Symbolic Study of the Tarot and the Tree of Life

When even a road
Is not a path anymore
There is only Eternity enjoying the walk

Week 70: Hod in Briah and the 8 of Cups

General Symbolic of Hod:

The ability to adapt to circumstances (a true definition of intelligence) is a necessity if we are to survive. Diplomacy and flexibility of mind are qualities that are useful to the Magician, if he wants to avoid that the pressure of the street hinders the continuation of his work. Hod is the monkey whose agility is required to climb the tree of life.

Sephirah Hod (Divine Glory) governs rational intelligence. It imposes its limits on the instinctive nature of the human soul and on the overflow of emotions. She's channeling it. The union of heart and reason is the ideal of the Magician, who must be located in the Middle Pillar, between Hod and Netzach.

The virtue we must acquire there is intellectual rigour in the pursuit of truth. Our research must be free from dogma and taboo, must not take desires for realities. The truth does not have to be consoling (and therefore comforting), it must be true. But Hod also governs humour, the only effective weapon against pride. Run away from the so-called follower who would be humourless.

Just as love and devotion are Netzach's two applications, the learning of the three hermetic sciences (The Trivium Hermeticum which combines alchemy, astrology and magic) is attributed to Hod. It is an exposition of the theories and techniques of the Magic Qabalah, while their ritual application would be closer to Netzach.

Instruction is a prerequisite for any practice. Training without practice dries up, but practice without instruction is like dancing on a volcano that is about to erupt.

Behind each created thing, the initiate perceives the archetype, the plane that contributed to the manifestation of the object in a particular form. Who drew up these plans? God, considered as the Architect of all worlds. Such a perception of God is the responsibility of this Sephirah.

The magic image of Hod is a hermaphrodite, the compromise between Hermes (Hod) and Aphrodite (Netzach). In the living world, no being is 100% male or female. The man must know and accept his femininity, the woman must do the same with her masculinity.

Because hermetic androgynous is not a simple anatomical coexistence of the two sexes. It is a fullness due to the fusion of the sexes, and not an overabundance of erotic possibilities resulting from their superposition. It is the symbol of a new type of humanity, in which the coincidence of the sexes has produced a new non-polar consciousness. It implies, not the accumulation of anatomical organs, but the totality of the magical powers of both sexes.

Similar conceptions have been used in all great civilizations. We will not go back to Hindu or Buddhist Tantrism, to internal Taoist alchemy to which excellent texts have been devoted.

Hod in Briah: Michael

Color: Orange

MICHAEL, "who is like God", "reflection of God", is the most famous of the princes. As a representative of Metatron, he governs the actions of the other princes, hence the nickname "Chief of the Heavenly Militia". He fights against Satan and the forces of evil. He is especially called upon to invoke his spiritual protection in cases of occult attacks, bewitchment, and possession.

Michael being the Archangel of Fire, one will visualize his appearance in an ember of flames and sparks, and one will try to feel an intense heat.

Archangel Michael by Amanda Hadley:


The 8 of Cups - Indolence

“The Eight, Hod, in the suit of Water, governs this card. It shows the influence of Mercury, but this is overpowered by the reference of the card to Saturn in Pisces. Pisces is calm but stagnant water; and Saturn deadens it completely. Water appears no longer as the Sea but as pools; and there is no florescence in this card as there was in the last. The Lotuses droop for lack of sun and rain, and the soil is poison to them; only two of the stems show blossoms at all. The cups are shallow, old and broken. They are arranged in three rows; of these the upper row of three is quite empty. Water trickles from the two flowers into the two central cups, and they drip into the two lowest without filling them. The background of the card shows pools, or lagoons, in very extensive country, incapable of cultivation; only disease and miasmatic poison can flourish in those vast Bad Lands.

The water is dark and muddy. On the horizon is a pallid, yellowish light, weighed down by leaden clouds of indigo.

Compare with the last card; it represents the opposite and complementary error. The one is the Garden of Kundry, the other the Palace of Klingsor.

In the psychopathology of The Path, this card is the German Measles of Christian Mysticism.’’
(The Book of Thoth)

Picture of the card:

Week 71: Path between Malkuth and Netzah in Briah

As much as this path may of seem foggy in Yetzirah, as much is it enlightening for the deep subconscious of this planet in Briah.

