History – Page 3 – A Sacred Life

May 3, 2023May 3, 2023

Keeper of the Keys

The sixth card which is numbered V, has one of the most overtly Christian iconographies in a set of cards that has a lot of them. This card was originally the Pope. It is named that in European decks that precede the RWS, and despite Waite’s changing the name to a more exotic Greek one, the design preserves both the traditional image, and amplifies it in that same Gothic Medieval style. The Hierophant may just as well be taken from a stained glass window in a cathedral, as it offers us little in the visual sense to merit divorcing it from its original Catholic nominative.

That image is one of the King of the Church, with his three crowns, on his throne, in full raiment, holding a triple cross in his left hand and making the sign of blessing with his right. The high-back throne is situated between two Norman style pillars on a raised dais, covered with an embroidered red carpet. Affixed to the front of the dais are a pair of crossed keys, traditional part of the Papal arms. To either side are tonsured supplicants. The one on the left wears a robe decorated with roses, the other with lilies. The dominant color on this card is grey, forming the background, the throne, and the columns. The priest of the rose has a grey robe, the one of the lily is a grey blue. Both priest have yellow vestments. The Hierophant himself is draped in red with white trim, and the bottom of his robe is blue. These are traditional colors associated with Christian depictions of Christ and the Virgin in Renaissance art.

Hierophant_RWS_Tarot — “Ladies and gentlemen, HIs Holiness, the Pope”

When I got my Hoi Polloi Tarot in the early 1970s, I admit to feeling cheated that what I expected were going to be “occult” cards had such obvious Christian images, and this one was perhaps the most “offensive” to my young sensibilities. I was not, at this point, educated on the entanglement between magic and occult practices and the traditions of the Abrahamic religions. Now, of course, we should all be at least acquainted with the influence that monotheistic orthodoxy has had on so-called “pagan belief”.

We live in an age where the perceived taint of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is very hard to remove from our ritual and belief. Reconstruction of pagan or pre-Christian belief in the late 19th and early 20th century was hardly scientifically approached. The Victorian magic lodges were actively calling on angels and powers in the secret name of the old Hebrew sky god, and that with many of the liturgies and rituals of the Church. “Folk” pagan movements borrowed from stories that had clearly been altered by centuries of enforced Catholicism, and synthesized based on rejecting or inverting the Christian teachings.

I personally think that much of that early monotheism itself has been redacted and retro-actively continued to match more modern perspectives, as well. Certainly Judaism offers us Kabbalah and a rich magical tradition in parallel with the sacred and practical teachings of the Torah and Talmud. First century Christianity contains more things that were deemed heretical, blasphemous, and even satanic than what eventually made it into the dogma, and early Islam has a similar history of dissent, disagreement, and disinformation.

The result is that what has passed down to us today is not clear, not original, and not perhaps accurate. When we step on the path of working with the secrets of the universe, we should be aware that some of those secrets are just plain lies.

The word Hierophant per the dictionary is most generally rendered “priest of the mysteries of the religion”. He is the arbiter between the mundane world that all may observe, experience and understand, and the world of sacred and divine that only the initiated may experience. He echoes both the Priestess and The Emperor in his pose and his situation.

Whereas the Priestess offers us the means to bridge the ideation of opposites, and the Emperor forces us to encounter the “I”, the Hierophant provides specific methods of instruction. These are the keys at his feet.

In the Christian iconography, and the Papal arms, these keys are the ones given by Christ to Simon Peter that open the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven. Peter is probably not actually his name, but derives from the Greek “petra” or stone. Peter is the disciple, who despite several issues detailed in the gospels, Jesus calls the “Rock on which I will build my church”. As Peter is officially the first Pope, this description is rather fortuitous.

The keys were conferred to Peter in the same passage (Matthew 16:17 if you’re interested) along with the curious authority of being able to cause things that he bound upon the earth to be bound in heaven and that he loosed upon the earth to be loosed in heaven.

FourHierophants — If you find yourself as put off by the depiction of a Christian pontiff as I sometimes do, there are several other decks that give us broader interpretations of the Keeper of Secrets. Clockwise from top left,

*The Shadowscapes Tarot* -Stephanie Law’s lyrical watercolor work presents a being related to Treebeard himself, and more at harmony with the mysteries of the natural world than a cultist in a cathedral.

*The Tarot of the Hidden Realm* – This deck is very Celtic/Faerie oriented and the illustration here by artist Julia Jeffrey of a personable druid is certainly more approachable.

On a different tack, Norbert Losche’s *Cosmic Tarot* combines what at first appear to be traditional religions with symbolism from occult and Oriental sources to hint that perhaps what is behind the temple doors is bigger than any one path.

Finally the *WildWood Tarot* shows us something called The Ancestor. This very Celtic/Shamanic deck presents a number of the traditional cards under new names and vastly alters their interpretation. In the shamanism of the Celts, the spirits of the ancestors have the authority to pass us through the mysteries. The artist is Will Worthington.

This sounds very much like the “As Above, So Below” of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes the Thrice Great, which may have been well known to the Greeks and Romans at the time the Book of Matthew was being compiled, possibly around 60-70 years after the events they were describing. Now that, of course, is the earliest version, and as noted above, many edits may have been made between then and later doctrines. These early Greek texts are supposedly the original source material, but given the history of religious thought that we have from modern times, it’s impossible to say with certainty that they represent an actual historical account, and have not, themselves, been “corrected” even at that early stage.

The Hermetic documents end up in Western European circles by way of Islam. These were perhaps preserved among other documents from the Library of Alexandria because they were not directly heretical to Islam whereas Christian authorities might have destroyed or suppressed them. While most public schools teach of the burning of that library by the Romans during Caesar’s time in Egypt, fewer mention that succeeding intentional purges were committed by both Christians and Moslems in later periods that resulted in many things being lost to humanity forever. Yet copies that had been made by Jews and Moslems at earlier times survived, and re-emerged as the vice grip of the Catholic church started slipping in the 15th century.

So perhaps the secrets being kept by the Hierophant are not those the Papacy and the mysteries of the Church, but of a secret Hermetic magical tradition. Perhaps Peter’s keys were an esoteric expression of the elevation of all humanity through the transformations of the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life. The powers ascribed to these long-sought solutions are eternal health, eternal youth, and eternal life, not so far from the immortality promised in the kingdom of Heaven. Whether or not Medieval alchemy was a confusion from a Papal esotericism, or if it was the other way around, is hard to tell, but it is one way we can break ourselves from of that initial reaction that we are looking at a Catholic pontiff.

We can also disconnect the red robe from the Holy Blood and recast it as the Elixir of Life. The blue of the robes beneath the Hierophant’s mantle can connect us to the Water Element, and the distillation or “liquefaction” of the process where the elements dissolve into “water” before reforming into the Philosopher’s Stone. We can assign the tripartite crown and triple cross to Hermes Trismegestus – The Thrice Great, and the entire scene magically dissolves into a pre-Christian pagan symbol for the pursuit of the Alchemical Ideal, the Great Hidden Secret of The Universe

As Above, So Below.

This ties well into my own perspective on the first six cards of the Major Arcana, and their interrelationship. The Hierophant sits at the bottom point of the “Below” triangle. He is that reflection and manifestation of the wild naked formlessness of the Fool. The Fool is the Universe as it is, as it is Becoming. The Hierophant is the Universe as it must be masked, to prevent us from being dissolved back into it. The secrets kept are wonderful and terrible, and cannot be experienced all at once. They must be meted out, building one upon another, so that the foundation is solid and the structure sound.

The building we find the Hierophant in may appear heavy and close, but it is certainly sturdy. The Romanesque style of columns used here don’t allow for wide spans and open spaces. The churches of this period were typically lit by only a few small windows, and candles or torches. Consequently, the surface decorations in most of them were evolved from Roman mosaic, using gold or other metal foils underneath the glass of the tessare, in order to achieve a shimmering and otherworldly sensation for the viewer.

This reflected upon the emphasis that the early church put on the Inward Life- the focus of the Soul, rather than on external material comforts. While one can argue that this is an effective method of maintaining social control during the privations of the post-Imperial days of Europe, it also has a good deal in common with many of the spiritual movements that have come up recently in response to an ineffectual and worldly orthodoxy.

This card most often reminds me of the mosaic of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian from that period. The mosaic in the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy establishes the Emperor as the central authority between the Church and the on one side and the civil and military authorities on the other. It echoes an adjacent mage where Christ is shown between the orders of the angels. This early depiction, even though Justinian is a Christian emperor with a sitting Pope, gives one an indication of the mindset of the authorities during the time of the early church. Justinian commissioned this piece around the mid 500s, or a little over 150 years after the Nicean Crede formalized Christianity in the Roman Empire.

This is always one of the problems I have with the Hierophant card. While it purports to be giving us access to a secret teaching, that access involves a hierarchy (derived from the same root word) which implies that some individuals are intrinsically better than others, and that the goal of learning the secrets is to move up to the next level. The word hierarchy was originally used to denote the orders of the Angels (the Hidden Order) but was then adapted to refer to the levels of the officials of the Church (sin of pride anyone?) , before it came to mean any stratified group with upper members having authority over the lower ranks.

I have mentioned in earlier articles that I am by nature a non-joiner. There’s something ingrained in my personality that naturally rejects the idea of hierarchy. Whether the Hierophant is keeping the keys of Heaven or the secrets of the coven makes no matter to me. While I understand (and have expressed) that there may be a need to meter information in order to safeguard the person seeking it, I have that basic desire to kick open the gates.

I see a great deal of discussion in the online occult communities about the concept of the “Gatekeeper”. The term is almost universally seen as bad, generally applied to a selfish, and perhaps self-serving, individual that responds to aspirant seekers with vitriol and insult. Yet I imagine that some persons being labeled as gatekeepers are, in fact, trying to teach, and possibly to warn and protect, the neophyte who may be leaping onto the path without proper awareness of what they are doing. Some of these people are members of organized hierarchical orders, and some are wild witches. In either case, the perception of the community seems overwhelmingly negative toward anyone who might suggest that there is some need for “rules”.

Okay, so let’s talk about making cookies.

If I have never made cookies, I can just decide that cookies are made with flour and sugar and butter and milk and put them all in a big bowl and mix it up and bake it and get cookies.

That’s assuming I have a general idea that are made of flour and sugar and butter and milk and not from crushed brown chalk and library paste (I’m going for Oreos here, obviously).

crayon-cocoa — One of my favorite comic strips from childhood, from a series that was far deeper than many kids and adults really perceived.

It’s important to remember that we are all born knowing nothing, and what we end up knowing is a direct consequence of what we encounter up to that point. If you’ve never tasted chicken, having someone tell you that alligator tastes like chicken is hardly useful.

The grandeur of our age is that all the information that has been collected and preserved up to this point in time is at our fingertips.

The great folly of our age is the assumption that having some small view of a tiny piece of that is sufficient to make one an authority over anyone else who may be looking at a different piece.

One cannot presume that we are even speaking the same language, let alone that we are all at the same point on the same path, and have come from the same direction. It is arrogant and cruel to judge anyone’s perspective based on our own, even if we believe we are helping that person avoid something that befell us. We should be generous when our opinion is sought, but in all cases, we should end the dialog with “that’s just my opinion”.

Of course, that is just my opinion.

Now, I think many of us will acknowledge that neither of these are going to give us tasty cookies. We are missing some fundamental understanding of how cookies are made.

Let’s take it a step further and suggest that we went and found a cook-book and took out the cookie-recipe of our choice. We sort of followed it, because we don’t really have any experience in how to measure ingredients, or prepare the pan, or check the doneness, and the cook-book assumes that we do.

Also bad cookies.

So I think most people in the room will start to see how there might be a need for the “gatekeeper” in certain circumstances. Someone to help us out getting things started and not burning our cookies, our fingers, or the house. The thing is that not everyone is particularly good at doing that, and not everyone is good at doing it for everyone who needs it. Good teachers are rare. Good teachers that can teach a variety of students are even rarer. And sadly, I think we have all of us at least once in our life experienced the “teacher” who, for whatever reason, just seemed to be focused on crushing any imagination or individual spirit the student had.

This is the reverse of the Hierophant that we encounter. It is that desire to so restrict interest and innovation to the point that it is creating mere parrots. Dogma is all that matters. There can be no questioning, that which is written is that which is written. To attempt to look beyond is forbidden. It is wrong.

Now as I equate that kind of rigid single-mindedness with the orthodoxy of established mainstream religions, the blatant imagery here of a Medieval Catholic Pope has always caused a bit of a twinge when reading with the RWS deck. I find that I have to consciously do a bit of mental alchemy to see that person as anything other than restrictive and oppressive, and I think that basic rebellion impacts the intuitiveness of any reading.

If I read based on my impressions, and the impression is off-putting, well, even if I tell myself “no…this means something else” I’m going to feel something is off. As readers we need to be aware of our bias when approaching the cards. I have my favorites (as you may have noticed) and I have those I would rather just not look at. And that will color how my senses respond to the cards as they are drawn.

In later years I’ve gotten a bit better at perhaps internally flashing a friendlier figure from one of my other decks that is not so overtly Judeo-Christian in many of the designs. But again, this deck is almost the de-facto Tarot for most people starting out, and it doesn’t divert from other older decks in this issue anyway. You have to go to decks from the later half of the 20th century to start seeing a visual expression that substantially deviates from this. Fortunately, there are a lot of them.

Next week I will endeavor to perform a similar exorcism with the seventh card, the Lovers, which rides straight at us out of the Book of Genesis, with only a minor detour through secular humanism and maybe a touch of Pre-Raphaelite romanticism. I hope you are finding these deep dives into the cards useful, or at least, stimulating to your own thoughts on the subject. Please join me again next week.

April 19, 2023April 18, 2023

Venus Enthroned

Before I leap into this week’s card completely, I want to mention a couple of points that didn’t make it into last week’s article, but are relevant to cover before going forward.

First, you may have noticed that I haven’t said anything about reverses, that is, the meanings I read when the card is drawn upside down. While these are considered traditional, not every historical source on Tarot has used them, so I think there’s probably a fair argument that “traditional” use is not absolute.

Thing is, several of the decks I own have a card back design that is clearly oriented to up or down, so when I read from those decks, I know whether the card I will draw is a reverse or not, before I draw it. To me, this seems a problem, it prejudices my opinion of what that card will mean even before I draw it. No, it ought not to, but in my own experience it does. Your mileage may vary.

But further, to get a reverse, one must intentionally shuffle the deck such that some cards are turned up and some down. The issue with that is that in a general randomization, you are going to get stacks of reverses coming together. Again, this may just be me, but I purposely re-sort my decks at the end of a reading, to the usual order that I use. From my years of using the cards, this is the Majors, then the Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles, all going from Ace to King. So because of this practice, a whole lot of shuffling is required to get reversed cards that occur individually. While it’s certainly not impossible, it’s just not as likely to get that outcome, and so I am back to having a lot of reversed cards in a row.

In many of the little books that come in the card box, reverses are dealt with as simple opposites. If the Two of Cups is interpreted as romantic love, then the reverse is read as a break-up or divorce looming. But the whole point I have been making is that the cards are to be intuitively read in context, and eyeing the reverse as a simple negation is hardly adequate. As astrologers will tell you about retrograde motion, the interpretation is that the usual meaning may be reduce, impeded, or frustrated, again, depending on context.

In going forward I will probably not spend any more time on reverse meanings than I have previously. I think the astute person who chooses to utilize some of my interpretations in their own exploration can glean what opposites or limitations should apply if these cards come up upside down in their reading. It may also be instructive to consider the earlier, less lofty meanings of the card images in that. It is possible and certainly applicable to perceive the previous three cards as an Idiot, a Con Man, and a Heretic if reversed, or ill-aspected by other cards in the reading.

My second point is to re-emphasize that I tend to regard the first three cards as representative of cerebral or spiritual natures, which may be described in terms of the “That Which Is Above” of Hermetic tradition. As we begin with the Empress card, we are entering into “That Which Is Below”. This is the world of the physical, the manifest, and the incarnate. These cards are both the way the non-corporeal natures of the “Above” show themselves in the perceived reality, and the reflection of those natures.

tarot-as-above-so-below — This arrangement can be a reading in itself, or it can be used as a prototype spread. The Fool, The Magician, and Priestess represent the “Above” of Hermetic teachings, that which is supernatural, divine, astral, etc. The Empress, Emperor, and Hierophant are their Counterparts in the physical world “Below”. If you take the essences of these cards, as they are positioned and opposed/reflected in this context, as signifiers, then cards drawn and placed on these positions can be read in those contexts. For example, the card in the Fool’s place represents new beginnings, first purposes, raw talent, unmoderated energy, etc.

In the years I have been working I have often used the cards to determine how I read the cards. That is, I might deal out a certain number, read those and then deal out again but use the first round to determine how the second round should be seen. This is not the same as the “clarification” where a card is drawn and the next card is drawn to amplify or elaborate. In this case, the meaning of the first card and its position are seen as the modifier to how the meaning of the second card is read. The first card’s meaning is a context, rather than a meaning to be further defined. I don’t know if anyone else has used this method. I am constantly exploring new ways to look at the cards.

I’d like to tell you that I have puzzled out how each successive set of three cards in the Major Arcana work in this interrelationship, but I confess that such a solution still eludes me, if it exists at all. There is a curious little mathematical trick in the Major Arcana, in that the numbers assigned to each card, when they are viewed in successive sets of three, are numerologically resolvable to the number 3.

That is:

The Fool 0 + The Magician 1 + The Priestess 2 = 3

And

The Empress 3 + The Emperor 4 + The Hierophant 5 = 12 and 1+2 =3.

Likewise

The Lovers 6 + The Chariot 7 + Strength 8 = 21 and 2+1 =3

And

The Hermit 9 + The Wheel 10 + Justice 11 = 30 and 3+0 = 3

From here on it continues, though it takes a few more steps

The Hanged Man 12 + Death 13 + Temperance 14 = 39 and 3 +9 =12 and 1+2 = 3

The same applies for the next three

The Devil 15 + The Tower 16 + The Star 17 = 48 > 12 >3

And the next

The Moon 18 + The Sun 19 + Judgment 20 = 57 > 12 > 3

And the final card is

The World 21 and 2+1 = 3.

It’s a nifty trick. I wish I could tell you that there is some hidden meaning here, but I continue to look for it. Beyond looking at the first two sets and their more or less obvious relationship, I can’t use this power of three to logically connect the meanings of the cards split thusly, aside from perhaps ascribing that the World, by itself, holds the same value as each set, and that is rather tidy. Yet my awareness of this strange little numerical quirk always crops up when I contemplate the cards, so perhaps there is something to it after all. I do not ascribe any secret and intentional message lost in the sands of time, but just that like all synchronicities and patterns, meanings may be derived.

