Renewal, Redemption, and Reincarnation

Judgement

Ray, did it ever occur to you that the reason we’ve been so busy lately is that the dead really are rising from their graves?

Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Husdon) – Ghostbusters

As we reach the penultimate Major Arcana card, we are confronted once again with the blatantly Christian origin of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck. The iconography on Card XX – Judgement has no other esoteric precedent. And yet, it’s possible to work around that if we spend a little time shifting the perspective.


judgement-rws
The card formerly known as The Last Judgement, or rather, the art theme it depicts.

The card shows an Archangel with flaming hair appearing over a cloud. The Archangel wears armor, and is sounding a trumpet, which bears a white banner marked with a red tau cross. On the ground below, with a white mountain range in the background, we see a six nude persons standing in boxes. The lids of the boxes are cast aside. Two of the figures are male, two are female, and two are children of undetermined gender. Between the male-child-female group in the foreground and the male-child-female group in the background is a river or other body of water. in the far background there are rolling hills and three trees may be seen. The colors in the lower part of the card are muted. The figures are the same grey as the boxes they inhabit. The landscape and river are a grey blue. Above the sky is a bright blue, but the strongest colors in the image are with the Archangel and its trumpet.

The majority of this imagery is derived from the Book Of The Revelation of John of Patmos. It is the last book in the official Christian Bible, King James Version, which was a dominant source of Protestant thinking for about 500 years. There are a number of other citations in the KJV regarding the physical resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. And there are similarly multiple references to angels with trumpets. But this idea of the judging of the dead alongside the apocalyptic imagery is primarily in Revelations.

As someone raised in a Christian community, Revelations was one of the more interesting texts. Aside from Genesis and Exodus, it contains most of the “special effects”. Yes, there are a number of miracles that occur to prophets and saints and Christ, but the big epic blockbuster stuff is saved for the last book.

Most modern thinking suggests that Revelations is at least partially a veiled political attack on the Roman state and its treatment of the nascent Christian church, particularly under Nero and his successors. The “Beast with Seven Heads” and the the “Whore of Babylon” are metaphors for Rome, and for it’s imperial influence in the world. They are, perhaps, wishful thinking on the part of John (if John of Patmos was a single author) that Rome would shortly fall and be punished and revenged upon for the persecution of Christians.

On the other hand, the earlier parts about the Book of Seven Seals and the Angels with the Seven Trumpets are a remarkably interesting description of either an asteroid impact, or a nuclear war. Stars falling as flaming hail and a great star plunging into the sea and causing massive death and destruction, followed by a period of global darkening, is exactly the kind of scenario scientists describe as the aftermath of an asteroid. Consequently, it also is a dead ringer for nuclear winter. To the extent this is legitimately prophecy, or a dramatic retelling of some actual event experienced by early humans and preserved through oral tradition – much as the Deluge appears to have been – is hard to say. Back in the seventies, when I was reading through this stuff, and consuming all the bits on alien astronauts, pyramid power, ESP, cryptids, and all those other things Annie Potts asks Ernie Hudson if he believes during the job interview in Ghostbusters, anything seemed possible. I hope to have become a bit more critical in my old age. But I don’t know if I would use the term skeptical.


Judgement-Journey-Into-Egypt-Ghosts-and-spirits
Two versions of the Egyptian Weighing of the Heart. The left is from the Journey Into Egypt Tarot and the other from the Ghosts and Spirits Tarot. For the Egyptian themed one this is an obvious choice for Card XX. In both, Osiris, the murdered god who was reassembled and reanimated by his wife Isis, and Thoth (Tehuti) god of writing, knowledge, medicine, and magic, presides over the final hurdle of the soul before they are able to enter the abode of the blessed dead. The illustration at top is a version of the Papyrus of Ani, the most famous version of the Book of the Dead, currently in the British Museum. This New Kingdom text is the basis for most published English translations. Anubis brings the dead Ani to the chamber. Thoth stands on the opposite side of the balance waiting to record his name for eternity. Behind Thoth, Horus presents a successful Ani to his father Osiris and Mother Isis. Egyptian art did not employ this “time-travel” as a shortcut to narrative, but as a magical proof that Ani’s heart would balance with Ma’at’s feather.

