Card number one
is the Magus, called here El Consultant, the male consultant.
(The Magus and the High Priestess are designated significators
in the Tarot tradition. These cards were traditionally picked
to represent the querent, male or female, in a divination.) Actually
what we have here is Adam Kadmon, archetype of collective humanity.
In the biblical myth of Genesis, before the seventh day of creation
when humans were precipitated into bodies of earth, every human
soul that was ever going to be born was together in one cosmic
entity-the master human, Adam Kadmon, whose organs were the planets
and whose body is the solar system. The process of breaking Adam
up into individual humans has, after the fact, been called The
Fall. This is the cosmic first form of the whole human race, all
in one body. The earth is below him, but he hasn't yet entered
into it-he stands above it.Adam Kadmon is given in masculine form. The Magus and his consort, the High Priestess, are the prototypes of their gender for the Tarot, the predecessors to all other male and female figures. Here is the first Adam, constituted by the solar system, containing all the potentials of every human who will ever be born into time and space. The collective Soul of humanity is here gendered in the masculine, who takes the stance of an active force in the spirit world. But we will see how the female gender is the symbol for the soul in incarnation, occupying one of the many "little atoms" in human bodies, living out the potentials of Adam Kadmon in practice. A powerful teaching is hidden in this symbolism.
This image in not exclusively Hebrew. Historically it represents the entire ancient middle eastern worldview, which was a thousand years old when Moses wrote out the Pentateuch. What eventually became the Old Testament gospels were originally very ancient creation myths held in common by all the semitic peoples who eventually became the Arabs, the Persians, and the Hebrews. So this Adam Kadmon is a portrait of what the middle eastern world would have thought of as our original state.
This Magus is a unique image; one does not see it on any of the decks that circulate commercially in America. In Fred Gettings' Secret Symbolism of Occult Art, we see a Rosicrucian version of this image from Gichtel's Eine Kurze Eroffnung . . . of 1799, showing cosmic man and the planetary rulership over the spiritual organs of the body. This must be the prototype for Guler's Adam Kadmon.
The viewer is expected to attribute the traditional planetary vices to Gichtel's image of the fallen Chakras of corrupt humanity, but not so with the version on El Gran Tarot Esoterico! This Magus holds the ankh in one hand and the wand of power in the other, eternal life on the right and directed will on the left, where the hand is raised. He is Adam, but he is also Atom, microcosm and macrocosm, mediated by humanity.
Referring directly to the Old Testament teaching about humanity being constituted "in the image of" God, through the medium of the stars and planets, this image says "See yourself anew, humanity". It reaffirms that our natural psychic, energetic, and physical structure, as a species, is directly related to the laws of nature. In present time, this is one of those things that we have forgotten, having experienced "the fall" (be it mythical or literal) away from unity and towards particularization, away from immersion and towards individuation. We have, unfortunately, lost our sense of identification with the Great Mystery, with the force that put us all here and set things up the way they are, so now we are fated to work out our destiny from the position of separate cells, or selves.
This Esoterico Tarot shows us that each one of us is part of the divine action in this Earthly reality, that we are all actually part of, the individual cells of, this divine entity called Adam Kadmon. We each may circulate around and have many different incarnations within this divine archetype, the Body of Humanity, but each incarnation is still a direct extension of the divine human nature. As Adam Kadmon contains and subordinates all the planetary gods of classical antiquity within his body, so the average person like you or I also contain divinity in our makeup. What an optimistic and uplifting message!
In this deck on each of the Major Arcana a Hebrew letter appears with it's corresponding numerical value from the Sephir Yetzirah. In the case of the Magus, the letter Aleph represents the primal element of "Air", representing consciousness, sentience, the type of awareness that "thinks, therefore it is". Close reading of Aryeh Kaplan's definitive treatment of The Sephir Yetzirah shows us that El Gran Tarot Esoterico follows exactly the Gra version of this ancient body of astro-alphanumeric correspondences, another demonstration of its authenticity as a Jewish Tarot. Hence it is imaging our full potential, not just our current limited circumstances
So knowing what we know about the Hebrew Kabbalah, we can "unscramble" the whirling orbs circling Adam Kadmon's body, and envision the Tree of Life mapping the relations of his planets/organs to each other, following the model shown in the Kabbalah chapter. It is not incorrect to say that those planetary centers serve in the western system the same function as the "chakras" serve in the Hindu map of the human energy-body. In the Divine Body, as in Adam Kadmon, these functions aren't divided against each other into competing worlds of divergent actions. In the Divine Body each Sephiroth functions like an organ does in the human body. Each organ carries its' own specialized task to support the survival of the whole. So each Sephiroth has it's own nature and realm it rules, although it takes all of them together to make up the Divine Life.
The work of the Sephirah, or the Chakras, or the organs of an individual, is carried on below the threshold of consciousness. These centers function instinctively, both in humanity and in God, great Nature, or Tao. Our individual life rests upon the autonomic functioning of our organs, and the life of God rests upon the autonomic functioning of the Sephirah. In the genesis narrative, the Sephirah of God are collectively called the Elohim, a female plural title, and now we know them as the Planets as well.
Arcana number
two is what we're used to thinking of as the High Priestess,
but what we actually see here is a naked young woman, overlighted
by the moon, most likely Eve, companion of Adam, with an opened
fruit in her hand and a gash in the earth beside her which seems
to lead down into the ground. Her nakedness conveys vulnerability,
but it also implies the innocence of the primal pair before the
events of "the fall," when "eden" is still
available to humanity. The moon behind her inspires her with intuition,
psychic sensitivity, and the nurturing instincts befitting the
future "mother of us all," although because of her "irrational"
connection with this "emotional" luminary, there is
no telling what she will do next.Her lack of formal attributes beyond her youth and blonde nakedness make it ambiguous who she "officially" is, as the text explanations are sparse and her name evidences only her divinitory role. But we know this is Eve. There are only two Tarot streams that portray Eve-the Etteilla family of decks, and this one-where she appears as her virgin, naked, primeval self, before she's eaten the forbidden fruit. This unique version of the High Priestess clearly refers back to the Gnostic reading of Genesis, wherein the tasting of the apple brought the knowledge of good and evil into humanity, which was considered the birth of the human race-not the fall, but the birth!
So here she is, the mother of us all, predecessor to reality as we know it about to get the knowledge that will make her fertile and receptive to Adam and start the ball rolling. We don't see her castigated as a fallen creature here. She stands in the midst of the woods, not in the open plane like Adam Kadmon, protected by and identifying with nature. She's on the dark side of daytime, but her hair is blonde, and the moon lends her it's reflected light. She's virginal, or at least young and beautiful, hence governed and led by forces which emanate from her own unconscious, irrational, intuitional, and spontaneous. She is not yet tamed by any externally-imposed hierarchy. Within this image is all the continuity Raphael Patai refers to in his tome The Hebrew Goddess, reaching back through earlier forms of the Creation myth, into the matriarchal roots of Judaism, as we shall soon see.
Both of these first two arcana show human potential at its highest, undimmed, standing at the beginning of the flow of history. And it is Eve who responsible for ending the mythic time of "before". Her bold act of eating the forbidden fruit marks the beginning of our mortal, incarnate, human experience of present time. We see her just teetering on the edge of change, before the fateful move is made which creates life as we know it. The fruit in her hand looks suspiciously like a pomegranate, long sacred to both the ancient goddess-mysteries and the later Hebrew priesthood. In the accumulation of symbolism offered here, this Eve is still "virgin", not yet inseminated but ripe and ready, like the earth in spring awaiting the seed. Just as the Magus is all explicit human potential for action, Eve is all of humanity's implicit human potential, our capacity for consciousness and soulful being, for intuition and tidal lunar fluctuations. Innocence and intuitive wisdom commingle in this arcana.
