Meditations on the Tarot

2014-03-06

The Source of Authority

With the fourth Arcanum of the Emperor, we have reached a critical stage. Since the hermetic path is also known as the Royal Way, understanding the quality of royalty is the key to understanding Hermetism. What we see here will challenge all our normal and accepted standards of authority. We all bristle under authority and that theodrama began in Eden. The urge for rebellion and revolution lies within each one of us.

First of all, a person has authority only if:

He has depth
He has being
He knows something
He can do something

Thus he gains authority as soon as he reunites in himself the depth of mysticism, the direct wisdom of gnosis, and the productive power of magic.

Note that his authority arises out of his own being. Modern ideas of democratic elections, legal appointments, hereditary monarchy, etc. cannot reach legitimate authority.

The Exercise of Authority

The Arcanum of the Emperor teaches us that the Emperor renounces compulsion and violence. This is counter-intuitive since the common belief is that the compulsion and violence are privileges of the government. Theologically, it means that God does not act through compulsion and violence (although there are several exceptions in Scripture). This frustrates us since a common plaint following some disaster or tragedy is, “Why did God allow this to happen?”

The only answer can be “freedom”. In the mineral kingdom, there is no freedom and, barring some miracle, physical events happen through inexorable law. The plant, and then the animal, kingdoms offer increasing levels of freedom. With man, freedom is absolute, at least at the level of the rational or intellectual soul which is the distinctive feature of man. Plants and animals still follow certain laws. But man has the choice of following God’s law, or not.

It is no easy task to follow God’s law, as the human spirit chafes at any such restrictions. That is why we need to follow the Royal way of the Emperor. His crown is a crown of thorns, as its restrains thoughts and arbitrary imaginations. In other words, the personality is directed toward the cosmic law and thoughts irrelevant to that are eliminated.

Renunciation

While Nature abhors a vacuum, Spirit abhors fullness. This gives us a clue to our own spiritual progress. If our mind is filled with random opinions, unguarded images, and a constant flow of idle chatter, then we are still at the level of Nature. At that level, we are constantly seeking distractions to fill up the void in our consciousness. We crave novelty, the next great movie, new restaurant, or insidious ideology. This is what we, at that level, consider to be freedom and it is difficult, or even impossible, for any deeper idea to penetrate that type of consciousness.

On the other hand, the Spirit is truly free only when it has discarded all personal opinions, projects and initiatives. This provides the space for divine revelation to manifest; such a Spirit is then open to the kingdom of heaven. Such a Spirit does not “choose” in the conventional sense; rather he lives by intuition, trusting in divine guidance to be always active in his life.

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Magic is the Tree of Life

Christ was and is the Logos who dwells in every man. ~ Justin (Apology)

The Fall of Man brought about a fundamental change in his being:

His spontaneous, effortless relationship with God was replaced by toil and struggle. The loss of that relationship meant the loss of alignment with His creative power. Instead, man struggles to create on his own without divine guidance.
Direct revelation or gnosis was lost and suffering results. Much of man’s suffering is mental. Since he no longer knows his place in the world, he becomes filled with fear and anxiety.
Before the fall, Sacred Magic was manifested in the history of the world. Afterwards, that power was lost and death was the consequence.

The good news of the Gospel is that the effects of the Fall can be reversed in Jesus’ claim to be the Way, the Truth, and Life. This is summarized in the following table:

Arcanum	Before the Fall	After the Fall	Jesus
Bateleur	Mystical Union with God	Toil, work, struggle	Way
High Priestess	Gnosis	Suffering	Truth
Empress	Transforming Life, Sacred Magic	Death	Life

Miracles

From this, Tomberg concludes that Sacred Magic is the Tree of Life. That tree was made inaccessible to those who would “be like gods” or the foolhardy, but not to those who do the Will of God. He points to the existence of saints, sages, geniuses, benefactors, healers and their works of pure thought, poetry, music, and prayer. This is all evidence of sacred magic in the world, understood in a superbiological way, since material forces, genetics, evolutionary psychology, or the like cannot account for it.

