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2013-10-062013-11-07

Welcome to Medtarot Discussion

This is the Welcome message that went out to the Medtarot discussion group. It explains the ground rules and the purpose of the group.

Welcome to this discussion list on Meditations on the Tarot. There are over 50 subscribers at this point. That should be sufficient to sustain a discussion considering the impact of attrition or lack of interest. You can post to the list by clicking the Reply button on your email reader or by sending an email to [address hidden]. Although we know that certain agencies may be collecting metadata, there should still be some expectation of privacy. In particular, discussions must not be made public; people may be in the process of development and should not be bound to their earlier opinions, or sometimes information of a personal nature may be posted.

I will keep enrollment open for a little while, until we reach the point where there is a danger of losing continuity. However, current subscribers can invite a friend at any point. Many of you know me in some sense, many may not. I accept that things do not happen by accident so that certain souls may gather together for a purpose, often from their depths, and which they seldom are able to remember. So remember we are together for a purpose, bonds will form, but do not be surprised that bonds may also break.

I have been involved in previous endeavors like this, so I can anticipate the dangers. Some people get angry about another’s opinions and skirmishes arise. Others may have an agenda apart from the group will. I intend to prevent such disruptions. Should anyone become displeased with this group, he is free to start his own; I will give him the opportunity to publicize it once on this list.

Paradoxically, a good discussion begins with silence rather than talk. One must clear the mind of stray opinions, random thoughts, fixed ideas, and so on; such a mind can then be receptive. Unsupported assertions benefit no one, particularly the asserter. What is more important are the reasons because they can be the aim of a discussion. It is important to meditate often. For example, the first letter deals with concentration, so we ought to make efforts in that direction. The task is not to force it, since we aspire to concentration without effort, and still less to berate ourselves when we find we have lost concentration, but simply to observe what was going on that led to the loss of concentration. Determine what event or, better, what thought broke concentration.

So in our discussions we will force ourselves to concentrate on one particular point and not wander into irrelevancies. Ponder that before you click send.

The Tarot is not a means to “improve your life”. Some may make promises to bring you understanding about different parts of your life. However, the goal is reintegration, i.e., making oneself whole again. So compartmentalizing your life into work, play, relationships, etc., is the very opposite of what we want to achieve. Still less is it about fortune telling and I hope no one is here for that. This is not solely for our benefit; by participating, we will keep the Hermetic tradition alive in one way or another. English only speakers have a disadvantage, since so much material is available only in French. I will offer translations of certain texts as my contribution. I will also be using the French text of the Letters and will make corrections to the authorized translation as necessary. You will make contributions in your own areas of interest; I’m hoping that from among all the writers that Tomberg discusses, some among you may have some degree of expertise in their ideas.

Although this list is not primarily about me, as the host, it will be unavoidable that my own personal equation will often intrude. I hope that is not too annoying. Consider this as akin to an invitation to a banquet. You go to enjoy what is proffered; you participate in the festivities; you engage in the conversation. In that way, there is a benefit to the host and the guests. However, if you insist on bringing your own bucket of fried chicken, you would be considered rude and a boor; I will deal with you appropriately.

Ultimately, spiritual friends will come to a common mind. Ekartshausen wrote: “Men do not agree on their conceptions; the scholars dispute among themselves; and, where there is dispute, there is not yet truth.” Our aim is truth and that is how we know we have reached it.

To subscribe to the Medtarot discussion list, please use this form:

2013-09-302013-10-06

Secret Movements of the Heart of Man

Translated from Letter to a Friend, or Political, philosophical, and religious considerations on the French Revolution by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin. (French title: Lettre à un ami ou Considérations politiques, philosophiques et religieuses sur la Révolution française.

Here he points out that the Truth must be first found in the spirit and heart of man, by introspection; this Truth is anterior to the traditions, and confirms what he is taught in Tradition. This comes without effort.