The path between Sandalphon and Hanael (or Haniel)

The Moon from the Tarot of Eli:


Color of the path: chamois sparkling with silver white

Letter: Qoph

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 this reason there appears at the bottom of the card, underneath the water which is tinged with graphs of abomination, the sacred Beetle, the Egyptian Khephra, bearing in his mandibles the Solar Disk. It is this Beetle that bears the Sun in his Silence through the darkness of Night and the bitterness of Winter.

Above the surface of the water is a sinister and forbidding landscape. We see a path or stream, serum tinged with blood, which flows from a gap between two barren mountains; nine drops of impure blood, drop-shaped like Yods, fall upon it from the Moon.

The Moon, partaking as she does of the highest and the lowest, and filling all the space between, is the most universal of the Planets. In her higher aspect, she occupies the place of the Link between the human and divine, as shown in Atu II. In this Trump, her lowest avatar, she joins the earthy sphere of Netzach with Malkuth, the culmination in matter of all superior forms. This is the waning moon, the moon of witchcraft and abominable deeds. She is the poisoned darkness which is the condition of the rebirth of light.

This path is guarded by Tabu. She is uncleanliness and sorcery. Upon the hills are the black towers of nameless mystery, of horror and of fear. All prejudice, all superstition, dead tradition - and ancestral loathing, all combine to darken her face before the eyes of men. It needs unconquerable courage to begin to tread this path. Here is a weird, deceptive life. The fiery sense is baulked. The moon has no air. The knight upon this quest has to rely on the three lower senses: touch, taste and smell. [See the Book of Lies Cap.πβ, Bortsch.] Such light as there may be is deadlier than darkness, and the silence is wounded by the howling of wild beasts.

To what god shall we appeal for aid? It is Anubis, the watcher in the twilight, the god that stands upon the threshold, the jackal god of Khem, who stands in double form between the Ways. At his feet, on watch, wait the jackals themselves, to devour the carcasses of those who have not seen Him, or who have not known His Name.

This is the threshold of life; this is the threshold of death. All is doubtful, all is mysterious, all is intoxicating. Not the benign, solar intoxication of Dionysus, but the dreadful madness of pernicious drugs; this is a drunkenness of sense, after the mind has been abolished by the venom of this Moon. This is that which is written of Abraham in the Book of the Beginning: "An horror of great darkness came upon him." One is reminded of the mental echo of subconscious realization, of that supreme iniquity which mystics have constantly celebrated in their accounts of the Dark Night of the Soul. But the best men, the true men, do not consider the matter in such terms at all. Whatever horrors may afflict the soul, whatever abominations may excite the loathing of the heart, whatever terrors may assail the mind, the answer is the same at every stage: "How splendid is the Adventure!"”
(The Book of Thoth)

Picture of the card:

Path between Yesod and Netzah in Briah

Here between Gabriel and Haniel

Color of the path: Sky Blue

Letter: He

"Note that Heaven is not a place where Gods Live; Nuit is Heaven, itself." The Book of Law

XVII - The Star: This card is attributed to the letter He', as has been explained elsewhere. It refers to the Zodiacal sign of Aquarius, the water- bearer. The picture represents Nuith, our Lady of the Stars. For the full meaning of this sentence it is necessary to understand the first chapter of the Book of the Law.

The figure of the goddess is shown in manifestation, that is, not as the surrounding space of heaven, shown in Atu XX, where she is the pure philosophical idea continuous and omniform. In this card she is definitely personified as a human-seeming figure; she is represented as bearing two cups, one golden, held high above her head, from which she pours water upon it. (These cups resemble breasts, as it is written: "the milk of the stars from her paps; yea, the milk of the stars from her paps").

The Universe is here resolved into its ultimate elements. (One is tempted to quote from the Vision of the Lake Pasquaney, "Nothingness with twinkles. . . but what twinkles!") Behind the figure of the goddess is the celestial globe. Most prominent among its features is the seven-pointed Star of Venus, as if declaring the principal characteristic of her nature to be Love. (See again the description in Chapter I of the Book of the Law). From the golden cup she pours this ethereal water, which is also milk and oil and blood, upon her own head, indicating the eternal renewal of the categories, the inexhaustible possibilities of existence.

