages its affairs more by negotiation, by pacific methods, than by any assertion of itself. It is Law, t…
1944 · PDF PAGE 177
…ll one case of the general proposition that the sum of the infinite Energy of the Universe is Zero. The Two of Pentacles was of old time called the Lord of Harmonious Change. Now, more simply, Change; and here the doctrine must be stated a little more clearly. This suit being of Earth, there is a connection with the Princesses, and therefore with the final Hé of Tetra‐ grammaton. Earth is the throne of Spirit; having got to the bottom, one immediately comes out again at the top. Hence, the card manifests the symbolism of the serpent of the endl…
1944 · PDF PAGE 182
…permanent in this; there is no rest from the Universe. Change guaran‐ tees stability. Stability guarantees change. The Nine of Swords is called Cruelty. Here the original disruption inherent in Swords is raised to its highest power. The card is ruled by Mars in Gemini; it is agony of mind. The Ruach consumes itself in this card; thought has gone through every possible stage, and the conclu‐ sion is despair. This card has been very adequately drawn by Thomson in “The City of Dread‐ ful Night”. It is always a cathedral—a cathedral of the damned. …
1944 · PDF PAGE 39
…thematicians begin the decimal scale with Zero. To make it quite clear to initiates that they did not understand the meaning of the card called The Fool, they put him down between the cards XX and XXI, for what reason .it baffles the human imagination to conceive. They then attributed the card number I, the Juggler, to the letter Aleph. In this simple yet ingenious manner they the attribution of every card, except The Universe, XXI, wrong. Meanwhile, the true attribution was well guarded in the Sanctuary; it only became public when the secret l…
1944 · PDF PAGE 28
…the Sephiroth or Things‐in‐Themselves, so that their position on the Tree of Life is significant. Here are one or two examples. The card called “The Lovers”, whose secret title is “The Chil‐ dren of the Voice, the Oracle of the Mighty Gods”, leads from the number 3 to the number 6. The number 6 is the human personality of a man; the number 3 is his spiritual intuition. Therefore, it is natural and significant that the influence of the 3 upon the 6 is that of the intu‐ itional or inspirational voice. It is the illumination of the mind and the he…
1944 · PDF PAGE 153
their own, unless it can be called a characteristic to be at the disposition of every impact or impression. There is, however, a hint (line 6) that the chief pleasure of people of this type is to lead and attract others. Such are accordingly (often enough) exceedingly popular.
1944 · PDF PAGE 36
…nstrument for Qabalistic calculations and for divination. In it is little place for abstract ideas. The subject of the book—the Tarot is called The Book of Thoth or Tahuti—is the influence of the Ten Numbers and the Twenty‐two Letters on man, and his best methods of manipulating their forces. There is therefore no mention of the Three Veils of the Negative, which was dis‐ cussed in the description of the Tree of Life. The description begins with the “small cards”, numbered I to 10. These are divided into four suits according to the four element…
1944 · PDF PAGE 131
…ey make war upon the Holy One, sending forth their delusion upon men, and upon everything that liveth. So that their false compassion is called compassion, and their false understanding is called understanding, for this is their most potent spell. “Yet of their own poison do they perish, and in their lonely fortresses shall they be eaten up by Time that hath cheated them to serve him, and by the mighty devil Choronzon, their master, whose name is the Second Death, for the blood that they have sprinkled on their Pylon, that is a bar against the …
1944 · PDF PAGE 104
XVIII. THE MOON The Eighteenth Trump is attributed to the letter Qoph, which represents Pisces in the Zodiac. It is called the Moon. Pisces is the last of the Signs; it represents the last stage of winter. It might be called the Gateway of Resurrection (the letter Qoph means the back of the head, and is connected with the potencies of the cerebellum). In the system of the old Aeon, the resurrection of the Sun was not only from winter, but from night; and this card represents midnight. “There is a budding morrow in midnight”, wrote Keats. For th…
1944 · PDF PAGE 180
The Seven of Disks is called Failure. This suit gives the extreme of passivity; there is no positive virtue in it below the Abyss. This card is ruled by Saturn. Compare it with the three other Sevens; there is no effort here; not even dream; the stake has been thrown down, and it is lost. That is all. Labour itself is abandoned; everything is sunk in sloth. THE FOUR EIGHTS The four Eights are attributed to Hod. Being in the same plane as the Sevens on the Tree of Life, but on the other side, the same inherent defects as are found in the Sevens …
1944 · PDF PAGE 264