This Eve exists not only as consort to Adam Kadmon, but she also forms a pair with the next card. In the Alexandrian Tarots we find Isis Veiled as the High Priestess and Isis Unveiled as the Empress, expressing a change of state between the Virgin and the Mother, but making it explicit that the two cards represent different versions of the same entity. Read from a purely Christian context, these could be referring to the paradox of Virgin Mary/Mother of Jesus.
But the third
arcana in this Esoterico Tarot, the Empress, is very visibly
an older, matriarchal conception, as evidenced by her attributes.
We are looking at a dark haired, bat-winged, Mars-assigned, lion-accompanied
priestess of the ancient Great Mother. I take her dark hair to
be an allusion to the dark color of the Magdalen's bloodline,
and to her underworld connections. We don't see such striking
brunette coloring on the Empress in any other esoteric Tarot.
But let me elaborate on her persona in the authoritative words
of Raphael Patai, as he is describing the first century. Kabbalistic
conception of the Wife of God : "The mother is the bearer,
nurturer, educator, that is, the establisher and maintainer of
order; she, therefore, must be the one who wields the legislative,
chastising, and correcting powers which are the attributes of
sovereignty.... [she is] the parent who has to be obeyed... a
fierce lioness". This image seems to be a perfect match with
Patai's stern and no-nonsense Hebrew mother-goddess.The Empress' shield bears a very enigmatic symbol. This is not the usual eagle, (which is also a Kabbalistic symbol in it's own right) but is instead a symbol for the ancient Hermetic axiom "as above, so below." The shield is bisected by a horizontal line, above which a pyramid stands dark against a light background containing the sun, while below an inverted, light-colored pyramid stands out against a dark sky containing the moon. This is a reference to the reversal of appearances when planes of consciousness are crossed. In the light of the sun, which could be said to be the light of the ego, the Empress looks dark, but in the darkness of night, of the Mysteries, of the underworld, she is the light. In the inverse world of the spirits, this dark mother is the doorway to life as we know it.
So we don't just have the hermetic "as above, so below," although it's a reference to that. The Empress is the flip side of the Priestess. What looks desirable and attractive in the human world is actually "darkness" to the world of pure spirit, whereas things that appear harsh and stern in the human world are the true benevolent, beneficent forces. This is a very strong tenet in magic that has come forward to us from ancient times. We'll see more of this theme in future arcana.
The Empress channels the divine, terrifying magical forces of the spirit world. But the work must be done under The Empress' tutelage and by her rules. She's accompanied by lions (which are usually assigned to the Strength card.) She wears the bat-wings of the Devil, (and the Devil, we will note later, has the angel wings usually attributed to the Empress.) Surprising to modern sensibilities, she bears the sign of Mars, nowadays given to combative, aggressive sources of power. But in this oldest, traditional attribution, Mars as Gimel on the Empress is the capacity for work, the very energy that drives the labors of nature, the engine of the homestead and the marketplace. My readers who are more familiar with more modern Tarots will be well aware that Venus is the more usual association here. But in the old Hebraic culture, the husband studied the Mysteries, spent time in the temple, was educated and contemplated philosophy, while the wife owned the house, the children and the business and ran the show in the material plane. So seeing Mars on the Empress card is no anomaly, but images forth the cultural sensibility from the times in which the Hebrew alphabet was forged.
On the Tree of Life diagram the materializing energy of the Mother Pillar (named Hyle) moves down the right side, across the Sephira of Mars (Geburah), culminating in Hod, "that through which all converts to inferiors" according to Gershom Scholem (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism , P 209). Conversely, the contemplative energy of the Father Pillar (Azoth) rises from Netzach, "that through which all converts to superiors." (op. cit.) Through her identification with Mars, The Empress is directed towards results in the material plane, symbolized by bat wings, a classic symbol of descent, where angel wings will represent ascent. Her red dress shows her connection with the animal world and the blood mysteries, the mysteries of birth, fertility, and death. This is the force that keeps the material plane open for our habitation. We may be shocked by her dark hair and bat wings, because almost every Empress on the European decks is etherial and fair-haired, not dark and sternly brooding, as we see here. We know that these arcana/letter/sign correspondences from the Sephir Yetzirah far predate the later Venusian attribution, a result of the Greek alphabet reform. The El Gran Tarot Esoterico image, I believe, depicts more correctly the older Semitic and Phoenecian roots of the story.
The Empress has a fierce countenance, and she definitely looks older and heavier and much more powerful than her fair and dewy predecessor. Eve as the unsullied virgin hovers on the doorstep of the unconscious, but the Empress possesses the daily true grit a mother requires to be strong enough to feed and clothe a family. This shift from the idealized Priestess to the stern Empress emphasizes that the former resides in the realm of mythos, while the latter deals with the real-time issues of survival in this difficult world. This arcana depicts the great Earth mother, whom we now call Gaia, both creator and destroyer. The ear of corn prominently displayed on her card further connects her with Demeter, goddess of the grain crops.
After all, with a good harvest and lots of grain, everybody lives through winter. With a bad harvest, there will be those who will be malnourished and lost to the tribe, failing to make it through winter. This Empress is manifestly the goddess of tough, dark times, with her bat wings and that hole in her skirt that probably goes straight down into the Underworld. But again, her shield says, "You may look at me and see something dark, in the light of ego or in the light of the day. You may see something dark and shadowy, but when ego and reason and our vaunted cultural attainments are eclipsed, I'm all that stands between you and the howling void, so you had better serve me or your existence is moot." Those lions remind us that she's the enforcer of the rules, the rules of nature and the rules of this creation.
Next comes the
Emperor, who stands as the regent in the place of the Great
Goddess. She has no specific locality, as her body makes up the
whole material plane as we know it. Nature has laws and she has
rules, and she has ways she wants things done, so the Emperor
serves as her mouthpiece. He wears her cloak and carries her wand,
knowing that his rule is law in this world. But he's sitting on
her throne, and when we look more closely at the card, we see
that he is completely at her behest. Notice that on both the Empress and the Emperor there is a little bush in the background. The Empress' bush has no black bird on it, but, ominously, the Emperor's does. That black bird is a traditional symbol from the ancient Mysteries of an emissary from the underworld warning, "Your time is up." The Emperor is the grain king who will be sacrificed at the end of his tenure. He's got the shed deer horns of a seasonal hunter-god, most likely Cernunnos, and a leather hat instead of the usual crown. It is crown shaped, but it's green, so it symbolizes the growing world, not a metallic substance. The Empress, instead, wears a gold crown, with the four phases of the moon on it, indicating that she has the power of life and death. The Goddess is eternal, perpetual, boundless. In contrast, the God blinks on and off; he is born, he serves the Goddess, and when he has done his job, like a drone bee, he is sacrificed.
The attribution of the sun to the Emperor signifies that every one of us as individuated egos in our separate bodies is in the position of regent for Demeter. It is our job to hold up the role, wear the cape, wield the wand and do her will, so when she comes around to check our work, she doesn't decide that our season in the sun is over. In the very oldest versions of this story, the Emperor is her son, her lover, and her emissary into the Underworld, being recycled every fall and sown as a seed in her womb, to be gestated and reborn again the next spring. In the later mysteries, the regent would just hand over a bunch of goats and bulls to be sacrificed in his stead, while he was heading for the hills!
But while he's still sharing the throne with the Mother that horned helmet on his head has to do with increased intuition and shamanic power, enabling him to receive transmission from her. As her regent he must fathom her will and intuitively know in any given situation just how she would want things handled. If he hasn't studied his natural law enough, then at some point or another, he'll make a decision that will obliterate him. Of course, he sits on the traditional cubic stone, and that's classic Tarot image for sovereignty and authority, but the wand with the cross over the globe traditionally belongs to the Empress. It is a pre-Christian symbol for domination, for the spirit dominating matter, and it belongs to her. It is also a symbol of the Tree of Life, the connection between the material world and the spiritual world. The globe is a big Malkuth, and the cross represents everything above it on the Tree of Life.
