The Tarot and the Planets

As discussed in the Path of Saturn if you use the Chaldean order then the association of the seven planetary tarot cards to the seven sacred planets becomes:

• Magus - Saturn
• Priestess - Jupiter
• Empress - Mars
• Wheel of Fortune - Sol
• The Tower - Venus
• The Sun - Mercury
• The World - Moon

To begin this understanding we have to be able to see The Magus or more correctly the Juggler (Jugglery being Goetia) as inherently Saturnian.  The Magician is involved in all planetary spheres, they are called to work their spellcraft in all of the kingships - wisdom, wealth, fertility, health, power, peace and luck.  To say the Magician is ''Mercurial'' I think really depends on what kind of Magician you are referring to.  If we see him as a trickster or charlatan I think Mercury suits him well but if in following the vein of the last post on the Path of Saturn - we see the figure as one of inspired melancholia forging a path of inquiry out of mathematics, natural law and philosophy, astrology, angelology, demonology, and time travel with the ultimate aim of healing the sick and liberating the poor then this figure is Saturnian in mindset.  Again putting ourself in the perspective of the Medieval or Renaissance mindset we could follow either path into the Tarot here but what I think is interesting is what that choice says about what we think magic is...  John Dee and Edward Kelley reflect, in their personalities and approaches to occultism, this tension between  the garmetnts of a Mercurial magician or a Saturnian one.

The Priestess was originally associated with Juno - sister and consort of Jupiter, patroness of riches and goddess of wealth.  Equated with the Greek Hera she is the mistress of prosperity and childbirth. Jason Miller calls upon Juno in assistance with prosperity as a female alternative to Jupiter, to that extent she is very much involved in what we call the Jupiter current.  To my mind this is a pretty strong association with Jupiter.

In order to understand the Empress and Mars relationship we need a better understanding of the planet itself as Mars is often misconstrued as a brutal bloodthirsty psychopath.  As I have argued before Mars is originally an agricultural deity, the soldiers that fought under him were primarily farmers, retainers and tribal militias - they fought not for love of war and booty, but in defence of their farms.  As Empires grew and professional armies were raised, at various points throughout history the cult of the warrior has consequently changed or become corrupted.

In all of my experiences with Mars he has shown itself to be a lover of peace, loyalty and competition in the sense of athletics, endurance or hunting.   Mars does not glory in bloodlust or psychotic slaughter but he does love the challenge of the hunt and the struggle against nature for survival - he is a pastoral sylvanian God.  In the Sefer Yetzirah we find the Kingship of Seed is associated with Mars* - again as an agricultural deity this makes sense - its transposition Desolation is what happens when Mars is out of harmony i.e. fields are burned instead of farmed.  If we wish to see the Empress in the classic Martial sense maybe we need to think of women such as Elizabeth the First but in my mind, Elizabeth acted *defensively* like a mother Goose is violent in defending her offspring. 

In looking at The Wheel of Fortune and its connection to Sol, it is thought by some scholars that the belief in the turning wheel of fortune had its beginnings in early seasonal rituals. The decline into misfortune or death was seen to be linked to the beginnings of autumn and the approach of winter; improvements in one’s fortunes were linked to the renewal of life in spring and the fruitfulness of summer. On the card we see Solar cross of heaven now a wheel, and four cherubim, showing the four quarters of the year or seasons.  That our fortune - fair weather or foul - is one with the sunshine.

The Tower or the House of God shows a disaster struck tower and a couple being ejected from it.  Again we tend to focus on the building and the destruction itself rather than the individuals who have literally ''fallen from the House of God'' or been cast out of Heaven.  So how does this connect with the the planet Venus?  In Latin the word for Venus is Lucifer, and in the Christian understanding this is the Devil.  What I see in this attribution is the idea that if one gives in to temtpation, lust, debauchery, desire, etc one will fall from heaven or a state of happiness.  In understanding this we need to think of giving in to desire from a Medieval or Renaissance point of view - the ideas of chastity and restraint were very close to the idea of holiness whereas liscentiousness and lasciviousness were the work of Succubi.

 

Whilst displaying a gigantic Sun in the sky as if our planet has somehow been brought closer to our star, the foreground of Sun cards often display young male imagery which could be taken for Mercurial, the twins in fertile fields reminscent of Gemini and Virgo or the boy on the horse carrying the message of the Sun behind him. 