The idea of resurrection, or at least the afterlife, and the judgment of the soul, is an ancient thing. We know at least that in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, that if the heart of the dead person weighs more than the Feather of Ma’at – Cosmic Truth, then that heart was given to the Devourer of Souls and the person no longer existed.

From the earliest times, though, our remote ancestors seemed to regard the person as surviving the body. Grave goods are found even in Neanderthal sites. Whether these were made as offerings, the disposal of now taboo objects, or simply a human need to show affection for the dead, we cannot know. But that idea that there is something extra beyond the meat suit seems to be a realization of early peoples, and our sometimes neurotic obsession with it persists to the present day, in every culture. Even the atheist and rationalist who argue that our consciousness is a quirk of chemistry, and just as fragile and temporary, can only say so as a “matter of faith”. While they say that the existence of the soul cannot be proven scientifically, it also can’t be disproven. It’s all a matter of what we believe.

Card XX acknowledges our basic need to believe something, even if something is nothing. In other words. the message of this card is that there is more than we know going on. In that context, our actions may have consequences that we are not aware of. This is the very essence of the concept of karma.

I am not any expert on the teachings of the Hindu or Buddhist mystic. I have read various tracts in both religions, as I have read Hebrew, Christian, Mormon, and Islam works. The popular notion of karma seems to have evolved as a New Age oversimplification of the actual teachings, through a lens of Western dualism. The ideas of good and bad karma, are not necessarily coincident with “good” and “bad” as we tend to think of them in a post-Protestant first world way. That’s not to say there is not some overlap. But our tendency to equate “karma” with a kind of cosmic balancer is, as far as I can tell, not quite correct.

Karma comes from a society whose afterlife belief was reincarnation. We may suspect this is because of the caste system, which is apparently still very important in Indian society even in the 21st century, but the ideas are ancient, and may simply reflect a differing view of what happens when the meat suit stops working properly. Reincarnation is not exclusive to Hinduism, but it is one of the most widespread examples, and along with Buddhism, one of the belief systems that has explored it deeply both ritually and philosophically.


judgement -Shadowscapes - Legacy
In the Shadowscapes Tarot and the Legacy of the Divine Tarot, more emphasis is placed on the ecstatic state of awakening or transcendence that the judging of the spirits. While they both still use the name Judgement, and employ versions of the traditional iconography, they’ve divorced that iconography from the Christian teaching about the Last Judgement, the End Times, and the attendant punishment and torment of those found wanting after the Apocalypse. These are happy, spiritual, and comforting. They speak of the escape from both earthly cares and mortal trauma, while not tying the experience to a particular ethos. The angelic figures need not be from an Abrahamic religion.

In the West, in the New Age, the idea of reincarnation quickly became more involved with having been someone prominent in a past life, rather than about what one would become in a future incarnation. Apparently most people were Cleopatra at some point. No wonder the poor woman had such a tragic life given all the people in her head. But there’s an entire branch of occult practice based around past life regressions and finding out who you were before you were you.

Now that is not to say there’s not value in that practice, if you believe in the idea of karma and reincarnation. Ultimately the goal of reincarnation is not to come back anymore. We keep coming back because we have failed to learn some vital lesson that will allow us to release our consciousness from this endless cycle of birth-suffering-death-rebirth and go on back to the source, which, is perhaps unconsciousness, or even, non-existence. So the idea that perhaps we can look back upon previous lifetimes and pinpoint where we went wrong – in order to avoid making the same mistakes in this life, and maybe future ones, is not without merit. So, maybe don’t get involved with invading foreign generals who are really just interested in rape and plunder. It never ends well.