Traditional decks tend to give the Emperor all kinds of credit as the boss. But that little black bird over there on the bush reminds us that the Great Mother is watching, and just because he's wearing the hat and carrying the wand doesn't mean he can do whatever he pleases! There are consequences to everything... hence, he's under a death sentence even as he sits there. This is traditional to both folk European and middle eastern mysteries, and definitely pre-Christian. The day the Emperor gets cocky and mistakes himself for his role, he will be recycled, in no uncertain terms!
The next arcana,
the Heirophant, is dressed in classic papal skirts, but,
strangely enough, he wears no hat. On most Tarots, we see a huge
crown, the Babylonian Triple Tiara representing the opening of
the lotuses above his crown chakra. Here, the crown is missing,
because this priest apparently has direct transmission "from
above". This Heirophant is a priest in the ancient order
of Melchezidek, the traditional designation of self-made priests,
without lineage, of spontaneous generation, like the shamans of
old. They've been visited by the divine impulse, as you see happening
in this card. Jesus claimed his priesthood from the order of Melchezidek,
asserting himself as a self-ordained Heirophant when his detractors
complained that he wasn't "Jewish enough". A Heirophant
has to have made the choice to open up to an invasion from the
divine, unmotivated by the desire for recognition by external
human authority. Nonetheless, once his mastery is complete, his
authority is self-evident and he becomes the head the school of
future priests.Replacing the triple crown is his triple cross, a sign of having undergone the three levels of initiation. Physical birth is the first level, birth into the celestial (astrological and occult) knowledge is the second level, and birth into the underworld (the realm of the archetypes) is the third level. One must have transcended one's limited ego, possess the freedom to move in and out of various levels of reality, being conscious simultaneously on all three worlds (organic, egoic, cosmic) before becoming a Heirophant or a bishop, the highest order in the outer spiritual community. The Heirophant is self-initiated through a link made with his own inner divinity, thereby staying in communication and communion with the vast web of souls. His status is recognized by the humans around him by their need of him to heal, to teach, and to speak the will of the Gods. And the two neophytes sitting at his feet are oppositely dressed because they represent different aspects of human nature, all of which are subservient to he who has conquered all aspects of the human dilemma
There is a paradox to this arcana which winks at us through the papal trappings. If he has transcended incarnational laws, having conquered the three realms, then he has conquered death as well, and is in possession of his eternal nature. That means he can come and go as he pleases in time and space! We can't know for sure whether the Heirophant is an incarnated human, or whether he's an angel that has taken a body just for this event, just to inject a little energy into the human world and then move on. The Heirophant appears to officiate at the mysteries, but there's no proving that he's a person who's still stuck in time and space with a local identity built up from consecutive human experiences. Because he's an independent contractor, no church can control him, hence the power of mystics and magicians to shake the Holy Roman Empire for the last two thousand years. ( In Guler's Euskalherria Tarot, we see the Heirophant with the papal tiara, but it's lifted off his head, hovering above him, and his skirt swirls around his ankles, revealing that his feet don't touch the ground. So he's literally levitating through the world.)
The fact that he raises two fingers instead of one is a nod to Roman Catholic Europe. Many priests and bishops ordained in the lineages which the Church declared heretical, (including those founded by the family of the Magdalen) had to join the Catholic Church to continue practising as priests. According to Kabbalah's teachings, there is no literal difference between divine nature and human nature, but in the human historical world of popes and inquisitions, the people who look to the Heirophant give him the attributes they need to see him having. The Heirophant could be standing there naked, and it wouldn't make any difference to his abilities and powers. But if he shows up in certain clothes or in a certain pose, it's because these are the signs the people need in order to recognize him. Above all, this is a self-realized individual. The attribution of the sign Aries to this card reemphasizes this point, saying "I am self-born and self-initiated".
Moving on, the
Lovers card shows a single path coming to a place where it
splits. This is the traditional Alexndrian-style image called
The Two Paths, but it has been altered subtly from the Egyptian
model. A man that might be the Magus stands there between two
women. The woman with the bound hair signifies an older person,
a matron. (Traditionally, hair binding was done after marriage;
a maiden wore her hair loose until she attracted her mate). The
matron is offering a golden apple to Adam and his companion on
the path, a young woman. Instead of the single path splitting,
I see this as two paths fusing. This is the Sacred Marriage, not
a choice between mother and girl friend, but the sealing of a
union in traditional folkways, which would be a hand-fasting at
a crossing of the ley lines, and the fusion of the destiny of
the two people by a priestess. They stand at the place where two
different powerstreams merge, and of course that augments the
power of the ritual that unites them. The old version of a hand-fasting was a spiritual contract that would last over many lifetimes.
This arcanum says, "Don't take relationship contracts lightly. You are joined in relationship for eternity, and you are responsible. You will be not let off the hook if later on you change your mind." The ritual of marriage does more than just call attention of the community to a union. It calls all the angels and the spirits in, hence the presence of the little cherub. Solar rays come out from the aura of the cherub, who is inside a distinctly egg-shaped, radiant bubble. That's the Ain Soph Aur, another Kabbalistic symbol, representing an emissary from the Unknown God, breaking through from the spirit world and laying this karmic bolt down on Adam Kadmon, saying, "I see what you're doing. Don't assume that just because you're doing it in time and space that it doesn't have eternal consequences".
The golden apple is the symbol that comes to us from the Greek Mysteries, the apple being what the more traditional Jews cast as the offending fruit, but what the Gnostics saw as the vehicle by which ignorant, innocent, asleep-at-the-wheel humanity became awakened. When an apple is cut crosswise around it's middle, what you see inside is a pentagrammatic seed-chamber. The number five represents the transcending of the ordinary sense-world of the four elements, just like the Heirophant, arcanum #5, transcends normal human experiences. So this speaks to us of the magic hidden deep within the ordinary. We ourselves are the fifth element; consciousness is the fifth element that makes magic out of the material plane. This card represents the marriage of two soul's five-element natures into one larger, multidimensional being.
The Lovers is keyed in this system to Taurus, the long, slow unfolding of agricultural, and biological time. It's a fixed sign, indicating the marriage is forever. Breaking these vows brings havoc, not just upon the offender and his or her lineage, but perhaps upon the whole village, because, of course, if Demeter's mad, she'll withhold the grain and the harvest.
The Chariot
card is fairly standard, though we don't really see the bodies
of the horses in this card, we just see their heads. Traditionally
the Chariot card references the chariot mentioned in the first
book of Ezekiel, piloted by the Word of the Lord. Mounted on this
vehicle is a man enthroned, whose lower half is hidden in the
glowing, seemingly burning, metal chariot. He is specifically
named as "the likeness of the glory of the Lord" (Ezekiel
1:28.) Of course, there are other mythic chariots to which this arcanum refers as well. For one thing, this is also the chariot of Hermes, the force that comes in and changes ordinary time into mythical time again. This chariot is also Apollo's vehicle, carrying the Sun across the sky in Greek mythology. On the negative side, this could be Phaeton, who one day stole the chariot and ended up getting thrown to his death because he couldn't control the horses. A Talmudic Jew would see in it the chariot of the Merkabah, the Holy of Holies, on wheels due to the diasporah, which we ride to ascend in consciousness to the Throne of the Great One. An alchemist would see in it the Triumphant Chariot of Venus or nature, carrying all lives along to their destinies by her magnetic power of attraction. There are layers and layers of mythos here, all pre-Christian.
The Chariot sweeps us up and forces us to come awake again to our divine prerogatives and be victorious in the fields of time and space, using the divine attributes hidden in our Adamic nature. That could be Adam driving the Chariot, or some part of the divine self enthroned, like the Emperor, but with wheels this time. Aligned with divine Will and prepared for the journey, one's activities will be expedited by those awesome wheels, and the steeds of the gods will be yours to command.
