Individuation

The topic of Individuation comes up in Arcanum ViI, The Chariot.

This is the fundamental law of sacred magic:

That which is above being as that which is below, renunciation below sets in motion forces of accomplishment above and the renunciation of that which is above sets in motion forces of accomplishment below.

That is, we must resist the desires that arise from below. This is equivalent to following the three vows. As a reminder, here are the temptations against the vows:

Vow Eve’s Temptation Jesus’ Temptation in the Desert
Obedience Eve listened to the voice of the serpent All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me
Poverty She saw that the tree was good for food Command these stones to become loaves of bread
Chastity She took of its fruit and ate If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down

The Charioteer

Tomberg describes the charioteer:

the charioteer of the Arcanum “The Chariot” is the victor over trials, i.e. the temptations, and if he is master, then it is thanks to himself. He is alone, standing in his chariot.

In other words, he has attained the higher self. The danger is that he may become blind to the divine that transcends that self.

We saw that in Chapter VI of Gnosis, in which the levels of consciousness are related to the levels of being:

Levels of Consciousness Levels of Being From MoTT
Consciousness The universal I God
Consciousness of the real I The real individual I Higher Self
Waking consciousness The personal mental I Ego
Subconsciousness The physical I of the body Subconsciousness

Tomberg begins with Jung’s discoveries. While acknowledging the sexual (Freud) and will-to-power (Adler) layers of the subconscious, he then encountered a higher spiritual layer. He regarded the transition from the Ego to the Higher Self as a “second birth”.

Unfortunately, there is a danger associated with that process: the danger of inflation. First of all, the Ego is the conscious part of the Psyche. Hence, the Ego experiences the Self as an object because it is unable to experience directly the unconscious. So it projects itself onto symbolism:  e.g., dreams, visions, active imagination.

It is worthwhile to maintain a dream journal to see what it reveals over time. Also, during the moments of spontaneous (or willed) awakenings during the day, try to see what was going on in the psyche at that time. Over time, you can see the forces keeping you in the state of waking sleep.

The process, to be effective, requires the harmonization of the Ego and the Psyche. This requires a re-centering of the personality, the birth of a new center, i.e., a magnetic center. From that center, the unconscious is perpetually in transformation into consciousness. This awakens the symbol-forces, called the archetypes. These are not known rationally, but rather experienced. There is the danger of identifying the whole of consciousness with one of the archetyps.

If this danger is avoided, then the center of personality can shift from the Ego to the Self.


Associated task: work on the vows. Renounce the temptations associated with the vows.

This post is gathered from notes from an online weekly discussion.
To enroll in the mailing list: click here: Medtarot Discussion List.

What is Hermeticism

From What is Hermeticism? by Sebastian Niklaus.

Anyone who has not conquered personal pride in at least a preliminary way, is led by Hermeticism, not to genius but to charlatanry. This ambivalence is indicated in, for example, Arcanum I, “The Magician”.

The Magician is, on the one hand, a man of genius, strong in heart forces, who is carried with ease by contact with the spiritual world. However, he can also stand before us as a warning if, in avoiding the efforts of purification through an ease that is wrongly understood, we risk becoming a charlatan.

[Hermeticism] lives only from intuition and, without it, is dead. And it is this dead thing that was seen by the representatives of religious faith and of science, who were genuinely astounded at the fact that there are people who take it seriously. They see only scientific and religious “tinsel” or, at most, a weak faith that borrows crutches from science or, perhaps, a kindergarten science that has not yet learned to distinguish between what is believed and what is known. And with this they are not wrong; for without the invisible cement of intuition, Hermeticism is indeed only a random collection of disparate elements of science and religion. ~ Letter on XIX. Arcanum- Meditations on the Tarot]

It should be stressed that the pupil must never lose himself in speculations on the meaning of this or that. Such intellectualizing will only lead him away from the right path. He should look out on the world with keen, healthy senses and quickened power of observation, and then give himself up to the feeling that arises within him. He should not try to make out, through intellectual speculation, the meaning of things, but rather allow the things to disclose themselves.

