Hướng dẫn bói bài Tarot The spirit of the tarot numbers as initiators of the major

THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKi i 9/9/09 1:14:50 PM Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKii ii 9/9/09 1:14:52 PM THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT Numbers as Initiators of the Major Arcana Claudine Aegerter and Berenice Benjelloun Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKiii iii 9/9/09 1:14:52 PM First published in 2009 by Aeon Books Ltd 118 Finchley Road London NW3 5HT Copyright © 2008 by Claudine Aegerter and Berenice Benjelloun The right of Claudine Aegerter and Berenice Benjelloun to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A C.I.P for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978-1-90465-835-1 Typeset by Vikatan Publishing Solutions (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain www.aeonbooks.co.uk Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKiv iv 9/9/09 1:14:53 PM CONTENTS INTRODUCTION vii GLOSSARY xiii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xix NUMBER ONE The Magician NUMBER TWO The High Priestess 23 NUMBER THREE The Empress 57 NUMBER FOUR The Emperor 81 NUMBER FIVE The Pope 109 NUMBER SIX The Lover 133 NUMBER SEVEN The Chariot 159 v Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKv v 9/9/09 1:14:54 PM vi CONTENTS NUMBER EIGHT Justice 183 NUMBER NINE The Hermit 205 NUMBER TEN The Wheel of Fortune 229 NUMBER ELEVEN Strength 253 NUMBER TWELVE The Hanged Man 279 NUMBER THIRTEEN No Name 299 NUMBER FOURTEEN Temperance 321 NUMBER FIFTEEN The Devil 345 NUMBER SIXTEEN The Tower 371 NUMBER SEVENTEEN The Stars 397 NUMBER EIGHTEEN The Moon 421 NUMBER NINETEEN The Sun 439 NUMBER TWENTY Judgment 461 NUMBER TWENTY ONE The World 483 CHAPTER TWENTY TWO The Fool 499 Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKvi vi 9/9/09 1:14:55 PM INTRODUCTION Humanity is at the present time at a crossroads, or point of transition The human kingdom represents the latest state of biological evolution on planet Earth, so further expansion of the mind beyond its intellectual boundaries must take place, if we are to realise the true potential of who we are as human beings and understand the purpose of our existence It is our responsibility to lead the way in service to the whole process of life in this Solar System Up to now, mankind has been the frightened brave species, expressing group survival through our behaviour and mentality By extending ourselves beyond our safe place, we can see ourselves as vehicles for a greater energy and a greater plan We then step into the realm of the next kingdom in the evolutionary process; that of the Soul The Tarot, seen as an initiatic tool, offers a perception of the inner work that a human being has to achieve as he associates with his Soul This leads to contact with the higher mind and its universal experience This is a new exploration of the Tarot, which reveals the esoteric numerological links underlying this ancient system It also connects the journey of the Tarot to the initiatic teachings, which express the idea of the work of the expansion of consciousness This expansion takes place through the realisation that there is more to life than the outer form As we explore beyond those physical, emotional and vii Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKvii vii 9/9/09 1:14:56 PM viii INTRODUCTION mental aspects in us that we call the personality, we find another energy that is not so easy to define and which seems to move us at a deeper level; this is the Soul It is by being receptive to its mystery that we can start to connect to the universal collective energy of the Spirit The different stages in this pioneering expansion into the unknown, unseen world of Soul and Spirit are reflected in the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana They provide a structure or map on which that journey can be recognised The symbols on the cards are translated into practical steps that can be applied to the everyday lives of those who seek greater consciousness When natural man first awakened by opening the doors of awareness and consciousness, the whole of the greater story was revealed, so that everything was seen for what it is The wise seers of those times had the insight to understand the revelation as a mind looking at its creation, seeing the origin of everything in the greater mind The story of manifested life had to be retraced and given out in codes and symbols to measure time and space; this was done with the help of geometrical shapes representing numbers and spiralling symbols for the understanding of the cycles of numbers These seers elaborated on the initial symbols of 1, and as a blueprint, out of which the final structure of 4, 5, and emerges These are the seven rays of manifestation Through the ages the descriptions of the movement of the creator as he built the worlds as we know them, took the many different forms of the stories or myths that are linked to every culture and religion The original symbols themselves not belong to any particular group or sect; it is always the same revelation of the unfolding of a higher consciousness, capable of being of service to the great mind of the universe As the tribal consciousness took control of most of mankind on the planet, it became dangerous for this knowledge to be given out, so it was hidden, the mysteries being kept in the depth of the Ancient Wisdom Then later, the idea of drawing pictures which related to that universal story was materialised and one of the end results was what we now know as the Tarot The Tarot illustrates the mystery of the alchemical process of transmuting matter back into light, personality into Soul The cards carry pictorial symbols which, at the time they were made, were linked to what was known of the ancient traditions, such as the Ancient Egyptian, Hebraic, Christian and Islamic cultures Like parables, they tell the hidden story in a universal language that can be translated according to the understanding of the reader The Tarot is a book for disciples and aspirants, or those who Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKviii viii 9/9/09 1:14:57 PM INTRODUCTION ix are open and ready to hear the symbolic language of the Soul The first language was number, then the language