This pattern, of course, exists separate from Tarot. If you take the numbers 0 through 21, and split them at every three steps, you get this outcome. It is just that it works exactly on the number of Major Arcana cards that I find rather intriguing. Again, it may have no more real relation than Levi tying the 22 Hebrew characters to these cards. But people use that system daily, so please feel free to adapt or ignore as you see fit.

Alright, enough to the sidebar, let’s get to this week’s card, The Empress.

Empress_RWS_Tarot — Smith has given us a sensual feast for the eyes with this card. There is much to explore beyond what I have written about. Foremost is that the openness of the card’s character invite us to go wandering in the woods behind her, an activity I always heartily endorse.

In the RWS deck she is show reclining on a couch in the middle of a field of wheat. Behind her is a stand of trees, which may be an orchard. A stream flows from it to pool just behind the dais her couch is upon. She wears a white robe with pomegranates on it, She is crowned with a tiara of six pointed stars, and holds aloft in her right hand a scepter topped with a large golden orb. Beside her couch, and possibly part of its carving is a tilted heart with the symbol for Venus upon it. The circular part of the symbol is filled with green. A variation of the Venus symbol is worked into a motif at the back of the couch (it may be intended as wicker work or filigree) and there are opulent cushions and throws upon it that she lays upon. The sky in this image is yellow, like that of the Magician card.

The yellow sky is also shared with the Fool card, and appears on four other cards in the Major Arcana. To the extent that these are intentional selections and not just the choices made by the printer from available inks is hard to say. Yet the spaces in each of the cards can be read as symbolic, and there is therefore no reason to ignore the color choice. If it was made by Ms. Smith or the printing house, is irrelevant. If intended, then we can say perhaps a meaning was intended. If coincidental, then we can, like the number sequence and indeed the random draw of the cards themselves, consider it a means of working into the inscrutable mystery being revealed by an unseen force.

In this instance, I make note of the connection of this color with the Magician card, in his rose garden. This is a cue to my earlier statement about reflection and manifestation. The Magician is reflected in the Empress. She is the avatar of Venus, Aphrodite, and Demeter. She is fertility and fecundity, bringing forth abundance and ripeness from the earth and all those things which live and grow upon it. It is she who is the physical representation of the Fool’s divine force, channeled through the Magician’s directed will.

For those more technically included, consider the photographic negative (you younger folks may have to go look that one up. As a photographer whose career and training began with these now “retro” tools, it is a logical and apt metaphor). It is opposite, and potentially unrecognizable. Yet when placed into the enlarger, and light projected through it onto the photopaper below, it yields an opposite and clear image. So I am comfortable applying the reflection/opposition principle here when I connect the Above to the Below. Additionally, we can view the Empress as the feminine aspects of the Magician. In a way, her sensuous nature completes and mollifies the severe and somewhat barren nature of the symbol of willful action.

This of course, does not limit her to being simply the worldly emanation of the will. That would disregard the value of the physical manifest existence. This is often a trap of the spiritual path. Many “seekers” have adopted the philosophy of self-denial, asceticism, and celibacy as the appropriate path to the divine. The whole argument that we must shed our attachment to the mortal world and its pleasures is a tenet of many religions and teachings.

Yet this begs the question as to what the purpose of a physical experience is in the first place. If the spiritual is the only truth, and rising to being solely spiritual is the aim of existence, why is there a physicality at all. If spirit exists before and after mortality, as many faiths teach, then why are we making a side trip. If we are divinity descended into flesh so that we can ascend back to the divine, this seems a futile waste of time.

The answer is usually a pat “because we must learn X” by being incarnated. I think that’s a bit too simplistic, and it also is often used as an excuse for all manner of evil and suffering in the world. We have to be hurt and abused because we must learn X. We make war and destruction on our fellow humans because someone must learn X. Your mother or your sister had to die of cancer because you must learn X. It’s all so you can return to the nature of pure spirit as –what — a better spirit? Were you a bit of a daft spirit before, and spending three score and ten repeatedly having your heart broken and stubbing your toe is going to fix all that?

I don’t buy that one. Sorry. Probably why I don’t fit in with most of the regular philosophical circles.

Now, I am not here to say that the Hedonist philosophy is the one true way either, but I think one of the big lessons we can get from the Empress card is that we are supposed to enjoy the experience of being incarnate. For every time we stub our toe, there’s all those times where we got to eat birthday cake.

Potentially a non-corporeal spirit can’t experience that luscious chocolate frosting, or at least not in the same way that a messy meat suit with taste buds can. For all the limitations and fragilities inherent in life in the meat suit, there are just some things that our ghost selves don’t enjoy in the same way. If this were not the actual case then it would not be so hard to give it all up.

The Hindu and Buddhist beliefs tell us that our spirits suffer because we cannot dissolve that longing for the physical. I say that our spirits naturally have a physical existence. It’s not a larval stage. It’s not preparing us for “the next life”. Our meatiness is part of our life. We may even cycle between being meat and not-meat throughout eternity.

Empress-triptych — A Triple Empress, if you will, and purposefully drawing on the Maiden-Mother-Crone architype. Three different artists give related, but not entirely similar treatments to the physical attributes of this card’s natural realm.

The leftmost from Stephanie Law’s Shadowscapes Tarot gives us all the joy and exuberance of Springtime with it’s potential for life and growth. Law cleverly paints it in the colors of autumn though, reminding us that these abundances are as mortal as our ability to enjoy them, and yet, they are part of a never ending cycle.

The middle piece I have drawn from Cirro Marchetti’s Legacy of the Divine deck. Here the Empress’s belly swells with the new life witihin, and she is attended by many emblems of fruitfulness and fertility. In one of my own attempts at this card, I also chose to depict the Empress with child, and yet still she is sensuous to us.

The final image is drawn from the Tarot of the Hidden Realm, which as you may guess from the title, is very Faery-forward. The artist is Julie Jeffrey, and has given us a copper-haired harvest queen the equal of Demeter or Ceres. The fruits of the Empress’s impressive garden are wasted if we do not pick them. That is their purpose and that is our purpose.

The Empress is the embrace of that physical world. She is warmth and sunshine on our face. She is the smell of the flowers in the field. She is the hum of the bees, and the chirping of the birds, and the babbling of the brook. She is the touch of a lover’s hand, the look in the lover’s eyes. While it may be true that when we return to the spirit form, we become one with that lover in a way that our bodies may not ever be able to, it is the delicate separation of those bodies, the appreciation of Other, that cannot be felt when the soul merges on a higher plane. That itself is worth something. That itself is why we physically incarnate.

While the emblem on the Empress’s couch (or throne, as it could be such in an Etrurian or Graeco-Roman style) is commonly that used astrologically for the planet Venus, and more modernly for the female, it is also an Egyptian Ankh. The ankh is supposed to have derived from the a stylization of a sandal strap, but it’s meaning is Life Itself. It is universally carried by the gods. It is showered down upon people in painting after painting. It is given by the gods to the deceased in the afterlife, so that they may enjoy an eternity of sensual pleasures in the Field of Reeds as the the Boat of Ra passes by. To me this further enforces the view of the Empress as that principle of Life Itself growing, renewing, and everlasting in the world around us.

Her spring brings forth life giving waters for the forests and fields. The wheat is perpetually golden, ripe and ready to harvest, there is no famine here. Yet this is not Eden. This garden she resides in is far more practical. It is the province of the Gatherer in our most ancient “Hunter-Gatherer” ecology. These plants growing in abundance are yet to be tamed and tilled in even rows. There is an antiquity here, almost as old as the caves, before the structure inherent in domestic horticulture caused her to fade into the background. She is here in the center of it all, to be marveled at, adored, and loved for all these gifts.

On her crown are twelve stars, and I think this is clearly the “stars” of the zodiac. The great gold orb on her scepter is the Sun, showing how it travels across these as the year passes. It is through this that all seasons, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter are realized in the physical world. In her garden there is something she does in each of them, to prepare for the next. She is not passing time, but the eternal cycle of life, the eternal promise of abundance, the never ending presence of manifestation. She is the embodiment of continuance.

Her left hand rests upon her knee, and we can see here the echo of the Magician’s stance, even to including the scepter. By this she fully claims her dominion of the physical world of the senses. She ordains what is to be through her will. We are subject to that will, we are dependent upon it, and therefore must pay obeisance to her. By contrast though, her manner is relaxed and open. She does not stand proudly by the Table of the Elements, but greets us languidly from her couch. She does not interpose herself in front of us in challenge, but invites us to come join her in this wonderful place she has built around her. The pomegranates are not an abstracted decoration on the banner behind her, but part of her personal garb. She bids us welcome, and insists that we should walk through her garden.

In this she is a stark contrast to the next card we will explore, that of the Emperor. I’ll be back in a week with that one. I sincerely hope you are enjoying these articles on the Major Arcana, their histories, and my own take on the cards. Your patronage is always appreciated. If you find them enjoyable, please share with a friend who may be likewise entertained.

April 12, 2023April 12, 2023

The Lady Behind The Veil

When it comes to the origins of the third of the Major Arcana, we are clouted soundly across the face by a great patriarchal misogyny. The High Priestess as she is styled today in the RWS deck and it’s derivatives, was a symbol of derision and sacrilege. Her former title, that of “Papess” or “Popess” carries a complex history interwoven with the Medieval Church and its politics.

Though sources differ, the most likely source for this character is the story of Pope Joan. Supposedly, in the early days of the church, a woman (gasp) disguised as a man entered the priesthood, and was so successful that she ultimately was elected to it’s highest office, that of the Holy Father, or rather Mother. And mothering, according to the story, was ultimately her downfall, because in addition to committing the great sins of cross-dressing, impersonating a man, and becoming a priest (which is still not legal in the Catholic Church) she also fornicated and got with child. Going into labor during a long procession through the streets of Rome, she gave birth to a son (and some say it was AntiChrist) at which point the crowds tore her to pieces.

It’s hard to say where the story actually came from. Some believe it was created by the Church itself in order to show just how terrible an idea it was to give women rights. Other sources consider it to have risen during Protestant times as an example of the wickedness and corruption of the old order.

There sort of was actually a female pope, who is connected by extension to the Tarot’s rich tapestry of tales. In the 13th Century, Guglielma of Bohemia proclaimed herself to be an incarnation of the Christ and thus equal to the Pope in Rome. Among her other prophecies was the idea of a female papacy. She was quickly executed for heresy, but her followers elected another woman named Manfreda as her successor, thus claiming an apostolic succession of their own. The sect was ultimately suppressed, but this Manfreda was apparently a relation or ancestor of the Duchess of Sforza, whose family commissioned the Visconti-Sforza Tarot now in the collection of the Morgan Library.

For whatever reason, the Popess is historically depicted as a female version of the Catholic Pontiff. Remember that these trumps were originally for playing a card game, and not intended to have any deep esoteric meaning that we know of. So incorporating Pope Joan may have been a slap at the clergy in an era of emerging secular humanism, or it may simply have been a case of “Hey, Luigi, we need to come up with another card. Whadda ya think? We already got a Pope, how about She-Pope?”

Fast forward to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when these cards are transitioning from Catholic France and Italy into Protestant England, which had at the time a female head of the Church in Queen Victoria, and the figure perforce needed to take on a different character. We can find some of that character’s evolution in Smith’s depiction.

High_Priestess_RWS_Tarot — Smith’s depiction of the third card of the Major Arcana evokes mystery and antiquity. The symbols and exoticism were part of the zeitgeist of the time in which she worked.

The High Priestess sits between a black column and a white column. inscribed with the letters B and J respectively, and capped with a lotus flower. Between them is draped a curtain adorned with what may be pomegranates. She wears a white crown or headdress with a sphere in the middle and horns or half crescents to either side, from which extends a veil. On her chest hovers a Tau cross. She holds in her hands a scroll with the word “TORA” written on it. A loose blue cloak covers her shoulders and is drawn across her lap. Her dress is of some thin material, that pools about her. At her right foot is a crescent moon shape. Behind her, visible only slightly through gaps between the curtain and the columns, may be seen a vast sea and the intimations of a distant shore across it.

I think it is very likely that Smith had access to a copy of the Sforza Popess card when she designed this. If we look at the Marseilles, which were the common predecessors in circulation, and we look to the Sforza, we can find closer visual structure with this earlier Italian version. While the Priestess no longer sports the triple crown, the distinctive shape of her head gear may be seen as exaggerating the lowest of those crowns. The central jewel becomes the “moon globe” and the side crenulations – already curving a bit in the Sforza painting, become the “horns”. Very frequently this crown is called a “Crown of Isis” or the “Crown of Hathor”, referring to the horned disk often depicted on those deities in the artwork of Egypt. This always draws the connection between Isis and the High Priestess, and, fair enough, it’s a connection I make as well, but I don’t stop there. There are a lot of other clues to be found.

antique-popess — Predecessors as female popes. The depiction from Tarot de Marseilles renders the figure very similarly to the Pope card (V-The Hierophant in modern decks) with full alb and regalia. The older Visconti-Sforza depiction maintains the Trinity crown but she is clad here in an ascetic nun’s habit, holding a simple prayer book, rather than what might be a ceremonial gospel in the later version. It is this humility that leads some Tarot scholars to inscribe the artist’s work on the card as inspired by the later Sforza relation Manfreda rather than the apocryphal Pope Joan. Documentation for any such argument is scarce, and there is very little we can glean from the time as to what view the players held about the Popess card.

Those are Egyptian columns, after all, so why not just accept the Hathor Crown as canon and move on. Except, though they are Egyptian in style, the columns are labeled with B for Boaz, and J for Joachim, or Jachin. These columns come to the Tarot by way of Freemasonry, where they are used both symbolically and as part of initiation ritual. The origin in both cases is in biblical accounts the Temple built by Solomon to house the Ark of the Covenant when Israel had been established as a nation and the capital was in Jerusalem.

In the biblical versions, the two columns were made of bronze and their decorations included pomegranates, lilies (lotuses), and “mesh-work” or some kind of screen. If we accept their existence as historical fact, their purpose was likely ritualistic, or totemic. They constituted a magical threshold between the ordinary space of the world, and the sacred space of the Temple within. We can find the antecedents of such magical structures in the Pylons guarding the openings to Egyptian holy sites, or things like the Ishtar Gate of Babylon and the Lion Gate in Nineveh, and the the symbolism continues down to the Arch de’ Triumphe and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

The names have no good provenance, but they are generally said to mean “Strength” and “Establishment”. Since Hebrew is read right to left, we are looking at the phrase as Jachin Boaz which is usually rendered as “He will establish in strength”. Yet esoterically, and this is symbolized by the black and white colors of the columns – rather than the bronze they are made of, the two columns represent all opposing or dualistic forces in the cosmos. In this case “Establishment” may be read as “Structure”, or “That Which Is” or “Matter” and “Strength” then becomes “Force”, or “That Which Changes” or “Energy”.

We may find here a parallel to the attribution of Saturn and Jupiter to the Magician. The universe is a dualistic existence (or at least may be expressed this way) where everything is the result of the tension (or balance) between opposite points. It is not correct to see either point in terms of good or evil, because they are simply the nodes that make possible the spectra between them.

High_Priesetess-Cosmic Tarot — Approaching the Priestess card from a non-traditional depiction, yet maintaining some of the key symbols, these two versions are a study in similarity and contrast.

On the left is the card from the Cosmic Tarot by artist and esotericist Norbert Lösche. His aesthetic reflects his studies in Tibetan Buddhism as much as a deep understanding of Western Tarot iconography. He keeps her veil, the moon, the waters, and the book. expressing them in a surrealist everyspace that transcends time itself. The Alpha and Omega, though derived from Christian biblical text, effectively communicate the same extremes as the black and white columns, which are in this case show very accurately as Tao.

The right side is from the Legacy of the Divine Tarot by Italian artist Cirro Marchetti. I have two of his decks, and will probably be adding the others. His art is deliciously sensual and innovative. Like Lösche he preserves key pieces of the symbol language, while introducing or interpreting others. He has her holding the pomegranate, traditionally associated with Persephone. According to legend, Hades agreed to release her from the underworld provided she had eaten no food that was there. But she swallowed one aral from this fruit, and thus would only be allowed to visit her mother for a short span. During this time, Demeter her mother in happiness would make the world verdant and fertile, but when she returned to the darkness of her husband, Demeter would morn and the world would be bleak and barren. This ancient tale of the spinning of the seasons is tied up in the cycles of fertility in the female as well, and connects to pre-historic knowledge and mysteries. The White Owl, a symbol both of Wisdom and Death, give us a glimpse at what lies across the deep waters behind the threshold she guards.

And the High Priestess is the nexus of that spectra. She sits between these points. She appears to block the threshold. Through her we must pass if we are to enter into the Sacred Space. But it is as accurate to say that she is that Sacred Space herself.

I tend to view the first three cards of the Major Arcana as representing cosmic forces. They are the powers, the energies, the potentials. They are those things which are eternal, and though they are seen through many different masks, they are themselves immutable. In the old Hermetic and alchemical sense, they represent “That Which Is Above”. This will become more apparent in the coming weeks when I delve into the second set of three cards, as I see in them “That Which Is Below”; the forces as they manifest in our physical world.

Just as Aristotle ventured that all things partake of all elements, there is an intermingling in all the forces of aspects of the other, depending on time, space, and context. I have said that I view the Fool as the undifferentiated Chaos, the inscrutable Nothing That Is Everything And Everything That Is Nothing that defies our general senses. It is, and will be, and always was, but we cannot interact with it, because in order to do so, we have to bind it in ways our selves can understand. We, in fact, have to separate ourselves out of it. This is the Magician, seeking to clarify, direct, and form. What then does this leave?

The Light was divided from the Darkness and the Dry Land was divided from the Waters.

The vast sea behind the Priestesses vale clearly signifies that these are Waters of Darkness. They are the remaining part of the Nothing to be acted upon, once the Actor has become conscious and separated itself. Within this dark-eyed beauty is the potential for all that might be. It is the Womb of the Universe, the Sacred Egg, It is Bliss and Creation, but it also is Terror and Oblivion. The Priestess gives us access to that potential through her innate humanity. She is the compassion that allows safe entry to the Darkness, tethered to her inner Light.