The figure in the centre of the World card is Luna, the Cherubim present as they were in the Wheel of Fortune.  Our lunar year alongside the solar year.  Diana and Artemis both goddesses of nature and the Moon, showing Luna's rulership of the Earth below - the oceans, the behaviour of animals, fertility and symbol of the chaste maiden, the etenral virgin in the middle.

In considering these Chaldean associations bear in mind that the Tarot deck is then brought into order with the Christian cabala and the Hermetic magic going on during the high Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance.  If mysteries were imbedded in the deck by some of these geniuses why would they scramble that order?  The Alefbeit and its associated astrological system are all laid out rationally in most parts of the WMT with the primary exception of the order of the 7 sacred planets.  Some of these varying orders arise from planetary weekdays, or planetary hours, or mystical symbols created by various adepts but as you can see from the table at Psyche they severely deviate from the earlier authorities. 

Like many initiates of the WMT I followed the Golden Dawn / Thelemic associations to begin with but knew that these had already been changed from the original Eliphas Levi (continental) associations.  As I studied the Sefer Yetzirah with the companion text from Kaplan along with other texts of Jewish Kabbalah my associations shifted to the rule of 3, 7 and 12 - 3 elements, 3 horizontal paths, 7 planets, 7 vertical paths and 12 diagonals for the 12 signs of the zodiac. I understood what that would mean for the Kircher Tree of Life and the Tarot attached to it. 

I agree with the repositioning of the Fool which originated in the British system.  I disagree with Crowley's shift of the Star card, and think that the communication, if not intentionally misleading, was misinterpreted**.  As you can see from the shifts caused in the above, moving our star, the Sun, to Wheel of Fortune plants it nearly squarely in the middle of the deck.  These associations were also the foundation of the work with the 231 gates, where the Chaldean order of the double letters makes sense out of much of the Sefer Yetzirah's more abstract/complex sections***.

Although I no longer work with the tarot after the communication from Raziel I certainly worked with the deck closely for ten years, the first few with the Marseilles and then as I discovered the Golden Dawn, etc the Rider-Waite and the Thoth took over.  Although I had success with these decks I avoid pragmatism bias and understand that if I shift my theories to better reflect the underlying spiritual reality I will get better results. I hope this post will at the very least make you reflect on that.  I do not own these associations so please feel free to take them, experiment with them and enter the dialogue if you are interested.  I am equally happy to engage be it supporting information or counterclaims.

Thoth Deck laid in Saadia, incorrect attributions have affected the imagery

*Chaldean Yetziratic Kingships and their corruptions/transpositions

• Saturn - Wisdom and Ignorance
• Jupiter - Wealth and Poverty
• Mars - Seed and Desolation
• Sol - Life (Health) and Death (Disease)
• Venus - Dominance and Submission
• Mercury - Peace and War
• Luna - Grace and Ugliness

**“Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God.
All these old letters of my Book are aright; but צ is not the Star. This also is secret: my prophet shall reveal it to the wise.”

***Concentrated in Ch.6 of the Gra version, integrated throughout in the Saadia Version.

****If you want to get ahead feel free to use these associations and map out the tarot cards to the Tree of Life according to the Saadia Tree.  You will see the medieval chain of being (although you will see it more clearly if you use an earlier deck rather some psychadelic awesome mash-up like the Thoth deck which has sadly been a bit maimed by the Kircher Tree) - bearing in mind that the figure of the Hanged Man in the centre is the accused of the legislators (emperor, pope, empress, ''papess'', generals, princes, princesses, jesters and alchemists above him) and what exists around and below him reflects his potential fate - death, exile, justice, heaven, hell, purgatory, etc.

Alef - The Fool
Beit - Magus
Gimel - Priestess
Dalet - Empress
Heh - Emperor
Vav - The Heirophant
Zayin - The Lovers
Chet - The Chariot
Teth - Strength
Yod - The Hermit
Kaph - The Wheel of Fortune
Lamed - Justice
Mem - The Hanged Man
Nun - Death
Samekh - Art/Temperance
Ayin - The Devil
Peh - The Tower
Tzaddi - The Star
Qoph -The Moon
Resh - The Sun
Shin - Judgement
Tav - The World

Thoth Deck laid out with Saadia attributions in full

The Depth of the West - Yesod, Foundation

When we meditate along the directions, east-west, north-south, up-down, good-evil, past-future, we lose ourselves in the point at infinity.  When we bring these opposites together we are left with nothing. Infinity and nothingness are the foundation upon which the rest of the edifice is built - the great arteries, veins, intestines, muscle fibres, fat cells, tissues, the cellular apparatus of the Great Man, Adam Kadmon splayed out in the roads, the tubes, the pipes, the systems and the chambers of our world.  A vision of the universal machinery.