of pictures and myths kept the knowledge of initiatic enlightenment alive As we get to know the world and so become ourselves, the world becomes itself The Gospel of St John tells us, “The wind blows where it wants; we hear its voice but we not know whence it comes, or where it is going It is the same for whomever is born of Spirit” Once we remove the idea that we’re doing anything, but are still participating in action then we’re not even really doing it; it is happening through us For example, if we think we are writing a book, we are trying too hard If we simply make ourselves available, the book will come through us and our skills will be used By all means try to know who we are, where we are, what we’re doing, or what’s the next best thing However, as John Lennon’s song says, “How I know where to go, when I don’t even know where to turn, or where I stand, or where I face?” This one speaks as a Fool of God Spirit comes through the wind and it is with the air and the fire that we spiritualise the earth and the water, for they are divine once we have seen the light So if we’re not doing something because we are waiting to face the right direction, we are not a Fool of God! Fly with the wind, burn with the fire, or flow with the water, it does not matter which; we are on Earth and it is of beauty ‘In these happy nights I was helped in the secret, Nobody could see me and I could not perceive anything To guide me, only the light burning in my heart’ Numbers give us a never-ending appreciation of the cycles of manifestation of life as it progresses towards its apotheosis Each card is a stage in our personal transformation The Tarot is a pictorial crystallisation of the mysterious language of number to guide us through the cycles of spiritual transformation Each chapter can only be understood in relation to the one before and the one after, just as with numbers We can really only truly understand a Number or a Number if we’ve understood what the Number was about; a Number by itself without time and space has no chance of realising itself! If the blade is alive in the fire, in the air, in the rock and in the water, we have to pull it out and go where it takes us Each card by itself is one aspect of whom we are, but all of them together make a book of esoteric life, of man becoming his future, the essence of love and wisdom, Heaven and Earth – a Soul Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKix ix 9/9/09 1:14:58 PM 510 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS being in our community, in order to become what could be called a dreamer from the point of view of the profane We have to break down all the powers, links and limitations so that the only thing that remains is The Star of hope and esperance Here we are poised with everything that remains in us, transformation, experience, cosmic dreams, the lot; it is a pure point of love, the fisher King is after a moonbeam Then what we do? We find ourselves breaking through another barrier again, moving out and taking that very lonely little path in Number 18, The Moon, with the full light on our subconscious helping us digest everything We know where we are going, even if we can’t see the way, because we are facing backwards There is no more protection, then on the other side of that horizon we come out straight into the full Sun in Number 19 We have truly ended the initiatic journey at Number 20 and are in a state of complete arationality, because we are seeing life from the Soul point of view We can see the patterns behind the events, so rather than getting caught up in the details we can see the bigger picture In fact we see the details better, but they are only there to remind us of the cleverness of personality and matter, resisting so that things can be done in time and space without too much destruction According to the plan the intelligent rebuilding happens harmoniously in the slow process of dying and rebuilding We have arrived in the world in full sunlight and then Number 21 is true triumph over the world, because we are seeing it from the point of view of the Soul This is why we are working with the Evangelists (Matthew Mark, Luke and John), who represent the good news that love/wisdom is the true life for mankind The purity of the Soul is in place It is important not to profit from the simplicity of the mass consciousness by feeding it what it thinks it wants The initiate’s role is to spark the inner revelation of the higher destiny of mankind in his brother’s inner eye The offer is often ignored, as the initiate is hardly ever demonstrating a life style that appeals to the average human being What is being passed on is only viable when it is manifested through an instrument that has understood, digested and released the essential The fundamental principle of Active Intelligence is the essential key for the light of Spirit to release the wisdom If we look at everyday life, there are people who make the bread for us and others who invent a better wheel There’s a school of Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK510 510 9/9/09 1:21:26 PM THE FOOL 511 thought that says that we should all be making our own bread, making our own medicine etc, but the specialisation of skills has taught us to share In the everyday life there is definitely a group understanding of trying to make everybody responsible by giving back something to the group With the inner life, where we are not dealing with the physical, we cannot eat somebody else’s ‘bread’, we have to recognise which type of bread we want, through somebody else’s point of view and then make up our own bread; manna from Heaven can only be given out with our own recipe There is no running away from such responsibility, for how much more responsible can we get than knowing that we are nothing and yet part of the salvation? We know that this is a mind-set, but we cannot use this as an excuse to drop the work if we find it too overwhelming, for we know we would break the gold and silver rays of aspiration and inspiration, which have been the hallmark of humanity from the beginning of time No words, symbols, ceremony and nothing from any physical/ mental discipline, can deliver the high state of wisdom It is achieved by giving up to an inner process of truth and forgetting ourselves The one who goes in