Therefore symbols are in no way instruments of thought, but rather they are its guides and active masters, just as the “symbol of faith”, the Christian Creed, is not an instrument of thought, but rather a stellar constellation high above the head.” Letter on XVI Arcanum

Where is the pupil led to by the “stellar constellation of the Arcana”? Through the shaping of the astral body so that it attains “compatibility with the Sun”, the astral body can receive into itself the solar nature of the human being.

Spiritual Larping

The others, the mages, the theosophists, the cabalists, the spiritists, the hermetics, the Rosicrucians, remind me, when they are not mere thieves, of children playing and scuffling in a cellar. And if one descends lower yet, into the hole-in-the-wall places of the pythonesses, clairvoyants, and mediums, what does one find except agencies of prostitution and gambling? All these pretended peddlers of the future are extremely nasty; that’s the only thing in the occult of which one can be sure. ~ J K Huysmans, Là-Bas

Role Playing

There is the mistaken impression that esoteric studies are based on some secret knowledge, hidden from others. Valentin Tomberg, however, makes a distinction between a secret and an arcanum.

Secrets are only facts, procedures, practices, or whatever doctrines that one keeps to oneself for a personal motive, since they are able to be understood and put into practice by others to whom one does not want to reveal them.

You see, it has nothing to do with esoteric attainment; rather, it is a means to retain control and power. Those who are in on the secret can use it to identify in and out groups. At its worst, it only feeds the urge for self-inflation. For these reasons, we prefer to keep everything in the open.

It is not the text or the book that ultimately matters. The text is merely the reflection of the pure act of intelligence, as revealed in the Magician Arcanum. It is only possible to reach the pure act through spiritual exercises. Otherwise, as Tomberg points out, you are only doing philosophy at best, or just role playing at worst.

Our first goal here is to promote the ideal of self-mastery and to show ways to achieve it. This requires control of thinking, feeling, and willing. This control can only result from a purification of one’s thinking, feeling, and willing. Without such purification, the mirror will be perturbed, and its reflections will distort the pure act of intelligence.

I have known and spoken to, in my travels, gurus, lamas, anthroposophists, theosophists, freemasons, rosicrucians, priests, gurdjieffians, Jungians, charismatics, channelers, and so on. Even giving the benefit of the doubt, many of the followers are role playing, i.e., they enjoy the fantasy of spiritual attainment without having to do the work. They try to act as they think a spiritual person should act. They dress a certain way, adopt a new diet, say the right words, while leaving their inner life untouched.

In actuality, you would not readily identify an initiate even if he crossed your path. He would have no reason to reveal himself to you, unless you expressed a sincere interest in the teachings.

The Christian Hermetic Tradition

Our task has been to serve the living Tradition, which has been assigned by Valentin Tomberg to his unknown friends. To that end, we have described the various manifestations of that Tradition throughout time and space. We have also introduced a great many authors who have contributed to that Tradition. The goal has been to entice others to want to serve that same Tradition. We have been quite open with that material, since it hides itself from those unable or unwilling to understand it.

As a matter of principle, it is problematic to earn one’s living from Hermetic teaching. It can lead to subtle distortions based on the need “give the customer what he wants”. At its lowest, it is a form of simony, i.e., selling spiritual knowledge for a price. In the olden days, a Hermetist might take the role of a street performer or horse trader. In that way, he could travel from village to village without arising suspicions, and meet with other Hermetists. It would also provide a modest income. That was a motivation for the Tarot cards. Books were too expensive and bulky to travel with. So a deck of cards that encapsulated the teachings in symbolic form was a boon.

Once upon a time, someone was hectoring us every now and then to rewrite or even remove certain posts, to delete comments, or to block links. It made no sense, until I was informed of the reason:

I thought it necessary to free Tomberg from rightist view and people who follow you

That is absurd. No one has the authority to decide who can read this blog or comment on Tomberg. First of all, we don’t have any political or religious tests to join our groups. Instead, we rely on the Law of Affinity; that will bring the right people together if they belong together.