The handful of thunderbolts is an old symbol of the king of heaven coming down from Olympas. When the Chariot card comes up, there's the opportunity available to navigate with the full realization of one's divine nature. Gemini rules this card: one may or may not elect to follow through on the possibilities offered. But those that choose to take the risk and conquer their fears enough to grab ahold of the reins and shoot for something have a chance of a major victory. Spontaneity and adaptability, combined with a warrior's toughness, are the hallmark of this arcanum.
For those who are used to the twentieth-century tarots which have abandoned the old correspondences, you will be surprised to see the Justice Arcanum in the 8th position, and the Strength Arcanum as #11. The opposite ordering has become "traditional" in the last century, but those attributions are thoroughly modern, having nothing to do with the ancient alphabetics or the Alexandrian synthesis underlying our original Tarot archetypes. As we are concerning ourselves here with a deck that portrays the "aboriginal" values of the Hebrew alphabet in visual form, I must stay true to the material at hand. (See the English School chapter for more explanation.)
The next image in
the El Gran Tarot Esoterico sequence is the Justice card,
number 8, depicting Solomon and the ruse he used to find the true
mother in the case of the contested baby. Despite the fact that
he retained the hereditary power of life and death over all of
his people, he chose to try cases judicially, probing for deeper
values and taking justice as his standard. In his own lifetime,
Solomon was reknowned for his wisdom both in his studies and in
his rulership. This version of the Justice arcana is amplified by the sign of Cancer, the sign of birth and death. It is not amiss to notice that Solomon as Justice also has a crack in his skirt like that of the Empress, which similarly seems to open up into the underworld. The water-sign Cancer contains the ocean of unmanifest being, and souls are fished out of it in order to have incarnations, then cast back into it when they're done.
So this baby has just come out of the unmanifest, and Solomon offers to send it back, which elicits the response he needs to hear to determine the rightful mother. He is dealing with human justice using natural consequences, which in his time set a very high standard of reasoning and created legal precedent. Very seldom do we see the Justice card as a male figure. Solomon, listening for the maternal response, determining who cares and who doesn't, is a novel role model for male wisdom in his patriarchal age. His genius is his intuitive way of reading between the lines and revealing the motives behind people's presentations. He is able to separate fact from fiction with his double-edged sword of truth. So again he's serving Demeter. He's serving the female agenda, and he's doing so without disempowering the Emperor's traditional powers as the regent.
Although this version of the Justice arcanum may seem less than sympathetic, we must remember that in many civilizations, the belief in reincarnation was universal and people were less attached to their personal egos. Solomon offered to split the baby, but he did not actually do it! He was fishing for a reaction. And in the moment of realization when it seemed he might actually do it, each mother showed her true motives. For the times that Solomon inhabited, this card shows keen psychological insight, and indicates that motive as well as action needs to figure into the application of true Justice.
We see a higher number of male figures in El Gran Tarot Esoterico, but they're still all dominated by the goddess's concerns. Several times we see masculine images given to traditionally "feminine" signs or planets. We also see some very strong female images. As previously mentioned, this apparent genderbend is characteristically Jewish, a strong identifying mark in a tradition surrounded by the virulence of the patriarchal backlash against Goddess culture. One almost suspects the Jews of the Alexandrian era of being the closeted feminists of the ancient world!
This Hermit
is classical, especially with the deer in the background, possessing
horns just like those on the Emperor arcana. I take this as a
statement about the Hermit being attuned to and telepathic with
nature, immersed in it, with his green cloak and his deep woods
background. The deer has been associated with the arcanum of the
Hermit since the epic poem I Triumphi celebrated the archetypes
of Love, Death, Time (the Hermit), and Resurrection in Renaissance
Italy of 1356 - 1374 (the years during which it was written.)The Leo attribution, in the ancient astrological lore, refers to the branch of the priesthood whose job it was to literally enact the Mysteries at the sacred times. These individuals learned how to create spaces inside of their ego for the overshadowing invasion by the archetypes, from gods and demons, to animals, weather, and features of the landscape. This is considered the oldest, most shamanic strain in the long lineage of preistcraft-the locating of game animals for the tribe for the hunt. This role requires isolation to perform the consciousness-work enabling one to create that space inside of himself to channel the divinities, and in particular Gaia, mother of the ecology. So although he is always and forever to be found working for the people towards their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, he is still a hermit, and he just wants to be left alone to do his own thing! In most Tarots, he is clearly masculine and of advanced age, implying perhaps that once one has put in one's time as a respectable pillar of society, there is a time when one wishes to just drop out, responding only to Spirit instead of the demands of the world. He still holds out his lamp, so those who come into the wilderness seeking him will not be lost. But he's established in a position of distance and renunciation, and that gives him the necessary perspective to help and advise those who have no such peace. I think of him as a wise old gramps or crone.
The next
arcana is a unique formulation of the Wheel of Fortune.
We absolutely do not see this anywhere else. We see a tiny fragment
of it on the Etteilla Tarot, which shows a crowned monkey in the
lineage tree. Here we see this big white bear, rolling a giant
calendar-stone, and a mask looking in two directions at once.
The mask is associated with the old theological virtue of Prudence,
who "looks both ways" in both time and space, much like
the analytical view taken by Virgos in the administration of the
practical duties of this material life.What we see in the image is the old Tree of Life, and on it, to the left, a crowned monkey with a pinwheel and a little red cape. This is a hermetic joke; the monkey is the Ape of Thoth (the pretense of knowledge) dressed up as European royalty. The monkey itself is an old figure of the shadow from the Egyptian mythos of Hermes, but for this deck it has been dressed and crowned and "made king", presumably by the Pope, since this is a European deck.
"Those who have eyes to see" would take this whole assemblage as a direct reference to the Holy Family. The monkey represents one of the puppet-kings usurping the Lineage Tree, displacing the royalty of the suit of Cups. His little pinwheel is a pretend signature of authority, mocking the white bear who rolls the Wheel of Time at his feet. The wheel could be viewed as a millstone, or as an ancient calendar. It's definitely the sign of a cycle and something that's moving very slowly. One might also read here an echo of the stone that mysteriously moved from the mouth of the cave that held the body of Jesus.
The little Janus head on the card looks backwards to the past and forwards to the future. That's how the Holy Family had to be. Members of these various families had to think generations ahead in order to keep their lineage and the sacred teachings intact from generation to generation. Once the anti-Merovingian sentiment set in at Rome, the stakes got higher for those who continued to serve the inherited destiny of carrying forward this inner magical, spiritual teaching. Evidently, membership in this bloodline is both a terrible burden and a great gift, and certain individuals were sacrificed to the destiny of the clan.
Meanwhile the secular kings and queens come and go, occupying a stolen throne, wearing the monkey crown, holding the pinwheel, assured by traitorous Popes that they're something special. In the shadows, this sacred tribe of Gnostic Magdalenic priests, like the Cohen lineage of the Jews, waits through generations for the moment when they can finally come forward again and be legitimized. I do not sense that the role of this Great Bear is threatening or vengeful or ambitious for worldly power at all. This is an image of long-suffering survival, waiting, holding back from using tremendous power or magical endowment until the world is ready, until all circumstances can be brought into alignment.
The Wheel of Fortune card shows the fate of the generations following the Magdalen's arrival in Europe. She came, she started this new movement and brought all this energy from the Middle East, but she herself died, and it's her children's children who are suffering from the persecutions and being hunted down through the generations, targeted by the Pope. The writers of Holy Blood, Holy Grail have accumulated monumental evidence to document that this suppressed and martyred lineage/faith/family/priesthood is the engine driving the secret history of Europe, and I simply have to agree.