The left hand, lowered, holds a silver cup, from which also she pours the immortal liquor of her life. (This liquor is the Amrita of the Indian philosophers, the Nepenthe and Ambrosia of the Greeks, the Alkahest and Universal Medicine of the Alchemists, the Blood of the Grail; or, rather, the nectar which is the mother of that blood. She pours it upon the junction of land and water. This water is the water of the great Sea of Binah; in the manifestation of Nuith on a lower plane, she is the Great Mother. For the Great Sea is upon the shore of the fertile earth, as represented by the roses in the right hand corner of the picture. But between sea and land is the "Abyss", and this is hidden by the clouds, which whirl as a development of her hair: "my hair the trees of Eternity". (AL. I, 59).

In the left-hand corner of the picture is the star of Babalon; the Sigil of the Brotherhood of the A.'. A.'. For Babalon is yet a further materialization of the original idea of Nuith; she is the Scarlet Woman, the sacred Harlot who is the lady of Atu XI. From this star, behind the celestial sphere itself, issue the curled rays of spiritual light. Heaven itself is no more than a veil before the face of the immortal goddess.

It will be seen that every form of energy in this picture is spiral. Zoroaster says, "God is he, having the head of a hawk; having a spiral force". It is interesting to notice that this oracle appears to anticipate the present Aeon, that of the hawk-headed Lord, and also of the mathematical conception of the shape of the Universe as calculated by Einstein and his school. It is only in the lower cup that the forms of energy issuing forth show rectilinear characteristics. In this may be discovered the doctrine which asserts that the blindness of humanity to all the beauty and wonder of the Universe is due to this illusion of straightness. It is significant that Riemann, Bolyai and Lobatchewsky seem to have been the mathematical prophets of the New Revelation. For the Euclidian geometry depends upon the conception of straight lines, and it was only because the Parallel Postulate was found to be incapable of proof that mathematicians began to conceive that the straight line had no true correspondence with reality. [The straight line is no more than the limit of any curve. For instance, it is an ellipse whose foci are an "infinite" distance apart. In fact, such use of the Calculus is the one certain way of ensuring "straightness".]

In the first chapter of the Book of the Law, the conclusion is of practical importance. It gives the definite formula for the attainment of truth.

"I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice."

"But to love me is better than all things: if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in splendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly to come before me in a single robe, and covered with a rich headdress. I love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!
"At all my meetings with you shall the priestess say-and her eyes shall burn with desire as she stands bare and rejoicing in my secret temple-To me! To me! calling forth the flame of the hearts of all in her love-chant.
"Sing the rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I love you! I love you!
"I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.
"To me! To me!
"The Manifestation of Nuit is at an end."
(The Book of Thoth)

Picture of the card:

Week 73: Path between Hod and Netzah in Briah

Picture from Queen Elsa:



In the middle of this horizontal path, link, between Michael and Hanael (or Haniel), we find, at the body level, the solar plexus at the cross point made by the vertical path, link, between Gabriel and Raphael.

In the Tree of Life, if projected on the body, the solar plexus is not a sephiroth like are Malkuth for the earth chakra, Yesod for the sexual chakra, Tiphareth for the heart chakra and Kether for the crown chakra. But rather a cross point between a horizontal path and a vertical path like for the third eye chakra. In this form of structure, the solar plexus chakra and the third eye chakra are a place where a form of polarity gets mixed and integrated.

For the solar plexus chakra at the cross point, on the horizontal path, called the Tower in tarot, we find the polarity created by Michael and Hanael. On the vertical path between Gabriel, the sexual charkra, and Raphael, the heart chakra, we have Atu XIV, Temperance or Art in the tarot, that mixes and integrates those polarity.

The throat chakra has a special status as a narrow bridge in Daath that crosses the abyss in both vertical ways, creation and dissolution, between the supernal, the three higher sephiroth, and the seven lower sephiroth. It filters all the Imagined forms of the Supernal that want to create themselves in the World or, at body level, limits all our though forms from manifesting.

