In this passage from Meditations on the Tarot, we see how “evolution” can be understood in a deeper sense. Profane science can only “see” random forces, operating without direction or purpose, in some inexplicable way still manage to create unexpectedly complex structures. Hermetic science sees more deeply, since it takes into account, not only material forces, but also vital and etheric forces.
In Letter XIV on Temperance in Meditations on the Tarot, Tomberg writes:
Tentacles, paws, arms, wings — are they not simply diverse forms manifesting a common prototype or principle?
In other words, Tomberg will show that they are homologous forms of a central and unitary meaning, which is precisely the Principle of Correspondence. He explains:
They are insofar as they express the desire to bear the sense of touch further, to be able to touch things more removed than those in the immediate neighbourhood of the surface of the body. They are active extensions of the passive and receptive sense of touch which is spread out over the surface of the organism. In making use of them, the sense of touch makes “excursions” from its usual orbit circumscribed by the skin which covers the body.
Clearly this is absurd and incomprehensible to one-dimensional thinkers who live and move on a line. So how do we justify this epistemologically? As we have repeatedly mentioned, the sufficient reason of the world of appearance is the Will. Since we have direct experience of our own Will, we should understand how the Will strives to bring our ideas into manifestation. So it is actually the rationalist who is absurd, since he denies the existence and efficacy of his own will, attributing it to some external force, fashioned by electro-chemical activity in the brain. Thus he denies his own existence while pretending to exist. Let’s allow Tomberg to explain:
The organs of action are simply crystallised will. I walk not because I have legs but rather on the contrary. I have legs because I have the will to move about. I touch, I take, and I give not because I have arms, but I have arms because I have the will to touch, to take, and to give.
The Will is creative. It takes the idea and brings it into the appropriate form. Tomberg makes this clear:
The “what” [the idea] of the Will engenders the “how” of the action (the organ) and not inversely. The arms are therefore the expression of the will to bear touch further than the surface of one’s own body. They are the manifestation of extended touch due to the will to touch things at a distance.