THE MANTIC ARTS | TAROT
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MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT

Part I / II / III / IV

To J.L., J.E., J.A., H. and D.

Sophorum Lapis Non Datur Lupis
- Villa Palombara, inscription

Introduction

Created in its classic form at the same time of the great Cathedrals and of their alchemical bas-reliefs, the Tarot said to be of the family or lineage of Marseille was actually present and manufactured in other cities and regions much before the late Nicolas Conver deck of 1760. This type of Tarot, by its traditional form and semi-anonymous authorship, retains in its bosom the Mnemonics that are proper to the great Western Initiatic Tradition.

As Schwaller de Lubicz sensed the Egyptian neteru (from Neter, god) to be personifications of Cosmic functions, the Cosmos being understood as a living being equipped with vital organs and therefore having its own physiology, so is the Tarot and its Arcana. It is the Mirror of the Occult World and of its Way: it is the aspirant's task to meditate profoundly on its various levels and keys.

What follows is only a personal interpretation of what would be one key to the Tarot (compare for example the present text with the learned and interesting interpretation that was made later by Hervé Delboy). As a powerful Initiatic tool the Tarot has numberless keys and, worse yet, tends to falsify any interpretation that is too rigid or overstructured of any of them. In the same way that the Devil and his Tower seem to be troublesome intruders in the canonical procession of the Work, there will always be in any given interpretation an unwanted Devil destroying our cherished Tower. This source of uncertainty is precisely the final signature that sacralizes the Tarot as a tool towards Awakening, for it breaks the mental structure and opens beyond, to the unpredictable and ever surprising Reality that is Source and Not-Source of any Path.

The deck that is here presented is the modern Camoin and Jodorowsky version of the original Conver Tarot. The pictoric details that were added by these authors to the original 1760 deck will not be taken into account in the present study. A good fac-simile reproduction of the original deck is available from Lo Scarabeo card manufacturers (Torino, Italy).

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The Fool

This is the chaotic principle in the Universe, manifesting itself as divine folly. It is the entropy of the mind, the rending of the Veil of flesh and concreteness. It is a notably Neptunian Arcanum. It is the metaphysical but yet uninitiated intuition and therefore subject to all kinds of errors and phantasies. O profane fool, do not wander alone in this dark wood, you must search for more experienced fellow-travelers that might orient you. Your aim is noble, but alone the risks are far too high.

Spontaneous and dreamy, you do not see how ridiculous you sometimes are. Buttocks uncovered, bitten by a bizarre mixture of cat and dog, you gaze the distant stars and are unconscious of the abyss in front of you. Of course, your soul belongs to the stars, it came from them and is made of the same stuff, as Plato wrote in the Timaeus. However, to return Home is a difficult toil. Arduous regeneration, arduous turning back. Seek Jacob's Ladder!

With the pilgrim's sack on your back, go to Santiago. Santiago of Compostela, Compos-Stela: Starry Compost, Field of the Star. Cultivate your internal field so that, like nitric dew, the Mercurial Star shall grow from it, the Universal Dissolvent of all decayed metals. The Star that you need for yourself, my dear microcosmos and microprosopos, is made of same stuff as the far-off star that you so intensely contemplate in the night sky: cultivate your field.

As they render your Veil of flesh, let the beast's fangs go to your bones and uncover them too, for your desire to Return must be engraved in the very salts of your thigh-bones if you are indeed one of the Chosen. The Way was never meant for the unconscious masses, dear friend, but for the spiritual élite in this world exiled.

You are disconnected from your body, from your here and now, and so you drift unconsciously through your innocuous phantasies. Reconnect yourself, take possession of and melt with your body. Your body and matter in general are the powerful tools towards Awakening. Awaken, or continue to reincarnate from dream to dream, like a perfect fool forever carrying this silly bag of flesh. Have you ever noticed how pathetic drug-addicts are? In a real sense you are closer to them than you imagine.