The Traditional way is not partisan, so the distinction between “right” and “left” is meaningless. It is the path of unity whereas partisanship is devilish. Louis Claude de Saint-Martin explains:

Now, in order to show how [the numbers] are related to their base of activity, let us begin by observing the working of unity and of the number two. When we contemplate an important truth, such as the universal power of the Creator, his majesty, his love, his profound light, or suchlike attributes, we bear ourselves wholly towards this supreme model of all things; all our faculties are suspended in order to fill us with him, and we really only make ourselves one with him. This is the active image of unity, and the number one in our languages is the expression of this unity or invisible union which, existing intimately between all attributes of this unity, must equally exist between it and all its produced creations. But if, after having borne all our faculties of contemplation towards this universal source, we return our gaze to ourselves and fill ourselves with our own contemplation, in such a way that we regard ourselves as the origin of some of the inner light or satisfaction that this source has procured for us, from that moment we establish two centres of contemplation, two separate and rival principles, two bases which ate not linked; lastly, we establish two unities, with this difference—that one is real and the other is apparent …

But to divide being through the middle is to divide it into two parts; it is to pass from the whole to the quality of the part or the half, and it is here that the true origin of illegitimate twofoldness lies. . .this example is sufficient to show us the birth of the number two — to show us the origin of evil. . .

Choosing a Path

In a recent comment, Mikkel asked a very good question:

How does one truly understand what “I want”? Due to the story of my experiences of my life, I find that I am more blind to this unfortunately in periods of distress.

Only by coming to that realisation, is it possible for a man to seek a way out. Most men live in ignorance of their real nature and what is truly good for them.

The Parable of the Coach explains our situation: our body is inefficient, our emotions are uncontrolled, our intellect is asleep, and there is no one in charge. Hence the coach moves without purpose or goal, in random directions.

It may happen that a more awake coachman may pass by and offer help. Usually the help is refused. Nevertheless, some few, due perhaps to karma, fortune, or grace, are willing to accept such help.

It sounds simple, except that in our world there are many offers to help, most asking for money. So it is right to be sceptical. People may spend more effort in choosing a car mechanic or doctor than in their spiritual development. It is reasonable to know what results to expect. The answer is an improvement in one’s thinking, feeling, and willing functions. You should ask those who have been helped previously about their experiences. The results should be permanent, not just some emotional high after a rousing lecture.

Avoid cults. Apply this test when in doubt:

A cult is easy to join, but hard to leave. A free group is hard to find, but easy to leave.

If the goal is self-mastery, then clearly you cannot surrender your will to someone else. You need to understand your situation and learn to choose your own goals. Simply being told what to do is useless. Either you will dislike the advice and leave the teaching, or else you will like the advice and not bother with the exercises.

A contrary approach is offered by many others. Typically, it will include spiritual counselling, for a fee. The counsellor will then tell the student his karmic tasks and what his life goals should be. To repeat, the student needs to determine that on his own, even if it might require a little encouragement. I have never seen that approach work very well.

Uniting Hermetists

I’ve always hoped for a loose coalition of Hermetists, each developing the Hermetic Tradition in its own way, despite the attacks described above. These different groups would cooperate in various ways, without regard for border. Tomberg’s description is what I have in mind:

Spiritual exercises in common form the common link that unites Hermetists. It is not knowledge in common which unites them, but rather the spiritual exercises and the experience which goes hand in hand with them. If three people from different countries were to meet each other, having made the book of Genesis by Moses, the Gospel of St. John, and the vision of Ezekiel, the subject of spiritual exercises for many years, they would do so in brotherhood. … What one knows is the result of personal experience and orientation, whereas depth, the level one attains — disregarding the aspect and extent of knowledge that one has gained — is what one has in common.

Tomberg tells us how to evaluate a teaching:

There are mirages above, as there are mirages below; you only know that which is verified by the agreement of all forms of experience in its totality—experience of the senses, moral experience, psychic experience, the collective experience of other seekers for the truth, and finally the experience of those whose knowing merits the title of wisdom and whose striving has been crowned by the title of saint.

In other words, blind belief based solely on authority or on unverifiable claims are not helpful on the Hermetic path. Too much emphasis on unusual or fantastic experiences will discourage students who should be content with slow but steady progress. Steiner, in Knowledge of Higher Worlds, warns several times about the expectation of fantastical experiences, for example he writes:

it is imperative to extirpate the idea that any fantastic, mysterious practices are required for the attainment of higher knowledge. It must be clearly realized that a start has to be made with the thoughts and feelings with which we continually live, and that these feelings and thoughts must merely be given a new direction.