refuses facility and servitude It is about going beyond the guru, beyond our own desire for initiation and refusing the comfort of dogma with all the strength of a heretic Being on the path is a heresy, because we go against everything that has been tried and tested We are a heretic when we have made a choice to move out of the common understanding of every wide-spread religion, when we go beyond our god The Fool is unfrocked and has no shame; this is because he is completely at ease with the process of life in matter He is at one with everything When we are looking at a nice landscape or tree and we have emptied ourselves, we feel the tree and field in us and merge with it; by going through this process we understand the oneness of life We know and understand that it is the one life manifesting in many forms and with many qualities of expression There is no way we can want anything for ourselves if we have experienced life energetically in us It is the most natural way; it is the realisation that with our minds we are in everything and everything is in us Naturally and automatically with no intellectual gymnastics, we are going to co-operate and share and not take If we are mischievous we will take, because we haven’t perceived and felt that oneness in us The true birth of awareness and recognition of the oneness of life Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK511 511 9/9/09 1:21:26 PM 512 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS is in the intelligence of the Soul of mind In that state we go beyond the veil and we are one with the veil There is only one goal and that is to merge and be one with the greater life of the God we live in We only find the goal when we have given up the search for it Once we have merged then we understand that we not know the God we live in; we can only sense the greater life in us and around us If we think we know it, we have gone back into the laboratory and are using God as a science, which means it isn’t God; we are studying, but it is illusory manifestation We cannot study the mind, the intent, the purpose of the greater life; we can only give our will to it It has to stay unknown; we cannot ‘man-size’ God The superhuman, man-made god is in our image and we strive to understand his powers for our own sakes, which is missing the point of where we fit in the Universe We have to drop ourselves and stop thinking that way The God we live in is that unknown that we serve, as we merge and dissolve into the next experience There is no end to that fusion of man and God, it is an act of love and a giving up of one’s certitudes; this is the beautiful process of alchemy Eventually we will fuse completely and experience God moving through us without acknowledging it, because it is a natural process There are so many ways of fusing our being with something greater Describing that disappearance of self when we are at one with the world is only one aspect of it When the world disappears in us and we disappear in the world, then we are that elusive thing, the higher mind; this is what we are here to on behalf of the greater God We have fused essence and appearance, so that the two become one Our mind has gone out of time and space and merged with the greater karmic purpose of the lord of the planet If we are still looking for an answer or a repeat, we are back in our intellects, trying to explain something which is impossible to explain or know, for the real experience is always spontaneous and we disappear into it Wanting to know the process of self-realisation is a valuable thing, but we really start the process when we stop checking the steps and ticking the boxes This is not knowing God or becoming God; it is serving life and fusing with its purpose To align with the greater life we live in, is the only way we can reach the cosmic divinity Beware, this must not be a want, need or a goal We are an essential instrument for the God we live in The unknown divinity cannot be reached by any sensual means or intellectual discipline There is absolutely no way but our own way and this is our own self-alignment to the greater life we live Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK512 512 9/9/09 1:21:27 PM THE FOOL 513 in Very few have achieved that completeness and oneness with the God we live in; we have to be humble to undertake this task When there is no shadow for the sun is clear, and no reflection for the water is no more then naught remains, but the one who stands with eyes directing life and form The threefold shadow now is one The three of self exists no more The Higher three descends and all the nine are one Await the time! Lucis Trust When the Active Intelligence principle in us recognises the higher will principle, through the love-wisdom principle in our hearts, then the strength of the human being is in wanting to love beyond the grave, beyond self and going even further, to know and be one with the thing we love That is our strength and the hope in nature is that the survival type of love will be transmuted into the sacrificial type of love This is the one thing we have in us, a stardust type of memory of infinity that we hope to pass on We know biologically we are all one body, one mind and one Soul, so if we don’t tackle a job in this life then others will take it on In any case the others are us; it is all the same thing That aspect of wanting to go back to the source of love enables us to go right back to the source of life itself, which is what we are here to The salmon is a symbol for an initiate, because the salmon goes back up to the source where it was born and at the top it spawns or releases its seeds and dies The young salmon then goes down to the experience, eventually going back up again in turn In the same way we hope beyond reason and that hope is kept alive by the one tradition of the Ancient Wisdom, with the many ways of exteriorising its teaching Hope is the refusal of nature to go through so many deaths in vain; the light of the mind was born as a refusal of anything that would hold back the human Spirit from going forward and back to its source The human Spirit is reborn as that great optimism, coming back again and again after having exhausted all the ways and means This is extreme physical endurance, via the emotional sacrifice of one’s life