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  #1  
Old 11-08-2019, 04:11 PM
Legrand
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Symbolic Study of the Tarot and the Tree of Life

I feel like doing again an exploration of the symbolic of the Tarot and the Tree of Life I did some 25 years ago. It took me 128 weeks on the serpent path of wisdom of the Tree of Life.

It’s a way among many to become aware in more details of 128 different ways for the Divine to manifest Itself.

For that I use the symbolic of different Tarot deck and that of the Tree of Life, that are closely related, and allow to the energies behind those symbols to manifest in my day to day life for the week. Exploring one symbol a week along the serpent path of Wisdom.

There are four Worlds for the Tree of Life. Starting from the highest:

ATZILUTH: (Hebrew word meaning proximity) is the first world to emerge from Negative Existence. Its name or title is the Unlimited World of Divine Names.
Atziluth is God in all these aspects, no doubt, but without contact with creatures. God acts directly and not through his ministers.
It will be associated here to the element Fire and in Tarot to the Wands.

BRIAH: the second world, emanates from the tenth sephirah of Atziluth; it is the archangelic world of Creation.
Briah derives from the Hebrew root BRA (Beriah), meaning "teaching or creating". Here, the idea is driven by a desire to manifest itself, to become something.
It will be associated here to the element Water and in Tarot to the Cups.

YETZIRAH: the third world, emanates from the tenth sephirah of Briah. It is the Angelic world of Formation. The word "Yetzirah" derives from the Chaldean word ITzR, meaning "to form or to do".
In this world reside the intelligent and immaterial creatures, each wrapped in a luminous garment; they are asexual and capable, by divine permission, of taking a form perceptible to men when they appear. They are also spirits, energies or helping forces that fulfill the Will of God. This world is immediately above the earthly world and the first one that contacts man's consciousness when it blossoms. It has the general characteristics that we mean by the astral word.
It will be associated here to the element Air and in Tarot to the Swords.


ASSIAH: the fourth world, is the Elementary World of Action.
Towards this plane are directed the forces and powers of the other three worlds. In this world, the qualities and essences of the other three are weakened and distorted. In him, we see obscurely as if through a glass. Atziluth's divine plan can be glimpsed, but only briefly as a completely inaccessible ideal; even Briah's archangelical creatures cannot be grasped by our limited senses and Yetzirah's divine forms are only perceived in a distorted way, as gods with clay feet. Our world is a twilight world of uncertainty and, like blind people, we are still unable to distinguish anything clearly. The veil of illusion covers everything.
It will be associated here to the element Earth and in Tarot to the Disks.

For those who do not know about the Serpent path of Wisdom on the Tree of Life here is a picture among many I found on the Internet:



Part of my comments are translated from French, as it is my first language. My comments want to be as brief as possible. I leave it to the reader to do his or her own research on the symbolic involved.

Enjoy!
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  #2  
Old 11-08-2019, 04:12 PM
Legrand
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Week 1: Malkuth in Assiah and the 10 of Disks

General Symbolic:

Malkuth: The four Elements from the Quintessence compose man and each object of the material world. As they are perceived from Malkhut, Qabalists call them Cholem Yosodoth.
We cannot represent as external to us the Earth on which we live. On the other hand, we can situate ourselves in relation to the universe. In an astrological theme, the ASCENDANT (constellation rising on the horizon at birth) and the houses (division of the sky into twelve sectors of which the ASCENDANT is the pivot) indicate how we see the universe around us. The ASCENDANT is connected to the physical body. It crystallises the history of the racial and family lineage in a given individual.

Mallkuth in Assiah: Earth

The 10 of Disks: The number Ten, Malkuth, represents the final issue of the Energy. Here is great and final solidification. The force is completely expended and results in death. Mercury rules this card in Virgo; and this may imply that the acquired wealth, being inert, will be dissipated unless put to further use by devoting its power to objects other than mere accumulation. It is the futility of material gain.
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  #3  
Old 18-08-2019, 10:26 AM
Legrand
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NOTE

The court cards of the Tarot:

I won’t be using them in this symbolic study of the Tarot and the Tree of Life. It would make it to long, for each court card in the Tarot represents an aspect of the Tree of Life. As an example, the card the Queen of Fire, represents the Tree of Life with the sephiroth in Water (the world of
Briah) and the 22 paths or 22 Major Arcana in Fire (the world of Atziluth). When the Tree of Life is colored, it is most often shown in the colors of the Queen of Fire, for it represents the ultimate female/male equilibrium.