Concepts like karmic debt and good karma and bad karma (and maybe instant karma) seem from my research to be largely Western adaptations to our already dualistic view of the cosmos. (If any of my readers are practicing a karmic religion and wish to correct me, I welcome it. As I said, I only know from research that may be faulty. I try my best, but I always want to truly understand). Karma is purely an expression of the need to be aware that our actions have consequences.

In the Christian (and ancient Egyptian) view of the afterlife, those consequences had a two-fold purpose. First, it was to cow behaviors that might otherwise be difficult or expensive to police. “If you breaketh this Commandment, thou shalt go directly to Hell. Thou shalt not pass go. Thou shalt not collect thy 200 sheckels”. Secondarily, it acted as an explanation for how those individuals who flagrantly and frequently shattered the commandments got little comeuppance, and in fact, appeared to profit mightily from it. If you are familiar with the history of the Church, you are aware that one of the issues at the heart of the Reformation was the sale of indulgences. That is, if one who profited from their sins might give some portion of the ill-gotten gains to building a new baptistry or chapel; and thereby shorten the time spent in the afterlife in Purgatory, waiting for a table to open up in Heaven. This “Get Out of Hell Free Card” was a key source of revenue for the expanding church, but they didn’t invent the idea. Ancient art is resplendent with temples and statues and stelae and obelisks given by the mighty and powerful who not only pleased their respective gods, but got a really nifty public relations boost.

New Age Tarot explorations of this card have obviously downplayed the Christian iconography used by Smith and Waite on this card. In Paul Huson’s Mystical Origins of the Tarot, this Last Judgement derives from same series of mystery pageant floats or stages as the Tower and some of the other more non-pagan symbols. I think he has a good argument here because it ties very well with the earlier forms of the next and final trump, the World. While we will delve more deeply into that card and it’s variants when I wrap up next week, it’s fair to say the original imaginings of the World card were also found in Revelations, and pertain to the aftermath of the events which we find displayed on this card.


Judgement-arthurian-hidden-realm-wildwood-Tarot
Three overtly pagan takes on Card XX, all of whom have dispensed with the imagery and the name associated with this card. The Arthurian Tarot, based on Grail Lore and a kind of Celtic shamanism, alludes to the legend that Arthur is not dead, but sleeping, waiting to rise again in time of need. His presence is personified in the land itself. In the Hidden Realm Tarot, the theme of the Fae expresses “Life Renewed” through the simple, but profound image of a sprouting acorn. Finally, the Wildwood Tarot, another Celtic shamanism deck, gives us the Great Bear. The Bear is terrible, and we fear it. It stands over the mouth of a burial mound. So here is death, waiting for us to make the wrong choice in a cosmos that will respond swiftly and brutally. Many shamanistic faiths feature “death journeys” as a form of initiation to express the death of one identity and the birth of another one. This prepares the individual to face the fact that our inevitable physical death will be another such journey.

By the time it reaches Levi, that version has moved toward a neo-pagan “Mother Earth”, and thus embraced by quasi-neo-pagan-reconstructionist-mystic-spiritualist-ceremonial-magicians who would ultimately give form to the RWS. Unfortunately that left Judgement twisting in the wind here with the Archangel Gabriel trumpeting the End Times to a bunch of folks who -by mid century – were really more interested in a self-centered, semi-hedonist, and in some ways anti-social kind of spiritual awakening. The New Age simply equated the card with the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and ignored the symbolism entirely.

But we can see this card as emblematic of personal awakening to the divine. Though Gabriel is frequently associated with the trumpet, and in Islam is identified as the giver of the Recitation to the Prophet, there are other candidates. The being identified as Metatron, personified as the “Word of God” also shows up in the Revelations. Described as proceeding from heaven on a white horse with a sword coming from his mouth that is the Word, with a name known only to himself, this being causes much of the violence and retribution of the prophecy. I know a number of Christian teaching equate him with Christ, and possibly also with Michael who is also often considered synonymous with Christ. Revelation, more than many of the other books, has a number of euphemisms and symbolic descriptions that, frankly, seem to be added for the sake of effect. There are a lot of things with multiple eyes, and horns, and wings, and a variety of horrific creatures that modern folks try to equate to weapons of war.