to the exaltation of one’s mind, through some hermetic, religious pursuit Everything has been exhausted and in the end we realise that we have to find our way alone We have been well strengthened as an instrument and well nourished by our beliefs We have made our base, but the digesting of the light and the nurturing of the seed to birth the flower of the Soul, can only be done by an inner process The Ancient Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK513 513 9/9/09 1:21:28 PM 514 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS Wisdom is the beamed light that gives its secrets through the marker stones of its symbols The only dance of life is that of the light The only conclusion to life is love; love and light can touch or guess the divine That type of love is madness Very few people can love to the point of madness, for this love requires complete giving of the self and everything that might feed self Many will give to love fully and many will end up lost, if they are holding onto the experience rather than go through and die to it through initiation It is called madness because we get lost again and again, but all the time there is that inner knowing that we are going towards the source of life We have love towards our own mind-sets and we have to be aware and know that there is a still a purer way to be; a more loving, wiser way to be, so as to be of service to the greater life It is madness in the sense that we have to keep losing ourselves; otherwise we might stop and imprison ourselves in whom we think we are It is losing ourselves by being transmuted, without the fear of being destroyed Eventually we abandon and forget ourselves into the supreme sacrifice In The Gospel of Thomas it is said ‘become yourselves, passing away’ Biology becomes mystic as we are aware that through Mary (the etheric web) our Active Intelligence principle is at one with the one God we live in We then see the very beginning of becoming systemic, as the Sun energy flows through our vehicle, reinforcing our role as aware witnesses for the light and using our skilled instruments It is a beautiful process of always being able to see what one has to give up, in order to reach a state of ‘self-less’ channel At this point we are coming up the river to reach the source of life The flower dies and gives its seeds; that is the way of nature By serving we die to our needs and the seeds are compassion and truth Putting forward a possibility or a probability is not the same as curiosity We look for answers in the power of symbolism and magic; we serve by helping ourselves through being the best health specialist or the wise guru, but at the end of the many lives in the day it is always the same; the answer and the way are within When we cultivate that strong inner certainty that comes from deep within the true self rather than from our appreciation of life, then we eventually understand that there is only one way; the inner way We don’t get answers at that level, we just get revelations and we have completely lost the personality, for it offers no resistance or opposition to the greater life which leads it There is no need at all for recognition from others, for the whole concept of the selves has vanished; ‘selfthis’ and ‘self-that’ has given up to the higher self of the Soul Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK514 514 9/9/09 1:21:28 PM THE FOOL 515 So far what we have called personality has been resistance The Fool is an entity that we can call personality if we want, but we must understand that he has no resistance and therefore has none of the characteristics of personality as we usually understand it The Fool has the type of personality that will really bother some people and certainly can cause reactions, because of too much willingness to give of self The instability he exteriorises, due to the giving up being almost complete, makes our initiate’s personality stronger than a personality might usually be, because it has no inhibition and no need for any appreciation of self It is humble, but not meek It is humble in the sense that it has no self-appreciation or self-care whatsoever, which of course is going to give him quite a difficult personality The last thing the guy wants is to be loved! This doesn’t mean that he can’t be loved; just that he doesn’t need it The renouncing of personality here is the removing of all the artificiality that we usually attach to personality; when we that there is no playing of games anymore In French, ‘Le Mat’ is an old word for the Fool, with the same root as ‘mad’ He has gone beyond freedom; freedom is normally only perceived as opposition to something bad or wrong that we want to get rid of However, it isn’t really this kind of freedom we are after, but rather a fusion with the higher consciousness; this is a complete obedience which has gone beyond freedom Because The Fool is outside of the principle of freedom, there are no more mistakes he can make and he’s not afraid of falling He doesn’t look at anything as good or bad, rather everything is an unfolding of the human condition The only way forward is to the abyss and the only luggage is the simple truth We complicate life too much by wanting it to be how we think it should be When we think life should be a certain way, it means that we have incredible pride in us, so that we are trying to think for God; this is putting ourselves in the position of God rather than just allowing God through us Most people work all their lives just to accumulate the next material thing, which has absolutely no value to the real inner life We have made ourselves prisoners of the material world so people work for the next holiday, the next television, or the next car All the potential of human creativity is going into making our prison more comfortable That is what we work for; it is quite funny! if it were not so sad The Fool is a response to The Magician, for he is the end of the search and he has used all the resources The alchemy has revealed the secret of matter with The Hermit The hermetic wisdom enables him to understand the symbolism and Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK515 515 9/9/09 1:21:29 PM 516 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS destination of the world in The High Priestess He has been put in touch