The card the King of Fire represents the Tree of Life with the sephiroth in Fire (the world of Atziluth) and the 22 paths or 22 Major Arcana in Fire (the world of Atziluth). And so on for the other court cards…

The Major Arcana:

They are 22 paths on the Tree of Life as they are 22 Major Arcana in the Tarot. For the paths, I will explore more the symbolic of the Tarot then that of the Sepher Yetzirah. It’s a personal perception, but the symbolic in the Tarot seems to me older and deeper than the one contained in the Sepher Yetzirah on the levels of the paths. For this study, I will not explore the difference in each path or arcana in each of the four worlds, but simply stick to their general meaning.
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  #4  
Old 18-08-2019, 10:28 AM
Legrand
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Week 2: Path between Malkuth and Yesod in Assiah

Letter: Tau

XXI - The Universe or the World: The first and most obvious characteristic of this card is that it comes at the end of all, and is therefore the complement of the Fool. It is attributed the letter Tau. The two cards together accordingly spell the word Ath, which means Essence. All reality is consequently compromised in the series of which these two letters form the beginning and the end. This beginning was Nothing; the end also must therefore be also Nothing, but Nothing in its complete expansion. The number 4, rather than the number 2, was chosen at the basis of this expansion, partly no doubt for convenience, to enlarge the universe of discourse; partly to emphasize the idea of limitation.

In the present card she is represented as a dancing figure. In her hands she manipulates the radiant spiral force, the active and the passive, each possessing its dual polarity. This final form of the Image of the Magical formula of the God combines and transforms so many symbols that description is difficult, and would be nugatory. The proper method of study of this card- indeed of all, but of this especially – is long-continued meditation. The Universe so states the theme, is the Celebration of the Great Work accomplished.
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  #5  
Old 25-08-2019, 02:15 PM
Legrand
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Week 3: Yesod in Assiah and the 9 of Disks

General Symbolic:

Yesod:
(The foundation) receives the emanations of the other sephiroth. It is the privileged receptacle that transmits them to the physical world (Malkuth). A form in Yesod is similar to a child in the womb of its mother in the ninth month of pregnancy: it is fully formed, but awaits its entry into a new world of existence in which it can grow and flourish.
Yesod is the astral, the intermediate world that stands beyond the world of forms, beyond this physical world that we perceive. To act on the forms, we must situate ourselves in Yesod and not in Malkuth. It is an illusion to want to transform the material world by being in the same world. The only way to achieve a lasting effect in Malkuth is to rise to Yesod, the vessel of Tiphereth's power, and act there. Procedures have been developed for this purpose, ranging from simple visualization techniques to sophisticated rites. The purpose of all these techniques is to elevate the mind to a certain plane so that it generates forms, planes, images that will incarnate in Malkuth.
Yesod is the kingdom of images. It is a distorting mirror of illusion that reflects images of the human mind or the higher spheres. It is also the sphere of the subjective mind, in all its strata: conscious, subconscious, unconscious, where many emotionally charged images have accumulated since the dawn of time. It constitutes the ancestral lineage of which we are the result. In the practice of Magic, it is wrong to think that the magician is only dealing with powers that are external to him. An evocation is a shock therapy. The "entities" mentioned are above all the personification of the materials of the unconscious, some of which inhibited the development of the person concerned. During the evocation, a dialogue continues between this entity and the operator. Both having tamed each other; this entity is reabsorbed. It reintegrates the unconscious, in a form that is no longer disabling. When the magician evokes powers that are external to him, these will only manifest themselves through him. The Platonic maxim "Know yourself and you will know the universe and the gods" confirms that the superior worlds are contacted at the end of a journey that passes through the interior of us. They are beyond the deepest part of ourselves. Thus, the psychological and hermetic explanations of the magical experience are reconciled.

Yesod in Assiah: Moon
The moon (LEVANAH) collects all the influences of the wandering and fixed stars (planets) to the things of our world. The moon is the closest of all celestial bodies to the Earth. It is the receptacle of all celestial rays. The speed of her movement makes her collect the influences of the Sun and other planets every month, as if she were the wife of all the planets. She is the most fertile of all because she receives in her the fruit born of the rays of the Sun and other planets. All the stars hit it with their rays, which it then communicates to all the lower bodies (between the orbit of the Moon and the Earth), spreading its rays over the Earth. Its power is evident as its movement is most apparent because of its proximity and because it is the intermediary between the upper and lower planes.