Color: Red

Letter: Peh

XVI - The Tower: ‘’This card is attributed to the letter Peh, which means a mouth; it refers to the planet Mars. In its simplest interpretation it refers to the manifestation of cosmic energy in its grossest form. The picture shows the destruction of existing material by fire. It may be taken as the preface to Atu XX, the Last Judgment, i.e., the Coming of a New Aeon. This being so, it seems to indicate the quintessential quality of the Lord of the Aeon.

At the bottom part of the card, therefore, is shown the destruction of the old-established Aeon by lightning, flames, engines of war. In the right-hand corner are the jaws of Dis, belching flame at the root of the structure. Falling from the tower are broken figures of the garrison. It will be noticed that they have lost their human shape.

They have become mere geometrical expressions.

This suggests another (and totally different) interpretation of the card. To understand this, it is necessary to refer to the doctrines of Yoga, especially those most widely current in Southern India, where the cult of Shiva, the Destroyer, is paramount. Shiva is represented as dancing upon the bodies of his devotees. To understand this is not easy for most western minds. Briefly, the doctrine is that the ultimate reality (which is Perfection) is Nothingness. Hence all manifestations, however glorious, however delightful, are stains. To obtain perfection, all existing things must be annihilated. The destruction of the garrison may therefore be taken to mean their emancipation from the prison of organized life, which was confining them. It was their unwisdom to cling to it.

The above should make it clear that magical symbols must always be understood in a double sense, each contradictory of the other. These ideas blend naturally with the higher and deeper significance of the card.

There is a direct reference to this card in the Book of the Law. In Chapter I, verse 57, the goddess Nuith speaks: "Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God". [For this reason the ancient title, to-day not very intelligible, has been retained. Otherwise, it might have been called War.]

The dominating feature of this card is the Eye of Horus. This is also the Eye of Shiva, on the opening of which, according to the legend of this cult, the Universe is destroyed.
Besides this, there is a special technical magical meaning, which is explained openly only to initiates of the Eleventh degree of the O.T.O.; a grade so secret that it is not even listed in the official documents. It is not even to be understood by study of the Eye in Atu XV. Perhaps it is lawful to mention that the Arab sages and the Persian poets have written, not always guardedly, on the subject.

Bathed in the effulgence of this Eye (which now assumes even a third sense, that indicated in Atu XV) are the Dove bearing an olive branch and the Serpent: as in the above quotation. The Serpent is portrayed as the Lion-Serpent Xnoubis or Abraxas. These represent the two forms of desire; what Schopenhauer would have called the Will to Live and the Will to Die. They represent the feminine and masculine impulses; the nobility of the latter is possibly based upon recognition of the futility of the former. This is perhaps why the renunciation of love in all the ordinary senses of the word has been so constantly announced as the first step towards initiation. This is an unnecessarily rigid view. This Trump is not the only card in the Pack, nor are the "will to live" and the "will to die" incompatible. This becomes clear as soon as life and death are understood (See Atu XIII) as phases of a single manifestation of energy.’’
(The Book of Thoth)

Week 74: Netzah in Briah and the 7 of Cups

General Symbolic of Netzah:

Tiphereth represents the higher consciousness, which perceives spiritual realities. Netzah is the image of desire (the instincts and reflexes it evokes), and Hod is the image of the concrete mind. It is impossible to separate the activities of Netzah and Hod, which are a functional pair, as Geburah and Chesed represent the two aspects of metabolism.

A child's lips suck any object that is offered to them. It is through dance, the exaltation of emotions through rhythm, scents, colour and sound that we come into contact with Netzah. Art and rituals involving these factors allow this contact.

Netzah is the artist and Hod the scientist. Hod's preponderance will make us theorists, without an ounce of practice. Hod's scepticism will destroy, before they are born, the fragile images we develop. Like everything else, Hod, unfertilized by the opposite polarity, remains sterile. Every magician must be a scholar and an artist.

Netzah is love; the parent's love for the child, true friendship.

With a hint of heresy, the term "Victory" attributed to this sephirah could be interpreted as follows: the instincts that motivate us, the fundamental dynamism of an individual, are closely dependent on his sexual life. This is a preponderant fact of our mental life, evaded by the esoteric in the living room who prefer to chat about "universal love" (an outcome and not a starting point) without having put a curse on their own neuroses. Although they have a good conscience, they are just as useless to others as they are to themselves. These people, convinced that they have achieved much more advanced awareness than the average of their peers (as confirmed by their brilliant and many past lives), most often reveal a life (love or work) that is sad, mediocre and chaotic.