Magic is not the absence of cause, nor the “God of the gaps” that is derided by the semi-intelligent to discredit religious experience. Otherwise, the diffraction pattern of an electron beam would be a “miracle” since no physicist can predict the path of any given electron. Rather, magic is the visible effect of an invisible cause or the effect on a lower plane due to a cause from a higher plane. You either can “see” that or you cannot; I cannot convince you and there are many educated and seemingly educated people who deny such a possibility with passion and conviction. If you “see” it, you are understanding what gnosis is.

As a powerful example of such a miracle, Tomberg uses the example of Theresa Neumann who survived for years only on the Holy Eucharist. This is the principle which should be contemplated until it becomes ingrained in your understanding and worldview:

Matter is only concentrated energy and energy is only concentrated consciousness.

Or, concentrated thought leads to will which brings about material change.

The Great Work

The Tree of Life is the sources of the miracles of creation, transformation, rejuvenation, healing, and liberation. One’s conscious participation in performing the miracle of the One Thing (Emerald Table 2) is the Great Work of Sacred Magic.

To understand this, Tomberg contrasts it with profane science whose ideal is power, i.e., practical and intellectual technical power. Intellectually, it seeks to reduce the multiplicity of the world to a few laws. That is, its goal is to mechanize the intellect in such a way to calculate the world rather than to comprehend it. On the practical side, technology has advanced in successive stages by destroying matter in order to free up the energy bound to it. Its principle, therefore, is destruction or death.

Hermetic science is quite different. It aims for conscious participation with the constructive forces of the world. While profane science tries to constrain nature to serve man’s will, i.e., his fallen will. Hermetism, on the contrary, aims to purify, illuminate, and change man’s nature and will. Hence, the Great Work can be defined this way:

The Great Work is the state of the human being who is in peace, union, harmony, and collaboration with Life.

The Theological Virtues and Incarnation

As always, along with the truth path, Tomberg points out some pitfalls of the religious life, which we should be on guard for. It becomes decadent, a theological and moral legalism, when it ceases to be:

rooted in Mysticism
illuminated by Gnosis
moved by sacred Magic

The remedy consists in the theological virtues which are related to experience and mystical stages as shown in the following table.

Virtue	Divine Experience	Mystical Stage
Faith	Divine Breath	Purification
Hope	Divine Light	Illumination
Love	DIvine Fire	Union

These virtues often frustrate the modern secular mind. Rather than faith, people today want to “know”, at least in the profane scientific and technical sense explained above. Faith, however, cannot work that way. It surpasses such knowledge and requires an act of the will, a commitment. Only then can one begin to see and allow gnosis, or true knowledge to arise. Tomberg relates the simultaneous work of these virtues with the élan vital, the impulse behind evolution. Everything was created through the Word, or Logos, that is, faith, hope, and love.

In summary, then, the third Arcanum is that of creation, vertically from above to below, and horizontally along the same plane. This is included in the Nicene Creed:

and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary

Once again, this requires faith, a commitment, a transformation, and gnosis. It does not suffice to contemplate it as an object, as some historical event that happened long ago. Rather this teaching must come alive in one’s own consciousness. As for how, that has been explained in the first two Arcana.

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The Goal of Sacred Magic

I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. (John 12:46)

Those who believe, see; they see with a light that illumines their entire journey, for it comes from the risen Christ, the morning star which never sets. (Lumen fidei)

Tomberg next tackles the question of the goal or purpose of sacred magic. This goal is freedom. Of course, this ties back to the Holy Spirit, whose action in the world is totally free. The presumption here is that man is not free, but must be liberated from the various forces that bind him. This differs from the modern secular mindset which follows Rousseau’s dictum: “Man is born free but is everywhere in chains.” Tomberg’s response is that man is enslaved to various forces and must be born again in order to become free.

On the material plane, this is freedom from various physical maladies. Thus the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead rise. Also, good news or a role model is given to the poor and free will restored to those possessed by malign spirits. Thus, Tomberg concludes that healing is not the ultimate purpose, but really the means to the end of true freedom.