The 9 of Disks:
The number Nine, Yesod, inevitably brings back the balance of Force in fulfilment. The card is ruled by Venus in Virgo. It shows good luck attending material affairs, favour and popularity.
The disks are arranged as an equilateral triangle of three, apex upwards, close together; and surrounded at some distance by a ring, six larger disks in the form of a hexagon. This signifies the multiplication of the original established Word – by the mingling of “good luck and good management”. The three central disks are the magical pattern as in earlier cards; but the others, since the descent into matter implies the gradual exhaustion of the original whirling energy, now take on the form of coins. These may be marked with the magical image of the appropriate planets.
As a general remark, on may say that the multiplication of a symbol of Energy always tends to degrade its essential meaning, as well as to complicate it.
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  #6  
Old 01-09-2019, 12:18 PM
Legrand
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Week 4: Path between Malkuth and Hod in Assiah

Letter: Shin

XX - The Aeon or The Last Judgement: “In this card it has been necessary to depart completely from the tradition of the cards, in order to carry on that tradition.

The old card was called The Angel: or, The Last Judgment. It represented an Angel or Messenger blowing a trumpet, attached to which was a flag, bearing the symbol of the Aeon of Osiris. Below him the graves were opening, the dead rising up. There were three of them. The central one had his hands raised with right angles at the elbows and shoulders, so as to form the letter Shin, which refers to Fire. The card therefore represented the destruction of the world by Fire. This was accomplished in the year of the vulgar era 1904, when the fiery god Horus took the place of the airy god Osiris in the East as Hierophant (see Atu V). At the beginning, then, of this new Aeon, it is fit to exhibit the message of that angel who brought the news of the new Aeon to earth. The new card is thus of necessity an adaptation of the Stélé of Revealing.

Around the top of the card is the body of Nuith, the star-goddess, who is the category of unlimited possibility; her mate is Hadit, the ubiquitous point-of-view, the only philosophically tenable conception of Reality. He is represented by a globe of fire, representing eternal energy; winged, to show his power of Going. As a result of the marriage of these two, the child Horus is born. He is, however, known under his special name, Heru-ra-ha. A double god; his extroverted form is Ra-hoor-khuit; and his passive or introverted form Hoor-pa kraat. He is also solar in character, and is therefore shown coming forth in golden light.

It should, by the way, be noted that the name Heru is identical with Hru, who is the great Angel set over the Tarot. This new Tarot may therefore be regarded as a series of illustrations to the Book of the Law; the doctrine of that Book is everywhere implicit.

At the bottom of the card we see the letter Shin itself in a form suggestive of a flower; the three Yods are occupied by three human figures arising to partake in the Essence of the new Aeon. Behind this letter is a symbolic representation of the Sign of Libra; this is the forth-shadowing of the Aeon which is to follow this present one, presumably in about 2,000 years-"the fall of the Great Equinox; when Hrumachis shall arise and the double-wanded one assume my throne and place". The present Aeon is too young to give a more definite representation of this future event. But in this connection attention must be drawn to the figure of Ra-hoor-khuit: "I am the Lord of the Double Wand of Power; the wand of the Force of Coph Nia; but my left hand is empty, for I have crushed an Universe; & nought remains. There are many other details with regard to the Lord of the Aeon which should be studied in the Book of the Law.

It is also important to study very thoroughly, and meditate upon, this Book, in order to appreciate the spiritual, moral, and material events which have marked the catastrophic transition from the Aeon of Osiris. The time for the birth of an Aeon seems to be indicated by great concentration of political power with the accompanying improvements in the means of travel and communication, with a general advance in philosophy and science, with a general need of consolidation in religious thought. It is very instructive to compare the events of the five hundred years preceding and following the crisis of approximately 2,000 years ago, with those of similar periods centred in 1904 of the old era. It is a thought far from comforting to the present generation, that 500 years of Dark Ages are likely to be upon us. But, if the analogy holds, that is the case. Fortunately, to-day we have brighter torches and more torch-bearers.” (The Book of Thoth)
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  #7  
Old 08-09-2019, 12:42 PM
Legrand
Posts: n/a
 
Week 5: Path between Yesod and Hod in Assiah

Letter: Resh

XIX - The Sun: "This card represents, in heraldic language, "the Sun, charged with a rose, on a mount vert".

This is one of the simplest of the cards; it represents Heru-ra-ha, the Lord of the New Aeon, in his manifestation to the race of men as the Sun spiritual, moral, and physical. He is the Lord of Light, Life, Liberty and Love. This Aeon has for its purpose the complete emancipation of the human race.

The rose represents the flowering of the solar influence. Around the whole picture we see the signs of the Zodiac in their normal position, Aries rising in the East, and so on. Freedom brings sanity. The Zodiac is a kind of childish representation of the body of Nuith, a differentiation and classification, a chosen belt, one girdle of Our Lady of infinite space. Convenience of description excuses the device.