The next arcana
is the Strength, stripped of lions, a male figure instead
of female, with long braided blond hair and a club on his shoulder,
marked by the sigils of Venus and eternity. Having a young blonde
hero on the letter that stands for Venus seems to be another clue
to this Magdalenean connection. In the Holy Grail, Holy Bloodline
mythos which these images reflect, it's not the Goddess or Mary
Madgalen who is personally important, even in the concentration
of Black Madonna churches all over the Iberian peninsula. Her
significance is as the mother of these special children. It's
the blood running through her to future generations of children,
which is the main fetish object in the Black Madonna worship,
the Holy Grail mythos, and the Magdalean reawakening. This young man who shows up on the Strength card in the place of the more-usual female figure is distinctly blond. This brings back to mind the Frankish (German) wing of the Hebrew/Gnostic/Magdalenic lineage, whose long blond hair signifies magical power and is left unshorn. What is implied here is that this heroic figure is not a particular historical character, traceable to a particular time or place, but an ideal, the archetype of the risen Christ of future humanity. Thus he would have the association with Venus, ruler of all things beautiful, refined, aesthetic, and sacred. He represents that purer strain of humanity that all Old Testament believers feel existed before the Fall, a recapitulation of Adam Kadmon, which we may someday reawaken within us.
This arcana also refers back in time to Samson and Hercules, Moses, Solomon, all of the charismatic leaders of the past who represent natural law and the greater hope of the people to be brought through difficult times and initiated into their higher nature. This is the androgynous young vindicator of the Great Mother, the redemptive aspect of the Goddess' pain at being suppressed by the patriarchy. So he embodies the Promethean role, bringing us gifts from on high-numbers, letters, the sigils and signs of astrology and other forms of learning. As a matter of fact, it's in a hollowed-out club just like the one we see on this card that Prometheus brings down the coals for fire.
He does look a little like a caveman, but that impression is tempered by the assignment of Venus and the eternity symbol over his head. He's the young, virile handsome son of the Great Mother, manly enough not to be sissified by the association with Venus. Venus adds the slant that he can be a romantic hero too, aesthetically cultivated and sensitive to the finer things, a "civilized" man. (We will hear echoes of this theme later, in the chapter on the Renaissance and the secret societies of that later time.)
Of course, there's nothing about this in the book that accompanies the deck. We have to go by very few clues, and I'm making some leaps of faith here. But because the author refers to the myths of classical antiquity in the first few cards-( Adam Kadmon , the Great Mother, the Grain King), I feel justified in stretching beyond jut the short historical moment of the literal Magdalen to see the greater mythological import this card carries. He is a sign of the good things which live in human nature, who will emerge from the shadows when we need him the most.
The Esoterico
Hanged Man has no human figure but bears a portrait of
the village square in the little town close to where Maritzu Guler
lived. This is a medieval stocks and gallows that stands in the
center of the town square and has been there since the Inquisition.
Maritzu lived in the territory to which the very first campaign
of the Crusades was launched, in the effort to quell their ancestral
Gnostic Albigensian heretical Christianity. Being the inheritors
of the Magdalenian legacy, they had an understanding about the
mission of Jesus and the purpose of incarnation in the world which
was very threatening to the Roman Catholic Church. These stocks
were erected all around this neighborhood as a part of the inauguration
of the burning times. I have not been able to find a dictionary definition for La Picota, but I would guess it is related to the word "picket", as in picket fence. The prong at the top would serve as a gallows, and it's construction of stone makes it indestructible when the heretic manacled to these loops was being burned. It also could serve as a stocks for public display of the criminal, or as a whipping-post. So without even having anybody attached to it, la Picota displays the fate that awaits heretics who live under the long arm of the church. The Hanged Man can also be seen as a symbol of the dilemma of the descendants of the Magdalen's and Jesus' marriage, whose status made them scapegoats in Catholic Europe during the dreadful years of the tenth and eleventh century.
In this deck, this version of the arcana bears the old symbol of the two trees each with six stumps. Remembering that this is an astrological metaphor, we are directed to Libra, the halfway point in the year, where the year turns back on itself. Spring and summer have passed, the time of waxing and warming; now fall and winter begin, the time of dark and cold. In this sense the Hanged Man is a card of the turning point. The Inquisitional assault on the Cathars was also a turning point in European history. For the first thousand years of the common era, the Roman church grew, but many different dissident groups grew as well. The Cabbalists and the Cathars and different sects and lineages carried on relatively unmolested. However, the baleful eye of the church was watching them accrue wealth and gain popularity, and eventually the threat they presented, and the riches they deployed, became too tempting a target.
So I think this Picota card is making a specific historical reference to that moment when the storm clouds that had been massing for centuries finally broke, and a whole new wave of disasters struck, not only for the Holy Family but for all non-Christians throughout southern Europe.
Next in the sequence,
the Death card is an especially syncretist statement using,
as it does, images from the ancient Hellenic world. Death comes
riding in on the underworld's dog, not on a medieval horse, like
a knight, but on Cerebus, whom the ancients believed guarded the
river that runs between the world of the quick and the world of
the dead. The Reaper wears the usual ghoulish grin, evoking with
his red-lined cape that fear of the plague, of death, of continuously-impending
mortality which had the mediaeval folk running to the church on
Sunday, only to visit the astrologer on Monday and the crone in
the woods on Tuesday. This arcana was deliberately exploited by
the Roman church to enhance the general fear of dying without
absolution and last rights. Because they claimed to be able to
either confer or withhold entry into heaven through the power
of the Sacraments, the priesthood could control the people's allegiances,
hence their lives.Rome was not the first Mystery School to mediate over its members' eternal lives. This function of the priesthood goes right back to the oldest mysteries, where the candidates for initiation were told not to mourn for the old self that would be taken away, an experience they should expect during course of the rite. The understanding was, when a soul comes into a body, it actually dies to its spiritual life. Conversely, when the soul leaves the body at the end of it's lifetime, this is seen to be a return to its eternal inheritance, and is celebrated as a great rebirth.
The Mysteries were so arranged as to put the individual through an experience that separates the soul from the body without death, to give that soul a new platform of consciousness from which to contemplate this life, without having to die to "get it." The Roman church, on the other hand, did not have enough trust in its members to offer them this option. It kept its participants in thrall with the idea that they could not die in spiritual safety without priestly mediation.
The cape on this reaping skeleton is a wonderful metaphor for the "veil" between the world of the living and the dead. Its blood-red lining speaks to the lust for life we all feel in our flesh, but on the outside is black as night and studded with the stars of the firmament, representing the vastness of eternal space and time. These two sides of the cape are symbolic of the exchange we make when we cross that threshold. So although this arcanum does to some extent refer to the old medieval plague/death image, because he's astride a steed and wearing this cloak of impenetrable darkness, we do not have to see this figure as a threat or a punishment. Death is only the revolving door between the visible world and the invisible world. Once we get over being afraid of it, we can learn how the seeds of the future are sown by the reaping of the past, in the eternal cycle.
The temple/sepulcher with the ankh on it that appears in the background suggests a revival of what was known when nations were young, before the fall of the ancient Mysteries. Eternal life was well-understood long before the birth of Jesus. This was one of the core purposes of the Mysteries, healing the people of their fear of death. Many people are not free within themselves, to truly understand what they are here for, until they get free of their mortal attachments, their clutching to the outer life and the sensual life as if that were all that is. A person who had undergone Initiation would gain the soul-serenity of knowing that they are already installed in eternal life, with or without the mediation of the priesthood or blessings from the Pope. This adds up to a very non-Christian card for a European Tarot!
The next arcanum,
Temperance, represents what's immediately beyond the experience
of death, following upon the heels of detachment from the fleshly
envelope. Here we see the soul in female form, unencumbered by
the body's polarities, be they issues of gender, age, race, temperament,
or any other spectrum of outer or inner qualities by which one
might define the "known self". If the soul is immortal,
its very being transcends those qualities of limitation and particularity.