This freedom includes liberation from the domination of doubt, fear, hate, apathy, and despair.

Evil Spirits

The evil spirits do not forcibly deprive man of his freedom. On the contrary, those beings take advantage of man’s freedom and use thus employ temptation as their weapon. Hence, possession by an evil spirit is something else. In the case of possession, man gives rise to an elemental being and then becomes the slave of his own creation. Thus, the evil spirits of the New Testament are not the devils who go by the name of Satan, etc., but are actually neurotic psychological complexes: viz., obsessions, phobias, etc.

Nevertheless, they are still real since they are independent of the conscious human will and tend to enslave it. The Devil does not participate directly in that, since he observes the law that protects human freedom. Hence, it is not the devil that we should fear, but rather the perverse inclinations within us. It is the latter that can deprive us of our freedom and enslave us. The depravity of man’s warped imagination is more dangerous than the Devil and all his legions. That is because man is not bound by the law respecting man’s freedom. Hence, some of the worst examples in history cannot simply be attributed to the devil, but are really the result of various human collectives.

The Role of Sacred Magic in the World

If freedom is the goal of sacred magic, then who, or what, is waiting for it, desires it, and is always ready to receive it. After quoting Romans 8:19-23,

For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in hope: Because the creature also itself shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, even till now. And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body.

Tomberg concludes that this includes the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms – hence all of nature is the domain of sacred magic since it desires to be free of the bonds of necessity. The reason for sacred magic arises from the Fall, including the Fall of nature, man, and even the hierarchies of evil. It is first necessary to see how this works in the deliverance of man.

Sacred magic is unlike personal magic. The latter operates by hypnosis, suggestion, necromancy, etc. Sacred magic is opposed to all these:

Personal Magic	Sacred Magic
Hypnosis	The awakening of free will
Suggestion	Deliverance from psychopathology
Evocation of the necromancer	The ascent to the deceased by the strength of love
Evocation of elementals in ceremonial magic	The gain of their confidence and friendship
Enslavement of evil spirits in practical Kabbalah	The resistance to their temptations

Those unfamiliar with the use of hypnosis and suggestion in personal magic may be interested in this four part essay on Emile Coué.

Curiously, Tomberg claims that by resisting devils, they will become your friends. That is because they, too, are awaiting the manifestation of the children of God. A devil is not an atheist and does not doubt God. Rather, he has no faith in man.

Bearing Burdens

Ultimately, sacred magic involves taking on others’ burdens, even unhealthy ones. Sacred magic necessarily serves the good. Personal magic may or may not serve the good … that is an essential difference.

The actual practice of sacred magic, including its various formulas and gestures, derive from, and are confirmed by, revelation. Tomberg lists, of course, the Holy Bible, particularly John’s Gospel. Then the other gospels and the Book of Revelation, etc. In the Old Testament, there are principally the Psalms, Genesis, and Ezekiel. He adds the traditional liturgy as well as the writings of the saints and mystics. He ends his list with the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus.

If anyone finds the last entry out of place, perhaps we can consider these words from Vladimir Solovyov in Lectures on Divine Humanity:

The great fathers of the ancient Church affirmed that even before Christ’s incarnation, the same divine Reason that was revealed in Him enlightened with the eternal truth the inspired wise men of paganism, these Christians before Christ. … Although the close inner connection between Alexandrian theosophy and the Christian doctrine is one of the firmly established theses of Western scholarship, for one reason or another, this perfectly correct thesis does not enjoy common acknowledgment in our theological literature.

Solovyov ended the passage with the promise to show the relationship between Christian doctrine and that of Hermes Trismegistus, but that essay never appeared. Perhaps, Tomberg’s text can be considered as an expansion of the project that Solovyov announced but never completed.

Mystery and Secret

Now, although these gestures and formulae are not “secrets”, they must nevertheless not be betrayed. Betrayal comes from their abuse. We can surely infer how Tomberg would feel about the abuses of the Mass that are happening so often in our time.

A mystery is protected by the light. Referring back to our epigram, it is clear that this light is the light of faith, a light that restores our sight. An Arcanum both reveals and conceals. Although anyone can “see” the Arcanum, there can be no revelation arising from it without that light.