with the superior realm by The Pope With the help of ancient traditions he has gone though several degrees of wisdom and so found himself All these are only tools to help us, they are not a way by which to achieve the goal It is exactly like any physical or mental exercise; we find that nothing does it in the end apart from the inner work itself All the experiences of the initiate have helped him to rise above the rational and therefore above the explanations of the intellect The experiences on the wheel of life have done it; all the other things are only ways or systems that man goes though When the Ancient Wisdom is completely absorbed, man can stand on it, this means he knows how to reveal it from within himself, so he becomes the diamond from which dreams and hopes radiate He has a profound knowledge of life as a human being, which is a study in intimate reality rather than illusion Through meditation and Ancient Wisdom, he has been able to rise and reach his own door of entry into the temple We always have to remember that what we are looking at is only a symbol Symbols can only be understood according to the point of view of the one looking at them; this view is dependant on how their level of consciousness is developing at the time So if we are still centred on curiosity of mind, we will look at the world as a field or a place where we can go and experiences On the other hand, if we have strongly internalised, it will be easier for us to use what we are looking at as a sounding board, to tell us which aspect in us is still not aligned It is necessary to overtake the intellect This is not negating it, but using it to supersede a sense of self importance We must acquire a certainty beyond augmentation or apotheosis so as to go for our inner light These are the depths where we find the lost word that gives us a sense of the destiny that we want to merge with; this is the goal It is beyond dialectics, beyond everything “Know yourself and you will know the worlds”, means to know that we are composed of mind, personality and Soul; then we can understand how all our reactions work and how we ‘become’ We might not be able actually to describe this alchemy, but we would know about it, having gone through it and we will know the worlds, because what happens to us is just the same as what happens between the movement of Spirit and the manifestation of systems all over the Universe The sentence goes on ‘know yourself and you will know the worlds and the Gods’ ‘The Gods’ refers to the elemental gods and is about seeing how it all Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK516 516 9/9/09 1:21:29 PM THE FOOL 517 works, according to the movement of the greater life This is about abandoning our role and carrying on with only a few truths This is the only card where there is a cat The cat family is relevant when we are talking of initiation In the card it is a lynx, because they used to be in Europe When we think of the cat family, we think of the lunar lord side of Active Intelligence, rather than Mary and her white veil The lynx represents the old great grandmother who is not going to let go of her crown; she is under the charge of the lunar lord In dreams cats can represent heavy sadness and selfpity; this is the drama that we might still have in our hearts and minds, that wants to hold us back by continuing to play itself out This is what the lynx represents here, so it is madly angry that it is not going to be able to play the drama any more and have control This lunar lord had complete control before the intellect turned itself towards the Sun It was having a great time and then suddenly The Fool put himself through all types of weird and wonderful things, pulling away from that control In the card we can see that the Fool is walking in spite of probably having a few pains, because he is not bothered by them He is not going to look back at the pains, for he knows that they are on the way out This symbol could also depict a false initiate who has taken the wrong path, lost his way and not found the narrow door because of his pride Going through the narrow door is about not joining the crowd and doing it like everybody else, but staying true to what we are doing and sticking to the path we have found, when everybody else is making names for themselves and seeking recognition The false initiate wanted to acquire psychic, supernormal powers by all types of outer ways, rather than through the inner way These outer ways could be incantation, magic and mental exercises, all of which are an exterior use of power The false initiate in the profane world is attacking those who have been able to stay on the path of their inner truth, because he can see that they have been able to acquire that innocent truth They represent for him his own culpability and condemnation The presence of the true initiate would represent a huge threat to the false initiate, so straight away the latter will try to disrupt There is a normally a counter-current that tries to destroy the forward movement of people who seek truth; this current is the bitterness represented by the lynx It is the same idea as when people project things onto us that we know are theirs; if we take those personally we play the game, so showing to ourselves that we still have a problem with some type of self-belief Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK517 517 9/9/09 1:21:30 PM 518 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS In the card an obelisk has fallen to the ground just in front of the abyss Next to the obelisk is a crocodile For the Egyptians the obelisk was a petrified, crystallised Sun-ray, in the form of a stone, which represents the transmission of truth and knowledge to the material world It is petrified; therefore it is always to with a type of dogma, religion, or crystallisation of a good idea that has helped mankind through the ages All the traditions are crystallised or petrified aspects of the rays of the Sun and according to what we do, going through them reminds us of what we are and of the quality that we are looking for We can drop that particular obelisk and go to the next one; that is how we go from one tradition to the next It has a great spiritual symbolism, but has become useless for the initiate, for he knows it is not that type