Whereas the Magician represents the Consciousness and Active Will, the Priestess is the embodiment of the Subconscious and Intuition. Both are necessary for the fruition of the Big Bang creative power unleashed in the Fool card. The painter is worthless without the canvas, but the canvas is wasted without the painter.

Again, the gendered language traditionally used to work with these cards is problematic for some persons for whom gender is not as clear cut as it was perceived to be at the inception of the meanings of the cards. I hope here to demonstrate that because both “genders” and the concepts attached to them are necessary for the culmination of the full spectrum of existence that fixation on such polarity is not the object. Within the infinite possibilities that exist along those spectra, one can usually find an expression of their own identity that provides power in the self. The place of the Priestess is a place of Power. It contains mystery and illumination. It contains love and acceptance. Yet these are to be earned rather than expected.

Design Sketch-High PriestessTarot — This is the only Tarot image that I made with the intent to create a Tarot deck that I am actually satisfied with. The original sketch, though I felt it was “right” languished in my sketchpad until some years later when I digitized much of my traditional art from my younger years. Once in the computer, and with the benefit of the intervening years using tools like Photoshop and Painter, I realized it in the manner that, I hope eventually, it will appear on the Priestess Card.

You can see my homages to the symbolic vocabulary of Pixie Smith, but also the connection I make between this card and pre-historic and ancient artworks that, as far was we know, have nothing to do with Tarot. It is through the contemplation of the card in context with my art history and archaeological backgrounds that I have come to derive my own meanings and contexts for the cards, that I am sharing through this series of articles. To what extent these are “correct” is irrelevant. They are as correct and accurate as any that any reader can intuit or be inspired to by similar contemplation and research, and that is undoubtedly the method our predecessors used to invent the “traditional” meanings that we now evolve.

She is the equal to the He of the Magician card. They are the children of the Fool. They are Action and Reception. They are Will and Fruition. To Separate the I from the Fool, we perforce create the Not I. The Priestess is that Other. But we know that deep within the I is the Other, so again, the forces are never truly separated, and never truly different. This ability to understand that we are both ourselves and all others is the Empathy necessary to overcome that negative aspects of pure willfulness and desire, which are the barren and truly dead legacy of the Dry Land. For the Land to bring forth Life, we must have the Water also.

The blue robe of the RWS Priestess seems to flow and become water itself at the bottom of the image. I am certain this is intentional, as is it flowing across the crescent moon at her feet. The connection between the moon and the female principle is an ancient one, and I believe prehistoric. I have mentioned a number of times the Venus of Laussel, with her horn marked with thirteen notches. I make a very strong connection with Laussel and the High Priestess, to the extent that I would almost consider the ancient stone inscription as a prototype, were it not for the documented history of the preceding cards. But it certainly is a spiritual prototype in my mind. I equate the Sorceror image from the cave of Tres Freres with the Magician in a similar way. I think these distinctions have been with us for a very long time before they became manifest in the ideations of the Tarot deck. Our journeys into these cards must acknowledge how deeply the roots go down.

The “Tora” scroll on her lap is another pointer that Waite subscribed to the belief as did many of his contemporaries, that the Tarot were linked with the Hebrew alphabet. “Tora” is meant to be seen as “Torah” the Jewish Holy Scriptures – specifically the first five “Books of Moses” also called the Pentateuch in Greek. These were believed to have been written by Moses himself, and also sometimes are called, the Books of the Law, as Moses is styled the Lawgiver.

To thus claim for the Tarot a pedigree that they are in some way Universal Law is most likely a complete invention of Alphonse Louis Constant, who reinvents himself with the quasi-Hebraic epithet of Eliphas Levi. The Levites, that is the Hebrew tribe of Levi, were signified as the priestly lineage descended from Aaron (or Aharon) the brother of Moses. Moses was then also of the tribe of Levi. In Tarot, the wands suit, though probably something else in the earlier versions, are typically depicted as wooden branch with leaves. This alludes to the Staff of Aaron, which is said to have budded and brought forth flower and fruit (almonds) even though it was essentially a piece of dead wood. This miracle was claimed as a signifier that the priesthood was forever the role of the tribe of Levi, and the rod is one of the items that supposedly was kept in the Ark of the Covenant. Since Eliphas Levi these complicated ideas have been interwoven into Tarot symbology, many of them without the modern reader even suspecting it.

My favorite Hoi Polloi Tarot alters the inscription on her scroll to TARO, severing the arcane ties in the earlier deck. I don’t know that this was any sort of anti-Semitic thing, I suspect that they just thought it made more sense for a tarot deck to read “taro”. Smith herself performs that same permutation on the Wheel of Fortune. On the wheel, of course, it’s a gematric pun. The letters T A R O can be moved again to form R O T A, or Wheel. We can take this game a step further and link it to the famous magic square of SATOR-AREP0-TENET-OPERA-ROTAS. If one is inclined to play the letter scramble games (as many Kabbalists are) the connection to this enigma is an obvious one, and provides much to contemplate and explore.

The book image itself is important. In the earlier decks the book may be seen as a Medieval Book of Hours or book of prayer. The Book of Hours was called this because it delineated those prayers to be said by the faithful at particular parts of the day. These rituals are echoed in the Muslim call to prayer, though they have effectively vanished from modern Christianity. It may also be seen as a Gospel book, which would have been the first four books of the New Testament, a Christian equivalent to the Mosaic Law, and symbol of the New Covenant. The Gospel book is used as a part of the Catholic Mass, both as a functional text and a potent physical symbol in the ritual.

The Hermeticists can divorce themselves of the Abrahamic religions and see within the scroll a metaphor for the Emerald Tablet or the whole Corpus Hermeticum – those texts from the semi-mythical Hermes the Thrice Great, possibly a sage in the Alexandrian Library, and possibly an Egyptian priest, doctor, and architect named Im-Ho-Tep. Still others would simply write across the scroll Sophia – Wisdom.

cretan-snake-goddess — The Priestess Card from the Ghosts and Spirits Tarot immediately reminded me of the so-called Snake Goddess of ancient Minoan civilization. The artist is Lisa Hunt, and the imagery of this deck is unique. It can be startling, disturbing, and at the same time mesmerizing. The whole is dreamlike, the figures ethereal. The woman stands in the center, between the fertile world of life on the one hand, and the inevitable world of death on the other. Yet in the death there is not oblivion, and in life there is no permanence. The flow back and forth between the gate is metered by the figure of the Priestess.

The Minoan figures are the feminine cult object of that culture, just as the bulls (or minotaurs) are the masculine cult object. Whether she represents a priestess of deity is uncertain. She is depicted in frescos as well as in the various sculptures. The bare breasts and aproned layered gown is as ubiquitous as the snakes, but we don’t really know if this was a ceremonial garb or if it reflects the actual daily dress of the women of that civilization. Much is still unknown about Crete. We believe now that the culture may have inhabited multiple islands in the Eastern Mediterranean including Thera, now Santorini. The cataclysmic volcanic eruption that destroyed that island may have caused a tsunami that overtopped the great Palace at Knossos, or at least impacted life on that island to the extent that it was abandoned not long after. The people settled on the coasts of Africa and the Eastern Levant where they founded Carthage and Phoenicia respectively. The intricacies of the priestess cults were lost in that disaster, possibly because the people felt those gods may have forsaken them.

It is fair to say that the Priestess is Sophia, but she is also Isis, and Astarte, and Ishtar, and Lilith. She represents a pre-Hellenic concept of the divine feminine that merges both love and war, fecundity and famine, and birth and death. The Greeks would split this nature into Aphrodite and Athena and Demeter and Persephone and Hecate. The Celts would call her the Morrigan, and the Vikings Freja. The dual nature of femininity to be kind and cruel, nurturing and aggressive, and both fruitful and barren, and how this expresses the cyclic nature of the seasons, is all wrapped up in this enigmatic woman on the threshold.

She holds the key to what is beyond, but, like Mona Lisa under her veil, one cannot ever say that they certainly know why she smiles. Even though ancient sages and modern scientists can say they know the process whereby life is kindled in the womb, no one can truly explain the alchemy that results when two sets of genes are united. Separately neither egg or sperm will produce anything, yet when combined they result in a conscious entity that never was before. That’s extraordinary. It is what lies behind the curtain of pomegranates, that we can only know once we have been allowed to enter in. Her mysteries are profound and plentiful, and can be treacherous and terrifying. We must tread carefully upon her doorstep and approach her majesty with the utmost respect.

When I return next week we will look at another aspect of the feminine idea, that of Card IV, The Empress. We will see how the next cards form a reflection and a manifestation of the forces released in these first three. I hope you will join me. I thank you for your time and attention.

April 5, 2023April 5, 2023

The Gift of the Magi

The first numbered card of the Tarot deck is called the Magician in RWS. It is called also the Juggler in some decks, or the Magus. Like many of the other trumps, its original character and image have evolved over the centuries and what was originally not only mundane but essentially negative has been elevated to a nigh-divine status.

The Magus was initially, at best a street conjurer, and at worst a con-man running a crooked gambling game of “ball and cups”. This accounts for the discrepancy between the depictions on earlier decks. Curiously the name on the Marseilles deck “Le Bateleur” actually translates to The Fool, so perhaps someone got that mixed up early on. This just enforces that his original role was as an entertainer or performer, rather than as an occultist and true sorcerer.

RWS_Tarot_01_Magician — This is the Magician as he appears in the usual version of the RWS deck. You can see here that perhaps one of the reasons that this deck became so popular is that it employed a printing technology called photorotogravure. That is, metal plates were made using a photographic process which produced high fidelity color prints rapidly and cheaply. While ultimately these would wear out just as the wood blocks used in previous decks would, they could always be re-imaged from the original artwork. So they were subject to less “mutation” than decks like the Marseilles. The additional detail also allowed Smith as an artist to create visual messages on each of the Minor cards instead of just elaborately drawn pips. The printing method is a consequence of the Industrial Revolution and is still used today for creating large numbers of highly colored images with sharp small detail.

Pixie Smith’s rendition of the character is a good deal more formal and refined than his predecessor in the French deck. He stands center scene, behind a table on which are arrayed the pentacle, chalice, sword, and staff that define the four suits, and their emblematic elements. His right hand holds a white scepter aloft, while his left points to the earth. He is clad in rather Roman looking robes, with a simple white band around his brow. The Infinity symbol floats above his head. Above him the top of the card is bordered by a flowering vine (probably roses) and below by roses and lilies. If you look very closely you’ll see an ascending dove is carved into the edge of the table just above the leg.

I will stop here and note that I refer to the Magician card as “him” and “he” because this is part of the gendered language that is inherent in working with Tarot historically. I have a few decks where the figure on this card is portrayed as feminine. I realize that both the language and the depictions present some issues for LGBTQ+ persons. There are a number of works out there trying to address the historical genderedness of Tarot, and of the practice of magic itself. I believe many of them are probably in a better position to speak to that than I am. I can only say that I recognize this is a problem, but it is a problem that we have to be open about.

female-magicians — The Magician as Woman. These are from the Darkwood Tarot and the Green Witch Tarot respectively. There are some others that take this approach, but these were the easiest to find in my collection as an example. In this case, the Darkwood raison de etre is expressed as a Tarot journey (go look that up, there are a lot of books on it) where the adept evolves through each of the Majors. Here the Crone serves to initiate the adept onto the path, in the same way a traditional coven experience might. Prior to the reconstruction that lead to Wicca and other modern practices, a witch might be of either sex, and the role of head of the coven based on seniority or experience rather than a gender role. If men were not involved, then perforce a woman would have the same role. The Green Witch Tarot, being a witch’s Tarot, substitutes the Witch for the Magician, in expression of a rejection of the patriarchal term used by the Victorian ceremonial lodges. I don’t see it as necessarily hexing the patriarchy as much as simply distinguishing itself from that form in search of a more nature-centric tradition. I could easily be wrong about that. Hexing the patriarchy is never a bad thing anyway.

The problem with this language is not that something is considered to be masculine or feminine but that so many things have been grafted onto the ideas of gender that have nothing to do with it. Because we exist in four dimensional space-time we tend to express ideas in terms of duality. We are here or there, past or future, day or night, light or dark, and good or evil. These dualistic ideations (which are in themselves problematic) have been confuted with the idea of gender over time, and frequently the feminine side of things gets the negative attributions. In fact, just the idea of “negative” meaning bad, versus simply “the opposite of positive” is one of the problems. These examples of pure misogyny were perpetuated by the 19th Century occultists, even though in practice I am sure there was more than a little gender fluidity among them.

The use of this language in the Tarot and it’s symbols is old and deep, and even when we are conscious that it is not adequate to the task, we must acknowledge what it has brought to the current experience of the art. Like the baggage in the purse on the Fool’s staff, what came before exists, whether we are happy with it or not. While we can work toward a non-binary expression, the symbols themselves were chosen because they are mnemonic of certain concepts, and those concepts, right or wrong, may be historically associated with masculine or feminine genders. It is equally unsatisfying to adopt other terms that try to assert a positive spin while covering up the obvious duality.

For my part, no offense is intended here. If my use of gendered language falls short of the reader’s enlightened view, I beg pardon, and ask that they consider the difficulty with which we must pick through the rubble of the Fallen Tower in order to build anew.

In my earliest texts on Tarot, I was instructed to presume that the Magician was representative of myself as the card reader (unless, I was a woman, in which case it was the High Priestess, there’s that gender thing already). This offers several barriers to reading with the cards. The most obvious one is that if the Magician is me, he can’t ever be anything else. He ceases to a valuable symbol open to interpretation and becomes a fixed identity, and a personal one, whose presence in the layout of the cards is incongruous to say the least. It is akin to the doctor seeing himself as part of every diagnosis, and it’s just plain silly.

The derivation of this idea (and I don’t know if it’s still taught, as I don’t typically read most of the included books in “true” Tarot decks I acquire), is that there are some layouts that require a “querent” a card to represent the individual for whom the reading is being done. This is most notable in the Celtic Cross spread (which I suspect is not in anyway Celtic). If one is reading for a client, then one picks the face card that has similar physiognomy to that client. But if reading for oneself, then you always pick either the Magician or the High Priestess depending. And in practice, even doing a client reading, I would tend to identify myself with one of those cards when it shows up, thus again blocking it from being a proper tool for divination.

hoi_polloi_magician — My personal Magician from my 50+ year old Hoi Polloi deck. You can find similarities and differences here, some of the more important ones I cover in the text of the article. I will add here though, that the roses are gone, or rather, they’ve become blue. Grapes are visible, the foliage might now be identifiable as pea vines, but also they resemble hickory fronds to me. You will note that the wand that lays on the table has a sprout on the end. This is the symbolic Rod of Aaron, that budded and brought forth fruit even though it had been uprooted. The symbolism of this has a lot of Hebrew and Christian overtones, as does the Dove and Fish engraved in the table’s edge, but it can also simply be another manifestation of the miracles the Magician is capable of performing given the right intentions and focus.

So in shedding this traditional approach, I have returned the Magician to a useful role, and can begin to explore it solely as visual metaphor, and use it in that way for reading, meditation and magic. In all honesty I doubt I could have ever really been comfortable with the severe figure on the RWS card. For the first fifteen years of my Tarot practice, I had the very different, though similar, Hoi Polloi deck. In preparing for this article I dug out the Magician for comparison, and found some very interesting concepts. As you can see in the image above, the patrician toga of Smith’s image has softened to what might be a velvet robe, in colors of Earth and Water. While he still holds the rod, it is in his left hand rather than the right, and his angled pose does not now simply point to the ground, but to the elemental symbols arrayed on the table before him.

While I suspect the switch from right to left may have been aimed at forestalling a potential infringement suit (which it did not) from the owners of the RWS copyright, it does bring up some interesting ideas.

As I am a lefty (and in Latin the word for left-hand is sinister, so again, language) I can certainly consider this Magician to be more my Magician. But that means for most of the time I was learning the Tarot, I was seeing this version as bringing down the power into the tools on the table. The act of “charging” the symbols then, meant that this power was moving out into the Minors and thus energizing my entire deck.

It is on this card, in either version, where these symbols are united. In no other card in the deck do we find all four of the suit symbols, and inherently all four elements, brought together. We don’t see the wand again until the Hermit, and swords are only held by the Sphinx atop the Wheel and by Justice. Temperance has two cups, and the Star two pitchers. While we can suggest that the Pentacle is seen symbolically in starry crowns and perhaps even as the Wheel itself, it’s never clearly presented as a pentacle in the same way as these other objects. Except here for the Magician.

It is this mastery of the elemental forces that defines the purpose and meaning of this card. If he is not directly sanctifying them, he is still assuming a symbolic pose in their presence that implies the same thing. This is a Hermetic message, straight from that old Emerald Tablet.

“That which is Above is from that which is Below and that which is Below is that which is above.”

illuminated_magician — One of the more unusual decks in my collection is the Illuminated Tarot. It was a Yule gift from my Good Lady Wife a year or so ago, and initially I found it a bit off-putting. It has only 53 cards, so it’s essentially a playing card deck. Except that it isn’t. The images of the 22 Major Arcana are merged onto the designs of the various Minor Arcana Cards. This is the Magician, with his upraised baton, and his table with the sword, cup, and coin. It is also the King of Wands, and the King of Clubs if you are playing a basic game of solitaire. They’ve also thrown in Leo and sunflowers to affirm the fire energy of the Wands suit, and still place the Magician in his garden.

This ability of the artist to provide Tarot mnemonics with only a traditional playing card sized deck is fascinating. I find it challenges my imagination and intuition because I now find combinations and inferences that aren’t there in the standard 78 card decks. I think because this one is somewhat difficult to work with, it has ended up on the shelves of many discount stores. It’s a squarish blue box with gold imprint, and it generally retails in the discount stores for under $20. I highly recommend it for the experienced reader looking for a fresh view, or for the collector interested in it’s novelty.

This pose is derived into the Tarot from Levi’s “Baphomet”, cast most frequently wrongly as the devil or “god of the witches”. On Baphomet’s lifted arm is written “Solve” and the lower arm bears “Coagula”. These are lifted from alchemical texts, also derived from Hermetic tradition, but essentially meaning that things may be dissolved and reconstituted. That is, the upper arm is dealing with unformed energy, and the lower with structured matter.

If we consider the Fool to be representative of the raw energy of Creation, we can consider the Magician the process of Formation. It is where energy becomes idea and where idea becomes artifice. If all the alchemical mumbo-jumbo gives you a headache, simply look at the card and imagine the table is an anvil and the rod is the smith’s hammer. This is the Forge of Vulcan, it is the point where the Formless becomes Form.