Perhaps now we are in a position to consider the spiritual meaning of the physical healings in the gospel:

The spiritually blind see through the light of faith
The deaf hear the Holy Spirit by stilling the mind
The spiritually dead are born again, from above
Sinners are made clean
The poor in spirit are set free from their perverse inclinations

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The Elements of Sacred Magic

Once again, Tomberg points out a potential pitfall along the path: vainglory or pride may be involved in the desire to exercise power over one’s neighbor. Hence, the question of the legitimacy about magic must be raised. First, he gives the example of Peter’s curing of the paralytic in Jesus’ name. This is a moral act of sacred magic because it meets three conditions:

The goal is a healing
The means was based on the essence of Jesus Christ
The source was Jesus, not Peter personally

There is yet a fourth factor that distinguishes the cure from a miracle pure and simple, to wit, Peter was necessary as the intermediary. So this thought leads to a deeper meditation on the meaning of the Incarnation. Tomberg refers to Redemption as the supreme act of Divine Magic, but that does not explain why the Incarnation was necessary for that to occur. That is, why did the Logos have to become the Man-God in order to accomplish the Redemption?

After dismissing some other opinions, which is clear enough, Tomberg explains that the Incarnation, as an act of love (recall “magic is the act of love”), requires the perfect union in Love between two distinct and free wills: the divine and the human. This, then, is the key to Sacred Magic. He then makes the remarkable claim that the work of Redemption is comparable only to the creation of the world.

Hence, miracles require two united wills. Miracles are then due to a new power which arises each time the two wills become united. This union then is precisely what Tomberg means by Sacred Magic.

Tomberg offers yet another, simpler definition of magic: the power of the invisible and the spiritual over the visible and the material. Peter’s cure was sacred magic because it did not depend on his will alone but on the union of his will with the divine.

The consequence is to be doubly happy, since sacred magic serves both what is above and what is below. This confers on Sacred Magic its legitimacy.

The Role of Dogma

Tomberg insists that he has no intention to overturn revealed dogmas, but in Hermetic fashion he deepens our understanding of it. For example, in the first two arcana, there are the dogmas of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin, and the New Birth. Here, there are the dogmas of the Incarnation and the Redemption.

Traditionally, Scripture has been understood on four levels: from the literal historical understanding to the mystical understanding. The mystical level does not supersede the literal level, so it is a “both-and”, not an “either-or”. As history, the Incarnation refers to the historical manifestation of the Logos as the God-Man Jesus at a particular time and place. That is known through faith since we can have no personal experience of it.

However, on the mystical level, it refers to the union of the divine and human wills within us, analogous to the Incarnation of the Logos. That is not known through faith, nor from reasoning about it as we would, for example, know Pythagoras’ Theorem. Rather, it is a direct intuitive knowledge, what he calls “gnosis”. The fact that I am writing about this does not mean I possess this knowledge as personal gnosis. As a matter of fact, apart perhaps from some saints, this union is not permanent so we probably do not have a constant sense of gnosis about it. As for the path to achieve that union, Tomberg refers to St. John of the Cross with the three stages: purgative, illuminative, and ultimately unitive.

Considering the high opinion Tomberg had of Vladimir Solovyov (or Soloviev), it is useful to consider what the latter wrote in the Lectures on Divine Humanity. The influence on Tomberg is clear, although Tomberg takes things even deeper. For example, Solovyov mentions the night conversation with Nicodemus in a similar way to Tomberg. His view of the Incarnation is also helpful. The goal of the Incarnation is theosis, or the spiritualization of the material world.

Although he does not use the word “magic”, the intent is the same. The effect of the Redemption is the real regeneration of man, not the satisfaction of some legal tort. The idea of Regeneration is the integral element of Martinism.

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The Subtle Rules the Dense

The Third Arcanum of the Empress is that of sacred magic. There are three kinds:

Sacred Magic. The magician is the instrument of divine power
Personal Magic: The magician himself is the source of the magical operation.
Sorcery: The magician is the instrument of elemental or other unconscious forces

The fundamental principle of all magic is this: The subtle rules the dense.