I’m fairly certain that the person or persons writing it were experiencing some kind of altered state of consciousness. Revelation is a hallucination, an ancient acid trip, or it’s an amazingly vivid dream. But those portions that are “special effects” would seem to indicate that whatever caused the experience was outside of that which anyone would easily express to another person.

So when approaching Card XX, I ponder the kind of transformative experience that leaves one forever different. This is not the Death that causes us to look for a rational alchemy in Temperance to deal with the new situation, nor is it the collapse of the external structure of the Tower which affords the opportunity to build new orders under the light of the Star. This leaves all the previous experiences behind. It is a change so profound to seem that before it one was dead, that the person who was, is not real, or relevant.

Such an experience may be overwhelming. The portent of such an experience, in a reading which centers on the mundane, the corporeal, and the worldly is jarring and incongruous. To try and integrate the message into the narrative of the other cards is difficult. Doubtless it’s easier to suggest it has something to do with making the proper choice, of being aware of karma, or even to demote it to the status of a simple positive outcome to a court case. But, excluding the last possible meaning assigned to this trump, a profound spiritual awakening is entangled with the perception of karma and the consequences of our choices. So in context, perhaps the card should be read as growing awareness of our own role in our fate, and our own responsibility for whatever else is going on.

With that, I will wrap up this week’s article and thank you for your continued patronage. I hope this series has been of benefit to you as you explore Tarot yourself. Next week is the World, the final trump, and I intend one last article to look back through the Major Arcana as a whole, before returning to a more or less eclectic editorial calendar. I hope you will join me.

Please Share and Enjoy !

Alkahest and Elixir

Temperance

Temperance makes its way into the Tarot deck as one of the old Catholic virtues. It’s place between Death and the Devil may be a bit more complicated.


temperance-rws-tarot
The scan here is from my RWS deck and the colors are a bit off from other’s I have seen. I was gifted these, so I don’t know the provenance of the print, but they are from the middle 1980s. Presumably they are a US Games deck, as the copyright was still in force in those days. I don’t have another RWS deck of that vintage, so I can’t compare the printing to it. The digital versions I usually use are from the Fool’s Dog app, and appear to either have a different set of cards or have been improved after scanning. I happened to have these out and thought I’d use one of the original paper cards.

Card XIV as it appears in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck is an image of an angel, with large red wings, pouring what appears to be water, from one chalice to another. The path of the water is physically improbable, if not impossible, in that it flows diagonally rather than downward. The upper chalice is in the left hand of the angel, the lower receiving chalice in the right. The angel stands with the left foot on the land, and the right foot in the water. Behind the left leg is a field of flowers which have been identified by some as irises. To the right, it appears that there is a path rising up out of the water and passing backward to a gap between two mountains, above which a luminous crown rises. The angels own halo is defined simply by rays emitted from it’s head (the gender is not specific) On it’s brow is the solar symbol, that goes back to the name of Ra in hieroglyph, and on the breast is a square with an orange triangle in it. The sky is the same gray as the previous Death card. The distant mountains are a light blue (the same color as the water, actually). The water contains ripples that indicate it is a small pond, or an inlet, rather than a flowing stream.

Much of the imagery here is echoed in the Star just a few cards later. There is that same symbolism of two vessels, and also the connection between the dry land and the water. The difference is that the Star is pouring out the contents of her pitchers onto the land and the water, whereas Temperance is pouring from one to the other, or possibly mixing the two. Yet the Temperance angel is linking the earth and the water in its stance.

Temperance taken at face value signals that balance one strives for, in order to have some general control over one’s fate. Of course, we’ve looked at the balance idea with Justice, so there seems some redundancy here. Justice also derives out of those ideas of the cardinal Catholic virtues, and forms a tetrad with Strength, and supposedly the Hermit, representing Prudence. If read as a Catholic virtue (and this is probably the likely origin of the name) then the mixing of materials here likely represents the dilution of the wine with water that takes place as part of the Eucharist ritual . This practice is, according to dogma, symbolic of the dual nature of Christ. The water represents his humanity, the wine his divinity. Thus it may be seen as a metaphor for the spirit of the divine that incarnates in all humans.