And that is, after all, what we expect out of the Magician, whether we perceive him as Merlin laboring in his Crystal Cave or on stage in Vegas pulling a bouquet of flowers “out of thin air”. It is that act of bringing into being that we identify as “magic”. It is the assertion of intelligent will upon the unordered fabric of the universe.

The rod the Magician holds is not a “magic wand” though I have seen it characterized as such by other authors, who would mention similar wands in the hands of the driver in the Chariot, and in the World card. These are scepters. They are symbols of authority, deriving in form most likely from the consular baton of the Romans. The simple short ivory staff was replaced by more elaborate ones after the Republic became the Empire, but in any case, it signified someone who had the authority to exert control, and control is what this card is all about.

three-magi — Behold the Three Magi. As I was preparing for the article last night I went in search of some variable approaches to the Magician card that reflect other artists’ views of the prescribed symbols.

Al left is the Enchanted Tarot, which eschews traditional imagery entirely for an Arabesque style one might find in an Arthur Rackham edition of Scheherazade. At first I thought the suit markers were missing, but if you look closely, you can see that they are fastened to his belt, in the form of a star-shaped buckle, a bottle, an elaborate wand or scepter, and his dagger,. The flame he manipulates is the same as the *baton blanc* in the hand of the RWS version. In the sky above the palace dome, we find not the Christian dove but Buraq, the flying horse of the Prophet, said to have borne him to Paradise at the end of his life. These are not Islamic cards, but rather reflect as pseudo-Arabian style popular in the 19th Century Colonial Empires.

At center are a recent acquisition, the whimsical Pulp Tarot that cast all the cards as covers to the dime novels of the 20s and 30s. As a fan of this style of artwork, I couldn’t resist adding them to my collection, particularly when they were being offered new at deep discount in the Half-Price Books store. They keep enough of the keys in the artwork to serve as a functional deck, and will surely be a conversation starter at the writers retreat I am attending this summer in New Orleans.

At right is the Magician card from the Tarot Universal Dali, by the surrealist Salvador Dali. This deck produced as mixed media extensions of collage, employing multiple works from the history of art, was originally commissioned for the early 70s Bond film Live and Let Die. Dali apparently set to work on it before the ink dried, and when his requested fee exceeded the entire production budget, the deck was replaced by a more basic deck by Scottish illustrator Fergus Hall. These are now sold under the title Tarot of the Witches, though I think perhaps all that recommends them is the notoriety of their connection to the film. The Dali deck, however, is a fascinating study in how the themes created by Pamela Smith can be interpreted in the hands of a great master like this mad Catalonian. While my deck is not a first edition, it is a facsimile edition made in short run in Europe, rather than the currently mass produced Taschen versions. It is both a pride in my collection and an inspiration for journeys in Tarot and art. Dali has here substituted himself for the Magician, as well he might, and given us symbols from his own esoteric vocabulary in place of the traditional ones. Yet they are immediately readable.

If we go beyond the four elements as the suit symbols, and look into the historical associations with social class Joseph Campbell and others ascribe to them, we begin to see the Magician as a very powerful and potentially very dangerous individual. The suits at one time or another have connected the Wands to the peasants or working class, the Cups to the clergy, the Swords to the nobility, and the Pentacles to the merchants and bankers. The Magician then, exists beyond these groups. He is outside of the social definitions. He is a creature operating in those areas reserved for gods alone. Like Frankenstein, Prometheus, and Lucifer, he is calling down the fire of Heaven and making it do his personal bidding.

Indeed, the boundless nature of space and time itself is shown as residing within his mind. The infinity symbol above his head signifies that he has access to things that are immortal, and immaterial. Through the lightning rod in his hand, he controls how these forces are manifest, and metes them out to the rest of humanity as he sees fit.

These attributes; the desire for authority, dominance, and control, are, I must sadly admit, still considered masculine traits. So perhaps the gendered nature of it’s history is not that far off. I don’t find such traits positive or affirmative myself, because the arrogance that usually goes with them is self-defeating. Frankenstein in his hubris, creates a creature that he ultimately cannot control, and cannot destroy.

This is the trap of science in our modern world. We are experiencing massive environmental impacts because of our use of technology, and we are as yet unable to see any solution other than more technology. This next technology will be better. Except, of course, when it isn’t. The blindness with which we stumble forward, secure in our belief that we are smart enough to change the rules instead of learning to play the game better threatens to be our undoing.

The Magician won’t put down the scepter and pick up the wooden wand. Why? Well because it limits him. He can only use the wooden wand to do wooden wand magic. And why would he choose to do that, when he can do wand and cup and sword and pentacle magic? Remember, he’s the only one that gets to use them all, the only card in the whole deck with that power. And that makes him dangerous.

Magicians are masters of prestidigitation and legerdemain. These are very fancy terms for the idea of sleight-of-hand; the ability to palm a card, slip a ball under a cup, or retrieve a dove from a secret pocket with you being none the wiser. This art of distraction is also to be found in the imagery of this card. Harkening back to his early days on the streets of Milan, the Moebius over his head and the arms at ten and five echo that ability to make you look where he wants, not where you want. The Juggler has you following the ball in the air. The Magician has you looking at the bright shiny stick, instead of the other hand that is doing something down behind the table.

In this way the Magician’s appearance in a reading can indicate distraction, misdirection, and even outright deceit. As it is such a prominent personage, it may often mean self-deceit, or at least self-delusion. Again, because the Magician is smart enough to believe his own hype, he can get into trouble.

Yet, caution, focus, and adherence to structure are also hallmarks of his art. Depending on where he shows up, he can as easily mean sterility and rigidity as agility and quixotic energy.

He draws down the power of the old gods. He can therefore be Saturn or Jupiter. He can be so locked into his method that any innovation is thwarted, but in the right circumstance, he brings forth growth, generosity, and the bounty which he has access to.

Behind him the Fool stands as old Uranus, pure and violent creative energy. It takes both the Saturnine structure and the Jovian expansion to make anything of it. The balancing of the two forces is the Juggler’s dance. It is the loop that goes ever round and round, because if one of the balls drop, the whole thing comes crashing down. Creation through discipline is his motto. From the ethereal to the material. Solve et Coagula.

The Moebius appears twice more in the Tarot, in an identical fashion on the Strength card (which may be eight or eleven depending on the tradition) and in the Minor Arcana’s Deuce of Pentacles. While my articles here are aimed at exploring only the Majors, I find it instructive to see where symbols and themes get shared across the whole deck and this is one of those important parallels.

RWS_2P_Juggler — Can you find the Magician here? If you look carefully enough, and know the secret language that Smith was inventing for this deck, you can find the same pieces underlying the traditional reading of this card. I have gone to some depth in the text of the article on this, but I wanted to include the card for the reader to contemplate. All the Tarot should be viewed as having symbols hidden, or included, for interpretation or expansion beyond what Waite or any other authors have had to say about them. They are a visual tool, created by a truly gifted artist, that continues to find favor with new artist and Tarot artists alike.

Sorceror — I am frequently inspired by the Tarot, even if I am not attempting to make a Tarot image. I don’t recall if this was another attempt to find my “vision” of a new deck, or if it simply was using the Magician card as a jumping off point for an artistic experiment. This piece is somewhat unique in my work. I was trying to master the curvilinear styles of the Art Nouveau -inspired by the looping tableaus of Mucha, and also playing with the felt-marker as an art tool. In neither did I succeed well in this image, but it has grown on me over the years. If I were to consider it my Magician, I’d have to create a whole deck in the style, and then I’d probably come back to this liking it less. As it is, it serves as a blind alley, I stumbled into, that I might return to someday, but not with any intention of something so large and daunting in scope. The style, or a mature evolved version of it, still entertains me as an artist, but I have no intention of using it to interpret the cards.

The second Pentacle card shows a Juggler, with the Moebius wrapped around his hands, each of which hold a large pentacle. Behind him ships are driven across an unruly sea. The ships are clearly made of wood, so here we also have the air in their sails and the water they sail upon, taken with the pentacles in his hands. At least through symbolic extension, all four suits are also present here, in this Minor card. It’s difficult for me to believe that this was merely a coincidence, so when the Deuce shows up, I frequently read it as an extension, or echo of, those same qualities I find in the Magician. While the typical reading of this card involves competing forces in finance or perhaps work-life balance, it’s not hard to overlay the desire to exert control on an unruly world, or have things our own way. And perhaps again, we are being distracted by the Juggler from the dangerous tableau that is happening in the background. We are being told things are all okay when they are clearly not okay.

Pay no attention to that man behind the current.

Well, he was a magician, too. And not coincidentally, one who used artifice to appear as magic. To create with machinery the illusion of power. And this also is inherent in that nature of this card. If we believe in the thing that we see then the power is real. It is not any different from the real power, because our perception makes it so. Reality is what our minds tell us it is. If we want to change reality, it is as simple as changing our minds.

Yet this itself is an act of will. It is that very thing which separate the Magician from the Fool, that his work is made with specific intent. It still requires the raw forces, the pure energy of the unmade to power it, but it is useless without the intention. Electricity is a powerful force, but without a mechanism to direct it and control it, it is either an untapped potential or a destructive lightning bolt.

The Magician is that conduit that brings the fire from the gods. It is, according to myth, religion, and fiction, an unrewarding task. Prometheus is chained and has his guts gnawed out eternally. Lucifer’s name is synonymous with Satan. Merlin was sealed in his cave. Faust ultimately found his pleasures empty ones. Frankenstein died in the frozen wastes attempting to destroy that which he created but could not control.

My ambivalence toward this card has grown as I have grown older. I think this is a natural progression. As we (hopefully) mature we cease to be as entertained by the rabbit in the hat, though I admit freely that in my youth I bought such a hat just hoping to pull a rabbit from it. It has become my magic hat, though not in the way that I expected, and that perhaps is a good message for this card as well. Intention and control are only the beginning. What actually proceeds from it may not be at all what was expected. To paraphrase Galadriel from The Fellowship of the Ring ;”Not even the wise can see all ends.”

That character is also an example of the dual nature of the Magician card. Characterized as both a seer and a sorceress, feared as a witch, and tempted by the power she wielded and could wield, she eventually is redeemed and allowed to pass into the West, along with Gandalf, the only wizard that seems to have met a gentle end. I think this is because ultimately Tolkien couldn’t divest himself of that deep Anglican Christianity, even when he wanted to live among the faeries.

His recent antecedents and contemporaries among the Victorian and post-Victorian esoteric movements seem similarly hampered. I think this is perhaps why the tiny bird is carved into the edge of the Magician’s table. You can find it amplified in all it’s Catholic glory in the Ace of Cups, as the Holy Spirit coming to inhabit the Chalice of the Eucharist, but here it offers a small, almost secret protection for the Magician from his own ego. Like other Romantic symbolism, it’s presence tells us that the New Pagans are still secret Christians, unwilling to let go completely despite how debased and debauched their rites might become, just in case they were wrong.

We struggle with that Christian legacy in the Tarot because it is a Christian oracle. It was derived from Christian symbolism and re-invented multiple times to try and shed those roots. But the key players were frequently fallen, or at least faithless, Christians, looking perhaps in some way for redemption and re-admittance.

The Magician with the little dove is less problematic in this way than other cards we’ll access, including the next one in the Deck, which I will undertake in a week. I hope this journey has inspired you to greater insights on the Juggler, the Magician, and the Magus, or at least has instilled in you the desire to question the traditional meanings you may have read.

If you don’t you are following his right hand and not watching what the left hand is doing, and you have ceded your will to that of the Conjurer.

Thank you for reading. I’ll return next week with the High Priestess.

March 29, 2023March 28, 2023

The Fool Who Follows Him

It’s been about a year since I started this column. The first of April is right around the corner and I am thinking about beginnings and endings. I felt it time to delve deeper into one of the more enigmatic symbols of Tarot, that of the Fool.

The Fool is interpreted simply in many dissertations on the subject. However, there is much more beneath the surface. I have teased this particular trip down the rabbit hole before, but now it is time to grab our pinafore and go after that púca with the pocket watch.

In most interpretations of this card, it is read more or less literally. It represents idiocy, poor judgement, ignorance, and cupidity. Some variations talk about it as a sign of new beginnings and innocence, but this is a more modern, “New Age” take.

The RWS depiction shows a youth, oblivious to the world around them, about to walk off a cliff. A small dog yaps at their heel. They wear a richly decorated tunic similar to the French Medieval style, a feathered cap, hose and boots, and they carry a leather purse or satchel on the end of a staff. In their left hand they hold a rose. The sun shows wanly in the background, and there are high mountains, indicating that the cliff overlooks a deep ravine and that the drop is most assuredly fatal.

Since this deck, or rather the license infringing Hoi Polloi deck that derives from it, was my first, all later impressions from other decks mentally point back to it. That is, the currents and eddies of the brain invariably take any new (or old) image of the card and compare it to the image as created by Pamela Colman Smith. Therefore the description above identifies the key pieces of that image, and those points for comparison and contrast in other interpretations of the theme. It is those points that I use when contemplating the cards, and teasing the secrets out of them in a reading.

RWS_Tarot_00_Fool — The Fool as drawn by Pamela Colman Smith supposedly at the direction Arthur Edward Waite. Her distinctive “PCS” monogram might be barely detectable under the Fool’s left foot, but it might be missing altogether, making this the only unsigned card. Of course, it’s also possible that the signature was simply cropped from the artwork by the printer without any realization of its purpose.

For this reason, the next twenty-one articles in this theme will begin similarly. While I can’t imagine anyone interested in Tarot does not already own some version of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, it’s also a means of getting everyone on the same page. For good measure I have included a screenshot of each card, which are now in the public domain.

The Fool is also given the number zero, but this has not always been the case. Initially the trumps were not numbered, and then later, only this card was unnumbered, so that in later conventions, it was assumed to have a zero value, when it actually has none. That sounds confusing, I know, but there is a subtle difference between something being given a quantifier, even if that quantity is zero, and something that has no quantifier at all. This is actually a point worth contemplating at length, because in both cases it gives us access to some of the more esoteric messages available to this card.

The somewhat related Eastern ideas of nirvana (quenching), anatta (non-self), and sunyata (emptiness) can be instructive in respect to this subtlety. In many Eastern teachings the ultimate goal of the human spirit is to rise past the need for it’s own identity. Suffering, so it goes, comes from longing, which comes from fear, which comes from the individual ego. When all are one and one are all, there is no need for fear or longing or suffering, and thus the soul is freed from the cycle of reincarnation, because it no longer requires it.

But beyond that, there is a point where none are all and all are none. This is a state where the awareness of the state itself is gone, there is no longer any awareness. This, for lack of a better word, is the void.

Depending on whose philosophy you are reading the void is end or the beginning, the void is a final and immutable state, or it is an intermittent state between cosmological incarnations, because it is inherently unstable, and prone to reasserting its diversity.

In quantum mechanics, physicists talk about things like the Big Bang and the Big Crunch. These represent the opposites ends of all space and time as we perceive it, when everything there is and may be gets pushed into a point so small that no scientifically accurate description can be made of it. The scientists call these points singularities, but because they exist outside the realm of the physics that describe them, they are essentially nothing.

The universe, as the story goes, was without form and void.

visconti-fool — A Fifteenth Century Fool. This one comes for the well-known Visconti-Sforza Deck the majority of which is held at the J.P. Morgan Library in New York City. This poor sot bears little resemblance to Smith’s bright medieval fantasy, or to most of the other fool figures that appear in the Tarot. He is missing the pack, the cap, and the dog, in addition to his pants. While there is the suggestion of mountains at his feet, this is more of a Renaissance convention than any significator. The figure still has more in common with the flat spaces of Gothic iconography than the fully dimensional depth that Leonardo and Michelangelo would bring to the world shortly afterward. He is painted against a gilded screen (as are most of the Visconti-Sforza cards) that likely would have been prepared by a separate craftsman as a blank.

Paul Huson suggests that the images we encounter on the Major Arcana derive from the Medieval mystery pageants that gave rise to our modern theater. If he is correct, the pitiable condition of the Fool in this image may be a metaphor for the bleak condition of the human soul in need of salvation. This attribution of the images resolves a number of questions regarding the inherently Christian content of the trump cards, even though they have been re-interpreted in more secular and pagan ways in the intervening centuries. It is important still to remember that the “book” meaning of Tarot in modern times stems significantly from the works of the occultists Eliphas Levi and Papus, both of whom studied for the priesthood before pursuing their esoteric careers.

There’s a permutation of these theories that says instead of the universe contracting back to a singularity at some point in the distant future, it will continue to expand to the extent that none of the forces of gravity, electromagnetism, or nuclear attraction will hold anything together, and eventually it all just becomes cold and dark and empty. Since none of the physical laws that describe the universe function, the universe itself may be seen to become nothing.

And then there’s the theory that after the universe collapses down to the Big Crunch, it explodes again into another Big Bang in a never ending cycle of time ending and beginning again. Because time and space end at the singularity, the new universe beyond can also be seen to not exist, even though it does.

So he we are, standing on the edge of that cliff, trying to define what the difference is between something that has nothing in it, and nothingness.

Yes, I am still talking about the Fool card.

And the zero which is also a circle. So it is nothing, that has no beginning or ending, completely surrounds nothing within it, and completely excludes everything outside it. It does not exist, yet there is no other.

But from this nothingness all other things must arise. The only way to get something is to have nothing to compare it to. Our numbers all exist as a reference against the value of zero, and zero exists against the value of other.

The light was separated from the darkness. The seas were separated from the dry land.

Things begin. On the edge of a cliff, with a dog yapping at our heels.

That little dog is entropy. It’s the natural tendency of things to fall apart. Stephen Hawking says entropy results in a less organized universe, where the structure and form of matter and energy become more chaotic. The tea cup, he says, always falls off the table and breaks into many pieces. It never reassembles and comes back up because it takes less energy to break it than it does to put it together.

At first glance, that means that our universe is heading for that Big Nothing. But physics also says that after the universe had the Big Bang, things were all sort of the same thing, and it was only because that didn’t stay that way that we got to where we are now. Particles formed as energy transferred from point to point. Forces acted upon the “uneveness” of the particles, and caused them to clump up into bosons and mesons and quarks and atoms and molecules and stars and galaxies. And those got really really big and they fell apart, and then the dust left over and the forces at play swept those clumps together and the process repeated.

We’re basically a second-hand cosmos. Maybe even third-hand.

But apparently that dog keeps chasing us right toward the edge of nothing. Even though it’s going to go over with us. Makes one wonder which one is the Fool here, doesn’t it.