…side, Water and Earth. The original concept of the Tao as developed by the Teh, is resumed in the name Thâi Kî. The Yang and the Yin are called the I or Yao. When these are combined two at a time, we obtain four figures, called the Hsiang, which may be compared to Tetragrammaton, and this stage of development is so secret in the Chinese idea that practically nothing is said about these forms. They only come out into the clear light when the combinations of the Yang and the Yin are taken three at a time as shown in the lower part of this diagram…
1944 · PDF PAGE 14
…rn playing cards, which are derived from it. But the Court cards number four instead of three. In addi‐ tion, there are twenty‐two cards called “Trumps”, each of which is a symbolic picture with a title itself. At first sight one would suppose this arrangement to be arbitrary, but it is not. It is necessitated, as will appear later, by the structure of the universe, and in particular of the So‐ lar System, as symbolized by the Holy Qabalah. This will be explained in due course. THE ORIGIN OF THE TAROT The origin of this pack of cards is very ob…
1944 · PDF PAGE 15
…liphas Levi. Eliphas Levi was a philosopher and an artist, besides being a supreme literary stylist and a practical joker of the variety called “Pince sans rire”; and, being an artist and a profound symbolist, he was immensely attracted by the Tarot. While in England, he proposed to Kenneth Mackenzie, a famous occult scholar and high‐grade Freemason, to reconstitute and issue a scientifically‐designed pack. In his works are new presentations by him of the trumps called Tile Chariot and The Devil. He seems to have un‐ derstood that the Tarot was…
1944 · PDF PAGE 23
…n. In other words, to describe Reality in the form of Knowledge, one must postulate these ten successive ideas. In the Qabalah, they are called “Sephiroth”, which means “Numbers”. As will be seen later, each number has a significance of its own; each corresponds with all phe‐ nomena in such a way that their arrangement in the Tree of Life, as shown in the diagrams (pp. 266, 268, 270), is a map of the Universe. These ten numbers are represented in the Tarot by the forty small cards. THE TAROT AND THE FORMULA OF TETRAGRAMMATON What, then, are the…
1944 · PDF PAGE 24
…. The scientific description of an object is universally true; and yet it is not completely true for any single observer. The phenomenon called the Daughter is ambiguous. It has been explained above as the spiritual ingredient in the result of the marriage of the Father and the Mother; but this is only one interpretation. THE TAROT AND THE ELEMENTS The Ancients conceived of Fire; Water and Air as pure elements. They were connected with the three qualities of Being, Knowledge and Bliss, previously mentioned. They also cor‐ respond with what the …
1944 · PDF PAGE 181
The Eight of Disks is called Prudence. This card is a great deal better than the last two, because, in purely material matters, especially those relating to actual money, there is a sort of strength in doing nothing at all. The problem of every financier is, first of all, to gain time; if his resources are sufficient, he always beats the market. This is the card of “putting something away for a rainy day”. Its attribution is Sol in Virgo; it is the card of the husbandman; he can do little more than sow the seed, sit back, and wait for the harve…
1944 · PDF PAGE 38
…s one that Pu Peng is a long way up the hill. It is very much the same with the Tarot. The 6 of Wands is referred to Jupiter in Leo, and called the Lord of Victory. This dictates not only what victory is like, but also the condi‐ tions to be fulfilled in order to obtain victory. There is need of the fiery energy of the suit of Wands, the balance of the number 6, the stubborn courage of Leo, and also the influence of Jupiter, the little bit of luck that tips the scale. These considerations are particularly important in dealing with the Atu, or T…
1944 · PDF PAGE 25
ing, but they were also called Knight, Queen, King and Princess. Sometimes, too, the Prince and Princess are called “Emperor” and “Empress”. The reason for this confusion is connected with the doctrine of the Fool of the Tarot, the legendary Wanderer, who wins the King’s daughter, a legend which is connected with the old and exceedingly wise plan of choosing the successor to a king by his ability to win the princess from all competitors. (Frazer’s Golden Bough is the authority on this subject.) It has been thought better, for the present pack, …
1944 · PDF PAGE 95
…e the word V.I.T.R.I.O.L., the Universal Solvent, to be discussed later. (Its value is 726=6 x 112=33 x 22.) This “hidden stone” is also called the Universal Medicine. It is sometimes described as a stone, sometimes as a powder, sometimes as a tincture. It divides again into two forms, the gold and the silver, the red and the white; but its essence is always the same, and its nature is not to be understood except by experience. It is because the alchemists were dealing with substances on the borderland of “matter” that they are so difficult to …