Week 2: Our Father who art in Heaven
Reading: Gen 3: 1-24
Day 1: 1st curse of the Father
Meditate on the connection between disobedience (verse 6) and the necessity of toil (verse 17).
And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat. (Gen 3:6)
And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. (Gen 3:17)
From MotT:
The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil has had a triple effect:
- Toil
- Suffering
- Death
Toil or work took the place of mystical union with God, which union (without effort) is the teaching of the first Arcanum of the Tarot, the Magician. The mystical spontaneity of the first Arcanum is that relationship between man and God which was before the Fall.
First psychurgical operation: Concentration without effort
Day 2: 2nd curse of the Father
Meditate on the connection between the feeling of shame (verse 7) and the necessity of suffering (verse 16).
And the eyes of them both were opened: and when they perceived themselves to be naked, they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons. (Gen 6:7)
To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee. (Gen 6:16)
From MotT:
Suffering replaced the directly reflected revelation or gnosis, whose direct revelation is the teaching of the second Arcanum of the Tarot, the High Priestess. The gnosis of the second Arcanum is that consciousness which was before the Fall.
Second psychurgical operation: Vigilant inner silence
Day 3: 3rd curse of the Father
Meditate on the connection between the feeling of fear (verse 10) and the necessity of death.
And he said: I heard thy voice in paradise; and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. (Gen 3:10)
From Mott:
Death entered into the domain of life or creative, sacred magic, which is the teaching of the third Arcanum of the Tarot, the Empress. For sacred magic is that life which was before the Fall.
Third psychurgical operation: Inspired activity of imagination and thought.
Day 4: The spiritualization of toil
The spiritualization of toil in creative spiritual work and meditation. Through the Holy Spirit.
the Fall changed the destiny of humanity —so that mystical union became replaced by struggle or toil, gnosis by suffering and sacred magic by death. This is why the formula announcing the “good news” that the effects of the Fall can be overcome and that the way of human evolution can return to that of mystical union instead of struggle, that immediately reflected revelation or gnosis can replace the teaching of the truth through suffering, and that sacred magic or transforming life can take the place of destructive death. (MotT)
Day 5: The transfiguration of suffering
The transfiguration in the soul of suffering by passing through purgatory. Through the Son.
From MotT:
Take the terms “limbo”, “purgatory” and “paradise” in their meaning as understood by analogy and you have a clear and precise formula for the working of the magic of the sacred pentagram of five wounds; it effects a change from the natural state (“limbo”) and from the state of human suffering (“purgatory”) to that of the blessedness of the divine state (“paradise”). The operation of the magic of the sacred pentagram of five wounds therefore consists in transforming the natural state into the human state and this latter into the divine state. This is the work of spiritual alchemy of the transformation from Nature (“limbo”), and from the Human (“purgatory”), into the Divine (“paradise”), according to the traditional threefold division —Nature, Man and God.
Concerning the experience relating to “purgatory”, it comprises all purging of suffering —physical, psychic and spiritual. It is corporeal, moral and intellectual suffering which is our intermediate state between the experience of the natural innocence of “limbo” and the moments of heavenly joy when the rays of “paradise reach us.
Day 6: The transformation of death
The transformation of death into the ideal of initiation. Through the Father.
Initiation is the Second Birth that Jesus revealed to Nicodemus.
From MotT:
Neither did death then play the role of liberating consciousness, through the destruction of the forms which enclose it. that it has played since the Fall. Instead of the destruction of forms, their continual transformation took place. This was operated by the perpetual action of life effecting the metamorphosis of forms, in conformity with changes in the consciousness using them. This perpetually liberating constructive action of life was—and still is—the function of sacred or divine magic. And it is this transforming function, opposed to the destructive function of death, that Moses’ Genesis designates by the symbol of the Tree of Life.
Day 7: Meditation on the Trinity
Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory.
Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43)
Glory: The Rainbow is the imagination of the Holy Spirit.
Power: The radiant solar cross in the blue sky is the imagination of the Son.
Kingdom: Stars shining in the dark night sky, strewn with stars, the soul turning towards the Father, accompanied by the words: Our Father, who art in Heaven.
This is the rainbow of seven colours of the manifestation of “glory” or mastership and also the octave of the seven tones of revelation of the “name” or mission of the vanquisher of the three temptations. And this rainbow shone around the empty and sombre place in the wilderness where the temptations took place. (MotT)