In other versions of the card, the dog (and sometimes tiger or lion) is shown biting the Fool, traditionally read as another sign of their obliviousness to reality. But there’s a second option, and that is the dog is actually trying to stop him from going off the cliff. Like Lassie telling us Little Timmy is in the well, the loyal companion here is looking out for it’s master’s best interests, even if the effort is not wholly appreciated.

thoth-deck-fool — Aleister Crowley’s “Book of Thoth” version of the Fool Card. In my late teens and early 20s I was very much drawn to the Thelema system of magick and the imagery and interpretation of these cards had a major influence on my thinking about Tarot. I had the book before I ever got a deck of the cards, so I probably have read more deeply these meanings than many of the others. Crowley, in an effort to synthesize a bigger better magickal system, sought to bring together ideas from witchcraft, alchemy, Hinduism and Buddhism, and Esoteric Kabbalah – along with the Golden Dawn magic systems, into a unified theory. The idea still intrigues me, but this card, along with a number of the others, just comes off as busy, over-complicated, and inaccessible. While there is symbolism aplenty, it doesn’t lend itself to the imaginative voyage of the reader. I love to contemplate the Crowley Deck, but I hardly ever do a reading with one.

In Medieval symbolism, the dog is frequently portrayed as an emblem of faith. The name often associated with family dogs is “Fido”, from the Latin “fidelis” – Faith. Compare that to the other common epithet of Rover and you can see how the two contrast. It’s a common feature of tomb effigies to show the little dog at the feet of the night or lady. This wasn’t a love of the pet, but a symbol of both marital fidelity and religious piety. Basically, if you showed up at the Pearly Gates with a Fido under your arm you got a pass. Rover, on the other hand, might have to do a turn or two in Purgatory for his indiscretions and philandering nature.

So we can take that and read the Fool’s dog a number of ways. It may be seen as just emblematic of our instincts trying to avert our mistakes. That’s for anything atheists out there, who just dig the pictures on the cards and don’t believe in the spooky weirdness. We can take it up a notch and consider that dog as the presence of higher forces, guardian angels or a divine power, depending on what works for you, that is guiding our forward steps. To the extent that we believe in and rely on such forces comes back to that faith part. Though, finally, we can just consider it a faith in ourselves, the nature of the universe, and the always rushing-forward power that somehow seems to keep all the plates spinning and all the balls in the air. The universe pushes onward because that is what the universe does. It’s part of the mechanism. What it pushes to, and where it pushes from, are completely irrelevant.

That cliff is usually a metaphor for the unknown, whether it be the future, the secrets of the universe, or this week’s winning Lotto numbers. It is the unformed void, the nothing that will become something. It is thus the potential inherent in all beginnings, and in fact all motion, because when we move we are inherently leaving what was and entering what wasn’t. It’s the zero just before it becomes one. It is also the assurance that zero is always going to become one.

mystical medleys fool — Simplicity need not be bereft of depth. This jolly little card from Gary Hall’s Mystical Medleys deck not only manages to incorporate the symbols we find in the RWS, but gives us other insights into the nature of this card. Most notable of the differences (except of course the use of the old-time cartoony style) is that the Fool’s head is a cyclopean pyramid. This has been a symbol for the presence of Divine Intelligence, or a Divine Plan for many centuries. It is frequently identified with the Illuminati, that mythical secret society directing all the worlds politics and commerce, and holding secret mystical knowledge that would make Dan Brown’s knees quiver. But it also may be read as simply the Divine in all, the secret sacred nature of humanity as it rolls inexorably toward the future. Anyway you spin it, there’s a lot going on here.

I love this little deck, as both an artist and animator, and a Tarot enthusiast. When I bought it I assumed it would be a very basic pastiche of the RWS cards, but they have incorporated a lot of deep secret stuff in each image. you can find it on the Zon, at B&N, and other Tarot resellers. It may be my favorite of the “new” Tarot decks.

Yet the Fool never steps on the cliff. Yes, I know with a piece of printed cardstock that defies our basic understanding of physics (and that as a metaphor is also worth some contemplation). But it never happens because the future never happens. We simply are in the next moment, and then the next and the next. We experience existence through an eternal present where the past is only a memory, and the future is only a thought. Neither state is really real, only the eternal present, which can be sliced down past minutes to seconds to microseconds and nanoseconds and ad infinitum. has any validity to our senses. We never reach the future. We cannot reach the past either.

This is the ignorance the Fool represents. They cannot know the future because when they get there it is always the present. They are not able to break that pattern. Forward movement is constant, but they never arrive.

These are very troubling ideas. It’s easy to get lost and distracted and give up on understanding any of it. That’s why the sun is behind them. Setting out on the journey here the comfort of the ordinary and the established is put to the side. Once the step is taken onto the path, what was once “true” may not be so ever again.

And very close to the sun in the image is the purse or satchel that the Fool carries with them. We’re familiar with this bag on a stick from numerous illustrations of hobos and vagabonds. It is the sum total of worldly goods that the poor creature owns, bound up in a tiny little bundle. That is, it’s the personal baggage we all carry.

The bundle represents all those things we drag along with us into the future, our identity, our upbringing, our social and cultural suppositions, stereotypes, bigotries, and other limiting factors. It is a small thing, after all, in comparison to the wide potential of all possible futures, but we can’t seem to leave it behind, and it will characterize and color anything that we come across.

The Fool is not “innocence” but “ignorance”. They are blissfully unaware that they carry the package, instead preferring to regard the rose in the other hand, that smells sweeter. This tiny white rose can be seen as a potential for enlightenment and improvement, in balancing the baggage of the past life and poor decisions. As we approach that unknown landscape of the yet to be, we have the choice to rise above the past.

fool sketches — Interpreting the Fool is not as easy as it seems. In pursuing Tarot, I have used the images and ideas associated with the cards as inspiration for artworks (sometimes unconsciously) and also have attempted to define my own deck. The above show two different attempts at the Fool, neither of which are satisfactory. The need to not only incorporate the “standard” features of Tarot – in order to make it a Tarot card that other readers will recognize, but also to include my own take on the card’s message from 50 plus years of working with the decks is frequently very frustrating. These images were made many years apart, and reflect changes in both my understanding of the cards and the symbolic language that I use. I see bits and pieces in both that I might employ today if I sat down to design a new card. And ultimately I intend to do so, but because the meanings and the messages change over time. I don’t know that i will ever be satisfied with it. If I made one this year, I would probably look at it in ten years and tell you it was horribly wrong.

Which is why we find the Fool up in the mountains. Every card in Smith’s designs takes place in a very specific locale. They are, I believe, all happening in a particular land which is as much a part of the Tarot as the key symbols themselves. Like the map just inside a Tolkien book this internal landscape gives us insights into the overall “story” the cards are presenting. It’s not a straightforward, consistent narrative, to be sure, but there are connections to be made. Within the Major Arcana, on the Hermit card is found in similar surroundings. While the Fool represents that raw charge at life with no regard for its dangers, the Hermit is a world weary soul who seeks the true experience of the unknown through a journey of internal contemplation. They are the extrovert and the introvert. The sensualist and the ascetic, yet both inhabit the same rarified air, an air which cannot be occupied constantly or for long periods, without some kind of detriment.

The use of Tarot for non-divinational magic is possibly as old as its more usual role. There are accounts of certain trumps being used in the Renaissance for magic. Often this was limited to the Devil or Tower cards and their aspect to lay malevolent powers upon others. Some speculation has been made that the number of Devils missing from extant decks was because they were used for clandestine veneration by secret witches, but these may be fantastical anecdotes manufactured by the Church, whose relationship with Tarot has always been ambivalent. There are some records indicating that Devil cards were equally employed by parish priests to perform exorcism rites, or otherwise drive the evil out of a place or personage.

Certainly they are potent symbols and their use in sympathetic magic should be obvious to all but the greenest novice. Tarot have been marked, attacked, bundled, buried, and burned. The purpose of the spell governs selection of the card, and method of application. This varies from system to system and tradition to tradition, of course, as do the meanings ascribed to each card, and therefore, its likely efficacy.

The longer one reads with the cards, the more meanings and subtleties may be perceived. The ones I have offered here for the Fool are from my own musings. Doubtless other experienced readers will have differing views. But that green novice may experience a brilliant flash of insight that shocks and amazes us all, because they come to it with fresh eyes.

That is the moment of the Fool. It is the energy of the Big Bang, before it cools to become predictable, quantifiable, and exploitable. It is the fire of pure creativity before it becomes entwined with the conscious control of the artist, who must meld the inspiration with the tool and technique that limits it. It is the raw fury of the Universe, pouring out in a constant roar, before it is tempered and directed by the Magician. It carries within it all that delight and terror that unrestrained chaos offers us.

I personally rarely see the Fool as an emblem of folly and recklessness. There are plenty of other cards in the deck to tell us when we are being idiots. When I see this rise in a reading, I look to how it embraces the future, the possibility of unknown and unknowable factors, and the shaky ground that represents. Cards near to the Fool may be blessed with sudden intuition and brilliance in equal (or unequal) measure with heartache and loss. For creation always carries destruction in her belly. To make a new thing is to destroy the old thing that was before the new thing became.

In this wise, the Fool can also be a death card. They may plummet over the cliff into the abyss. There is nothing to say that the unknown is not Hamlet’s undiscovered country. That is a part of the journey we eventually all experience. The future for all of us is a mortal one, at least in regard to the meat-puppets we pilot merrily along. Beyond that there is only speculation, faith, and myth. If we turn back, and drag our feet, and shy away from the next step, there are consequences. The Fool does rush blindly on, as we all do in a way. Time gives us no respite. Our experience of the universe is a constant forward motion. The little dog is always yapping at our heels.

I hope this article has offered you some new perspectives on this traditionally first of the Major Arcana trumps. I have hinted above at our next adventure, with Card One – The Magician, beginning next week. I hope you will return for it. Thank you again for reading my work.

February 22, 2023February 22, 2023

The Sacred Life

On Friday last I attended the Ordination to the Diaconate at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. We had been invited to witness the investiture of a friend. I am not Catholic and clearly not Christian, but I respect individuals who live their faith through tolerance, generosity and humanity, even if the “official” policies of the faith are problematic.

Besides, it gave me an opportunity to anthropologically observe a high ritual for comparison and contrast with my research on the nature of human belief. I had attended Catholic weddings and funerals before where an abbreviated mass and Eucharist had been performed along with the other rites, but this was the big show, conducted by a full Prince of the Church, and something I was very much interested in seeing.

Contrary to what you may expect, neither I nor the cathedral burst into flames when I crossed the threshold. And while I respected the requests to stand and sit (kneeling I don’t do, aside from the hypocrisy that would involve, my arthritic knees simply won’t accommodate that), I did not partake of the Communion. I will not profane another’s sacred rite by participating in it if I am not a believer. I was not alone, in that respect. Whether because they were not of the faith, or were, but did not feel the need to partake, I can’t say, but fortunately I was not the only person attending that skipped that part. Within that context, I found the whole experience immensely interesting and enlightening.

I’ve been fascinated by the symbolic toolkit of the Mother Church since art history class, and was actually a bit let down by the more modern and rather bland cathedral. I suppose it’s hard to be wowed after you’ve experienced the great Gothic edifices of Europe. This building had more in common with their predecessors in the medieval times. The space, though sufficiently massive to impress, was limited in decoration, and lacking the great glimmering mosaics or stained glass of the traditional churches.

In fairness, with the congregation much more literate, and with audio-visual tech for reaching those less so, the need for the great surface decorations as means of visual instruction in the mysteries no longer exists. To me, that is rather sad. The aesthetic experience of art, and the elevation of spirit and alteration of consciousness that art alone can provide, was missing here, or at very least subdued. Beneath the great dome of the crossing was a porphyry high altar, supported by twelve columns emblematic of the Twelve Apostles (and just perhaps the twelves zodiac signs). To the right of the dais was a matching lectern as microphones have supplanted the requirement of the raised pulpit. On the left a simple wooden podium was provided for non-ecclesiastical personnel, such as those leading the hymns and oratorios.

On the other hand this spartan space did focus more attention on the pageantry of the ritual itself, with the robed nobles of the church arrayed behind the high altar, the great gold and silver clad Gospel book poised upon it, the thurible and the incense wafting out over the crowd. With the aforementioned standing and sitting and kneeling and the calls and responses, hymns, the litanies of the saints, and other parts of the three-hour ordination ceremony, there was certainly a creation of a focused ritual space.

I believe I spotted a number of symbolic performances and structures, which I will not enumerate here, that seemed familiar. Having not attended a ceremony like this, and not having a Catholic background, these observations are perhaps inaccurate. That’s something we should all keep in mind when reading anthropology, or when sussing out a ritual from some old texts that may have been written by the outsider. As an outsider, though, I found that I could appreciate the sacredness of the acts, whether or not they personally were sacral to me.

Within this time and space, there was a clear feeling that something happened that non-Abrahamic monothesists would term magical. There was a belief, from the cardinal down to the congregants, that a power was moving through him into the supplicants for ordination, and that they were transformed into something different than they were beforehand.

As human beings we engage in ritual for both selfless and selfish reasons. Our need to feel there is something beyond that which simply happens to us daily drives a desire for communion with the Holy. Often this takes place in a public setting, where we share our experience with others.

Yet we can and do engage in very small individual rituals. It may simply be flipping our eggs the same way each time, while muttering some incantation to make our day “sunny side up”. This participation elevates the mundane experience and gives meaning to our actions. All our actions.

In sanctifying our every movement, we teach ourselves about the sanctity of all other things as well. In this way we learn how to relate to the world as sacred space, where each thing is a sacred act.

This, of course, is the idea behind any form of initiation, even those that are not wholly magical or spiritual in nature. That is perhaps why we encounter commonalities between many such rituals, and why some people believe that one group or another is stealing something that predated that group’s origin. I have heard much about how the church has appropriated rituals from Rome, Greece, and Egypt, and this is doubtless true. The Romans, of course, amalgamated Greek and Egyptian and Hebrew and Persian and Celtic and Gothic and Hunic and Punic and whatever else they encountered, so a nascent Roman church can hardly be castigated for following this model.

It’s fairly obvious given the similarities between the roles of the various deities in ancient cultures that they either had a common origin in some unknown past, or they represent a basic human tendency to explain our experience through animism. Or it can be both.

Recent discoveries at places like Gobekli Tepe and the region around Stonehenge indicate that our propensity for sacred ritual predates our agricultural civilization. That is, we were not holding a festival to celebrate the harvest, we learned to harvest to celebrate the festival. Sacred megalithic sites seem to have been built up over generations, because there was some local reason for people gathering there, and when they gathered they celebrated with feasting and drinking. To these stone-age peoples, the experience of drunkeness, or other altered states of consciousness, was not simply the result of eating the white berries, it was transportation to the realm of the spirits.

In the case of Stonehenge, the draw appears to have initially been a rich source of flint. In the Neolithic, flint’s role was the equivalent of petrochemicals to modern industrial society. It was used for hunting, of course, but it was also used for the preparation of food, the construction of housing, the production of hides, leather, and clothing, and, perhaps most importantly, the kindling of fire. Wandering tribes of hunter-gatherers would follow the food animals during the seasons, but at some point in each year they would return to the lands around Stonehenge to replenish their supply of this all important natural resource.

Such mining and refining probably took place at times when the food animals were going into dormancy, and the wild crops were dying down. So with the larders full against the coming winter, the tribes would head toward the mines, and when meeting with each other, appeared to join in communal feasting and ritual.

To insure full larders, the food animals and crops gradually became domesticated. One theory emerging from work at Gobekli Tepe is that grain crops were initially being cultivated to make beer. Considering that these beers could very well have been contaminated with things like rye ergot, or various other fungi and molds during the fermentation process, prehistoric brews may have been far more hallucinogenic than your average can of Bud Light today. Consider also that ancient humans had certainly discovered more powerful intoxicants than simple alcohol, and were possibly adding these, or using them in conjunction with, the ritual beverages. We find significant evidence of the sacred use of intoxicants and hallucinogens in the historical accounts of “stone-age” cultures that survived in isolation to modern times. Indeed, some of these practices remain extant among indigenous peoples despite the attempts of colonizers and modern legal restrictions.

When Christianity began to take hold over Europe in the fifth century, the elation and abandon of chemically augmented spiritual ecstasy became associated with the “old religions” and ultimately stigmatized and criminalized. The ritual pageants remained, and became central to the practice (if they were not already, let’s not assume that every pre-Christian rite was a Roman orgy) and spread out, in one form or another, as the One True Catholic Church split and splintered and rolled across the world.

And yet the chanted prayers, the sacred spaces, the processions of symbolic items and artifacts, can be found right through Islam, Judaism, and non-Abrahamic Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and the various fragmented children of those faiths. We can locate a version of it in indigenous religions, in the Victorian magical lodges, the modern fraternal societies, and the graduation ceremonies in schools and colleges.

We as human beings have an inborn need for this sacredness. We, alone on the planet (as far as we know anyway) yearn to experience something greater than our mundane daily grind, to connect with that which is beyond and experience that which is other. Whether we attain to such states via all the pomp and splendor of a choreographed religious ceremony, or we approach it by contemplating the bubbles in our morning tea is irrelevant. The result is our internal elevation, that epiphany of self that leaves us transformed, and returned to the mundane world a bit different, and perhaps a bit better.

My eldest and I were perusing the occult shelves at a local used book store recently when she commented “These all seem largely… self-helpy…” I have had the same observation with many of the texts being offered in the last couple of decades. To be clear, it is not the idea of self-improvement that we find disagreeable, but the thought that it can be achieved by reading a few chapters of the latest hastily published thin paperback on magic, witchcraft, astrology, chakras, herbalism, crystals, or tarot. Much like the myriad diet and exercise books, and those psychology and pseudo-psychology books that are actual defined as “self-help”, many of the hundreds of texts under the broad label of “new age” appear to offer a quick fix for all that is wrong in the world.

And to be fair, like most of these books, there is probably a paragraph or two that mentions to be effective such changes and practices are a long-term commitment. Self-transformation is not a goal, it is a process. It is the result of small steps taken all the time, and over and over, and doesn’t ever stop. The road is long and winding, if one gets the opportunity to walk it. In time the little changes open up our minds and our hearts and gift us with the true realization that it is not all about us.

“Self-care” as a buzzword and marketing strategy has emerged to dominate a number of quasi-esoteric topics since the beginning of the plague years. This is an expected result of the kind of emotional trauma that this world wide epidemic, and the social changes it brought. But as we hopefully emerge from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we have to be more than self-absorbed and self-contemplative islands. At the same time, we need to realize that we will feel isolated and alone in the cosmos, as we make the journey outward.

