Meditations on the Tarot

The Aim of Spiritual Exercises is Depth

With this claim, we are winding down the meditation on the Emperor. But what is Depth? First of all, Tomberg is eliminating other aims. For example, the aim of spiritual exercises is not to gain special powers, nor secret knowledge, nor inspiring visions, nor blissful experiences, among other things that people may be seeking. Perhaps, they may be side effects, but not the primary motive.

This has consequences. For example, different Hermetists may not necessarily share the same knowledge, or one Hermetist may have the power of healing while another does not. So what unites them is that that have all achieved “depth”, i.e., a certain level of consciousness. That is how they recognize each other.

Knowledge is of Facts

Here is the first indication of depth: The Hermetist’s knowledge is of facts, not theories. The temptation of those who are not Hermetists is to spout off about various theories, as though that were the most important thing. On the contrary, the Hermetist knows facts, spiritual facts, to be precise. Depending, therefore, on his interests and experience, one man’s factual knowledge may very well be different from another. Yet these Hermitists recognize each other in their depth.

Asking, Seeking, Knocking

The sort of factual knowledge that the Hermetist acquires comes from spiritual exercises, which are really the Arcana. The spiritual exercises give the Hermetist the aptitude so that he is suited to acquire that knowledge of facts.

Initiation, then, is the capacity of orienting oneself to attain the knowledge of relevant facts. To give a non-esoteric example: A chemist is “initiated” into the field of chemistry. He will know how to perform experiments (exercises) to expose chemical facts. He will know what to look for, and this capacity is lacking in the non-chemist.

Analogously, the Hermetist needs to be orientated in the particular domain that interests him. Theoretical knowledge alone will not help him, nor will reading books or attending conferences and seminars. Only doing the spiritual exercises (the equivalent of an experiment) will reveal spiritual facts to him. So the first step is to know how to

• Ask, seek, and knock

The result will be knowledge because the Hermetist has

• Received, found, and gained access

Knowing How to Know

The Hermetist “knows how to know,” and that is not theoretical knowledge. Tomberg gives the most important example. The Hermetist does not know concepts about God, but is rather oriented towards the living God, i.e., the spiritual concrete fact of God. This is the difference between thought and being.

There is the false belief among certain “sophisticates”, that belief in beings is childish and needs to be replaced with abstract principles or laws. Just the opposite is the case. Rather, laws and principles are manifestations of spiritual beings.  In other words, thoughts and ideas are really the activities of spiritual beings, and through them we experience concrete spiritual realities.

God is Concrete and Real

Hence, the Hermetic knowledge of God is that of the most concrete and the most real, since He is absolute. All created things are only relatively real and concrete.

In a profound way, the Hermetist if usually closer to simple believers in their exoteric faith, because the latter are not led astray but pseudo-sophisticated theories. The only difference is that the Hermetist knows what the faithful believe. The Hermetist knows the angels. He esteems his Tradition.

The Man of Authority

So Hermetic philosophy has the ideal of realizing the man of authority. That is, that man is more human than all other men. In other words, he has more being, and has manifested all human possibilities. He is fully human.

The Image and Likeness of God

Paradoxically, the more human a person becomes, the more he manifests divine qualities. That is because the “image and likeness of God” is the divine element underlying human nature. Thus, all the baser elements of human nature can be alchemically transformed into silver and gold.

This transformation requires the operation of sublimation, which is the “crucifixion” of the baser elements, so their true essence can blossom. Specifically, this involves the renunciation of the four arbitrary liberties of human nature, which was discussed earlier in Letter IV.

The Hermetist is a person who embodies all these roles:

• Mystic
• Gnostic
• Magician
• Philosopher

The last quality requires some clarification. Tomberg says the Hermetist must be both an idealist and a realist, i.e., he relies on facts and experience (realist) and on ideas and speculative thought (idealist). In the academic world, idealism and realism are normally opposed to each other.

Tomberg makes another remarkable claim:

 Hermetic philosophy is not a philosophy among other philosophies.

In other words, it does not fit into the typical histories of philosophy. This means, also, that is has no interest in debating its doctrines with adherents of other philosophical systems. Obviously, this is because Hermetic philosophy is revealed, and its truth derives from that revelation, not from logical hair splitting.

This is a tough claim for most people of modern sensibilities. Readers of these letters are all too ready to add to, subtract from, modify, and even reject, the Hermetic doctrines revealed in these letters. The regard this claim as too dogmatic. But what is the point? Are you so attached to your personal opinions that you prefer them to what is revealed to you from Heaven?