Moreover, it is best to observe the Hermetic principle, “Be Silent”. Boasting of spiritual attainments, even if they are true, is not helpful. Steiner, in the same book, verifies that thought:

know how to observe silence concerning your spiritual experiences.

Mysticism and Initiation

Rene Guenon distinguishes between mysticism and initiation. The former is passive, individualistic, subjective, and exoteric. Initiation, on the other hand, is quite different. He explains that

Initiation is the transmission, through appropriate rites, of a spiritual influence

Titus Burkhardt expands on the idea that the transmission of the spiritual influence must be conferred

by a master who also communicates the method and confers the means of spiritual concentration that are appropriate to the aptitudes of the disciple

Furthermore, he points out that in ancient times a mystic referred to someone who had knowledge of the mysteries. In other words, the mystic was initiated in the esoteric mysteries, but that is not how the word is used in our time.

Preconditions for Spiritual Science

A period of self-purification is necessary before any effective initiation can take place. Otherwise, all sorts of mischief can result when the unprepared receive esoteric teachings. First of all, it is best to keep one’s physical body in good order, lest it bring distractions to spiritual practice. Proper diet and exercise are helpful. Moreover, the concentration required for physical disciplines like athletics or martial arts are a good preparation.

One’s life should also be in order. Anxiety over relationships or money will make spiritual practice difficult. Then, work can be done on oneself. The Christian Hermetist Willi Seiss, in his commentary on Valentin Tomberg’s Course on the Lord’s Prayer claims:

A precondition is the purification of the three soul-forces of willing, feeling, and thinking.

He summarizes the specifics like this:

  • The element of will is trained through the rigorous, many-sided process of cleansing from everything that is impure.
  • Through refraining from destructive feelings, that is, all reprehensible emotions
  • Disciplining of the thoughts, whereby the essential is freed of influences from fearful, corrupt, hate-filled and empty thoughts.

The Pagan Revival

In our time, the neo-pagans are prime examples of this. Misunderstanding the cycles and subcycles in the flow of time, as well as the existence of castes, they claim to harken back to the exoterism of their allegedly pagan ancestors. Anyone else, they say, are bugmen. Yet that have no idea what caste they descend from. Moreover, since they believe they are the “true” Traditionalists, they do not bother with the idea of purification, and don’t really understand the inner sense of the pagans.

It is true enough, however, that the strata of earlier pagan traditions remain in our psyches. The Book of Revelation contains messages about the ancient Indians, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures. Their psychic residues remain in our collective unconscious. They must both be remembered and transcended.

Note

Friday the 13th was the day the Templars were destroyed. This post is dedicated to them.

And God knows best.

Christian Hermiticism: Valentin Tomberg

[materialists] fear judgment. Because the future brings retribution for the past, people deny both the moral world order and the future in the sense of that moral world order. ~ Valentin Tomberg

One generation creates the destiny of the next. ~ Valentin Tomberg

Although the sequence differs between Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13, these are the three temptations:

  • To turn stones into bread
  • To jump off the pinnacle
  • To rule the world

The first item to note is the symmetry between the beginning of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Genesis sets the stage for the emergence of the First Adam and the three temptations in Eden:

  • Listening to the serpent. The serpent was cunning and shifted the perspective of Adam and Eve from the vertical to the horizontal.
  • Seeing fruit as a delight to the eyes.
  • Eating of the fruit

Adam and Eve succumbed to each of those temptations, and then experienced the corresponding effects.

First of all, Eve allowed the voice of the serpent to have equal influence with that of God. This was an act of disobedience and the result was doubt, i.e., having two minds in conflict with each other.

This put the tree in a new light, for now it seemed desirable. Doubt wants to be resolved by experience, i.e., to actually taste the fruit of the tree. That is greed, the opposite to poverty.

Eating the fruit, i.e., actually undergoing the experience is unchastity.

The New Testament begins with the stories of Jesus’ origins ending with the Baptism in the Jordan. He is led to fast for 40 days in the wilderness. There, Satan tempts him, but Jesus resists each one of them. The following sections show Tomberg’s analysis from each of the four works mentioned.