I have said before that the Hermit and the Hierophant both hold the secrets of the universe. At one time or another, we will seek revelation through either pathway, and there is no reason to choose one over the other, or to exclude one or the other for once and for all.

The Sacred Life is one that keeps us constantly moving forward.

And on that thought I will move forward to next week’s article, and thank you as always for your time and attention.

February 15, 2023February 15, 2023

Pyramids Then

Taking a poll here.

The fact that we have pyramids or pyramid like structures around the world among different cultures that never were connected with each other proves that:

A. ALIENS!
B. ATLANTIS!
C. If you want to build something really big out of bricks or blocks, the easiest thing to do is just make a big pile.

My answer today is C.

I was a firm believer and did much research into both A and B (and of the variant A1. ALIENS! FROM ATLANTIS!).

But it was the 70s. If you think paranormal is big now, you should have been around for the Golden Age.

I’m talking Pyramid Power.

I haven’t heard the term used in a while, but back in the 70s and early 80s it was the cat’s pajamas (also a term I haven’t heard in a while).

When Uri Geller was on Merv Griffin bending spoons with his mind, the rest of us were sharpening razor blades, treating migraines, and curing erectile disfunction with the awesome power inherent in that magical shape.

You could buy cardboard Pyramid Power kits from the backs of magazines, or go for the super deluxe model that you sat inside in your living room. Pyramid Power was the panacea. It cured what ailed us. It kept us young and vital and was fueling the Sexual Revolution, or at least the one-night stand.

The origins of this mania started as a concept about keeping meat fresh.Iin the 1930s a French dowser named Antoine Bovis theorized that the pyramid shape would inherently “mummify” organic materials. The basis of his thinking is a bit fuzzy, I am not up on the idea of dowsing enough to work out quite how he deduced pyramid shapes had this power. He extrapolates in his theory that since his cardboard shape worked with a small fish and a piece of meat, the bigger Egyptian pyramid must contain the same magnetic energies.

There is an apocryphal account that he observed mummified cats that had supposedly been created by the Egyptian pyramid itself. Of course, the interior of the pyramid is relatively warm and dry and works fairly good as a giant dehydrator. But we know that couldn’t be what was doing it. Had to be some mystic force.

After the Second World War, an enterprising Czech inventor took Bovis’s ideas of concentrated magnetism and started marketing his own line of patented cardboard pyramid “sharpeners” to prolong the life of razor blades during the bleak Soviet bloc economy. They were apparently successful enough to draw the attention of a couple of authors who included these ideas in the book Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain in 1970.

In an American generation that was deeply embracing counterculture, ideas of supernatural and paranormal were frequently the topic of general conversation. People were experimenting with altered states of consciousness, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and other non-abrahamic religions, including Wicca and other occult practices. “Secret” practices that had been suppressed by the Soviets (and probably the CIA) just had to be looked into. Von Däniken had just had tremendous public success with Chariots of the Gods, and the idea of an ancient alien spiritual techno-medicine just hit the right chord.

Generally if there’s not a satisfying rational explanation for something, people are willing to accept a much more enticing irrational one. Thus the pyramid business took off, initially with dueling books both entitled Pyramid Power. As you might imagine, theories that the pyramid shape might augment or reflect or collect earth’s natural magnetic field in such a way as to deter degeneration, got intertwined with any wild occult paranormal pseudoscientific idea that caught public attention.

And we all did our pyramid things. I think I built one or two. I watched every show that mentioned it. I read all the books I could find (and without the ‘Zon, they were few). And like Agent Mulder I wanted to believe. There had to be a secret power. There must have been some kind of ancient civilization. Aliens had to have helped them cut the stones.

pyramidsinwands! — Pyramid mania isn’t a new thing. The fascination with Egypt in the Victorian Era doubtless inspired Pamela Coleman Smith to hide the Giza pyramids in these “hills” behind a couple of Wand Court cards. And understandably so, since the pyramid was confuted with “pyro” or fire and the outline shape of the triangle is the alchemical rune for same. Like the salamanders on their tunics, the pyramids in the background are fire symbol, both of common terrestrial fire, and of the cosmic celestial fire of the cosmos.

Although many designers choose to show the wands more literally as torches, Smith has elected to portray them as simple branches, with a few leaves here and there. This is also symbolic, as it refers to the Rod of Aharon. Moses half-brother wields his staff significantly during the 10 plagues, and later in Exodus, it is said to have budded, showing the power of the Almighty to bring life from the dry wood. It is one of the relics kept in the Ark of the Covenant, and in the RWS Tarot symbolizes the present of hidden fire within.

And then I went there. I went to the pyramid. I climbed the passage and scrambled across the rock into the King’s Chamber and I stood in the heart of the Great Pyramid of Giza and expected my Great Epiphany. And possibly also alien teleportation and super powers.

And then I realized, sliding my hands across those glassy smooth stone walls with the perfectly fitted seams, how it had been done.

Lots and lots of people, with lots and lots of sand, and lots and lots of time.

No aliens. No laser beams. No antigravs.

Just people, sand, and time.

But the Great Epiphany was something even better.

Now, mind you, I do understand why everyone wants to believe. Aside from it just being a lot cooler to think it was space aliens with laser guns posing as ancient gods, the Pyramid itself evokes a sense of massive awe that is hardly paralleled. I have only experienced the same kind of mental and spiritual transport a few other times. Once was the Chartres Cathedral in France, and once was the Saturn V rocket here in Houston.

Now all of these things are firstly very very big. They’re bigger than many things we encounter in our lives. The Pyramid was the tallest building on Earth until the Eiffel Tower was built. But the Eiffel Tower, though admittedly cool, and really big, doesn’t impose itself upon you like the Pyramid does.

There’s the old saying that all men fear time, but time fears the pyramids. That’s a palpable feeling when you are standing near it.

My first experience of Chartres was much like my first experience of the Pyramid. You are driving along and then suddenly there is this massive thing rising out of the horizon. Chartres is situated on a natural hill, and at the time (late 1990s) was surrounded by large wheat fields, so it’s massivity was augmented by this isolation. Of course, it sits in the middle of the modern city, but it’s hugeness is still unique for the locale. So both with Chartres and the Pyramid you can approach them and get the same sense of how they appeared at the time of their builders. They are effectively timeless.

Gothic-Chartres — Notre Dame des Chartres as it appears today. It’s really hard to get a sense of the scale of these things until you are next them and yet it’s daunting. The great Gothic cathedrals, many dedicated to the Virgin Mary, sprang up between the end of the first Millennium and the Black Death. They strove to portray the heavenly Jerusalem described in the Book of Revelations, by a complex series of symbolic and mathematical inclusions in the architecture. Many Christians believed that the promised return of Christ was going to follow the year 1000, and these grand churches were a plea for mercy, as well as a kind of working penance. The towers above are different because they took so long to build that the artistic style had changed when the second one was started. It was almost 100 years before it was completed. For comparison, from the beginning to the apex of the Pyramid age in Egypt was about that long.

The Three of Pentacles shows the fine detail work inherent in the Gothic style. The pointed arches are all parts of full circles, that push into each other. The geometry defining them could be done with a simple divider (what we sometimes call a compass in math class). The trefoils – here holding the pentacles, and quatrefoils were circles arranged on circles, and the great rose windows that pierce the walls of the apse and transept are circles holding up circles holding up circles, all of them pushing together in a magic dance that allowed such massive structures to be made with thin walls and glass windows.

Chartres photo from Wikipedia by Olvr – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16331210

We know more or less how Chartres was constructed. It took hundreds of years, and lots of people, and lots of stone and other resources. It uses sophisticated and ingenious technologies to lift massive weights high above the ground, and keep them there, without benefit of an internal steel skeleton. Chartres, like all Gothic Cathedrals, is held up by gravity. This oxymoronic statement may seem absurd at first, but the basic engineering principle goes back to the Romans.

The Romans worked out the true arch. The arch is half of a circle. Gravity is causing every stone in the circle to fall toward the center, but every stone in the circle is caught between two other stones also trying to fall so that the whole thing stays up.

If you put a row of arches in line after each other you get a vault. If you put two of them in perpendicular, you get what is called a groin vault, which gives you a square room underneath with openings on all four sides. Large Roman buildings employed these techniques to create very large interior spaces. They also used the same principle to create the dome, where instead of going in a single direction the arches pivot around a central point. And because the stones near the top were pushing into each other all around the circle, they could even leave an opening – called an oculus or “eye”- in the middle of the dome and it would still stay up.

The only difficulty in such structures was that the weight of the downward pushing stones tends to press outward at the bottom, so initially Roman buildings had to have walls with equal or great mass than the weight of the stones in the arches.

The Gothic innovation, was in utilizing arches upon arches upon arches, to make thinner lighter walls, which they filled with brilliant stained glass, and flying buttresses, which pressed inward against the vaults but carried the weight out and down to a set of descending piers. The whole effect results in a kind of wedding cake extravaganza of a building.

The Pyramid, by contrast, comes from a time where post and lintel construction is necessary. If you are using stone, you can only make your openings as wide as the stone you are using for the lintel – the piece that goes across the top – will bear before it breaks. Or you have to use a bigger stone. Which means you have to have bigger posts. And a lot of them. This is why the Hypostyle Hall in the Temple of Amen Ra at Karnak has the forest of massive pillars. Think Stonehenge, but one a bigger scale.

Even with that though, the chambers inside the Great Pyramid can’t bear the weight of the structure above it without some pretty amazing tricks. The passage that goes up into the pyramid is only a few feet wide, so it is constructed of limestone and using basic post and lintel method. But the burial chambers would need to be much bigger, and for whatever reason, Cheops wanted them inside the stone mass of the Pyramid. This is generally believed to have been to deter robbers, but Peter Tomkins, in his Secrets of the Great Pyramid Revealed offers some other plausible ideas -ideas that are as nifty as space aliens and still don’t involve Atlantis.

In any case, the middle parts of the Pyramid use heavy granite, a stone much stronger and capable of spanning a chamber 20 or 30 feet wide without snapping. Of course, it’s incredibly heavy, is almost impossible to carve with copper chisels (even if you were sharpening them in a pyramid) and was quarried hundreds of miles up the Nile at Aswan.

And yet there it was smooth as glass, with the faintest hint of a joint between the massive blocks. And above me the great weight of about another third of the Pyramid over my head was pressing down on those granite roof beams. As they had been for thousands of years.

So clearly, Pharoah’s overseer of works just phoned over to where they were building Stonehenge and got Merlin to come move them. No aliens at all.

Thing is, we know now that they rough cut the granite stone using fire cracking. They moved the great slabs from the quarry using various ramps, sledges, mud “lubricant” and a whole lot of people pulling on ropes. They barged them down the Nile to the job site, where the docks were a lot closer than they are today, and using more ramps, sledges, and people drug them up to where they belonged.

And then some dude sat there with sand, and a jug of water, and maybe a reed or papyrus matte, and sanded them glassy smooth. Okay, fine. It was several dudes. But it’s the same thing they did at Chartres 3000 years later and nobody claims that was aliens or mermaids or the Loch Ness Monster.

And in both cases, they were building a monument to God.

It’s just, that in the case of the Pyramid, God came to look over the building site from time to time.

Even though in the last couple of decades all that I have just explained has become widely known, we still have a fascination with this curious shape. I personally have several pyramids made from semiprecious stones and crystals. And for all of them I probably also have an obelisk, a sphere, and probably a skull carved from the same rocks.

And I am not alone, judging from the numbers of rock and crystal pyramids that I find wherever fine rocks and crystals are sold. Clearly we still believe in Pyramid Power, if not exactly in how it was perceived in the 1970s. The physical shape of the pyramid is a touchstone to our psyche in a way that few things are. Even when we see simple the two dimensional outline of it as a triangle, our minds evoke exotic locales, ancient civilizations, and mysteries. The pyramid is sacred geometry. And was meant to be.

The Great Pyramid in Egypt and all it’s little brothers and sisters up and down the Nile were meant to be magic engines that transported the soul of the Pharaoh (and later lesser personages) to the sky where they would ride in the Boat of Ra for all eternity. The shape was derived from both the “god rays” we sometimes experience when the sun shines down through clouds, and also from a stone emblematic of the Primordial Mound of Earth that formed in the beginning of time, and from which grew the Lotus that Ra emerges from.

In the Mesopotamian cultures great ziggurats were built that were capped with temples, bringing the priesthood and the kings closer to the gods that lived in the sky. In Mesoamerica, pyramid structures fulfilled a similar purpose, though we have some that were also used as tombs. It’s probable that burying the dead king in the pyramid temple was seen to give an additional power and sacredness to it, but as far as we know Mesoamerican pyramids were not conceived as tombs.

There is a parallel here to the numerous famous personages who are buried in modern cathedrals. The church is holy ground. The holier the church, the more important the community of it’s dead become. Tompkins puts forth that assuming the only purpose of the Egyptian pyramid was a tomb, would be the same as asserting that the only purpose of Westminster Abbey was to bury the royals of Britain. While it is done there, there are a number of other purposes.

The orientation of various pyramids to astronomical phenomenon cannot be denied. We tend today to separate sacred and scientific, but this has never been the case until recently. Building anything required consultation of the spirits, the stars, and the omens, and building something as important as a pyramid or temple complex even moreso. It’s telling that in China some pyramid like structures were created for the purpose of improving the flow of chi in accordance with Feng Shui principles. They were human made mountains because natural mountains were not in the proper place.

Much has been made of secret numbers and ratios and measurements inherent in the Pyramid. And they are. This is because they were intended to be there, just as they were intended to be in Chartres and it’s sister cathedrals. We “discover” the correspondences to our modern measurements because our modern metrics (not the metric system, but the old ones – foot, yard, fathom, etc.) are derived from scales used to create the Pyramid.

All these things only seem wild and crazy and beyond belief if we assume that our ancestors were all a bunch of idiots, walking around with knuckles dragging.

The splendor of Pax Romana brought along with it the propaganda that the Roman way was the best way. A certain amount of this arrogance was inherited from the Hellenic Greeks who wrote up standards of truth and beauty and morality and ethics and just about everything. When the broken bones of these civilizations were resurrected in the Renaissance, they were idealized by the secular humanists over the cultish, insular, and dogmatic church of the Middle Ages.

So the secrets handed down from master to apprentice mason were divorced from their sacred meanings, and ultimately became purely mechanical operations. In this transition, the idea that pre-Alexandrian cultures could have possessed any such understanding was scoffed at. And so we reached the 1970s comfortably assured that the pyramids had to be built by aliens because human brains just couldn’t do that.

AstroVette-Saturn-5 — The state of the art in 1969 technology. The big rocket now is housed in a specially built hangar following a major restoration. If you are ever down Houston way, I highly recommend visiting it. Despite this being the product of modern engineering, you can see a number of structures within it that are derived from universal mathematical principles that the builders of Chartres and the Pyramid would have seen and understood.

If we underestimate the human capacity to imagine, to dream, and to dare, we do a great disservice to ourselves and our ancestors. The pyramid builders may not have understood mathematics and engineering as we do, but they had a technology and it worked. Despite the stories told by Greeks centuries afterward, the majority of the work on the monuments of Egypt were done by free people, in exchange for food and other needs, during the time of the Nile flood. Like the workers on the grand Gothic monuments, they were assured that their efforts would guarantee them a life everlasting.

In 1903, the first heavier that air machine took off at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and flew a third of the length of the Saturn V rocket. Sixty-five years later human beings landed on the surface of the moon. We generally have been brought up believing that this accelerated leap in technology is a purely modern thing.

The Step Pyramid of Djoser was devised and executed by the vizier and sage Im-Ho-Tep around 2600 BCE. The Great Pyramid of Cheops was completed about 100 years later, and assuming the current figure of 20 years to build, that’s only a little longer than it took us to get from Kitty Hawk to the moon.

We did not have any help from the aliens. We didn’t even have electronic computers until the very end of the process, and we were checking those with mechanical sextants and slide rules because these 18th and 19th century devices were more accurate than the roomfuls of tubes and wires.

I would like to think, that should humanity survive it’s comparative infancy and follow those first explorers out into the void, that our progeny will someday look back at that weird collection of cylinders in the museum down at Clear Lake, with the same kind of awe and admiration and wonder that we feel about that old pyramid.

Until next time, remember that humans with their mind and their will can build mountains. Aliens not required.

February 8, 2023February 8, 2023

Time and Space

I spent the last few days in New Orleans, and no, I was not aware that it was Mardi Gras, or rather, that Carnival had already begun. New Orleans, like the Romans, enjoy a good party. It was, however, very nice to see the French Quarter returning to its former liveliness after two years of privation and and loss during the pandemic. New Orleans is a scrappy town, of course, and one used to making it through rough times.

My objective was just to get away for a few days, eat some really good food, probably drink a little more than I ought, and wander through the ancient streets of the Vieux Carré looking for the strange and unusual. And in that I was successful.

This is my fifth or sixth trip to our neighboring city on the Gulf. During my first visit, on Halloween in the mid twenty-teens, I was intent on finding shops that provided magical supplies. It had been a very long time since I had been in what felt like a “real” witchcraft shop, and I was hoping New Orleans, with it’s reputation for voodoo and vampires, would have something to fit the bill. It did. Several in fact.

The latter trips were mostly occupied by a writer’s conference, which is happening again finally as we rise from the plague years. While this limits my time to roam around, it also occurs in the heart of the French Quarter. The time I get to explore is well rewarded by short strolls to nearby shops.

We came over for my birthday in 2020, in defiance of COVID and the World’s Ending and out of a desire to put some little cash into an economy struggling hard against the loss of tourist dollars. The Quarter was oddly quiet. Many of the restaurants and shops had closed up completely, rather than trying to meet expenses with few customers. But we found the few that were there, and made good friends among them, and that is one of the very pleasant reasons I go to New Orleans.

To be accurate, I go to the French Quarter, whether I am staying there, or in the adjacent Warehouse district, I am generally in the that bend of the river for which the Crescent City is named. It is the old town, dating to the first occupation by French colonials, and dripping in history with pirates, writers, adventurers, witches, vampires, and voodoo. I have visited the Garden District and gone up into town to the New Orleans Museum of Fine Art, but the reason I go is to walk those ancient sometimes broken streets and feel the years upon them.