Hermetic philosophy differs from academic philosophy because it deals with arcana and their symbolic expression, rather than with precisely defined (univocal) concepts and their logical consequences. Recall what was said about arcana in the first letter; that will help. An Arcanum is multivocal, and it loses something when crystalized into a determinate statement.

Occult Science

Nevertheless, the multivocal richness of the arcana can be reduced to univocal concepts in the case of the so-called occult or esoteric sciences. Tomberg lists the Kaballah, alchemy, magic, and astrology as three such sciences. These sciences then will have “secrets”. It is all important to recognize the precise relationship between the two: the sciences derive from Hermetic philosophy and not the other way around.

The Aim of Hermetic Philosophy

The teachings then of Hermetic philosophy are not like those found in a catechism; rather it consists of spiritual exercises. Readers should be alert to all these exercises mentioned in the Letters. The Arcana themselves are such exercises. The aims of these exercises is this, and this should not be glossed over, but rather treated with the utmost seriousness:

The aim of spiritual exercises is to awaken from sleep ever deeper layers of consciousness.

In other words, we spend our days in a state of “sleep”. Spiritual exercises properly understood will awaken us. Besides the Tarot, Tomberg recommends several other sources of spiritual exercises, that is, texts and images to meditate on. Among these are:

• The Apocalypse
• The Gospels
• Old Testament books such as Genesis and Ezekiel

To properly do these spiritual exercises, it is necessary to reach the state of consciousness capable of receiving revelations. The elements of this state are worth repeating, since nothing significant can be achieved without making the efforts to reach this state:

• Concentration without effort
• Inner silence
• The inspired activity of imagination and thought
• Passive contemplation of that creative activity

There are no shortcuts. Having achieved concentration without effort and inner silence, one then immerses himself vividly in the imagery of the spiritual exercises. This type of meditative reading of biblical texts is different from an exoteric reading.

For those who are not Christian, perhaps the Bhagavad Gita can be read in the same way. After all, Tomberg says that the pagan teachings will be resuscitated, but that will wait until Letter VII.

Tomberg emphasizes that freedom is the key to understanding the role of God in history. Without this key, the alternatives are

1. God controls every detail of history through compulsion
2. God is powerless in history

These alternatives fail to take the fact of freedom into account.

The Void

Tomberg adapts the concept of tsimtsum, the withdrawal of God, from the Cabbala to explain creation. God, as Infinite, contains all possibilities as divine ideas and cannot be determined by anything external to him. The Void as an Idea can only exist potentially and not in actuality. As such, the Void is a “mystical space without his presence”. This space is where the objectivization of God takes place, that is, it is a self-limitation since no other being can limit him. Thus there are two moments in creation. The meonic element (the void) gives rise to the pleromic elements (the plenitude), and they are indissolubly bound to one another.

Note that these two moments follow closely what Vladimir Solovyov wrote in Divine Humanity. Solovyov identifies a third moment when Unity is restored, yet without destroying the pleroma.

This is the realm of freedom. The mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdom are ruled by nature’s laws. However, the human and angelic kingdoms are free. While plants and animals follow the cosmic law out of necessity, human beings are free to follow the cosmic law or not.

The Post of the Emperor

So the divine order (i.e., the Logos), may or may not be manifest, since humans are free to follow that order or not. The divine order includes the hierarchical principle. Therefore, the government of the city should likewise follow the hierarchical divine order. The absence of the Emperor in Christendom is contrary to the divine order. The post of the Emperor in our time is now hidden and can only be revealed by God.

Without the Emperor, the alternative to hierarchy is egalitarianism. That is why a liberation theologian like Leonardo Boff can reject the whole idea of the celestial hierarchy as described by St Dionysius the Areopagite. That can only be because of the lack of authority which is the “completely manifested divine name.”

Initiation

It is interesting that Tomberg identifies the post of the emperor with a state of consciousness. This state is the complete synthesis of mysticism, gnosis, and sacred magic. This state he calls initiation. He goes further and identifies this state of consciousness as that in which “eternity and the present moment are one.” Specifically, it is the simultaneous vision of the temporal and the eternal, of that which is below and that which is above.