Anthroposophic Meditations on the New Testament

In this work, there are two chapters devoted to the temptations in the wilderness. The NT starts with the human and leads to the divine. Curiously, Tomberg begins his discussion with Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche experienced loneliness and isolation in their depths. That is, he knew the wilderness and its temptations, yet yielded to them.

His emptiness led him to seek the fullness of life in the instincts and the will to power. Then from the mountain top, Nietzsche came up with the idea of the Eternal Return. This means that the Earth has no future, but is condemned to repeat itself endlessly. Nietzsche claimed to have been inspired by superior forces. Yet then led him to devalue God, spirit, soul. The same temptations exist today, although few succumb with the same intensity.

Jesus in the wilderness was likewise isolated; the angels did not minister to him until afterwards. For, according to Tomberg, it is human freedom that must resist the temptations. The wilderness represents the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age. That is the temptation of humanity as a whole, which we see constantly repeated. Suprasensory experiences are rare because people have not yet decided:

  • Whether to rule or to serve (power or obedience)
  • Whether to possess the kingdoms of the past or to wander destitute into the future (wealth or poverty)
  • Whether to desire miracles of knowledge (the authority of miracles or the chastity of knowledge)

People are exposed to these temptations in diverse forms and Tomberg provides examples.

First Temptation. Stones into Bread

The tendency is to substitute a quantitative numerical value to everything qualitative and specific. But quantity is death and the property of quality, the living, cannot be reduced to it.

Tomberg considers money as an example of converting metal or paper into a “basket of bread”. The value of money is arbitrarily set while bread, which supports life, is subjected to the power of number. The prime example of this is in the USA where the major concern in elections is the GDP, as the spiritual and intellectual level of society declines precipitously.

Second Temptation: retreat into the subconscious

This temptation is to seek the source of life in the instinctual life of the subconscious. This is jumping from the pinnacle into the abyss, the domain of hidden instinctive urges. Thinking is difficult so the temptation is to expect miracles from the subconscious.

The true source of life, however, is the superconscious and the free life of thinking.

Third temptation: materialism

Materialism is the temptation to see the world as having no moral or spiritual guidance. This view grants them freedom from responsibility. However, when materialism is followed all the way through, the ruling intelligence behind matter will be seen to be the “prince of the world”.

The path of materialism leads through hallucination to insanity and from insanity to demonic possession. These terms are not meant in a clinical sense, and the symptoms are certainly noticeable in our time.

The fundamentals of materialism are force, chance, matter

  • Blind force is the opposite of spiritual light, a denial of the Holy Spirit
  • Blind chance is the opposite of the Logos, or Son
  • Spiritless matter stands in contrast to the cosmic First Cause, or Father

Force is unspiritual time, chance the lack of causality, and matter, the mechanization of life. The results are sleep, prostration, and death. The following meditation contains the opposite tendencies:

Out of the Godhead is created humankind.

In Christ death becomes life.

In Spirit’s cosmic thoughts, the soul awakens.

 

Inner Development

In the series of lectures published with the title Inner Development, there is a brief discussion of the three temptations. The context is a critique of the three currents of contemporary intellectual life, viz., religion, art, science

Religion

Religion has succumbed to the temptation of reckoning with the Prince of this world. It has succumbed to the temptation to organize the world with the help of a power principle and take possession of it with the help of a centralized power organization. This is the temptation to rule the world, provided one bows down to Satan.

He then criticizes the Roman Church which, he claims, “strove to bring the world and its glories under its dominion.” However, in the Meditations, the view becomes more balanced.  He came to recognize that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, i.e., a real entity. It is the egregore of the Church, a factitious creation, that succumbs to the temptation, not the Mystical Body.

Art

Tomberg then turns his attention to art:

Artistic creation is increasingly becoming a situation whereby the artist creates out of the deep dark underworld of his subconscious.

That is because the artist succumbs to the temptation of jumping into the abyss.

The artist leaps from the pinnacle of the temple of clear consciousness into the sphere of impulses, instincts, whence something is supposed to arise that is to be regarded as angelic revelation.

The art of popular culture is now plagued with vulgar, scatological, and sexual innuendo.  For some reason, this is considered to be a deep insight into the human condition

Science

Science succumbs to the temptation to turn stones into bread:

Modern science is based upon the conception that the dead mineral world can be the foundation of everything, and that everything living is only a consequence of movement in this mechanical, dead world. i.e., all bread arises out of stone.