If this is a symbol of the Eucharist, then the angel is most likely identified as Michael, who is most often confounded with Christ in much of the mystical literature. It is Michael who is chief of the armies of heaven, and who makes the final war against the rebel angels and the Great Dragon in the Book of Revelations. This has led many church writers to consider him identical with the risen and ascended Christ, who will come at the end of days (more about that later).

Paul Huson, in his seminal text Mystical Origins of the Tarot, suggests that this figure may have originally been meant as Ganymede, the cup bearer of Zeus. But this is also the source for claiming that Temperance derives from the Catholic virtues, so there may be a bit of conflicting information there. Not that this is unusual at all for mystic thought. And I am certainly not criticizing this text or Mr. Huson’s long work on the subject. I include it here merely to illustrate that the figure of the angel may represent a number of things. There is another reading that has the figure represent the goddess Iris (hence the flowers) who was emblematic of the rainbow and another messenger from the gods. There would seem to be a common theme that the card offers us some sort of insight, or perhaps indicates that maybe we should pay more attention to what is going on.

In my thinking this card’s symbolism is very much drawn from the practice of alchemy. If one is familiar with the fantastic and surreal rebuses used in the alchemical manuals, they’ll no doubt spot some of the similarities. Admixture of fluids is the most obvious one, but the symbolism of “betwixt and between” shown in the figure standing on both earth and water, is a frequent theme. The triangle on the chest of the angel gives us the element of fire, so we are only lacking air in this combination. Or perhaps we are supposed to leave out air. In alchemy there were often procedures that needed to be cooking in a sealed vessel, or allowed to “swelter” over time.


temperance-star-Cosmic-Tarot
These two renditions from the Cosmic Tarot show just how similar the ideography of Temperance and the Star can be drawn. The artist here has chosen to share more elements than are perhaps seen in the Smith versions, but there is certainly a visual connection among the symbols. If Temperance represents our own internal transmutation, which occurs before the next two dark cards – the Devil and the Tower – then the Star on the opposite of those cards may signal a promised reward for the effort.

We may also see in this the dual nature of the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life. These were the ultimate goal of alchemy, and though apparently two things, they were frequently interchangeable. They granted eternal life, youth, health, and wisdom, and possessed the power of transmutation. Not only could they turn base metals into gold, they were capable of elevating, or refining, anything to which they came in contact with. They drove out all corruption, and made the thing pure. One was the watery form of the earthy form of the other. Depending on the text, the silvery white powder of the Stone would dissolve into water (or wine) and make the Elixir, or the Elixir could be evaporated to precipitate the Stone. Essentially if one had the one, they could obtain the other.

This curious property echoes the idea of transmutation itself, and I think we can apply these insights when reading the Temperance card. We are not, here, bound by this idea of limitation. Once might basically presume the inference of this card is that of stopping before things get out of hand. But rather, we can look at it terms of controlling our choices, not merely just holding back. Consider the alchemical idea of refinement, of incorruption, of the removal of impurities. Alchemy used the processes of improving an ore or an alloy as metaphor for spiritual growth. In fact, the adept had to attain a certain purity of spirit before they would be able to create the key chemical combinations that would result in the Philosopher’s Stone. Some mystics suggest that the true adept was able to perform the miraculous feats of changing lead to gold and living a prolonged life because they had completed this internal alchemy, and that the external Stone or Elixir were merely metaphor. The adept became capable in their own power, much as we see things like reiki today, of making these astounding changes.