A balanced temperament is not the objective of the spiritual life, but a prerequisite for its beginning.

In both East and West, the Mystery Schools have grasped the importance of desire, which can lose or exalt the one who experiences it. Also, techniques and rites have been developed to make it sacred and channel it. Indian Tantrism is partly composed of such techniques. But they have reserved for the highest degrees and have nothing in common with the easy love of those Westerners who use them as an alibi.

"Spiritual sexual life" means "sexual life in conformity with our inner being" and not "sexual life in conformity with the morality enacted by others". Each human being has a male and female component, although to varying degrees. To recreate a complete being in itself, a "male" man can search for a "female" woman. But a "male" woman can look for a "female" man, etc... Much of the mystery of these attractions lies far beyond the physical body. Like any other combination, both male and female homosexuality belong to this search for the total human, prior to the division of the sexes.

Netzah's magical image is a beautiful naked woman.

Netzah in Briah: Hanael or Haniel

Archangel Haniel by Ros:


Color of Netzah in Briah: Emerald Green

Corresponds specifically to Netzah, we find Hanael (I, The God). It is also called Haniel, (Grace of God), or Phanel (the face of God).

The 7 of Cups - Debauch:

“This card refers to the Seven, Netzach, in the suit of Water. Here recurs the invariable weakness arising from lack of balance; also, the card is governed by Venus in Scorpio. Her dignity is not good in this Sign; one is reminded that Venus is the planet of Copper, "external splendour and internal corruption". The Lotuses have become poisonous, looking like tiger-lilies; and, instead of water, green slime issues from them and overflows, making the Sea a malarious morass. Venus redoubles the influence of the number Seven.

The cups are iridescent, carrying out the same idea.

They are arranged as two descending triangles interlaced above the lowest cup, which is very much larger than the rest.

This card is almost the "evil and averse" image of the Six; it is a wholesome reminder of the fatal ease with which a Sacrament may be profaned and prostituted.

Lose direct touch with Kether, the Highest; diverge never so little from the delicate balance of the Middle Pillar; at once the holiest mysteries of Nature become the obscene and shameful secrets of a guilty conscience.”
(The Book of Thoth)

Picture of the card:

Path between Hod and Tiphareth in Briah

The path between Michael and Raphael.

This card or path brings up a lot of different interpretations.

One the path of creation, going down the Tree, it could be represented by the energy of the Sun becoming to fast matter for consciousness or life to occur it this process of transformation.

On the path of dissolution or going up the Tree it could be represented by matter returning to fast to its energy form for life to evolve it this process of transformation.



Another interpretation of a Christian influence, as say someone who wanted to stay anonymous in his Book Meditations on the Tarot, is that one cannot meditate on this card. To quote the chapter of The Devil card in this book:

“The fifteen Arcanum of the Tarot, in so far as it is a spiritual exercise, cannot – and must not – lead to an experience of identification of the meditant with the subject of meditation. (…)
One can grasp profoundly, i.e. intuitively, only that which one loves. Now, one cannot love evil. Evil is therefore unknowable it its essence. One can only understand it only at a distance, as an observer of its phenomenology.”

So, I would not suggest to one starting on the path, or one that has not cleared all its fears, to meditate on this path of the Tree of Life.

Color of the path in Briah: Black

Letter: Ayin

XV - The Devil: “This card is attributed to the letter 'Ayin, which means an Eye, and it refers to Capricornus in the Zodiac. In the Dark Ages of Christianity, it was completely misunderstood. Eliphaz Levi studied it very deeply because of its connection with ceremonial magic, his 4 favourite subject; and he re-drew it, identifying it with Baphomet, the ***-headed idol of the Knights of the Temple. [The Early Christians also were accused of worshipping an ***, or ***-headed god. See Browning, The Ring and the Book (The Pope).] But at this time archaeological research had not gone very far; the nature of Baphomet was not fully understood. (See Atu 0) At least he succeeded in identifying the goat portrayed upon the card with Pan.