I live in the suburbs of Houston, which despite a heritage going back to the formation of Texas in 1836, is probably one of the more modern cities in the country. We did, after all, go to the moon from here, so there’s always been a kind of impetus to forward momentum that often leaves something lacking. In the sterile steel and glass of downtown, with more and more of its characteristic neighborhoods “gentrifying” into high rises, townhouses, and “trendy” shops and restaurants, I find very little to connect with. When I first arrived almost a quarter century ago, there were places with character, charm, and not a little quirkiness. But with the influx of money and transplant, the ethnic eateries that had served a community for generations were bought out, torn down, and replaced by synthetic simulations of authentic neighborhood diners that are much more palatable to hipsters and millennials who invest in downtown. In Houston, no one seems to be interested in preserving the neighborhoods, or the neighborhoods have already collapsed to the point that there is nothing to preserve. Yet for some reason, we need another Starbucks on another corner.

If there’s a Starbucks in the French Quarter I have not found it. While it is true that there are modern eateries in that sector, they tend to be managed by families who go way back in the restaurant business. Many of the places I patronize there shifted their kitchen facilities to feeding the people who worked for them during the initial days of the quarantine, when they were not able to open up to the public, and those people had no livelihood. I know that some place did that here in Houston, and I imagine others might have. But I also know of prominent chains that almost immediately laid off their entire staff. Arguably this is because such industries operate on a business model of constant income and constant expansion. The New Orleans folks, took care of their own. They reimagined and consolidated operations in order to do that, and they are emerging slowly from the plague years with an operation that is sustainable and recognizing of the human element. In a time when we are confronted by billionaire capitalists who routinely ignore the human for meager margin increases, caring for the waiters and the cooks and the dishwashers counts for a lot in my book.

In my trips to the Crescent City I have only been treated less than warmly in two shops, and I have never gone back to them. In all the rest, people are friendly, helpful, engaging, and interested. They enjoy what they are doing and they enjoy the people who come into their businesses. That is how things used to be in the world, long, long before it could be blamed on COVID or Amazon or Walmart. People connected with people. When I was a child going into town for a shopping trip was a social occasion. You saw people you hadn’t seen since the last trip. You caught up on the news. The store and the barber shop and the soda counter were gatherings for community. They were generational. There were always a group of older folks in these places, that knew you, because they knew your mother when they were your age. I grant you I lived in a rural setting, but I can’t imagine that the tone and substance were much different in the city neighborhoods in the Northeast or the Midwest, and they certainly had been that way in the South.

Neighborhoods were about expressing culture. The suburbs are about homogenizing it. As more people lost touch with their own culture, and embraced the synthetic simulation of “suburban America”, the depth of our experience, and our connections to each other, became shallower and shallower.

nola-in-and-out — On my phone there are only two additional photos between these shots of my plane landing and taking off. One i posted to Instagram of some new cards I bought at Earth Odyssey and Sassy Magick, and the other was to gauge my child’s interest in something I found in the latter shop. Unplug every now and again. Your real friends will understand, and your “followers” can wait. Don’t be trapped into believing that feeding the social media beast is a real thing. It’s useful if you have a business or an agenda, but for most of us it’s an illusion.

We’ve taken it to the point that interaction now is often entirely simulated. We call it “social media” but it is neither thing. I grant you, you would not be reading this without it, and for that I am grateful. And I cannot say that I have not made connections with people on line, but I do not delude myself into believing that they are as real and binding as the ones I have “irl”.

I have commented before on the illusory nature of the internet experience. Web 1.0 was clunky and slow and sometimes hard to get around, but like those old neighborhoods, it was people interacting with people – albeit over a really really slow dialup connection.

Then Web 2.0 promised us the ability to have fast direct interaction. Corporations seized upon this idea, seeing a profit bonanza in being able to communicate instantly with customers. Until it happened, and the corporations realized how many customers and potential customers, and unhappy customers, and itinerant cranks and absolute lunatics were out there interested in “engagement”. So they hired people to specialize in engagement…until they got caught making AIDS jokes on the Twitter and had to be replaced by “artificial intelligence”.

We have come to the point where a machine requires you to prove that you are human in order to have access to a chat system which requires you to interact with another machine.

I guess the corporations don’t want the bots getting to each other. They might unionize, or start making holocaust jokes on the Twitter or something.

And this is one of the reasons I make periodic trips across the Mississippi to that old weary neighborhood by the Big River.

I could have purchased all the things I got on the internet. I’m sure the ‘Zon had the Tarot cards as cheap if not cheaper and I would not have had to venture forth from my domicile in the day time. And somewhere in some register in some computer in the cloud, some bit would flip, and a tiny modicum of shareholder value would be generated for billionaire investors who already have more money than they could spend in a lifetime even if they were Iron Man and Batman ( which sadly, none of them have imagination enough to do).

And though in a couple of places I was asked to prove I was me, I was never asked to prove I was human (which is probably a good thing, with that elfin bloodline and all). Wandering down those streets I can hear the echoes of all the other humans that have wandered there before me. I guess, if you listen well, enough, you might do that anywhere, but in the old cities, the living relics; the phantoms come right out of the ruins. They are French and Cajun and Creole and Caribbean and African and Spanish and English and Native American and Catholic and Protestant and Voodoun and Pagan and oh so many more. They are the heritage of humanity, a heritage we are in danger of loosing to the synthetic simulation of diversity and ethnicity that is being flattened and packaged by the internet, with a helping hand from mega-corporations who just can’t keep spending on smarter bots to deal with real diversity and individualism.

I grant this rambling has not been as specifically about magic and spirituality as my usual. Well, spirits get interested in a lot of things.

Illusion is a trap that the magician and witch should always be wary of. It is very easy to accept a “sign” that we want to see, even when it isn’t there. And likewise, we can perceive that our lives are “cursed” when it is only the perception that is.

Every now and again we need to take a breather from the interwebs, from the echo-chambers, and be alone with ourselves. We need to remember the sound of our own voice so that we know when we are hearing it.

I’ll leave you with that thought, and hopefully, having had a bit of a break myself, will return to more expected pursuits next week.

February 1, 2023February 1, 2023

An Imbolc Article

Well, I understand that today or tomorrow is Imbolc. Or Imolc. Or Imolg.

I must confess that until recent times, this was not an observance I was too keenly aware of, apart from it being Groundhog Day, of course.

In my younger days, absent access to all the books that are abundant now, and with no computer network whatsoever, let alone all the various flavors of Internet, I had only a couple of sources for what were Sabbats. They referenced the Equinoxes, the Solstices, the Eve of All Hallows, and Walpurgisnacht.

The “Cross-Quarter Days” midpoint between Solstice and Equinox were not enumerated in my references, as they are now in the typical Wheel of the Year. Of course, as I pointed out in my birthday article, we are not really celebrating the Cross-Quarter Days on the astrological day, because the day that sun enters the 15th degree of Aquarius is February 3rd. At least by my charts.

No matter, I am willing to adapt and expand. As I write this a week or so ahead, I am already seeing the Imbolc posts popping up on Instagram and the other social media sites. Which got me going down that ol’ web-search rabbit hole looking for “ye rightwise and true knowledge” of the festival of Imbolc, or Imolc, or Imolg, or…

Well, you see where this is going.

imolc-almanac — In the pages of this year’s Witches Almanac I found yet another spelling as Oimelc. Apparently this is an old Gaelic word for ewe milk, and makes much more linguistic sense to my ears that Imolc or Imbolc or Imolg.

You’ll note that February 2nd here recognizes the Catholic Candlemas, even though it is probably a “stolen” feast day from the old pagan practice. One of the things I like about the Witches Almanac is the pantheist approach of the editorial staff. Catholic witches are a thing. Christian witches are a thing. And if you want blessed candles to bring luck and light in midwinter, what’s the harm. You can always bless them yourself.

I found at least three separate observances (excluding the one largely invented by the Punxatawney, PA Chamber of Commerce) that share the date of the first or second day of February. They are the old Irish tradition of Imolc, the similar old Irish tradition of St. Brigid’s Day, and the also old Irish Catholic tradition of Candlemas, which appears to be an even older Hebrew tradition relating to the Nativity.

So lets work backward here. Candlemas is a Catholic feast day celebrated 40 days after Christmas. It supposedly recognizes the day that baby Jesus was presented to the priests of the Temple in Jerusalem, as part of specific Hebrew ritual. Per the internet, a newborn must be brought into the Temple 40 days after the bris ceremony (the circumcision) and becomes part of the congregation. It is also at this point that the mother is considered to have been ritually purified following birth.

Like many of the ancient Hebrew practices, we can find certain logical precedents for the ritual dates. Forty days is a sacred number in the Old Testament. The Flood was 40 days and 40 nights, for instance. In the New Testament, Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness, where he faces the temptations of Satan. This can be seen as a specific period of ritual purification as well.

But let’s consider this in the context of the Mother Mary, who was in medieval Europe much more associated with Candlemas than the specifics of the Presentation. Forty days would presumably be long enough for a woman who had given birth to have at least one full menstrual cycle. This would not only signal her return to fertility, but also that any remains of the birth process had be ejected with her menses. This is a reasonable hygienic consideration in ancient times.

In similar fashion, forty days would mean the circumcision of the male child had time to heal, before introducing it to a large group of people and the potential of infection. What perhaps began as basic practices to insure the health and safety of the community, became ritualized in order to perpetuate their practice.

But in medieval Europe, where the practice of circumcision was rare, and Hebrew ritual was not as much a part of the Christian service, these things became dogma. We celebrate this because we do. Yes, there was a meaning, but you don’t need to know that.

And, well, we also need some reason to continue practicing this pagan holiday in the middle of the cold months so we can get more people converted over to the One True Way and all that.

Which brings us to Imolc and St. Brigid. These seem to have survived in Ireland more than in other Celtic regions. There is every indication, however, that a day in early February also had significance in the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon cultures of central Europe, and may also have been known in Scandinavia. It is most likely that this has more to do with preparing for the agricultural duties of the coming spring.

Imolc is generally roughly translated as “in the belly” and is believed to refer to the pregnant ewes among the all-important sheep of the ancient Irish economy. This getting of the lambs could vary a week or so around the first part of February, but essentially this meant that the sheep would be born about the time that the first grasses were cropping up in the meadows around early to mid-March. This is the point usually when the last hard freeze is past, and planting of the crops can begin, so the pregnant sheep were a good time marker for preparing the seeds, fixing the plows and other farm equipment, and generally shifting from the winter inactivity, to the spring activity.

St. Brigid, the “Mary of Ireland”, is a semi-mythical personage who may have been named after a more ancient goddess Brigid or Bride (and is possibly synonymous with the Welsh Rhiannon, and Gaulic Brigantia) .

The goddess Brigid was one of the Tuatha de Danaan – the People of Donn, which are frequently viewed as elves or faeries. She may have been a triple goddess, or a goddess of triple aspects, but she is identified with poetry (and thus spellsinging or magic) blacksmithing, healing, and livestock. So her feast day celebration on or around the time of Imolc makes much sense as it ties to the activities needed for the approach of spring.

St. Brigid of Kildare is supposedly the daughter of a nobleman and a pagan slave. She was released from her bondage due to her charitable nature tipping off the High King to her special purpose. She is purported to have founded the first convent in Ireland at Kildare, under an ancient sacred oak, thus usurping the old Druid Magic with a new Christian Faith.

She seems to have borrowed a good deal of her namesake’s mythology, but this is not unusual for an early Christian saint whose celebrations are plastered over an ancient pagan feast day. In Ireland which embraces and transformed the Roman Faith into something uniquely Celtic, the gods and heroes march dutifully into sainthood and remain preserved for us. Their continental counterparts were not as fortunate.

So Brigid the goddess and Brigid the Christian saint merged and continued to herald the coming of spring, and through her role as “Blessed Virgin of Ireland” comfortably supplanted Candlemas in the Irish liturgical calendar.

Or so the internet says. But here I am, still trying to figure out where the groundhog came from.

hibernating-cat-day — In my world the deep hibernating critters take the form of lazy tomcats on a Saturday afternoon.

The question here, of course, if whether the Great Floofy One will mistake the House Panther for his shadow and I will be stuck underneath the pair of them for another six weeks.

I guess it could be worse. If it is a longer winter, at least I will stay toasty warm with all that hair.

Yes, I know. The groundhog really isn’t part of the old traditions. Or at least it doesn’t seem to be. But I have that obsessive nature that drives me to look for connections in these things. If a tradition survives on or about the same day as some other tradition, there is some likelihood that they are linked. And I am that guy that just has to know.

Especially if I am trying to work out how any and all of these traditions fit into my own practice and world view. I am not someone who can just accept that we celebrate this day because we do. It needs to mean something to me personally, or I just won’t do it.

So the groundhog apparently is another one of those Pennsylvania Dutch – nee Deutsch things. It survives from a practice in Germany where the local critter was a badger, though the tradition remains the same. If it comes out on a sunny day in early February, winter is going to last another six weeks…which gets us on into April.

Of course, if it’s cloudy and murky on February 2nd, then we get an early spring.

I find this to be counter-intuitive, and I can’t be the only one.

To me, if we’re going by the usual signs and portents, a sunny day would surely mean that spring is on the way. Also, if your local furry critter pops out of it’s burrow on such a day, that would indicate it is no longer in hibernation and that the worst of winter is likely over.

So why should these two signs taken together be considered a sign of six more weeks of cold nasty weather.

My initial thought was that we might be dealing with a proverb type situation such as “counting the chickens before they hatch”. That is, seeing the sun shining and the little beasties out and about in early February was just too good to be true. Best prepare for things to remain bleak for a bit longer, and take the time to lay in more supplies.

Turns out that last bit might be the key to the whole thing. Sort of.

In my digging I ran across another ancient Celtic goddess. Called the Cailleach among other names, she is the “Old Woman of Winter” and seems to occupy a spot opposite Brigid, in the latter’s aspect as goddess of the spring. The Cailleach is the personification of the Winter Dark, the bleak death of the world, the abandonment of the sun, and potentially ruler of nature during the period between Samhain and Beltane.

Being a Winter Dark thing myself, I like her. She’s a goddess I can relate to. Suddenly this thing got a lot more personal.

Wildwood-Imbolc — In looking for images to illustrate the various articles here, I often have recourse to my large collection of Tarot and Oracle cards. In the search for Imbolc, and the larger-than-life personas that lurk beneath it’s surface, I can think of no better resource than the Wildwood Tarot by Mark Ryan and John Matthews, and these wonderful images by illustrator Will Worthington. I have several other decks by this artist, but this is by far the favorite.

The deck is unashamedly Celtic in character, which fits the Imbolc tradition perfectly. You might be able to puzzle out which cards I have chosen, as some of the iconography is traditional, but the way they have been fit into the Celtic shamanistic tradition that Mr, Matthews and his wife Caitlin have developed so well in the last few decades is unique.

Alas there was not an obvious Cailleach card, and the two here (left and center) both felt right. In the parlance of the Wildwood, they are the Ancestor and Hooded Man (Hooded One works as well). They correspond to the more usual Hierophant and Hermit, which I have discussed at length before (and which I frequently associate with my own sometimes larger-than-life persona). They are connected concepts, and both seem to auger here the presence of Winter Dark.

Even though the Ancestor is out in broad daylight, the moon is visible, and the bleak sky portends more snow may be coming. This being reflects the great gulf of time that separates us from our origins, from the known into the unknown, from the dimming light into the apparent continual darkness.

Offsetting them in the role of Brigid/Rhiannon/Brigantia is the Green Woman, apt for a goddess associated with spring arriving. In the deck she corresponds to the Empress, which is also appropriate, with her connection to the fecundity of Venus and matters of birth and fertility in animals and plants.

I cannot recommend this particular deck highly enough, especially for those of us with Celtic roots, or who are pursing a path of nature-based paganism. The imagery alone is worth the price, and the accompanying book is insightful and innovative.

In any case, depending on local tradition, the transition from the Old Woman to the Young Brigid was celebrated on different days. Beltane was an obvious one, because by the first of May any vestige of winter’s grip was well and truly gone.

Practically of course, spring activities begin well before May 1st. The whole month of April is usually occupied in planting and lambing, if not earlier, so another date for the hand-off was around March 25, which is close enough to the Vernal Equinox to argue that as the intended date, plus or minus several years of calendrical confutation.

And still one other tradition takes us all the way back to Brigid’s Day on February 2nd.

While this ties us neatly into Candlemas, Imolc, and St. Brigid, I am sure you are wondering what happened to the groundhog.

Well, it’s not so much the groundhog (or the badger), but the day.

See according to one Scottish tradition, the Cailleach would go out on February 2nd to gather wood in for the rest of winter. Because she was a most powerful witch, she cast a spell for a sunny clear day so that she would not be inconvenienced by poor weather while getting in her provisions.

And thus if February 2nd is bright and sunny, we know the Cailleach is prepared to deliver winter weather on into mid-April. That was the part of the equation I was looking for.

Okay, so I still don’t know where the badger fits into that. But, hey, we don’t need no stinking badgers.

In the early morning hours today, as I was between being asleep and reaching full wakefulness, I was thinking about needing to write this article. An image came into my mind unbidden, as it does sometimes during that hypnogogic state that is not really thinking and not really dreaming, where the subconscious just bubbles things up.

It was a brief vision (if you will) of a small household altar, with the remains of a human skull among the other accoutrements, and the owner’s hand gently stroking it. Through that metadata that accompanies such experiences, I knew that this was the skull of an ancestor, kept reverently and lovingly addressed.

Now, because I do have that obsessive faculty, I can suggest that perhaps this drifted up because in my research I discovered that portions of a skull believed to be that of Brigid of Kildare are scattered across Europe, where they are venerated in various churches and cathedrals. I think perhaps a little piece may have returned to her native Ireland, which seems kind of sad, because the larger portions remain abroad.

I really have not understood the Catholic cult of the relics. I have always viewed it as an economic engine, wherein a particular site was given or recognized as having an object of veneration and power in order to attract pilgrims and their gold. Yes, I am a cynic. I can make the same argument for the sacred wells of the Celtic world, the various Oracles in Greece, and the numerous temples along the Nile. There is and always has been a mercenary component to the practice of ritual and religion.

But that does not, and should not take away the spiritual nature of such a pilgrimage, or the belief in the power of the venerated object or location. I think perhaps that ancestor skull in my early morning vision is a kind of epiphany for that. What we connect to, and hold dear, and revere, is powerful, if for no other reason than that we imbue it with our own power.

I don’t know that many of us have the bones of our ancestors. Some of us, if not most, may have the opportunity to visit those remains in a cemetery or mausoleum, but with the rise in cremation the “scattering of ashes” seems to be severing those links forever.