That crown rising in the distance, is, to my thinking, a symbol of the personal power that can come from self-control, self-discipline, and self-knowledge. We can make the water defy gravity if we have sufficient control of our own will, and sufficient awareness of the world around us. We have to stand on the land and the water. To understand both the mundane and the sublime we need to be as at home in that watery world of the unseen, as we are on the dry land of objective reality. The “crown” is a common term in alchemy texts, and representing stages of the refinement practice which result in purer or purest material.

I admit that much of my thinking probably was influenced by exposure to Crowley’s Book of Thoth version of this card in my early twenties. That card is call “Art” and very directly expounds on the alchemical ideology. In the Thoth version, two conjoined figures pour fire and water into a common cauldron, presided over by a white lion and a red eagle. The figure may be considered hermaphrodite, as it shows a union of opposites, a very common depiction in alchemical art.


temperance-thoth-tarot
The “Art” card as it appears in the position of Temperance in the Thoth deck as imagined by Aleister Crowley. It borrows much from alchemical art and a number of the more obscure symbols should be understood in that context. Crowley in the text clearly says this is about the internal alchemy of the magician, the transformation or transmutation, of our rough “human” selves into something more rare and sublime, and capable of making wonders in the world. Space here does not permit a lengthy analysis of all the little hidden messages, but it is worth spending some time contemplating this card and determining what meanings you personally assign to the various pieces.

This is the culmination of those aspects we see in the gendered metaphors of the earlier trumps of the Major Arcana. The figures are an equal union. There is therefore none in dominance, but a true blending of the properties of both, that is necessary for the creation of the Elixir. It is an awareness that all things are but aspects of one thing, that the outward forms are only meant as a means of understanding the inward truths, that is required to refine the Stone. And the Stone and the Elixir are the same thing. One within the other, one giving birth to the other, in an endless cycle. This is also the structure of the second riddle of the Sphinx, the answer to which is “day and night” but may more generically be termed “time”. And remember that the most astounding power of the Stone/Elixir is eternal life.

We can spin this right around to the Christian iconography we talked about at the beginning. If we are seeing the angelic figure as the risen Christ, performing the sacrament from the Last Supper that supposedly absolves the sinner and makes them worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, then this cards connection to immortality is rather obvious. We can see that crown over the horizon at the end of the long road as the promise of Paradise.

Alchemy, despite it’s well established connections to magic, or at least magic results., was essentially cooked up in a Christian context. While it may have been inspired, or even educated on pagan texts, medieval grimoires, and possibly dicey translations of ancient Hebrew and Islamic works, any underlying spiritual transformation was clearly cast in the Catholic mold. While it’s true some alchemists, and the associated seers and necromancers of the Renaissance and early Enlightenment were prosecuted by varying authorities on crimes of witchcraft, most often it was their failure to produce results, in the form of eternal life, health, and wealth, that led to their ultimate demise. Alchemy as a practice survived well into the 18th Century, where it was practiced by no less a personage than Sir Isaac Newton. Newton’s laws, which formed the basis for physics for centuries and still apply to certain large massive operations of gravity, are prefaced with his understanding of a “spiritual architect” that derives from alchemical ideas.


temperance-pulp-tarot
A bit more tongue in cheek approach to the odd character of this card can be had in the Pulp Tarot, based upon the artwork of tawdry novels, magazines, and comics from the 30s to the 50s. Compare this to Crowley’s version of the hermaphrodite, and to Smith’s angel. It walks a line between the two, taking neither very seriously, you still providing the reader with plenty of opportunity to image and expand on the images.

One of these contexts is that Jesus Christ transforms the wine and water into the Elixir of Life. It is through his personal divinity that this transmutation occurs, and it is through this power, passed down the ages from the disciples to the various popes to their bishops and priests, that the Holy Eucharist conveys this eternal life in the ritual of the mass.

Yet the idea of the alchemist is that this is a natural process, which may be discovered, attained, and passed on, without necessarily having intervention of deity. Or rather, that it did not require the involvement of an established church and the Apostolic Succession. There is no coincidence that the flowering of alchemy and the Reformation are closely aligned in history. While much of the material theories predate Christianity, it is during that period when the pre-Christian knowledge of the Graeco-Roman world was re-emerging to challenge the dogma of Catholicism that sees it blossom.


temperance-Wildwood-arthurian-Tarot
A pair of non-traditional Temperance cards, curious because they are both derived from Celtic myth, and share at least one author, John Matthews, in common.