Summary

Tomberg related the temptations to the political forces rampant at that time. The specifics might not be so important now, but the temptations still arise in different contexts.

World history is essentially nothing other than the continual karmic confrontation of humanity with the first, the second, the third, or all three temptations.

Degeneration and Regeneration of Jurisprudence

In this PhD thesis, written shortly after his conversion, Tomberg reformulates the temptations in the context of jurisprudence. Instead of religion, art, and science, the concern is now law, ethics, and religion.

A view which presumes law, ethics, and religion to be a structure unity cannot avoid recognizing a kind of “fall” in the history of jurisprudence in the 19th and 20th centuries. A fall consists of succumbing step by step to the same three temptations to which Christ was exposed in the desert.

First Temptation

The turning away from the ideal of reason, and the turning towards the instinctual is, seen morally, nothing but the leap from the pinnacle of the temple into the abyss, hoping that there angels of God will lift the one falling. i.e., intelligence reigning in the darkness of the instinctual.

Thought should be oriented toward the divine, but the temptation is to sink.

The height of pure thought (pinnacle) oriented towards the divine (temple) has been left behind to find the reign of the nation’s subconscious force (angels) in the instinctual (abyss). This is the path from faith to superstition.

Just as an individual’s personal instincts may be made, so too are the national instincts. Hence, there is a risk or a leap into the unknown. This temptation is to put the irrational above reason.

Second Temptation

Historically, there have been no intervention of angels to break the fall. Only the ground can break the fall, leading to the cult of materialism.

Hence, one generation creates the destiny of the next, although not necessarily a repetition of what came prior. Culture and morality were assumed to be determined by mechanical and material forces. Hence, the materialist generation reversed the order of the higher and the lower. In particular, the revolutionary movements of the 19th century were rooted in the primacy of the material. Quantity placed above quality.

This is the temptation to transform stones into bread. The transformation of inorganic and dead stones into organic bread is actually a reversal of the above and the below.

It treats culture (law, ethics, religion) as the product of the material (amoral and irrational).

Third Temptation

The materialist generation gave way to the positivistic generation:

Law is only what was laid down by a power according to its will and sanctioned by force. The good is only what leads to the set objective. And that objective is defined to be “truth”.

Matter is no longer fundamental, but force is. In man, force is actualized as the Will.

Will is the reality in the life of a human—ultimately it creates and directs everything—including all of civilised and legal life. But for legal life this means a decisive change in its foundation: might replaces right.

The temptation is to become the authority over all the kingdoms of the world, provided on bows down and worships Satan. This is predominantly the situation we find ourselves in today.

Meditations on the Tarot

The three temptations have a prominent place in the Meditations. However, they are always put in contrast with the temptations in Eden, and in relation to the three vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity.

The three vows are, in essence, memories of paradise, where man was united with God (obedience), where he possessed everything at once (poverty), and where his companion was at one and the same time his wife, his friend, his sister, and his mother (chastity).

The work of redemption begins with the three temptations in the wilderness. However, this time the tempter was not the serpent. Rather, the tempter was the prince of the world (the new man, the superman, or other son of man who, if incarnated, would be the realisation of the promise of freedom made by the serpent.

The three temptations of the Son of Man in the wilderness were his experience of the directing impulses of evolution, namely the will-to-power, the “groping trial” and the transformation of the gross into the subtle. They signify at the same time the test of the three vows—the vows of obedience, chastity and poverty.

Bread and stones

The first temptation came after Jesus’ forty day fast:

Hunger of the spirit, the soul and the body is the experience of emptiness or poverty. It is therefore the vow of poverty which is put to the test when “the tempter came and said to him: If you are the Son of God. command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Matthew iv, 3). “Command these stones to become loaves of bread”—this is the very essence of the aspiration of humanity in the scientific epoch, namely to victory over poverty. Synthetic resins, synthetic rubber, synthetic fibre, synthetic vitamins, synthetic proteins and. . .eventually synthetic bread! —When? Soon, perhaps. Who knows?