So the Emperor is not simply a political figure (temporal), but represents the authority of the initiate. Hence, we can regard these meditations as the preparation for initiation, for which we need to achieve that synthesis in consciousness. In seeking the Truth, we are given these criteria for something to be absolutely true:

• It is of divine origin
• It bears fruit in conformity with its origin
• It is in accordance with the categorical needs of thought and experience

Tomberg sums up the Emperor’s four renunciations as shown in this chart.

Renunciation	Replaced with	Letter
Personal intellectual initiative	Divine initiative	Yod
Action	Revealing action	He
Movement	Magical movement from above	Vau
Personal Mission	Anonymity	He

In a sense, we have given up our personal mission by plunging into the currents of the Hermetic tradition, we have abandoned a personal mission. When caught up in a current, it is not so easy to extricate oneself. Of course, that depends on the individual. For some, following a spiritual path may be more like a hobby or a distraction; for others, it is all-consuming and becomes the center of their lives. By adhering to a spiritual tradition, we also sacrifice our personal opinions.

This self-emptying is not always so comfortable. God’s power is active in the world to the extent that his authority is freely recognized and accepted. On the face of it, that seems to put the responsibility on us. And the challenge in a godless age can make us feel isolated. In the West, our political systems are officially godless, science proceeds as though there is no God, and logic itself proves nothing. Hence, the main sources of terrestrial authority are either indifferent to, or actively opposed to, God’s authority, unless by serendipity or through custom.

The bottom line is that there can be no compulsion to faith. Torture, scientific discoveries, and logical arguments are inconclusive. Even miracles, which give strong faith to some, are easily dismissed as wishful thinking by others. If believers always lived on the house on the hill, had perfect families, never got sick, and were perpetually happy, then there would be no need for faith; anyone could see the fruits. But in this world, things are mixed, and God’s will is not always done on earth. So we pray, or we ignore; those are our choices.

Two Theories of Power

This radical uncertainty is difficult for most people. Instead, they believe that truth and power coincide. This is the philosophy of pragmatism: whatever works is true. Haven’t you heard that a thousand times? “Whatever works for you…”

But Tomberg is more concerned with two possible distortions of spirituality based on the idea that truth is power. One concerns magicians who strive for personal power; their hubris eventually does them in. The second includes those who would attribute everything to God: reprobation and the calamities that beset the world.

This leads Tomberg to a radical view of freedom. He claims the mankind is solely responsible for its history. But this is just the lesson of the prodigal son. The father allows his son to make his mistakes, but accepts him back nevertheless. Pace some systems like theosophy: we are not in evolution, life is not a “school” in which we need to learn and “evolve”. Rather the truth has already been fully revealed to us, Christ has died on the Christ. We are free to choose it or not.

Freedom

Because of this, Tomberg points out that the real existence of man, as well as the angelic hierarchy, is freedom. He makes the metaphysical distinction between noumenal and phenomenal freedom. That latter is what most people mean by freedom.

The phenomenal world is the world of experience; not just sensory experience, but also our feelings, emotions, dreams, thoughts, etc. – what the Vedantists call jagat. So phenomenal freedom means that there is nothing in the world to interfere with me. I can do what I want, think what I want, etc., with few external constraints. In this realm, a man can choose, but he is not necessarily free.

Noumenal freedom transcends the world, including our emotions and thoughts. It cannot be detected in the world. That is, a scientist cannot prove or disprove free will in a person. That is why many serious thinkers can deny free will. The only way to “know” it is through gnosis; i.e., a direct intuition that I am free. This is not just that I can choose pistachio ice cream over chocolate, but rather that I can choose my thoughts and my emotions. But this usually requires training to reach that point.

The gift of freedom is the gift of existence. It means I am the center of my being, I am independent, whereas the existence of other things in the world depends on something else. That makes man immortal, since he has his own independent existence.

Freedom is the third force in the world, between God’s Providential Will and the deterministic destiny of the world. Without freedom, the world would run its course mechanically, blindly, ignorant of God’s Will. It is only through man’s free will that God’s Will and be known and be done in the world.

To identify God with the mechanical world process would make of him a tyrant. To deny God’s Will would be blasphemy. Today, we hear many theologians talk of a weak God, an impotent God, who is powerless in the world. The opposite includes those theologians who believe that God predestines some to Hell, sends wars and earthquakes, and even kills children.

Tomberg reveals the esoteric meaning of the inscription over the cross of Calvary: “Jesus of Nazarith, King of the Jews”. To those with the eyes of faith, Jesus is King; to the unbelievers of the world, he is crucified and irrelevant.