On the Tree of Life, Atu XIII and XV are symmetrically placed; they lead from Tiphareth, the human consciousness, to the spheres in which Thought (on the one hand) and Bliss (on the other) are developed. Between them, Atu XIV leads similarly to the sphere which formulates Existence. (See note on Atu X and arrangement.) These three cards may therefore be summed up as a hieroglyph of the processes by which idea manifests as form.

This card represents creative energy in its most material form; in the Zodiac, Capricornus occupies the Zenith. It is the most exalted of the signs; it is the goat leaping with lust upon the summits of earth. The sign is ruled by Saturn, who makes for selfhood and perpetuity. In this sign, Mars is exalted, showing in its best form the fiery, material energy of creation. The card represents Pan Pangenetor, the All-Begetter. It is the Tree of Life as seen against a background of the exquisitely tenuous, complex, and fantastic forms of madness, the divine madness of spring, already foreseen in the meditative madness of winter; for the Sun turns northwards on entering this sign. The roots of the Tree are made transparent, in order to show the innumerable leapings of the sap; before it stands the Himalayan goat, with an eye in the centre of his forehead, representing the god Pan upon the highest and most secret mountains of the earth. His creative energy is veiled in the symbol of the Wand of the Chief Adept, crowned with the winged globe and the twin serpents of Horus and Osiris.


"Hear me, Lord of the Stars, for thee have I worshipped ever with stains and sorrows and scars, With joyful, joyful Endeavour. Hear me, O lilywhite goat Crisp as a thicket of thorns, With a collar of gold for thy throat, A scarlet bow for thy horns."
The sign of Capricornus is rough, harsh, dark, even blind; the impulse to create takes no account of reason, custom, or foresight. It is divinely unscrupulous, sublimely careless of result. "thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect." AL. I, 42-4.

It is further to be remarked that the trunk of the Tree pierces the heavens; about it is indicated the ring of the body of Nuith. Similarly, the shaft of the Wand goes down indefinitely to the centre of earth. "If I lift up my head, I and my Nuit are one. If I droop down mine head, and shoot forth venom, then is rapture of the earth, and I and the earth are one." (AL. II, 26).

The formula of this card is then the complete appreciation of all existing things. He rejoices in the rugged and the barren no less than in the smooth and the fertile. All things equally exalt him. He represents the finding of ecstasy in every phenomenon, however naturally repugnant; he transcends all limitations; he is Pan; he is All.
It is important to notice some other correspondences. The three vowel-consonants of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph, Yod, 'Ayin, these three letters form the sacred name of God, I A O. These three Atu, IX, 0, and XV, thus offer a threefold explanation of the male creative energy; but this card especially represents the masculine energy at its most masculine. Saturn, the ruler, is Set, the ***-headed god of the Egyptian deserts; he is the god of the south. The name refers to all gods containing these consonants, such as Shaitan, or Satan. (See Magick pp.336-7). Essential to the symbolism are the surroundings - barren places, especially high places. The cult of the mountain is an exact parallel. The Old Testament is full of attacks upon kings who celebrated worship in "high places"; this, although Zion itself was a mountain! This feeling persisted, even to the days of the Witches' Sabbath, held, if possible, on a desolate summit, but (if none were available) at least in a wild spot, uncontaminated by the artfulness of men.

Note that Shabbathai, the "sphere of Saturn", is the Sabbath. Historically, the animus against witches pertains to the fear of the Jews; whose rites, supplanted by the Christian forms of Magic, had become mysterious and terrible. Panic suggested that Christian children were stolen, sacrificed, and eaten. The belief persists to this day.

In every symbol of this card there is the allusion to the highest things and most remote. Even the horns of the goat are spiral, to represent the movement of the all-pervading energy. Zoroaster defines God as "having a spiral force". Compare the more recent, if less profound, writings of Einstein. [Compare Saturn, at one end of the Seven Sacred Wanderers, with the Moon at the other: the aged man and the young girl -see "The Formula of Tetragrammaton". They are linked as no other two planets, since 32=9, and each contains in itself the extremes of its own idea.”
(The book of Thoth)

Picture of the card:

Week 76: Path between Yesod and Tiphareth in Briah

By Kasamba:


Path between Gabriel and Raphael.