Forty-five years later, we can begin to answer such questions. Synthetic meat is being grown in the laboratory and will soon be mass produced. Of course, the advances in artificial intelligence are seen as a threat. Synthetic humans are already being produced for specialized purposes (i.e., sex).

Through the media, the population is being prepared to accept these androids as fully human. Some even predict them to be the next root race that will replace biological humans.

In cultural terms, this temptation leads the intellectuals to deny life, which is regarded as merely complex molecules. In the political realm, economic life is regarded as primary.

Groping Trial

This is the temptation to jump off the pinnacle into the abyss, assuming God will come to the rescue. In practical terms, it is the idea of evolution over creation. Creation is the accomplishment of absolute wisdom and absolute goodness.

Evolution, on the other hand, proceeds blindly by trial and error, from one species to the next. Evolution is actually guided by the serpent, or prince of the word. This temptation is opposed to chastity, and fornication is threefold: spiritual, psychic, and carnal.

The principle of spiritual fornication is therefore the preference of the subconscious to the conscious and superconscious. of instinct to the Law, and of the world of the serpent to the world of the WORD.

Transformation Temptation

The third temptation is directed against obedience. The temptation is the will-to-power, the desire to rule over the world.

It is a matter, therefore, of accepting the ideal of the superman (“fall down and worship me”), who is the summit of evolution (“he took him to a very high mountain”) and who, having passed through the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms, subjecting them to his power, is lord over them, i.e. he is their final cause or aim and ideal, their representative or their collective concentrated will, and he is their master, who has taken their subsequent evolution into his hands. Now, the choice here is between the ideal of the superman, who is “as God”, and God himself.

Obedience is faithfulness to the living God.

Fundamental Law of Magic

A fundamental law of sacred magic is this:

That which is above being as that which is below, renunciation below sets in motion forces of accomplishment above and the renunciation of that which is above sets in motion forces of accomplishment below.

This means:

When you resist a temptation or renounce something desired below, you set in motion by this very fact forces of realisation of that which corresponds above to that which you come to renounce below.

Or

It is not desire which bears magical realisation, but rather the renunciation of desire (that you have formerly experienced, of course). For renunciation through indifference has no moral — and therefore no magical — value.

This renunciation is actually the practice of the three sacred vows, which is the true magical training, and concentration without effort. That is the esoteric value to resisting those temptations.

Sacred Magic

The Empress
The third Arcanum, the Empress concerns sacred magic. Valentin Tomberg identifies three kinds of magic:

  1. sacred magic: magic where the magician is the instrument of divine power
  2. personal magic: magic where the magician himself is the source of the magical operation
  3. sorcery: the magician is the instrument of elemental forces or other unconscious forces

Tomberg demonstrates the contrast between personal and sacred magic in regard to similar phenomena.

Personal and Sacred Magic
Personal Magic Sacred Magic
Hypnosis Awakening free will
Suggestion Deliverance from possession by fixed ideas and psychopathological complexes
Evocation by necromancy The ascent towards the deceased effected by the force of love
Constraint employed by ceremonial magic with respect to elemental beings The gain of their confidence and friendship by corresponding acts.
Procedures of the practical Cabbala to subjugate evil spirits Their transformation into servants through their own accord by resistance to the special temptations of each of them

In Letter III we learn that the goal of the first three Arcana is to return to the state of consciousness before the Fall.

  • The Magician: return to the mystical spontaneity of the relationship between man and God
  • The High Priestess: return to the state of consciousness before the Fall
  • The Empress: return to that life which was before the Fall

These are not propositions to believe, but rather states of being to experience.

Miracles

A miracle is the visible effect of an invisible cause, or the effect on a lower plane due to a cause on a higher plane. Said another way, it demonstrates vertical causation. The purpose then of unusual miracles is to remind us of vertical causation.

Familiarity obscures our recognition of miracles. There is no explanation, in terms of horizontal causes, for the existence of the universe, of the stars, of life, of sentient life, or of human life. A hippopotamus is a miracle.

Human life is supra-biological, hence its continuation from century to century is a miracle. Only familiarity prevents us from seeing it that way. Even a conscious act like lifting a finger is an example of vertical causation, since there is no physical explanation.

Here are two principles to keep in mind, even if they are not fully understood:

  • We create reality
  • Faith can accomplish anything