As such, the soul has access to both yin and yang energy, both
solar and lunar capabilities, mediating all opposites with its
infinite flexibility. All of our qualities are putty in the hands
of the higher nature, who mixes up the personality in any given
incarnation just like an alchemical recipe. With a dash of this
planetary metal, and a dash of that moon phase, a really interesting
lifetime is created, perhaps one in which the soul can get some
learning done. Here we have the soul in its lab blending the opposites to create the Master Medicine, the alchemical elixir of eternal life. The waters of life are being rebalanced and renewed in preparation for the distillation of cosmic fluids into earth substances. Later these same waters will be poured out upon the creation, in The Star.
I experience the two vessels as the left brain and the right brain. This is the result of shamanic work, especially in the context of the Mysteries where the initiate is shocked and/or paradigm-shifted. In the process of being tempered via this method, the competing brain chemistries of "fight or flight" versus "rest and digest" encounter each other and merge. This stimulates the corpus colosum, and then one is no longer working in either/or mode. This is an "and/and" mode, inclusive of all possibility. One's being is no longer compartmentalized, and all of reality is flowing together and fusing into a new higher order. This process is supervised and mediated by the "angel of the sun" or the higher self, the sun-self.
In all Tarot decks, the Temperance gives the message to take the time and learn the practices enabling one to adjust brain chemistry at will. The fact that this arcanum follows right after the Death card is no accident. In the Mysteries, the initiates ate some massive dose of psychedelic ergot or wild mushroom or some soma mix, and was blasted right out of their normal minds as a part of the Mystery experience. Even in the Christian services after the Mysteries folded, harmonic singing, vast darkness punctuated by flickering candlelight, hypnotic movements and repetitive chants, fasting, and incense were used in long ceremonies that went on into the night and through the next day. This would have that same effect of massively altering consciousness to promote the opportunity for direct experience of the intimate presence of God, heralded by the angel's presence.
Such experiences sometimes occur spontaneously at pivotal times, when facing the Grim Reaper or one's potential immediate demise. All of a sudden there's this extra-intelligence, this extra clarity, as the higher nature clicks on. But somebody who didn't handle the death card correctly, would never encounter the angel because of their attachment to the material plane preventing this higher octave of consciousness illuminating the psyche. This extraordinary vision only appears to people who are working on a higher frequency, who know the self to be energy beyond form.
The Devil
arcanum represents the state of the individual who has shed human
limitations and recognized him- or herself as an incipient God
in the making. This concept in ancient times was called the Demi-Urge,
and it signified the "unconscious" operations of God,
the aspect of the Elohim (previously mentioned as the "chakras
of God", which humans also participate in) which takes over
the intimate administration of the material plane when the first
seven days of creation were finished. Think if it as the metabolism
of God, the "autopilot" features which uphold this creation.
Like the Emperor stands in for the localized presence of the imminent
Great Mother, the Demi-Urge serves as regent for the administration
of the Cosmos, with the understanding that the Creator and Originator
is now concentrating on other things. When a human soul evolves
to a certain point, it can influence the Demi-Urge by becoming
one with it and directing the flow of the collective Unconscious
with personal will. This is the goal of every practicing magician,
ancient to modern. The Demi-urge is a regular feature in Gnostic, Hermetic, and Persian cosmologies, and would not have been unknown to Jesus and Mary Magdalen either. Some Hebrew Gnostics believed that Jehovah was actually the Demi-urge, who cast Adam Kadmon into the bondage of fleshly life out of fear that humanity would evolve beyond him eventually. No wonder the orthodox Jews of the time hated them! But for us living in these more psychological times, the Devil, Demi-urge, Typhon, or whatever else one might call it is a fascinating archetype of humanity's magical potential to affect the flow of circumstances from within, through a strategic application of consciousness to the collective unconscious. And to follow this line of thought a little further, then the demi-urge, who is the administrator of the fallen or the post-Eden creation, is the rightful ruler of the material plane and set there for divine reasons by the over-god, the unknown God. That this is not a tragedy, this is not a torture, this is not a punishment- this is the plan. The Demi-urge is our baby-sitter and role model until we grow up and assume this role ourselves, in our spiritual maturity.
Heaped upon that already-formidable pile of paradoxes, the Devil card also carries all the freight of doctrinal differences that have provided the justification for holy war over several thousand years duration. Here we see the primeval ancient earth goddess, related to the Great Mother of the Empress card through the bat wing/angel wing switch. She is made up of the four elements (earthy legs, watery abdomen, airy breast and wings, fiery head), and as well she has been" scapegoated", made to wear the mask of a goat or donkey, a shaming symbol since ancient times.
But it's more than just a goat's head. This is a very unique formulation, the face of this Devil card, and to me it looks like aspects of human female genitalia, like a clitoris and its labial folds. The face on this Devil card is just unprecedented. Additionally, we see this feminine force associated with the letter Mem, which is explained in Hebrew calligraphy books as a snake eating its own tail. What is less often explained is that this circled serpent is also an old symbol for the yoni, the vaginal opening among the Semitic tribes!
This Devil card also shows also shows a distinctly female form, which in our chapter on the Major Arcana I explain is a more "esoteric" take on the Devil. It all serves to make explicit the fact that this Devil is aligned with the Goddess Mysteries. To top it off, she makes the same hand signals we traditionally find on the Heirophant, with a crescent moon above and a dark moon below, referring back to the old lunar mysteries. There's a lot of emphasis on blood and menstruation here as well, with a caduceus running down her spinal column and culminating in an exaggerated second chakra, a great throbbing red uterus of some kind, as if her inner organs are exposed.
What a combination of symbols! The demi-urge is equated with a feminine force channeling descending energy, sending something to earth, along lines of occult transmission. She's apparently totally unstoppable, as she's already slipped thorough the fingers of the Wheel of Fortune, the Hanged Man, the Death card... all of the social controls belonging to the collective mind used to rein us in, hold us down, and keep us from believing the heresy that we're part of God. All of that collective control has been left behind, and the initiated individual functions as the demi-urge, controlling the environment. The demi-urge dominates the foreground, while a sketchy little church fades into the background, totally dominated by this force. When all the layers of acculturation have been peeled back, what we find is the divine power within us, still fully capable of changing the world at any given moment through personal will and magic, through self-empowered acts of Sagittarian expression and freedom.
For our discussion, the important factor is how literally genital and blood-mystery oriented this card is. Here we have the goddess, the female principle, as the genatrix of creation, the literal genital generator. And also from the point of view of the Magdalen myth, she is the Holy Grail, the vessel who carries the bloodline from the past into the future, so that holy blood is seen here accumulating around the genitals of the Devil card. There's something sacramental about this, that somehow we go from red as blood, the carnage of the Death card, through the mixing up of an sacred elixir in the Temperance to the accumulation of this terrific potency in the womb of the Devil.
Without the proper spiritual cultivation at this level of initiation, however, there is the possibility of immediate self-destruction through the stupidity of bad choices. Once external limits are removed, if we can't set limits on ourselves, we'll just explode from our own inflation. Ordinary human laws and even natural laws no longer hold for the individual who has fused with the demi-urge, but, at that point, the temptation is present to attempt everything in the world, to risk everything, to exceed all possible limits. Sagittarius wants to fly as fast as the arrow, but if he does not use foresight when he releases his bow, the curve of space makes him shoot himself in the back!
The person who at an energetic level is working in the realm of the Devil arcanum as the demi-urge is free of the karmic delay that allows them to do something rotten now and not hear the consequences until later. One of the things experienced with the Devil card and everything afterwards is instant karma, instant response, instant accountability. The center of gravity has shifted out of the human ego, so when the ego wakes up with the demi-urge's capability, its response if it is immature would be, " Oh, wow! Now I can do anything!" In truth, the soul is much more culpable at every level, because it has shifted to being an actor rather than a reactor in life. That's part of the test of the Devil card. Can you handle that capacity and not get yourself in trouble with it?