[25] So the elements, air, sound, time, weather, languages, math, the close alliance which is found among the good and base customs of natural and civil society, the political institutions whose invention belongs to us less that we believe, since we can create nothing, history of the human race, the same scene of his prejudices and his universal errors in which one would have probably found a fixed residue, if one gave himself the necessary time and attention to let its volatile and the heterogeneous parts evaporate, the inexpressible and secret movements of the heart of man, especially that type of holy veneration by which he is seized when he contemplates his own grandeur, and which, in spite of his crimes, darkness, and deviations, reveals it to himself like a naked God, (allow me the term) like a God ashamed, who blushes to find himself exiled on the earth, who weeps from the inability to show himself in it in his true and sublime form, and who is more reserved and more embarrassed again in the face of virtue. Here are the paths in which the thought of man had been able to find as many religions, that is, as many of the means to unite to himself his intelligence, his spirit, and his heart as the only source from which he descends, and without which there is no peace for him; because while carefully roaming over these paths, he could not fail to meet the one who belongs to him, and who would have led him infallibly to his end.

[26] I warn you, my friend, that with so many gifts which are offered to the observers to support their religious principles, I am pained by never seeing them employ any of them, and abandon them all to resort to books and miracles. The sacred books that they quote to us, are naturally at such a distance from the belief and thought of man, that it is not astonishing to see them miss their target with identical weapons. The verities which he is concerned about are anterior to all books: if one does not begin by teaching man to read these verities in his being, in his mysterious circumstances in opposition to the thirst of his heart for the light, finally in the movement and the play of his own faculties, he grasped them poorly in his books: instead that if, by the active inspection of his own nature, he already saw himself as what he is, and foresaw what he can be, he receives without effort the confirmations that he can find of them in the traditions, and which serves only as the support of an already existing fact and recognized by him.

[27] All the more, it is also like that with miracles: I believe that it is a word that one would never have pronounced before man without having previously begun to attempt to discover the key to his being. One can never repeat it too much, it is in him, and in him alone, that man can find the understanding of all miracles; because if he had once glimpsed the miracle of his own nature, there would no longer have been anything about them which can surprise him.

2013-08-312013-10-06

The Tableau of God

Translated from Letter to a Friend, or Political, philosophical, and religious considerations on the French Revolution by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin. (French title: Lettre à un ami ou Considérations politiques, philosophiques et religieuses sur la Révolution française

In a wide ranging discussion of the French Revolution written in the form of a letter to a friend, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin turns, in these passages to the question of demonstrating the existence of God. Moving beyond the philosophical arguments, Saint-Martin is intent on demonstrating the God who is active in the soul and in the world.

The atheist is unable to see that God is reflected in the human soul. In denying that, the atheist is veiling the very thing that brings attention to his existence, replacing it with the darkness of nothingness. Unlike the Gnostics or the Platonists, Saint-Martin does not see the material world as a prison, since it, too, passively reveals the creative power of God.

An important point he makes is that there must be some common essence between God and man as the basis any possible communication. Ultimately, this can only be recognized and cannot be demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction. The translation follows.

[12] The true atheist, if there is one, and consequently the truly impious man, is the one who, turning his gaze on the human soul, is unaware of its grandeur and disputes its spiritual immortality, since it is only in the character and the immensity of the gifts and virtues, of which the soul of man is susceptible, that we can see reflected, as in a mirror, all the pure and sacred rays, of which the tableau of God must be composed: thus, to extinguish the human soul is to cover the Divinity with a lugubrious veil that this soul alone has the power to bring to attention in all worlds; it is to extinguish that eternal sun whence everything originates, and to immerse it, with the universality of things, in the mourning and the obscurity of nothingness.

[13] The only means that we would therefore have of proving the true God, the God ruling over free beings, finally the loving God and source of a joy that can be communicated to other beings, would be without doubt to demonstrate in his creature the existence of some base or some essence similar to his, and even to obtain and to feel this joy of which He is the principle; finally, it would be to demonstrate the spiritual and immortal existence of the human soul which, in its radical and integral nature, is fully desire and fully love, finding itself to be then the active witness of the holy and loving God, as physical nature is the passive witness of the powerful and creator God, we would have placed thereby all the foundations of the building, and it would only be a question of working on its construction: for it is very much without doubt that the immortal existence of the human soul has been recognized, as several good spirits have done on earth; but to recognize a thing, is not always to demonstrate it.