The left image is from the Wildwood Tarot, and features the Red and White dragons from the child Merlin’s vision. In the story, King Vortigern is trying to build his new fortress, but it keeps falling down. The augers say a child must be sacrificed, and the young Merlin is selected. He tells Vortigern that he must dig down into the foundations of the hill to release the two dragons, so that the ground will stop trembling. He does and the castle gets built. This legend is later embellished with Merlin’s half-human or non-human ancestry, and attached to the Red and White Wells of Glastonbury, on whose hill the bones of Arthur and Guinevere are supposed to have been found. Vortigern is considered to have been an historical personage, and the account places him some time before Ambrosius and Artorius, who may have been the historical source for Arthur. Merlin or rather Myrdwn in Welsh, if the same person in both stories, would still have been well over two centuries old.

The Image on the right is from the Arthurian Tarot, which is an amalgam of old Celtic myth, Grail lore, Arthurian fiction, and a handful of Saxon/Norse referents, as well as some later glosses from the English witchcraft revival. Her we see three women tending a cauldron. They represent the more modern ideas of Maiden/Mother/Crone that may not have good evidence of existing in antiquity. There are a number of magic cauldrons in Celtic myth. There is the Cauldron of Bran, which the Irish High King used to raise his slain warriors to fight again another day. The Cauldron had a number of other magical powers, such as providing an endless supply of food and drink, and being able to determine if someone spoke the truth. Much of these powers were confuted with the Grail in later chivalric tales, but they originate in the Mabinogian.

The other famous Celtic cauldron is that of Ceridwen, who made up a mystic brew to give her son (who was no great shakes) a fair form and powerful wit. She hired a man named Gwion Bach to stir it, and at the appropriate hour, when the charm was complete, the cauldron burst and three drops of the contents landed on Bach. He immediately became a powerful sorcerer, and there follows the tale of a wizards duel where Bach flees Ceridwen and they each go through a variety of transformations. In the end, Bach becomes a grain of barley, and Ceridwen transformed into a hen, eats him. She becomes magically pregnant at this point with Gwion. When he is born, the magic power has made him beautiful, so instead of killing him, she puts the baby in a boat and sends it down the river. He is discovered by a poor salmon fisherman who names him “the Shining Brow”, which is Talesin in Welsh. Thus the celebrated bard Talesin was born.

Even in these tales we can find the doctrine of sacred transformation, and the power inherent in it. The cauldrons in Celtic practice can often be seen as metaphors for the womb, and in some ways their practical use as a cooking pot was “life-giving” in its own way.

The patrons of the alchemists were undoubtedly interested in the prospect of adding to their treasuries, and fighting off those thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, but we find that a good number of them were also heads of states that had taken a publicly Protestant stance, such as Queen Elizabeth I. Her patronage of Dr. John Dee, and his subsequent experiments in alchemy and necromancy, indicates a broadening of thought that was perhaps less available in those lands still holding to Papal fealty. When Dee left England for the continent, a number of the courts that entertaining him had the same political and religious bent.

So when we come to this card, we can perhaps now have a better understanding of why it has been placed here, between Death and the Devil. If we look at it only in terms of a Sunday school lesson about curbing our appetites, it seems perhaps a trifle late for that. But if this is a message about the transformation of our spirit itself, something we find in Eastern as well as Western philosophy, then it makes much more sense.

The Devil still lies ahead. Next week we will explore that card’s origins and meanings, and how it fits between the idea of personal transformation into a more sublime being, and the remainder of the Major Arcana. There are only seven cards left and then I will have to figure out something else to write about. In the meantime, thank you for continuing to support these efforts and I hope you will join me in a week.

Please Share and Enjoy !