As he directs his eyes towards the starry heaven, our pilgrim Fool does not perceive the stone on which his foot stumbles, a stone that is common and of little value, rejected by the architects but nevertheless being the Cornerstone of the Work which will unfold in the following Arcana.

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The Magician

A Mercurial Arcanum, in the sense of cleverness and cheating. He is the virtual Initiate, the one that has received the little seed of the Kingdom in his interior, and that has now to work hard in the following Arcana in order to fructify this seed of regeneration: as he does so, his Initiation becomes real.

It is the arrogant and vain presumption of control over the four elements, of mastery of the world, of attaining the perfect equilibrium of the four components of the microcosmos: body, soul, mind, spirit, respectively Earth, Water, Air and Fire. The arrogance of the Magician blinds him to the fact that such control or manipulation of the interior and exterior worlds is a chimera. Through hard and persistent toil something of the kind might be obtained after many years, but it is so fragile and unstable that it is almost laughable. The Cosmos is flux, a stormy river that never stops, and there is no human device that can effectively delimitate or structure it: our Magician is a presumptuous yet able fellow.

The Magician looks disdainfully to his left, towards the Fool that he was not long ago. Recently freed from his prior Foolishness, our Travelling Arcanum (that is, the invisible Arcanum that travels sequentially through all the 22 Major Arcana) thinks himself to be very smart and enlightened now with the little Light he has received... But he is nevertheless an able fellow, and this will be immensely useful in the manipulation that takes place in the laboratory: Labora and Oratorium, as Henry Khunrath suggested. Mercurial Magician, it is through your deft manipulation that you will be able to bring the Light out of the Chaos that is given to you in this life. It is no wonder that your little table has only three legs to support its quadrilateral top: understand well how the perfect equilibrium of Sulphur, Mercurius and Sal is concomitant and co-necessary to the perfect equilibrium of the four elements and four humours (Dry, Humid, Hot and Cold) of your Internal Field or Kingdom.

Sense, O arrogant one, how little you know, and humbly ask for help. At the same time, how precious is this little knowledge you have, for unlike the Sophists you truly know it. You know it because you have experimented, manipulated and lived these small and precious truths. They are the small jewels that you have found in the Way and that signalize it, keep them with you for they will be useful ahead - just like in the fairy tales.

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The Popess

Ironical Lady, Isiacal and Lunar and as old as Time, the Popess keeps in her lap the Akashic Records of all that was, is and will be. In this sense she is also Saturnine, as the intimate Occult relationship between the Moon and Saturn is suggested by the equivalence of the Lunar month with the Saturnine cycle.

The Popess knows but refuses to reveal. She is Occult Wisdom, a wisdom that looks at the Magician at its left and laughs at his silliness and pretension. She is the Sphinx that our Travelling Arcanum will have to meet in order to humbly prostrate himself and to swear an oath of devotion. The Initiate must aspire to this Wisdom, to this communion with the occult designs of the Tao. He will have to develop with subtleness and gentleness this intuitive and Lunar faculty, so as to be able to counsel his own effective action in the world as the Pope counsels the Emperor.

Sterile as a woman, the Popess is nevertheless a Phallic Matriarch. Pre-Christian Black Virgin, black of the blackest wisdom, she is only fertile to celestial agriculture or to the sea gardens of the good Hortulanus. In the cultivation of the internal Field or Kingdom she is the subtle celestial energy that blesses (or not) our efforts, an imponderable factor that decides our success or failure. As we patiently purify our energy body we become suited to attract through sympathy this diaphanous and subtle Cosmic energy. Like attracts like, in Heaven, in Man and in the Crucible.

O Lunar Vestal, help the Pilgrim that deserves it, one imbued with ardent desire and gifted with a pure heart and patient and toiling hands. Recognize our sincere and steady efforts and have mercy on us. Teach us how to find you, how to please you and win your graces. So be it.