The green mound represents the fertile earth, its shape, so to speak, aspiring to the heavens. But around the top of the mound is a wall, which indicates that the aspiration of the new Aeon does not mean the absence of control. Yet outside this wall are the twin children who (in one form or another) have so frequently recurred in this whole symbolism. They represent the male and female, eternally young, shameless and innocent. They are dancing in the light, and yet they dwell upon the earth. They represent the next stage, which is to be attained by mankind, in which complete freedom is alike the cause and the result of the new access of solar energy upon the earth. The restriction of such ideas as sin and death in their old sense has been abolished. At their feet are the most sacred signs of the old Aeon, the combination of the Rose and Cross from which they are arisen, yet which still forms their support.

The card itself symbolizes this broadening of the idea of the Rose and Cross. The Cross is now expanded into the Sun, from which, of course, it is originally derived. Its rays are twelve-not only the number of the signs of the Zodiac, but of the most sacred title of the most holy Ancient Ones, who are Hua. (The word HUA, "he", has the numerical value of 12.) The limitation of mundane law, which is always associated with the number Four, has disappeared. Gone are the four arms of a Cross limited by law; the creative energy of the Cross expands freely; its rays pierce in every direction the body of Our Lady of the Stars.

With regard to the wall, it should be noted that it completely encircles the top of the mound; this is to emphasize that the formula of the Rose and Cross is still valid in terrestrial matters. But there is now, as was not previously the case, a close and definite alliance with the celestial.
It is also most important to observe that the formula of the Rose and Cross (indicated by the wall-girt mound) has completed the fire-change into "something rich and strange"; for the mound is green, where one would expect it to be red, and the wall red, where one would expect it to be green or blue. The indication of this symbolism is that it must be one of the great advances in adjustment of the new Aeon to work out simply and without prejudice the formidable problems which have been raised by the growth of civilization.

Man has advanced so far from the social system, though it was not a system, of the cave man, from the primitive conception of property in human flesh. Man has advanced so far from crude anatomical classification of the soul of any given human being; he has accordingly landed himself in the most dreadful mire of psychopathology and psycho-analysis. Tiresome and tough are the prejudices of the people that date morally from about 25,000 B.C.

Largely owing to their own intransigence, those people have been born under a different spiritual law; they find themselves not only persecuted by their ancestors, but bewildered by their own uncertainty of foothold. It must be the task of the pioneers of the new Aeon to put this right." (The Book of Thoth)

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  #8  
Old 15-09-2019, 12:45 PM
Legrand
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Week 6: Hod in Assiah and the 8 of Disks

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 Assiah: Mercury

This sephirah is attributed to Mercury. Mercury was matched with the Babylonian Nebo and the Greek Hermes. The youngest of the Olympian gods, he was a messenger and servant of Zeus and other gods. Guide of souls joining the underground world, guide of travellers, protector of writing, the art of speaking, science and more particularly mathematics and astronomy-astrology. Above all, he was god of agriculture and commerce (including in the negative sense of god of thieves). Hermes was renowned for his powerful speech. He was represented with wings at his feet, always going at high speed, and was matched with the rapid movement of the planet Mercury.

The 8 of Disks - Prudence:

“The number Eight, Hod, is very helpful in this card, because it represents Mercury in his most spiritual aspect, and he both rules and is exalted in the sign of Virgo, which belongs to the Decan, and is governed by the Sun. It signifies intelligence lovingly applied to material matters, especially those of the agriculturalist, the artificer and the engineer.

One might suggest that this card marks the turn of the tide. The seven of Disks is in one sense the fullest possible establishment of Matter-compare Atu XV-the lowest fallen and therefore the highest exalted. These last three cards seem to prepare the explosion which will renew the whole Cycle. Note that Virgo is Yod, the secret seed of Life, and also the Virgin Earth awaiting the Phallic Plough.

The interest of this card is the interest of the common people. The rulership of the Sun in Virgo suggests also birth. The disks are arranged in the form of the geomantic figure Populus. These disks may be represented as the flowers or fruits of a great tree, its solid roots in fertile land.

In the Yi King, Sol in Virgo is represented by the 33rd Hexagram, Thun, "Big Air". It means "retiring"; and the commentary indicates how best to make use of that manoeuvre. This is congruous enough with the essence of Virgo, the secret withdrawing of Energy into the fallow Earth. Populus, moreover, is the Moon retiring from manifestation to her conjunction with the Sun.” (The Book of Thoth)

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  #9  
Old 22-09-2019, 01:17 PM
Legrand
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Path between Malkuth and Netzah in Assiah

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)

The Moon.jpg

http://www.esotericmeanings.com/wp-c...otCard.jpg.jpg
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  #10  
Old 29-09-2019, 03:25 PM
Legrand
Posts: n/a
 
Path between Yesod and Netzah in Assiah

Letter: He

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)

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