of knowledge he needs It has served him in the past, so he is not going to negate it and tell people, “Don’t go for it”, but when people are ready he will be able to say, “Okay, that is good, but don’t stay there too long”, because we all have a tendency to keep on using something that works What he was using before is now useless for him, so it is pulled down In The Tower all the systems have fallen away and then in The Fool we have the little crocodile rising The crocodile was used as an ancient symbol of power in Egypt and in the Book of Job In Egypt it represented Ra the Sun God, coming out of the water and opening his eyes for the new dawn In the hieroglyphic script the eyes of the crocodile represent the dawn, so he’s a symbol for the sun, light, self-awareness and man coming out of the animal kingdom The new life and the new dawn are from now on going to be sacred and that makes all the difference to the way we perceive life We can decide that from now on we are starting afresh, looking at life as this sacred new dawn This can happen because we have recognised that the Soul is sacred, the Sun is sacred, absolutely everything is sacred, even the profane world, because it has the seed of sacredness within it; then whatever happens to us next really doesn’t matter because it is all sacred The obelisk signifies the descent of Spirit into matter, the involution, or the process of going in, through the long search to find out our own truth Then suddenly we rise up into the new consciousness with the crocodile One is symbolism and is dead like the obelisk; the other is life It is a new life in the true life; it is a real accomplishment of a spiritual destiny So the obelisk is material or crystallised matter and the crocodile is the life energy Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK518 518 9/9/09 1:21:31 PM THE FOOL 519 The abyss is the infinity, the sacred unknown The Fool is walking out of the old world of form, intellect and even high reason and then he overtakes the world of manifestation to precipitate himself into the absolute He plunges over the edge, not to acquire a superior science, power, or superhuman strength; it is more humble and simple than that He doesn’t go in there just to try his courage or to put himself though a trial, or to enjoy knowledge He deliberately goes in to disappear, because he knows it is his destiny and because he has realised that the destiny of mankind depends on the willingness of The Fool to fall He’s like the hero in a western, walking into the sunset by himself, saying “Lets go further and bring more justice” He is mankind and his dreams The tulip at his feet says he’s an initiate The flower has a drooping head, for its life is As Jesus said at the end “All is consumed” and the mission is accomplished The initiate has lived amongst men; he has lived their lives; he has walked with them and though he has been unnoticed, he has radiated the purity of his heart and mind He was like a dove amongst wolves and he was unhurt, because he was not afraid of them He has been for some a help, for others a trial and for himself a question, but in all these circumstances he has kept in him the inner illumination of ‘esperance’ and certainty about the destiny of mankind He is a being of consciousness, a witness He has been sharing his humanity with others without an ounce of self-interest He goes into infinity and all is consumed and accomplished, because he has understood He has not suffered his destiny; rather he has uplifted it which is quite different, so he can fall towards the source of life If he is crushed and overwhelmed by destiny, sometimes it is because he cannot or does not want to understand at the time, preferring to play the drama Sometimes the questions are not true questions, but only anger and revolt If we are touched by the plight of humanity and feel the hurt and abuse we inflict on each other and on every living thing on the planet, we are still refusing the process of the system we live in We know the solution is simple, ‘communicate’ rather than fight Share and help to apply goodwill to every problem, respecting all lives as sacred However, this can only be applied from within outwards, so we cannot oblige or force anyone to adhere to it unless they have worked it out by themselves We have to stop our own drama of wanting life as we know it should be, for this is still a form of self harm and rebellion The keynote to this card is that the kingdom here on Earth is overseen and ruled by the light that enthrones the higher will Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK519 519 9/9/09 1:21:31 PM 520 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS We are not here to perfect our will, we are here to align our will to the higher will, until the two merge All the time we think we have to perfect something while we are here, we are a bit too self-centred and still doing it for self As man aligns his will to the higher will he can achieve a clearer vision, a deeper wisdom Beware of spiritual pride, for the force that flows through us will destroy us if we seek it for our own power! Happiness or peace of mind is the fruit of the science of bad and good God doesn’t allow that fruit to be picked, unless man is sufficiently a master of himself and is able to come near it without coveting it, so we can’t get near that tree until we are ready We are ready when we not want the knowledge any more! It comes back to the four words ‘to want without desire’, which is ‘want’ being willcentred rather than need-centred Desire is necessary to start out with, for when the will awakes the desire to go forward, this actually puts the will into action We know that the will always pushes us to what we want, so the best thing is to stop wanting and then the will pushes us to where the world wants us to be, which is quite different All the time our desire side is active the will follows it The idea is to get the will out of where it was trapped in desire; then it moves according to where it should be for the greater plan The only thing that helps us overcome desire is understanding If we truly understand that we are here for an experience, in order to bring back wisdom and to transmute misunderstandings, then we are not going to actually be taken in by how good the wine