And obviously the
very next card is the Tower where the consequences of any
action whatsoever in the Devil card come down. Once the lightning
bolt is loosed, the material plane will change. The Tower card
is the immediate response to any action taken.One of the challenges, for the initiate is to be impeccable in decisions and choices without becoming ego-inflated, and so the transition from the Devil card to the Tower warns against the over inflation of the ego, against assuming owner ship of that flow of energy which the Initiate merely mediates. The forces of Nature are much stronger than any human agency.
We know that there are a lot of associations with the Tower that go back to biblical times. One old myth is that during the three days that Jesus hung on the cross, the great temple, the Synagogue in Jerusalem, was hit by lightening. Another myth relates to the tower of Babel and the smiting of language into different tongues because of the hubris of trying to build a tower to heaven. We do know that the Tower built of bricks represents a human construct instead of an organic growth, and because its a construct it's an imposition on the landscape. The tension it generates in nature eventually makes it a lightening rod, primed for destruction.
The figure exiting from the bottom of the Tower symbolizes both emergence from oppressive cultural constructs that benefit the few by enslaving the many, and also, in this Magdalean context, the destructive struggle between different religious hierarchies, while the incognito, without dramatic alignments, are preserved and maybe even liberated. So there is something here that may be part of the fulfillment of the prophesy implied in the Wheel of Fortune card, that with time and cultivation of the sacred blood line, the false hierarchies of power will crumble of their own deficiencies and self-inflation, allowing the keepers of the sacred trust to once again emerge publicly. There's been more controversy and more exploration and more in print on this sacred family in the last twenty years than there was in the previous 1400 years. This arcanum is assigned to Capricorn, the traditional sign of rulers and lineages that are able to carry teachings, power, money and authority through several generations.
In the Tower card there is a sub theme about orgasm. Remember that in the strict reading of the Bible is the injunction to be fruitful and multiply. In the remnants of the Gnostics that had to go underground in Europe there were alchemical practices such as coitus interruptus or cunnilingus/fellatio, as well as non-ejaculation, which helped to prevent impregnation. So the Tower card, following as it does upon the Devil arcanum with its emphasis on female sexuality and the second chakra, is to some degree connected to the act of non-procreative sexuality. It's the big bang, orgasm without the expectation of traditional family and all concomitant mundane consequences. And this of course was a part of Gnostic practise that deeply threatened Roman Catholicism, which taught that people were to remain celibate and enter nunneries and monasteries or they were to marry. What did St. Paul say ? "Better to marry than to burn". Any other form of contact between men and woman that might lead to ecstasy or joy or higher states of consciousness that wasn't immediately tied to reproduction responsibility was also part of the Devil's work.
In the Star
we see the dispensation of the alchemical elixir that was mixed
up in the Temperance card. While we find the gold and silver vessels
traditional to the Star, here they are both being poured into
the water, where a more traditional Star would show one part falling
on the earth and one part falling in the water. The color of the
fluid is blue. It isn't blood or wine or sacrament, but rather
an indigo blue like the night sky. I take this to refer to a stellar
consciousness being poured down into the water, an element that
is common to all life forms. This is not a sacrament being poured
out just for the few; this is being given to the whole creation,
as depicted by his pentagram in the center of the sun , and the
solar flare bearing the glyphs of Jupiter, Mars and Saturn, the
outer three visible planets in the solar system. (The personal
planets are the ones inside the orbit of the earth-Moon, Mercury,
and Venus, while the visible ones outside the orbit of the earth
are considered to be social or collective planets.) So, again
that's a implication that this sacrament is being poured out,
not just for human souls or certain selected individuals but for
the enlightenment of the entire creation, a Gnostic conception
because the Shekhina residence in every thing. Matter itself is
made of her body and the liberation of the world is the liberation
of the light in everything. Though the Star is traditionally a female figure, one could read the long flowing blond hair as a reference to the heroic Strength figure. The breasts first appeared on the Devil card, and we will later see the hermaphroditic World card as well. My tendency is not to see them as naturalistic attributes of a youth in the woods, but as symbols of powers accumulated which the soul wields in the work of redeeming the world. Those who remember their New Testament studies will remember the teaching Jesus gave, that in the Kingdom (among the coming humanity), there would be no gender separating women and men. I think that at this later stage of the cycle, the polarities of the soul are beginning to fuse back together into the Hermetic Androgyne, with attributes of both male and female. This Star is presaging the hermaphroditic World card to come, image of the Regenerated Human, all in keeping with the theme of redeeming the tragic consequences of the "fall of Adam." The ongoing goal throughout the Major Arcana remains to provide a path for self-initiation.
The presence of the pentagram on this arcanum is the symbol of humanity in the spirit world. Because human consciousness is the fifth element (the first four are the obvious material elements, earth, air, fire and water) we supply the fifth element which is imagination, creativity. Therefore when we use consciousness to mix the traditional four elements we actually invent new substances and invent new technologies. The pentagram is the symbol of our curiosity and human persistence in augmenting the creation with modifications and experiments . So that Pentagram is the image of the positive but also feared aspect of humannature. This is why the Church had to demonize it. So, it simultaneously represents what's unique about human species and what gets us in trouble all the time-our imagination. So, here then, to put the pentagram in the middle of that sun is to say that it is a divine quality of ours, it's part of our innate Godhead, our mandate from heaven and from that point of view that goes back to that optimist reading of Genesis that of course Eve was told not to eat the apple so that she would.
Another interesting little detail is the little bird on the bush. The last time we saw a bird on bush is was on the Emperor card, as the blackbird of the underworld. This is the white bird, the dove, from the higher world. So, there's a communication being extended from outside the solar system or from the supernal triangle on the Kabbalah Tree from the realms of super-consciousness and the realms of the Divine Archetype to the human world and a prepared individual is able to distill that fiery energy. This is not just a Christian conception, but an ancient belief handed down from the Mysteries that everything has to be re-illuminated by brightening the sparks of the divine within until they penetrate the illusion of the material plane. The Gnostic approach is to assume that even God is evolving, through creation's evolution. We are the act of God evolving in consciousness. So this a very optimistic message, that any moment that we can be licked by these divine tongues of flame and awaken just a little bit more or push ourselves a little farther along in terms of coming to consciousness and be seized by the spirit of that which is higher within us to become good servants, good stewards, tenders and keepers of the garden.
As a follow up to the Tower, in terms of Tantric sexual practises, that image of the flame can be taken as the orgasm that doesn't inseminate in the sense of creating a child, but instead illuminates consciousness and is applicable to the entire world .
The next arcanum,
the Moon, is rarely seen formulated this way. Instead of
two towers in the background, we find the two pillars of Hercules,
which were like gate markers to enter into the Olympian realm
of the gods. Hercules, because he was half human and half god,
had to prove to the gods that humans had some redeeming values.
Unlike the traditional pathway cutting between two towers, symbolic
of the opposites of reason and imagination, we have here a watery
path where what is usually dry land has been overtaken by this
watery inundation. In the tradition this card is called "The
Eclipse of Reason", and one can view that full moon in the
sky as blotting out the sun. The resulting high tide obliterates
daylight reasoning and brings up the dreamtime, turning the world
into a ghostly realm of shadows and illusions, implying that it's
spiritual intuition or the psyche that is the vessel and vehicle
for moving between the opposites of reason and non-reason or science
and magic. And of course we have already seen that the water is
mixed with this sacred elixir that has been generated through
the Temperance card and disseminated through the Star card. We
know that water is the common denominator of all carbon based
life forms, for all of us who have grown through evolution from
single celled organisms up to higher mammals. This is again a
clue that it is planetary consciousness that is attempting to
evolve, not just human consciousness.Here also we find droplets of multiple colors, rising towards the moon instead of the more usual falling pattern. The droplets are returning to the moon, being pulled like the tides, so this implies the soul getting ready to go back to its celestial origins. Earthly gravity is no longer so binding, and this spiritual or psychic force is starting to draw us towards something higher. Where the average Moon card is laden with negative associations, I see those etheric droplets as a hopeful image that we might be "raised to a higher state", to rejoin the celestial ocean of consciousness.