Color of the path in Briah: Yellow

Letter: Samekh

XIV - The Art or Temperance: “This card is the complement and the fulfilment of Atu VI, Gemini. It pertains to Sagittarius, the opposite to Gemini in the Zodiac, and therefore, "after another manner," one with it. Sagittarius means the Archer; and the card is (in its simplest and most primitive form) a picture of Diana the Huntress. Diana is primarily one of the lunar goddesses, though the Romans rather degraded her from the Greek "virgin Artemis", who is also the Great Mother of Fertility, Diana of the Ephesians, Many-Breasted. (A form of Isis-see Atu II and III.) The connection between the Moon and the Huntress is shewn by the shape of the bow, and the occult significance of Sagittarius is the arrow piercing the rainbow; the last three paths of the Tree of Life make the word Qesheth, a rainbow, and Sagittarius bears the arrow which pierces the rainbow, for his path leads from the Moon of Yesod to the Sun of Tiphareth. (This explanation is highly technical; but this is necessary because the card represents an important scientific formula, which cannot be expressed in language suited to common comprehension.)

This card represents the Consummation of the Royal Marriage which took place in Atu VI. The black and white personages are now united in a single androgyne figure. Even the Bees and the Serpents on their robes have made an alliance. The Red Lion has become white, and increased in size and importance, while the White Eagle, similarly expanded, has become red. He has exchanged his red blood for her white gluten. (It is impossible to explain these terms to any but advanced students of alchemy.)

The equilibrium and counter-change are carried out completely in the figure itself; the white woman has now a black bead; the black king, a white one. She wears the golden crown with a silver band, he, the silver crown with a golden fillet; but the white head on the right is extended in action by a white arm on the left which holds the cup of the white gluten, while the black head on the left has the black arm on the right, holding the lance which has become a torch and pours forth its burning blood. The fire burns up the water; the water extinguishes the fire.

The robe of the figure is green, which symbolizes vegetable growth: this is an alchemical allegory. In the symbolism of the fathers of science, all "actual" objects were regarded as dead; the difficulty of transmuting metals was that the metals, as they occur in nature, were in the nature of excrements, because they did not grow. The first problem of alchemy was to raise mineral to vegetable life; the adepts thought that the proper way to do this was to imitate the processes of nature.

Distillation, for instance, was not an operation to be performed by heating something in a retort over a flame; it had to take place naturally, even if months were required to consummate the Work. (Months, at that period of civilization, were at the disposal of enquiring minds.)

A great deal of what people now consider ignorance, being themselves ignorant of what the men of old time thought, comes from this misapprehension. At the bottom of this card, for example, are seen Fire and Water harmoniously mingled. But this is only a crude symbol of the spiritual idea, which is the satisfaction of the desire of the incomplete element of one kind to satisfy its formula by assimilation of its equal and opposite.

This state of the great Work therefore consisted in the mingling of the contradictory elements in a cauldron. This is here represented as golden or solar, because the Sun is the Father of all Life, and (in particular) presides over distillation. The fertility of the Earth is maintained by rain and sun; the rain is formed by a slow and gentle process, and is rendered effective by the co-operation of air, which is itself alchemically the result of the Marriage of Fire and Water. So also the formula of continued life is death, or putrefaction. Here it is symbolized by the caput mortuum on the cauldron, a raven perched upon a skull. In agricultural terms, this is the fallow earth.

There is a particular interpretation of this card which is only to be understood by Initiates of the Ninth Degree of the O.T.O; for it contains a practical magical formula of such importance as to make it impossible to communicate it openly.

Rising from the cauldron, as the result of the operation per- formed ~ is a stream of light which becomes two rainbows; they form the cape of the androgyne figure. In the centre, an arrow shoots upwards. This is connected with the general symbolism previously explained, the spiritualization of the result of the Great Work.

The rainbow is moreover symbolical of another stage in the alchemical process. At a certain period, as a result of putrefaction, there is observed a phenomenon of many-coloured lights (The "coat of many colours" said to have been worn by Joseph and Jesus, in the ancient legends, refers to this. See also Atu 0, the Motley of the Green Man, Dreamer-Redeemer).

To sum up, the whole of this card represents the hidden content of the Egg described in Atu VI. It is the same formula, but in a more advanced stage. The original duality has been completely compensated; but after birth comes growth; after growth, puberty; and after puberty, purification.