tastes, how nice the colour of the wall is, or how important a person we might be! Understanding our place in the plan has to be the key The initiate has risen above the present life (the one we live from the point of view of personality) so when receiving anyone coming to him for help, his whole being is transfused with the light, which means that anything he does is done on behalf of humanity, no longer for himself It is not to with the little private life or private joy; it is much more metaphysical and is not the sensory type of joy The complete human is present in us and when that complete human (the Soul) is touched, we suddenly feel at one with everything, because we have gone through the whole of experience so far, right back to the beginning of time We are at one with everything and we are with and in real life This is meeting with the uncreated essence, which is the ultimate goal of the entire creation, for creation wants to meet itself Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK520 520 9/9/09 1:21:32 PM THE FOOL 521 So it is our glorious 1-2-3, precipitating into the glorious 4, then internalising in the 5, radiating in the 6, going forward in the to be reborn again, then definitely reaching the point of inner truth to be able to apply it This is the process of becoming more human When we are in the wheel of life we align with the force of God, where we completely give up power so as to only live the essential The rise in consciousness can help us refine our instrument and make the right choice, so that we can go beyond all the fabricated or artificial knowledge so far We become humble, pure and clear and accept the loneliness of the path We have the full Sun of the Soul radiating, so that the world doesn’t attract us any more We have dominion over the world without domination, we can tread the path that has been trodden before by those who know the destiny of humanity We can that in a day, if our many lives each become a breath, with its life and death cycle in the greater of cycle of the greater day We become three-fold in one and then there is only the travelling in time and space and it is all anyway What a dream, no wonder we wake up tired! The journey of the Fool has come full circle, so it can only go further by uplifting into a spiral Thus the potential of the circle becomes the energy that propels the Soul upward or downward towards the next completion of a circle; circles represent the completed experienced levels of the conscious mind working in a specific sphere of consciousness His jacket is the jacket of the court jester Its colours represent purity, aspiration, crystallised sunshine and passion, with the gold of wisdom; it is all there We have the green of life as crystallised sunshine for sacrifice The top part of his hat is red, because the highest level in the great work is ruby red The right-hand sleeve that represents action is coloured the blue and white of purity, to show that his passion is inspired by purity His trousers are yellow like the obelisk; they represent the wisdom belonging to all the traditions, which have to be ‘unfrocked’ and fall down All of that is the lower aspect and so is below his belt, being representative of what the intellect and personality would have used His neck is scaled like the snake, or crocodile of wisdom He holds his bag with a staff held in his left hand that goes over his right shoulder; this speaks of action held by the heart The staff or wand now symbolises force rather than power and it holds that little bag of universal truth very loosely The strange way that the baton crosses his shoulders, shows us that he is not free and is not after freedom Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK521 521 9/9/09 1:21:32 PM 522 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS His hat is not shown entirely, as we cannot depict higher universal consciousness It rests fully on his head as a great cup of receptivity, for his intellect has given up to its master; the higher mind of the Soul It connects directly with the throat, which is the centre of higher creativity for humanity This is the matrix that can receive and transmit the cosmic light, for the benefit of the ‘becoming’ of the kingdom of Souls The grotesque face of The Fool tells us that he has had to let go of wanting anything else but a consciousness that comes out of nature and serves God, so he’s not going to have a pretty face that says “I am an angel” rather his face tells us “I don’t look like anything, I don’t need to prove anything, I am even quite happy to look stupid” He does look stupid in the way he thinks and behaves; this demonstrates the achievement of Active Intelligence at the service of the life of the Spirit It is actually nature walking towards her God and her God recognising his progeny as himself, through the love aspect The top of the bag looks a bit like a rose, which could represent the ultimate sacrifice of carrying the love and truth; it is like having our heart on our shoulder He is offering up his heart so as to reach out to the truth quickly The staff of The Magician has become a blue rod, to show that it is not power, but force and love, for he has given his direction and his will to something that is outside himself He is not standing straight and proud, for there is no doubt that he has given his will up to the fiery will of God His heart and his will are not his any more; his will is the will of God and he carries on His eyes look dazzled as if he’s had one or two drinks too many, for he is drunk with the Spirit in him This is far stronger than any spirit he could drink! There is no way he is afraid of death, so that makes him completely vulnerable; he is just going for the next thing with his whole being Because the yellow of his long-johns represents some mental/spiritual discipline, which he rested on as certainty The lynx pulling them down is helping him to renounce and let go of the mindsets and traditions that he has learnt, so as to go beyond them We have to keep retranslating the traditions, otherwise we get stuck The main stream of people who have not got the insight to take more responsibility Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK522 522 9/9/09 1:21:33 PM THE FOOL 523 with their belief systems, want the traditional interpretation