The twenty two letters of foundation are related to the chromosomes of the cell and are situated in the Depth of the West.  The animal forces that manifest are part and parcel of the genetic time travelling I discuss in the Hermetic Lessons.  In descending into your genes in meditation, whether you know it or not, you are inevitably entering into dialogue with the ancestor organisms/animal spirits that link your tree of life back to the first cell.  Various types of monkeys for sure but go deep enough and you will find - marsupials, amphibians, sharks, sea-squirts, flatworms, sponges and fungi.

If you follow the principles of cellular consciousness you will discover that Yesod, or the Depth of the West, relates to your genetic self - a creature I refer to as Feelix the Perfect Helix, a time travelling information spiral.  As you emerge from Malkuth, the Depth of the Past, during your initiation, you are winding back time - the lightning flash grounded you in the past, fixed you in destiny - your path away from this is therefore one of liberation.  You are no longer an isolated organism disconnected from the Earth, alone amongst the shells or husks, but the sum of the being of the organisms that brought you here.

YESOD - DEPTH OF THE WEST

When moving from Yesod to Tifereth - along the path of the Sun, we do so then as Feelix, not as our individual egoic self which is left behind like shed skin.  We continue to move backwards through time, West to East, towards the Beginning in the Depth of the Future - the animal spirits within us have merged together into Feelix and what we are becoming is a cell.   The higher forms of animal life we encounter in Tifereth are not ''higher'' in the sense of ''more evolved'' organisms like monkeys, etc they are deeper, or more fundamental components of life and existence.  At the end of the path of the Sun, in the Depth of the East, lies the nucleus.  When we follow this path we merge with the Sun at ''the Dawn'', our genetic selves regain their nuclei.

TIFERETH - DEPTH OF THE EAST

The nucleus, nucleolus, or nuclear membrane, can be likened to the luminous egg of Carlos Castenada, the celestial vehicles of Iamblichus, or some interpretations of ''the aura''.  In my work on cellular consciousness I liken it to the sphere of physical reach so adeptly rendered in the Vitruvian man but this sphere, when understood in consciousness, goes beyond simply the ability to manipulate the world ''physically'',

As I discussed in the post on education and initiation, one's models and assumptions change fundamentally as you progress through the system.  To begin with you tend to be a materialist*, rooted in matter and you therefore use material models to explain the way the magic is working. You believe that the world around you is literally the world, and have not yet understood that it is a representation of that world which is in fact, a bit late.  As you move up the path of the Moon and into the Depth of the West, psychological models seem to yield the most explanatory force - psychology gains ground as you realise the limitations of matter and the necessity of mind.  In order to complete the initiation as far as the Depth of the East, and regain your nucleus, it is necessary to study the Depth of Down (informational models) and the Depth of Up (spirit models).  The most powerful understanding of the nucleus then is the way in which these models culminate and integrate within a model based in Mind.  Your sense of being is no longer rooted in your brain, or your physical body, or your ''genetic self'' now it extends to this luminous egg.

DAATH - CYTOPLASM

In following the middle pillar up the Tree, we enter the final path of Saturn, continuing to rewind time and reconstitute our cellular nature - although like the journey to Tifereth, the Depth of the East, it involves more than this path but all the other remaining paths as well.  This journey connects Zeir Anpin (Tifereth and the central Sefirot) to Arikh Anpin (the macrocosm) and reveals how your nucleus relates to and connects with the whole cosmos.  Daath, when understood, becomes ''the contents of the cell'', bounded by the cellular membrane, and Kether, ''the bloodstream of time''.

KETHER - MEMBRANE/BLOODSTREAM

*Generally lay folk are ''materialists'' even if they live in a more spiritual society and are not what we consider scientific materialists

Raziel - Genetic Dimensions

In my last post about Raziel's communication regarding movement I discussed the toilet dimension - a pocket dimension which is all toilet.  I suggested that many of our cells spend their entire lives in the toilet dimension, i.e. that these cells' concerns rotate entirely around excretion, think kidney, bladder cells.  We also know people who are toilet cleaners who spend a great deal of their physical lives in this toilet dimension. When we calculate the amount of time spent in toilet related activity the toilet dimension constitutes a considerable portion of most people's reality.  In the outward manifestation of our interior/cellular reality we have also created a vast toilet dimension in the form of an intestinal tract we call the sewer system, great kidneys we call water treatment plants and pipes like the anus and the urethra that eventually pump the final results out to sea.