The little bay appears to be marked by the Pillars of Hercules, which stand in for the more usual two towers. If this is the author's intention, then perhaps this bay is the Mediterranean Sea, around which the cultures of the Mystery Schools flourished. The moon, symbol of collective spiritual intuition in its many forms, draws the waters of inspiration into the bay, and later she will pull them back out again, symbolizing the fortunes of the ancient Mystery teachings through the cycles of history. Some centuries are hard on those souls who chose Magian ways rather than more conventional religious paths. Other eras are marvelously supportive of the spiritual quest, resulting in great cultural flowering like that of the Renaissance, or that of our own time. In every generation, some hardy souls will even find themselves swept from the sheltered bay of local tradition, into the boundless deep, physical symbol for the ocean of cosmic space from which we may have come so long ago and to which we are told we will eventually return. We call such cosmic surfers "mystics", and they push the envelope of human consciousness for the sake of collective evolution.
The moon, with her grey face and her spiky, straight rays was first seen on the High Priestess card, in this deck called Eve, La Consultante. Now that we understand that Eve is not "fallen" but is the mother of us all, we can also see this Moon as a benign, nurturing matrix of divine instincts and intuitions, calling us back to our primordial depths. The Moon doesn't have to be an image of fear. Recalling the four quarters of the Moon on the Empress' crown, again we are linked to the great Goddess and her cyclic ways. In this arcanum we come to terms with our fear of the unknown, which in the Roman Catholic paradigm was considered infested with demons, but which the Gnostic Kabbalists knew as the domain of the Great Mother.
The Sun from
El Gran Tarot Esoterico is depicted with wavy rays, as opposed
to the straight rays of the moon. In the foreground below the
Sun, we see the Gemini twins, portrayed as androgynous or gender-neutral
figures. The two of them are sitting under this very interesting
sun with three coiled snakes of black, red and green. I see this
is an alchemical reference to the three different states of being
believed to underlie the makeup of humanity, that is the animal,
vegetable and mineral worlds. The animal world is red, for the
red of blood. The vegetable world is green. The mineral realm
is black. These three serpents come together and cross their heads
at the center, implying that the Sun is the source of all the
life-forces and life forms on the planet. The Sun radiates these
three colors outwards. Those drops, as on the Moon card colored
gold, red and green, are ascending toward the sun, again portraying
the gathering up of the different sparks of light and life that
were scattered upon the mythical "fall of man". I have not see this picture in any other Tarot, although my hunch is that we will find its prototype among the journals of the alchemists, who retained the old Gnostic myth of the constitution of human beings from the planetary metals. Here it is, combined with the Hebrew idea that each one of us is a spark of the sun. So this pictures the return of human nature to its original state, wherein humanity embodies not only the special gifts of our own species, but also occupies the pinnacle of evolution overall. This is neither a Christian nor a Jewish conception. From the Biblical point of view, we were invented on a certain day as a separate entity. But from the Gnostic point of view, humans are a composite of every life form with which we share the planet. The evolution of God itself happens through the agency of the mineral/vegetable/animal and, hopefully, human layers of consciousness. So this is not just the awakening of an individual soul. This is the Great Light containing everything that has gone before and gathering up all the fruits of all those incarnations now finally becoming conscious of its own fullness, having unfolded all those potentials. This is God, emerging from unconsciousness into consciousness, not just the illumination of an individual human consciousness.
The alchemists understood that all matter was made up of the same base elements, but they didn't have the scientific terminology that we use nowadays. Their concept, even at the material level of turning lead into gold, had to do with untying the bound core units of matter and then reassembling them at a higher level of expression . This version of the Sun arcanum is that same metaphor taken to the levl of the macrocosm, including all forms at all ages in all stages. Human consciousness is meant to be the midwife assisting in the process of disassembling the unconscious creation and reassembling it in a more lucid form, in the light of consciouness. Through this image a link is being asserted between the alchemical creation of gold and the metaphysical return to the light.
An alternative reading of the three snakes would be the three Mother letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Or, this could be Father/Mother & Divine Child, because the Gnostics understood the godhead in terms of the Holy Family. In the Hebrew Kabbalah, the supernal triangle makes up the divine presence above Daath, the throat chakra, the abyss. Together they make up the original manifestation of deity, which still exists in perfect balance above the firmament. A Hermetic take on the triplicity would reference Pythagoras' theory that the number three is the first "real" and stable number, because one is the great All, the Monad full of everything, and two is a state of transition between unity and polarity. Three is the first true state of individuation, a balanced harmony between thesis, antitheses, and synthesis.
Next we encounter
The Cycle (usually called Judgement), which has
a unique image reminiscent of the Etteilla Tarots of the late
seventeen hundreds. Here we see the lintel and frontispiece of
the Parthenon, adorned with the symbol of Venus. The temple itself
is gone, already an archeological relic by the time of Jesus and
Mary. In an arc across the sky stretches a path along which travel
the signs and planets of the zodiac, so this would be the band
of the Milky Way along the plane of the ecliptic. In the distant
part of the arc the sign of Pisces is setting, while at the closer
end is elevated the sign of Aquarius. I take this to be a reference
to the precession of the equinoxes, which accomplishes the passing
of the Age of Pisces and the starting of the Age of Aquarius.
The planet Saturn, who rules this card through it's Hebrew letter
attribution, is "hidden in plain sight" in a mound of
earth at the bottom of the card. The moon and the sun are also
shown moving along the zodiac, an image of the turning of the
years and of the millennia. Venus, meanwhile, symbolizes the ancient values of harmony, proportion, ratio and perspective, the one who is naturally true and good and beautiful. She has the power of attraction, making us resonate to our highest frequencies, that which inclines us all to make our best and sincerest efforts. She is also the action of natural cycles, the law of eternal return. At the time of the establishment of the Roman Church, these Greek temples were already ruins, and yet they still stood for something noble in human character that continues to attract us and inform us about the values held by our higher natures.
On the surface, it may seem a paradox that the card bearing the Ankh of Venus is dedicated to the planet Saturn. Yet in classical astrology, Saturn is exalted in Venus' sign Libra. Saturn's other name is Chronos, the cosmic clock ticking and turning the wheel of karma. His orderly and inexorable ways guarantee the eventual enactment of nature's laws. This combination of symbols superimposes the linear experience of sequential time (Saturn) with the eternal experience of sacred time (Venus), showing both as being true simultaneously. Apparently the sizzle between the two experiences of time is part of the meaning of this card, which shows a radical departure from the more normal "resurrection" image.
The next card is
not numbered on its face, but it has been assigned the next-to-last
letter in the Hebrew alphabet, Shin, making it correspond to number
21. This is the Fool. Visible here is a very specific formulation
of the Fool as scapegoat, the well-known yearly sacrifice who
atones for the sins of the people. This scapegoat tradition started
with the Hebrews in the Holy Land. At the new year, they would
assign all the negativity that had happened in the village to
a goat, giving to it the role of the devil, the vessel that held
all their sins. Then they would chase it around the village throwing
sticks and stones and calling names, eventually driving it out
to expire of its wounds in the desert. In this way the villagers
would then feel relieved of all their year's sins.By the time this tradition trickled into Europe in the Dark Ages, it was transformed, and the carrier of the village sins became the village idiot rather than livestock. At this point it could be some old crone who was getting demented with age, or a child with a bi