The subtlest is the superconscious or divine consciousness, which is symbolized by the Empress. From that, we get this sequence:

Superconsciousness ⇒ consciousness ⇒ force ⇒ matter

It is worth pausing at this point to consider what this means. Man’s position in that sequence is the second one of “consciousness”. When man’s consciousness is united to the divine, then sacred magic is possible. Tomberg will provide several examples later in this letter.

If man applies magical techniques without reference to the divine, then he is at the level of personal magic. We see this today in the new age section of bookstores under topics such as the “law of attraction”, “new thought”, “manifest your destiny”, and so on. These all recommend know magical practices such as visualizations, control of one’s thoughts, meditations, performing rites, and so on. However, they lack two things. First of all, they can only be personal magic, since the divine will has no place in it. To the contrary, God, the Spirit, or the “universe”, often used interchangeably, are usually regarded as higher forces that can be manipulated for one’s own interests and satisfactions. Hence, you will find advice on how to manifest a new car, found money, better relationships, a great job, even parking spaces. Perhaps you may be thinking there is nothing “wrong” about desiring to improve one’s life. Nevertheless, that is not at all what these Letters are intended to encourage.

The second fault is that they use these magical techniques without understanding their theoretical bases. Hence, they are used randomly and mostly ineffectively. This is not to deny that that there are groups in the world who do indeed understand the proper magical operations, which they use for their own benefit. However, they are not satisfied merely with a new car, but rather with great wealth and power. These groups know how to use the mass media for the purposes of manipulation. At this point, personal magic may be veering into sorcery, where human consciousness is bypassed and lower forces take control for their own purposes apart from any personal desires.

In his youth, Valentin Tomberg wrote a review of the book The Angel of the West Window by Gustav Meyrink. The story is about the Elizabethan era magician John Dee, who, although certainly quite knowledgeable in the magical arts, used them for material ends, specifically the expansion of the British Empire. In his evocations and séances, Dee came under the spell of a spirit, or psychic residue, named Bartlett Greene. Tomberg describes it:

Bartlett Greene spun around Dee an imperceptible web whose threads drew him on throughout his long life. It was a though he were a marionette directed by an unseen hand. Only in old age, broken in body and spirit, did Dee finally see the web of deception for what it was; and, as he lay dying he turned toward the East.

Initially, Dee thought he had contacted the “surprisingly beautiful figure of the Green Angel” and followed its guidance. Only later did Dee recognize the “angel” as a demonic being and that behind the Green Angel and Bartlett Greene there was a secret brotherhood at work. Tomberg recommended this book quite highly for anyone interested in such topics.

Sacred magic is legitimate and its purpose is the sublimation of nature. Specifically, Tomberg agrees with with Josephin Peladan’s definition of magic as the “art of the sublimation of man.”

This is part of the passage from Peladan’s book that I will translate here:

Magic is the art of the sublimation of man, no other formula is worth anything. Sublimation occurs on oneself, in idea and in act; it is necessary to be sublime in order to think rightly, and to think rightly in order to act in the light.

I can only promise you that the result is proportional to the effort. … in order to satisfy my conscience, I unite the Catholic ideal and the magical ideal! The soulish (animique) adoration and the intellectual adoration of God: piety and mystery.

Is mystery above piety? Yes, if piety serves as its base. For this is the most important point of my teaching: magic is not compatible with dishonesty.

On another book, Peladan wrote that one “throws the eagles of one’s desires to the wind” because happiness “Raised to the level of an ideal, freed from the negative aspects of oneself and of things … is the sole triumph of this world.”

There is a lot packed into that statement and it is worthwhile meditating on it. What would it mean to be freed from those negative aspects? How is happiness raised to the level of an ideal?

There are some clues from Papus’ two definitions:

Magic is the science of love
Magic is the application of the strengthened human will to accelerate the evolution of the living forces of nature

The second definition is actually the means by which the aim of magic is attained and love is the strengthened human will.