2013-08-202013-08-20

Enriching the Tradition

What follows is my translation of the preface from the French edition of Meditations on the Tarot, which differs in subtle ways from the authorized English translation. Since the letters were written in French for a definite reason, it is not unimportant to refer to that text. Understanding this preface will make clear the aim and method of the meditations and we should take what Tomberg says here with great seriousness.

First of all, the reader will come to know what Christian Hermetism really is, but only after meditating, not just reading, the letters. The meditations also reveal much about the author; hence, one should be way about relying on rumours, speculations, or third party reports that would contradict or add to anything in the letters themselves.

So the letters constitute a work about Christian Hermetism and the intent is to draw others into that stream, thereby enriching the Tradition. Note that, although the author lived in England, he chose the French current of Hermetism over the British. The British version of Hermetism, transmitted particularly through the Golden Dawn order and its many offshoots, is pagan, whereas the French version is Christian.

Finally, Christian Hermetism is not a set of static dogmas, but a living current of Tradition that depends on like-minded spirits for its continuation. The manner in which Tomberg proposes to “enrich” that Tradition is explained in the letters, but it has to do with reuniting the Church of Peter with the Church of John.

Preface

These meditations on the major arcana of the Tarot take the form of letters addressed to the unknown friend. This unknown friend is everyone who will read them, and after meditated on them, he will know with certainty what Christian Hermetism is. He will see that through these letters the author says more about himself than he could have in any other way, and he will know him better, thanks to them, than from any other source.

These letters were written in French—which is not the mother tongue of the author—because it is in France, and in France alone, that a living literature on the tarot has continued since the 18^th century. Moreover, there exists there as well a continuous tradition of Hermetism, which joins the spirit of free research with respect for the Tradition. These letters, throughout their contents, will thus be able to become an integral part of the Tradition, as well as enriching it.

In the capacity of support of and contribution to the Hermetic tradition, whose origin is lost in the night of time that has become mythical, the epoch of Hermes Trismegistus, these letters are the concrete expression of an ancient current of thought, effort, and revelation. Their goal is to make the Tradition come alive again in the 20^th century, but also, and especially, to enable the reader, the unknown friend, to immerse himself in this current, perhaps in a definitive way. That is why the numerous citations of ancient and modern authors that you will find in these texts are due neither to literary considerations, nor to a concern for erudition. They intend only to evoke the masters of the Tradition, so that they may be present, with their aspirations and the light of their thought, in the current of meditation that these letters illustrate, these twenty two spiritual exercises that will enable you, dear unknown friend, to immerse yourself in the current of the living Tradition and to penetrate to the heart of the community of spirits who have served it and are serving it. The citations are there only to point out this community. For the links of the chain of the Tradition are not made of thoughts and efforts alone, but, above all, of living beings who are at the origin of these thoughts or efforts. The essence of the Tradition is not a doctrine, but a community of spirits that endures from age to age.

From beyond the grave, your friend greets you, dear unknown friend.

2013-08-112020-08-11

The Future of Prophecy

Among the biblical books containing magical formulas, Valentin Tomberg lists the Book of Ezekiel. Moreover, a Hermetist who made Ezekiel’s vision the object of spiritual exercises, would likely become a “profound Cabbalist”. If that is true, then we can regard Pope St Gregory the Great as perhaps the first Cabbalist in the Church. Gregory’s meditations on Ezekiel run to nearly 500 pages in the English translation, yet he only manages to cover about 5 chapters or so.

Under the inspiration of Almighty God, Gregory begins by first explaining the three tenses of prophecy: future, present, past, although we typically consider prophecy applying to the future only. He gives some examples of each:
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