Relationships with the ancestors can be problematic. The ones that we personally knew, were known to us, “warts and all” and as such potentially offer memories of trauma and disfunction. Past grandparents and maybe great grandparents, they exist as photographs and names only, and what limited stories come down to us. Unless they were celebrated or famous, there’s generally not a lot of detail, aside from names on gravestones or maybe in a family Bible.

So perhaps that’s why we connect to myth figures and saints, and attach our rituals to some tangible remnant of their existence in the ever-changing world we inhabit. We need that assurance that something lasts, that spring will continue to follow winter, even as we enter our own personal Winter Dark. We need to believe that the path is a circle and not simply a road that heads out into the wilderness and then abruptly ends.

That is what I found when looking for Imbolc, anyway. This blog is my own personal journey as much as it is anything else. I remain, for now, on the road.

I will be back next week.

January 25, 2023February 2, 2023

Hidden Figures

A black draped figure seemingly glided to the front of the classroom and began scribbling on the chalkboard.

Professor Snide spoke without turning.

“Turn to page twelve-thousand, six hundred, and seventy-four and begin reading the rubric at the end of the third paragraph; subsection two, heading four, chapter eight hundred eighty-two. . .” Pausing he added “. . . aloud. . . in four part harmony. “

Wes Rongley peeped his bright orange tufted head above the antique leathern tome on the desk in front of him and peered at the board. He squinted.

To his growing horror, he could clearly make out in the ever-growing scrawl that flowed unceasingly onto the slate from the chalk in Snide’s hand integers, operators, exponents, and not a few letters of Greek.

He shuddered. He had inexplicably stumbled into a maths class.

Wes slunk back down behind the ponderous mouldering volume and wracked his hazy brain for some memory of how this could have happened. The first few days here at Hogwash’s had been a heady blur, but surely he could not have made such a colossal blunder.

There was nothing for it but to try and escape.

He slid further down in the seat, as if he could melt into liquid form and seep quietly out under the classroom’s big oaken door. He tested the floor board with the slightest pressure of his left toe.

It creaked.

“Going somewhere, Mr. Rongley?”

Caught in the act, betrayed by the ancient timber, he had little choice but to respond to Snide’s withering gaze.

“I. . .uh. . .I’m in the wrong room, sir. I don’t think I’m supposed to be in this class.”

Snide inspected the desktop and at length drew out a square of browning parchment.

“You are Wes Rongley, First Year?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then you are on my list and you are in the right room.”

The room seemed to dim when Snide had said ‘my list’. Wes felt every follicle of his flaming shock of hair contract. Perspiration formed on his upper lip. On his tightening scalp. beads of sweat began to coalesce into rivulets that ran down the nape of his neck. He ventured.

“But . . .sir . . . that looks like maths. . .”

Snide turned, his expression softening . . .which for some reason was more disturbing.

“Hmmm. . .really? Are you sure?”

Wes nodded meekly. Professor Snide leaned a bit back and regarded the unfinished equation he’d been scribbling.

“By, Jove, Mr. Rongley, you’re right! It is maths! Seen them before, have you?”

“Yes. . .yes, sir!”

“Well, now you’ve seen them again. Turn to page twelve thousa-“

“I was told there’d be no maths, sir.”

“What?”

“I was told there wouldn’t be any maths. When I signed up, sir. That old chap, Humblebore was it? He said that maths weren’t required for my programme.”

“Headmaster Mumblesnore,” Snide corrected, “may have been a tad vague on this point. Let me assure you, Mr. Rongley, maths are indeed required.”

Wes felt Snide’s dark presence swirling toward him down the aisle but couldn’t move. He was a mouse transfixed by a great black cobra, knowing doom was coming but powerless to escape.

“How else do you expect to tease out the subtler courses of the orbs on their wanderings through the heavens, or divine the sublime secrets of the Gematria, or calculate allowed deductions for consumable spell components and the depreciation of cauldrons of more than a hogshead’s capacity when filing with the Inland Revenue?

‘Let there be no doubt in your mind, Mr. Rongley. Maths. Are. Required.”

Satisfied, Snide turned and had made it halfway back toward the front when Wes exploded:

“But I don’t like maths!”

Snide whirled. There was a flash and puff of sulfurous vapor.

There, atop the vast ancient folio, in the middle of an unwholesome looking greasy spot, sat a rather confused looking amphibian with a shock of flaming orange hair.

-Excerpted Unabridged from Hairy Plodder and the Half-Done Script

Like young Mr. Rongley, I too, did not care for ‘maths’ as it is commonly styled in Britain. Seeking a similar avoidance of all things mathematical, I pursued a career in the creative arts.

It is one of life’s little ironies, that when my own term at the Hogwash School of Wizardry, Witchcraft, and Computer Repair was over, that I entered a field where mathematical calculations are both necessary and intensive.

In further evidence of the universe’s perverse sense of humor, my personal occult studies are repleat with examples of the necessity of mathematics, algebra, geometry and trigonometry, and yes, calculus.

Having avoided many of these courses in school it fell upon me to educate myself over the years as required. The result is that I perhaps have not approached the topics in the same staid way that they are typically taught, and though I do get the needed accuracy of result, my methods are more in tune with the way my left-handed right-brained operations work.

I feel confident that, insofar as I am not building a nuclear reactor in close proximity to inhabited areas, said methods are sufficient for my goals. I’m sharing a bit of them this week in order to acquaint you with the delight I often find now in working with purity of numbers and the permutations thereof.

In a previous article I have spoken about the absolute reality of number itself. That is, number is a real immutable infinite and eternal thing, which remains fixed regardless of time, space, velocity, or dimension. One is always one. Two is always two. One and two are and have been and will always be three. Whether we call that three or tre or trois or drei is irrelevant, the actual thing that it is never changes.

There’s a comfort to that. It’s nice to know that regardless of how much chaos swirls around us there’s still something that remains unchanged. It is the Anchor in the Sea of the Night. It is a Fulcrum in the Void. It is a Beacon on the Shores of Infinity.

Of course, sometimes, it’s fun just to play around and see what comes up. My subject for today is the hexagon, a regular geometric shape having six equal sides.

While the word hexagon doesn’t have a connection with our use of the word hex in occult circles, the doctrines of sympathy and correspondence would argue otherwise. Hex in witchcraft comes at us out of Old German and Old Norse, and probably shortens and corrupts from hagatesse – a word used to refer to the Norns, the old women who sat at the base of the World Ash Ygdrassil and pronounced the fates of man. The connection between Norn and witch is an easy one, and the term haxa and haxxen have been used to apply to witches since early times in various north and central European dialects. Thus it crossed the Channel with Hengst and entered into the Anglo-Saxon tree.

The hex in hexagon, though, is ancient Greek for six, and merely means it’s six sided, or six angled, and there’s no magical connotation at all.

Except that there is. And frequently this confutation between the witchy hex and the mathematical hex is expressed in the darnedest of places.

For instance, among the “hex signs” of the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch. The Dutch are more accurately Deutsch – Germans, who settled in Penn’s Woods along with other emigrees seeking arable land and the ability to worship openly. They are noted – among other things, for the curious geometric designs that grace barns and some houses, which are said to drive away the “devil” and other malicious spirits. In this case the “hex” is the old German haxxan – a specifically magic application. Yet many of these geometries are based on six sided figures, though perhaps as many, if not more are eight-sided.

The hexagon is the natural regular shape that is formed if you outline from point to point on a hexagram. Now the hexagram is an established magical and talismanic shape, known as the Star of David, Solomon’s Seal, and other specific names. It is the figure below, which is composed of two overlapping triangles, and as you can see, it fits neatly into the hexagon.

In the parlance of the occult, this image has many meanings. The following image comes from Eliphas Levi’s Histoire de la magie and demonstrates the maxim supposedly extracted from the Emerald Tablet penned by no less a personage than Hermes Trismegistus himself. It is “As Above, So Below”

The actual text,

That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above

translated into English from Latin or Arabic, which was probably translated from Greek, essentially says that all things in nature are aspects of a single cohesive whole.

From the standpoint of Greek philosophers laboring in Alexandria, this might be a convenient expression for the atomos proposed by Democritus in 400 B.C.E. and a forerunner of our idea of the atom.

Thrown into the rather more fanciful environs of medieval Europe, accompanied on it’s way with tales of djinns and efrits and the glorious magics of Solomon the Wise, the idea became a binder between the heavens and the earth, and justification for the correspondences of metals, stones, plants, and the like with the natures and virtues of the planetary wanderers.

And yet in this aspect was the roots of modern medicine, metallurgy, and chemistry, as well as enduring metaphor for the expansion of the consciousness. Alchemists revered this phrase and it’s interlocking trines throughout their search for the Elixir of Life and Philosopher’s Stone. It carries within it even more secrets, hinted at in the texts of the Emerald Tablet.

Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon.
The Earth carried it in her belly, and the Wind nourished it in her belly,
as Earth which shall become Fire.
Feed the Earth from that which is subtle

Here then are references to at least three of the four classical elements – Earth, Wind, and Fire. This kind of phrase, along with the most imaginative of illustrations, form the rhebus instructions of the alchemical manuals. But I think the really neat trick is how we find the elements with our hexagon/hexagram.

First, of course, we just have to separate the “Above” from the “Below” and we get Fire and Water. But look more closely at the joined triangles. If you take the upward pointing triangle and the bottom line from the downward pointing triangle, you get the sign for Air. Flipping that to the downward pointing triangle gives us Earth. So the four elements are hidden figures within the As Above, So Below hexagram.

But, like any good late night infomercial pitch, that’s not all. The hexagon/hexagram combination does that same nifty trick that the pentagon/pentagram does. Within the hexagram inside the hexagon is another hexagon. You can then create another hexagram in that, which creates another hexagon inside it, ad infinitum.

Welcome, my friends, to the concept of fractals. And also the basic ideas that lead us into the murky waters of quantum theory – no matter how small something is, it’s always made up of something smaller. And, well, no matter how big something is, there’s probably something even bigger outside it, that maybe you don’t see until you get outside that, and outside that, and outside that…

So again, turtles all the way down. Most of which have no connection to Renaissance artists or togakure-ryu. But if it helps, you can think of all those repeating hexagon/hexagrams as being diagrams of turtle shells.

If infinity has you’re head spinning, let’s jump back onto a more solid ground. Platonically solid ground, in this case, as a few choice lines from the angles in the hex give us a nice diagram for the first two platonic solids, the pyramid, and the cube. From two dimensions we have moved into three, or at least we are representing three dimensions in a two dimensional space, and that’s nifty in itself. The cube is more elegantly expressed of course, because in addition to just looking better, we have the added symbolic link of a six-sided object being used to represent a six-faced object. I’ve tried to find some sacred number related to the four faces and six sides, but it’s not there, so it’s just that you can draw it if you need to, though again it’s not as isometrically clean.

On the other hand, if you wanted to get a four faced pyramid (which is actually five sided; four triangles and a square) you just have to modify that upward pointing triangle and the square of the cube. It’s not exact to the one’s that the Egyptians built, mind you, and I make no claim that it has any relation to them. I think I will probably due a future article on the legend, myth, and symbology associated with pyramid structures in human history, but that’s not for today. In the meantime, it’s a satisfying exercise.

Of course, one of the most basic ideagrams that we can render from the hexagon shape is the “hex” itself, as six-rayed assembly of lines. This equivocates to the “grove” symbol in the Ogham script. Again, I can’t say there’s any evidence of a connection, but that doesn’t prevent you making one, and drawing on the power of that symbol. In some permutations of the Ogham grove I have found it also flexes to represent the transits of the luminaries on the equinoxes and solstices. That is, if you take an aerial view of Stonehenge – or the Great Pyramid of Giza for that matter – and plot the sunrise and sunset positions of the sun and moon on the equinoxes and solstices, you get a hex line shape. In this case, the angles are much more shallow, as the Tropic are around 23.7 degrees north and south of the equinoctal line, and in a regular hexagon, the angles are 60 degrees.

Which is to say, they are sextile for the purposes of astrology. Which we can also derive from the hexagon shape. For instance, if we take one of our inner triangles, and draw a line from each corner to the middle (instead of all the way across) we get a three rayed shape with angles of 120 degrees. This is a trine. you can also achieve the same design by erasing half of the rays in the hex. Have of six is three. Half of sextile is trine, even though the angle measurements double. I always had trouble understanding that relationship until I started playing with these hex diagrams. Maybe this will help you.

You can find the 90 degrees of a square aspect with a hair more work. Put the hexagram back in and draw a line from the top of the upper triangle to the bottom of the bottom triangle. Now draw a line across the point where the two triangles join in the middle. Erase the extra lines and viola – a four rayed shape with 90 degree angles.

You have now derived the three major aspects used in astrology. Of course, you’re going to need a chart.

So take the hexagram, and draw lines through each point of the triangle, like we do to get the hex, and then draw lines through each of the intersecting angles, like we did to get the square. You end up with 12 rays, and the cusps of 12 signs. In the diagram I’ve reduced the size of the hexagram, so the relationship is clearer, but you can see it does indeed contain the keys to a zodiac.

Overlaid in color here are two of the trine diagrams, one in blue, which shows you the relationships of the water signs. You can rotate this to locate the air, earth, and fire signs, respectively. The red one also shows the locations of the cardinal, fixed, and mutable triplicity, in this case for the signs of fire, but just rotate it around and the others fall into place.

Is this all that we can tease out of the humble hexagon? No. Fiddling around in my art software I was able to come across a few more totally unrelated, but poignant connections using just the geometry and some imagination.

Taking our hex lines again, you can look to them as Cartesian coordinates. They are the X, Y and Z axes of three dimensional space. Anyone who struggles with that train leaving Chicago problem may remember some of these exercises from algebra classes. I do a lot of 3-D animation work, and the 3-D grid is almost second nature to me. Essentially the center where the three line cross is 0, and any point in space can be plotted using positive or negative values along those lines, so X is left and right, Y is up and down, and Z is forward or back. In order to see clearly the values of all three lines, the diagram is usually tilted in almost exactly the same way as our hex. So you can use a hex to put anything anywhere.

Now, I have mentioned before that we all live in a four-dimensional space-time. If I want to diagram it on my hexagon, I can just drop it in at a right angle to Y axis, and get the following figure.

So any point in space and time can be reached by virtue of the hex. That might explain why the capacious interior of a certain blue phone box has had hexagon wall decorations for several decades. Or not. Still, it’s an intriguing expression of the concept.

Moving back into more esoteric spaces, I was also able to take the basic hex, add a few curves, and arrive at the Xi-Rho symbol, usually with Alpha and Omega, this is supposedly the vision of Constantine at the Malvern Bridge, with motto “in hoc signio vincis” – In this Sign, you will Conquer. While historians generally believe that Constantine took it as a message from Sol Invictus, later Christian records give it as the Xi-Rho, a short hand for Cristos, and the basis for what became Christian Rome. While his mother was a devout Christian, and Constantine did order the Council of Nicea which firmed up the Nicean Creed and laid the foundations of modern orthodoxy, the Emperor himself didn’t convert until his deathbed.

Another imaginative permutation is the zig-zag “lightning bolt” that is said to travel down the Quabbalistic Tree of Life bringing Divine Wisdom (Ain Soph) into existence in the material world. You need to stack a couple of hexagons for the full diagram, and add a tail at the bottom, but you can get there from here. Those claiming that abracadabra derives from the Hebrew “what I speak I manifest” might want to play with this idea a little further.

Am equally interesting object from the hexagon and As Above/So Below angles is a three dimensional construct known as a merkaba. The word merkaba comes from the Hebrew as “Chariot” and so we have an immediate link with the seventh card of the Tarot major arcana. As many others have posted, 2023 is considered a “Chariot” year as it numerologicaly resolves to seven. Seven is a sacred number all on it’s own, so if a merkaba is a chariot, then we’ve managed to find seven hidden in six. That’s an alchemical spontaneous generation worthy of old Bombastis himself.

The merkaba is the three dimensional extension of As Above, So Below. It is the two triangles, expressed as interlocking three-faced pyramids (see there was a reason I talked about the platonic pyramid) such that each face of each pyramid is pierced by the the point of another one. The diagram here is derived from the hexagon. I have mocked up one in Lightwave 3-D to show how interesting this thing becomes as an object. Pretty nifty trick for an old Hebrew chariot I think.

Some also say the word merkaba is derived from the ancient Egyptian root words mer-ka-ba. Several online sources style this as “light, spirit, and body” or “love, spirit, body”, It may be more accurately translated “Pyramid of the Soul and the Shadow” or “Food of the Blessed Dead” since “mer” can be either pyramid or cake. The Greek “pyramid” derives from “pyramis” -wheat cake. The Egyptian wheat cake was called ben-ben, which is the word for the top of the pyramid or the obelisk, which had a similar shape. These shapes were also symbolic of the sun’s rays, and the primordial mound of earth rising from the flood of the celestial Nile where the Lotus that Ra emerges from grew. Mer, then, is not the cake, but the ritual use of the cake, either in feeding a god or a deceased relative, both rituals we know of. It’s not fair to say the Greeks got it wrong, because over the long age of Egypt mer came to mean “love” and “pyramid” as well as the ritual use of the cake.

Those are fascinating concepts to explore. Relating them onward to a Hebrew chariot that is visually complex and symbolically loaded, draws to my mind some of the Old Testament angels connected with the prophet Ezekiel. Plenty of places to go with this one if one is interested.

Speaking of going, in my own explorations, I have used the hexagon/hexagram as basis to develop this symbol, which I will eventually put on an amulet or an altar stone. To my mind it connects with symbols of Hekate, and well, Hekate, Heka, Hex, Haxxan, Hagatesse and Hexagon can all blur lines in rhyme, alliteration, and the verbal games we play in spell work. And now you can see that there are mathematical and geometric games you can play as well, so if you are looking for right angle (pun meaningfully intended) to approach a particular magical operation, I hope I have given you some new tools to work with. If nothing else, I hope it encourages you to spend time looking past the surface of things as presented.

Before departing this week’s article I fully admit to lifting the title from a very much more important work. Even though you can’t copyright titles, and the words fit my little exercise, equally well, I clearly acknowledge, respect and admire the work of the pioneering African-American women the book and film Hidden Figures is about. Their contribution to the advancement of both the space program, and cause of racial justice in this country, cannot be minimized. If you are unaware of it, I strongly encourage you make yourself familiar.

Thank you again for reading all the way to the end of this week’s piece. It is longer and potentially more complicated that what I have offered in the past. More like this is forthcoming, so I hope you find it useful. I’ll be back again in a week.

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