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The Empress

A fertile Arcanum, maternal, Jupiterian and Venusian. Unlike the Popess, the Empress is the White Virgin, Virgin of unconditional and maternal Love for Creation, generator of the Logos or Christ Principle whose epitome is the amorous and fraternal glue that unites the two twins in the Arcanum of the Sun. Generator and fructifyer of the Universal Empathy that unites the worlds, she is the Higher Eros as Plato describes in the Symposium, the Lower Eros relating to the Arcanum of the Devil. These two antinomical Arcana are respectively the Superior and Inferior Waters, the former being the matrix of the Archetypal World and the latter its inverted reflection decayed in Matter. The rope that unites in the Devil is a dirty simulacrum of the golden glue that unites in Christ the men of good will.

These superior waters are regenerated states of conscience where the Adept permanently communes with Christic Love, a Universal Love that is impersonal and Cosmic. Our Empress does not look to the right or to the left, but obliquely, an unfocused and impersonal look that reaches the background of Creation and not its individual forms. It is through the Cosmic energy personified by the Empress that we can become real Christians and not just nominal ones.

Love Principle of the Creating Divinity, without Our Noble Lady the world would be in the darkest Chaos, for without her womb the informing archetypes of Matter could not be born. She is the Antimonial Earth of her sceptre, cultivated by the Imperial Eagles of her coat of arms, the Internal Earth ready to be inseminated by the Emperor's male sperm symbolized by the eagles. If she is Earth, the Emperor is Heaven, and to create our world it is necessary to unite the superior with the inferior in order to produce the miracle of the One. All the Work will depend on this Imperial Wedding that must be protected by the right choice of bed.

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The Emperor

An aggressive dominator of Matter as symbolized by the Quaternary, of Jupiterian and Martial nature, the Emperor lordly holds his phallic sceptre as in an enormous erection, a sceptre with which the Empress inseminated her womb. With a benevolent look to his left, he contemplates and protects his Lady as he points the penis head of his sceptre towards the soil, to the Earth he dominates and fecundates. His crossed legs reforce his Quaternary cipher, and the eyes of his Eagle meet the gaze of his Lady's Eagle.

He is our red Philosophical Sulphur, husband of the white Philosophical Mercury symbolized by the Empress, and relates to her as the cooked to the raw. He is also the Adept (from Adeptus, possessor) in full possession of his powers over his material world, a world composed of the perfect equilibrium of the four elements and four humours. This regenerated world is his Exalted Stone that is so richly symbolized in the final Arcanum of the Work, The World.

This Arcanum symbolizes our Mastery, our ability to do and therefore to be, now in a superior octave from the Arcanum of the Magician. For if the Magician symbolizes the capacity or ability to the Work, the Emperor stands for its effective realization in and through the Operator. In this sense he is older than the Mercurial Magician, for he is matured by experience and by positive advancement obtained in the Path.

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The Pope

Jupiterian and Sagitarian, with subtle and sublimated hues of a Neptunian Mercury, the Pope is unlike the Popess the Wisdom that speaks and transmits. He embodies the sacred duty of the Adept-Emperor, a duty that naturally comes after Adepthood.

He is Hermes Trismegistos, the great Initiator that possesses the Mastery and Occult knowledge of the Three Worlds of his Crown and of the Three Phases of the Work of his Sceptre. His hands that transmit, initiate and bless are marked with the Maltese Cross, for his wisdom, knowledge and mastery come from his tireless work at the Crucible. Looking to his right, he counsels and blesses the neophyte in order that the latter might make by himself alone the right choice of the Pythagorean Y symbolized by The Lovers.

Together with his two pupils, the Pope forms a mighty phallus turned upwards, towards the spiritual insemination of the world, an insemination subtly symbolized by the back of his throne. He represents the very Wisdom of the Arcana as a whole, the marrow of Wisdom that the Work provokes and produces.

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