This extended physiology is not limited to the processing of waste, we can see how our cellular nature defines the entirety of the human world - roads, tunnels, bridges for the circulatory system, emergency services responding along them like the immune system; phone lines and fibre optic cables like the nervous system; appartment complexes rising up like edifices of bone and skin.  The rooms we all operate in like different types of cells in tissue, designed for specific purposes but sharing common features - an information source (DNA, maybe books, computer, often simply yourself), light/heat sources (mitochondria), windows and doors (gates in the cell membrane, receptors).  Adam Kadmon, the primordial man, arisen through our society and civilization, has laid down his tissue, his sinew, his nerve, his bone, and his blood upon the Earth.*  We all live inside this great being, this extension of the human self.

As we move around this great body we act like the DNA of the cell nucleus, utilizing the machinery of the different cells we work or play in - whether you be a policeman in a cop car (a white blood cell), a customer in an ice cream parlour (a fat cell), a programmer working on some coding at their computer desk (a nerve cell) - to complete its role in the metabolism of time.  Where understanding Raziel** becomes difficult is in understanding that you never move between cells, that you have always been in the same cell and that you have never moved in your life - ever.  Even my own psyche revolts at this kind of thinking and returns to the comforting delusions of Plato's cave - depth, space, movement, quantity.

The truth is that the difference between the physical world and the world of consciousness is marked. First of all I cannot confirm the existence of a physical world I simply assume there is one.  I make this assumption based on the fact that other consciousnesses supposedly exist because you talk to me, that we share a reality and that banging my head into the wall hurts.  I cannot confirm it though as the only reality I have contact with (and have ever had contact with) is my own consciousness of reality which operates under different rules.  When I look at other people or hear their voices, I see shadows and hear echoes, when I bang my head, I feel my feeling of the pain, not the pain itself. I look into a lightbulb, then close my eyes and I see a multi coloured blob. Whatever I look at it in the real world, wherever I turn my head, this burn remains until it fades.  From this we can conclude that I am always looking forward at my consciousness of reality from somewhere else in my mind, I am chained down in the cave, facing forward at the shadows.  When I move my head I feel like I am looking somewhere else but from the point of view of consciousness the field I am looking at, that I am chained down to look at, is simply repainted, retextured, remapped.  I do not see physical reality, only my consciousness of it, so the notion of depth, of distance, of colour, are achieved virtually, simulated within my consciousness - simulated to such a perfect finish that I, like most others, think that the world I see around me is the real world and not a representation of it somewhere in my mind.***

As my consciousness moves around the social body at large and enters different cells, interacts with different individuals it is not actually physically moving.  My physical body may well be moving but what is happening in my consciousness is the reverse - from that point of view, the world is being moved through my mind.  From the moment I was born, I have never ever moved - south, up, east, right, the world has moved through me at the behest of my will.  This is the foundation of understanding Raziel.

When we accept this truth about the nature of our interaction with the world we understand that genuine movement for consciousness in the classical spatial sense is impossible - what we are actually doing is either a) being in a cell of a particular type and replicating events within it - eat, breathe, make, sleep, etc or b) changing the type of cell we are in.  If you are working in an office and then go home, what is actually happening, in lieu of physical moving from one room to another is that the reality of the cell you never leave, and have never left, is being changed from one type to another.****

In my last post I talked a lot about patterns and the scripts we follow and I want to make sure that this was understood as an analogy to help understand Raziel as opposed to a pop psychological discussion.  Yes, you all have unhealthy behaviours and patterns in your activity that you should probably challenge***** but that is not the point.  The point of the communication is the reality of movement for spirits, and the movement of ourselves if we embrace our true nature.  A higher dimensional entity does not move it simply remodels its cell according to its will and at the heart of your nature is a higher dimensional entity.  The static nature of these entities is part of their being, since they have accepted it they are not mired in matter like we are, in some sense you are here because you are at odds with the truth.******

*This type of thinking would relate to Keter of Assiah, for Adam Kadmon is related to the tip of the Yod in YHVH and Kether and this ''material'' understanding relates to Assiah.
**There is no movement there is only replication and/or deviation.
***It may well be there for real, the point is that we never interact with it directly.
****This is the basis of remote viewing.
*****Jury is out on this one - pancreas types love their sugar, kidney types like their booze, thymus types seem to like smoking, and I am not sure people should give up things they enjoy in totality, just moderate them.
******I would imagine there are different levels of understanding this in the spiritual hierarchy with your local fae spirits, like us rooted in their geography. not really getting it either.