In this card, therefore, is foreshadowed the final stage of the Great Work. Behind the figure, its edges tinged with the rainbow, which has now arisen from the twin rainbows forming the cape of the figure, is a glory bearing an inscription VISITA INTERIORA TERRAE RECTIFICANDO INVENIES OCCULTUM LAPIDEM.
"Visit the interior parts of the earth: by rectification thou shalt find the hidden stone." Its initials make 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 understand. The subject-matter of chemistry and physics in modern times is what they would have called the study of dead things; for the real difference between living things and dead is, in the first instance, their behaviour.
The initials of the alchemical motto given above form the word Vitriol. This has nothing to do with the sulphates of either hydrogen, iron or copper, as might be supposed from modern usage. It represents a balanced combination of the three alchemical principles, Sulphur, Mercury and Salt. These names have no connection with substances so named by the vulgar; they have already been described in Atu I III and IV

The counsel to "visit the interior of the earth" is a recapitulation (on a higher plane) of the first formula of the Work which has been the so constant theme of these essays. The important word in the injunction is the central word RECTIFICANDO; it implies the right leading of the new living substance in the path of the True Will. The stone of the Philosophers, the Universal Medicine, is to be a talisman of use in any event, a completely elastic and completely rigid vehicle of the True Will of the alchemists. It is to fertilize and bring to manifested Life the Orphic Egg.

The Arrow, both in this card and in Atu VI, is of supreme importance. The Arrow is, in fact, the simplest and purest glyph of Mercury, being the symbol of directed Will.”
(Book of Thoth)

Picture of the card :

[Scholarly Tarot]

An enormous amount of information! I did a study of the symbolism of the Tree of Life throughout the various ancient cultures last year that was fun. Yours appears to me to be a sharper focus, which is very valuable. Thanks for sharing all this material man. It will take a bit of reading for me to get it all. Is this a book you have written? If not, you have enough material to produce a book you know.

Your last idea in this most recent post about the arrow of Mercury is good. Arrows anciently were used as boundary markers as well. Various cultures in the ancient world (Alans, Slavs, Berbers, Ancient American Indians, etc.) used to mark their arrows, then shoot them in the four directions and that marked out the extent of their Kingdoms. Interesting symbolism used for practical purposes. Herodotus indicated that it was the spirit weapon that alone can prevail when the demons show up because arrows pass through the void between other worlds and our own. It is in the Olaf-Tryggvason Saga that states a few times that the summons arrow was sent to all the land in the four directions.

This is also found in the ancient Indian Asvamedha, where the king sends his arrows in the four directions as a means of requesting all the peoples who were conquered to appear before the King. The arrow was also seen as a thunderbolt, because the ancient and universal concept was that God governs the universe and keeps order by means of the arrow, which was a swift messenger of his wrath if people were wicked.

The Herald of Zeus is the instrument that summoned all his subjects, armed with a golden wand which subdues all creatures when it touches them. Hermes is said to have received his staff originally from Apollo, who brought it with him as an arrow from the land of the Hyperboreans.

The census-arrow is found among the Scythians, Tartars, Persians, Georgians, Norsemen, and American Indians, and this is how the ancients lived, by the arrow of heaven and earth, theirs being the earthly form of the Godly arrow of power. (all this and much more in Hugh Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State" found in "Western Political Quarterly," 2/3 (1949): 328-344.

Hello Scholarly Tarot and welcome to SF,

The texts about the tarot cards are from the Book of Thoth, the mane reason I am taking those texts is that they have no copyright on them, for me to copy them here.

The text on the Tree of Life come from notes of the last time, some 25 years ago, when I did this path of Wisdom. I was hanging around with a few spiritual alchemists then. And those text are also influenced by my own experience of taking this path.

You do have a great knowledge of symbols and mythology. Those are great source of wisdom.

About the arrow symbolism.

And not to forget the arrow of the Sagittarius constellation that points to the centre of our galaxy. How people came into the past to draw this arrow and the tail of Scorpius to point there, is a nice question.

When it is only in 1958 that Sagittarius A has been chosen to be the true 0 coordinate for the galactic latitude and longitude.

Did it shine at one point in history? Does it emit a special frequency that some can see? So many interesting questions in this world.



But those are only questions. Nothing like trusting your own inner experience.

Regards,