intact and so want to hold back the initiate and destroy him The power of the collective consciousness is very strong, much stronger than we can imagine The collective egregore of the ones who have built society is very powerful and difficult to break through The Fool is not what he looks like or does He would be stupid if he tried to save the world, anybody, or anything else for that matter The noise of our greedy civilisation and the dark cries of the ones who want to destroy it, cover the voice and light of our initiate He will not waste the force by finding ways to put the world to rights He lets the energy of love and light in him direct his life in the market place, as a jester of the greater king he serves – the God we live in Step by step, dance by dance, each man moves with the song of Spirit in his heart as he becomes a Fool of God, bringing closer the promise of peace on Earth The prophesy of the coming of a saviour for mankind comes true every time a Soul of man walks towards its full realisation The Ancient Wisdom has held the knowledge of this secret journey alive, so that in time it could simply be revealed through the life of the realised Soul, Jesus Christ The revelation of the kingdom of the one Soul of humanity rests in the lighted temple of every man’s heart Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK523 523 9/9/09 1:21:34 PM Agerter-Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK524 524 9/9/09 1:21:34 PM [...]... Agerter -Spirit of the Tarot_ BOOKxviii xviii 9/9/09 1:15:05 PM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book was developed from a series of talks given by Claudine Aegerter to the Connaissance School of Numerology over a period of 2 years The aim of the talks was to bring out the hidden light or Spirit behind the ancient system of symbols known as The Tarot – hence the name The Spirit of the Tarot The idea of making the. .. has all the elements of the Earth to use and he sees the whole of humanity reflected in him; by this means he can recognise what is real or illusionary within him This is the work and the journey has begun 1 Agerter -Spirit of the Tarot_ BOOK1 1 9/9/09 1:15:07 PM 2 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS The Magician is the beginning of the pack, The Fool is the end and in between these two, the. .. hell are open and the passion is there, ready to deliver action, devotion and sacrifice out of chaos The passion of searching for the truth is the most dangerous passion there is, for it has to do with the slaying of an aspect of the personality, such as the glamour of being best loved of the emotional body, or the pride of the intellect We can hold on to the idea that we are the gift, rather than understanding... Agerter -Spirit of the Tarot_ BOOK13 13 9/9/09 1:15:18 PM 14 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS the primordial union, when the Spirit came into the great womb of the Solar System; this is the evolution that we are re-enacting inwardly With the sword we are doing magic, for it is used to draw a circle of protection around The Magician If we look at the handle it is in the shape of a gold cross The. .. SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS Each card in the Major Arcana represents part of a whole, so in order to understand the place our Magician holds, looking at some of the other cards is helpful The first three cards, The Magician, The High Priestess and The Empress, represent the three major aspects of the unity of the God we live in, so in these three we see a depiction of the divine Trinity... matter, we feel the mass and the heaviness of Agerter -Spirit of the Tarot_ BOOK9 9 9/9/09 1:15:15 PM 10 THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS it; we all recognise that feeling From coal to diamond, we have to experience life on the earth as heavy, dark and oppressive, so as to associate with the suffering of humanity Every time we go through an up-lift, we release the weight of what we’re leaving... transmute Spirit has no other goal but the fusion with matter in order to release it from its unconscious state The cup on the table reminds us of the Grail cup, as well as all the other beautiful cups of initiation It is full of red blood It is a silver cup with a hexagonal stem, so its six sides tell us of the creation of all things, for it rises out of the Star of David as the perfect cup of nature... book about using the Tarot as a method of prediction, but rather as a guide through which we can look at the state of our awareness of the world as it is today It offers a new perspective on the traumas and crises that face us This new perception comes from the point of view of Soul Each of the twenty-two chapters is based on a different card in the Major Arcana, presented and explored in the numerical... different spiritual traditions, such as Astrology, Tarot and the Kabala As the energy of Spirit moves through time and space, the blueprint can transform the divine intent into manifestation, so that matter and form can mirror back to the God we live in, an appreciation of the unfolding of his intent So the Spirit comes down, still holding the beautiful and pure ideas of the blueprint and the concept,... spiritual will of the Soul and the realised Soul emerges; we call this the Christ The following defines the Christ realised Soul:– ‘Christ is the light of the world, the embodiment of love and the indicator of divine purpose He is the source of all light and energy which flood throughout the world of human consciousness at this period in the annual cycle The Christ of history and the Christ in the human .. .THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT Agerter -Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKi i 9/9/09 1:14:50 PM Agerter -Spirit of the Tarot_BOOKii ii 9/9/09 1:14:52 PM THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT Numbers as Initiators of the Major. .. work and the journey has begun Agerter -Spirit of the Tarot_BOOK1 9/9/09 1:15:07 PM THE SPIRIT OF THE TAROT: NUMBERS AS INITIATORS The Magician is the beginning of the pack, The Fool is the end... sacrifice out of chaos The passion of searching for the truth is the most dangerous passion there is, for it has to with the slaying of an aspect of the personality, such as the glamour of being best