Raziel - Replication and Deviation

The other night I communicated with Raziel, or rather he communicated with me although I put myself into the trance.  His communication was that from the perspective of higher dimensional entities there is no movement as we understand it because there is no space persay - the only form of movement that exists is replication or deviation.

When you journal or keep a diary you see patterns emerge in your life;  people make the same event happen over and over - replicating a pattern or script very much like a gene is transcribed.  I remember once I was really head over heels in love with this ginger girl, and, after I had made so many mistakes in my attempt to court her that it was impossible to recover, I met another incredibly similar girl and immediately got a chance to repeat the event and succeed.  The rate of replication of events like this varies considerably between individuals - some people replicate events extremely quickly, some take a near lifetime*, and this could be considered something of a metabolism of time.

In terms of the philosophy of Cellular Consciousness explored in the Hermetic Lessons  events, experiences and people in your perceived environment are likened to proteins/chemical messengers that have either entered from the bloodstream of time or have been created by transcribing genetic information within the self at the nucleus - replicated from within.  The vast majority of events that enter the cell from the bloodstream of time though can only do so because of receptors on the ''cell surface'' that allow those types of events to enter, these receptors are therefore equally an expression of that interior reality.

As previously discussed ad nauseum, in the cell of consciousness there is no actual movement, what feels like movement is the retexturing of the universal substrate of the cell which is thought.   In understanding Raziel then, genuine movement within this cell can only take two forms-  replication and/or deviation.  The cell, whatever type of cell it is, must manufacture the same proteins over and over again in order to survive - what changes is the quantity and rate of replication. The factors that determine the quantity and rate are manifold, amount needed to top up levels in the blood to maintain homeostasis or the amount of substrate available to build the protein.  I must eat, sleep, excrete, breath, find warmth, light, etc in a series of replicated events, just like the cell, or I am dead.

How does this map over to our experiences in the percieved world, as opposed to simple routines? It seems to be that we encounter the same scripted realities or variations along certain lines/themes and the same type of people/characters who play out the same role although sometimes they scale up/down in length or intensity of relationship or you encounter them at different speeds. This makes sense in our correspondences as certain cells, tissues, organs in the body must have specific relationships with cells, tissues, organs of another type - for example a leaf is made of a group of different specialized cells working together.  We feel this repetition most keenly in our working lives which are often about repeating the same kind of tasks within our office cell with people of similar types but people experience this kind of repetition in their personal lives as well.

To understand this replication as movement imagine that you are trapped in a toilet in a bar.  You can see the walls of the toilet and the toilet bowl change, different graffiti adorning the walls, cleaned off or painted over, different levels of damage from passersby, different levels of nastiness in the soiling of the space.  The replicated reality of the toilet is in constant flux, though the structure remains and you are trapped inside this space - this toilet dimension.  Some of the cells of your body and some of the people in the world live in exactly this toilet dimension of replicated toilet reality forever.

When it comes to deviation we are talking about breaking patterns and cycles and redefining/recreating ourselves - in this sense we can break out of that toilet reality into another type of reality but before we discuss in detail we must remember a few things

a) without DNA repair most mutations are deleterious i.e. fatal, in suddenly changing up your routines or risking dynamic changes to your cycle you may damage yourself
b) the world needs its cleaners (doctors and toilet attendants are actually on the same spectrum in relating to the kidneys)
c) we need repetition and replication in order to survive
d) once the cell is redefined one must return to some level of replication
e) not to confuse a different scale of replication with genuine deviation**.

Understanding all this then genuine deviation is not a common experience, although minor mutations may be, they constitute mild randomness in the system as opposed to a general break with it.

I was watching the 13th Floor again last night, and I always remember wishing that the Matrix had been as ambitious in its sequels as the 13th Floor was in its original story-telling.  I also believe that this film contains something of the truth of our reality.  As scientists have pointed out if it is possible to simulate universes within a universe to a high degree of fidelity then within any given universe the number of simulated universes far outweighs it therefore we are statistically more likely to be in a simulated one than a ''real one''.  If like the protagonist in the film we really deviate from our natural cycles we reach the metaphorical edge of reality.

My experiences in Edward Kelley's Tower were certainly like this - I broke with the replicated reality I was living in at the time in an extremely purposeful and willful way supported by alliance with various powerful entities and intrepid theatrical ritual and at the end of it found myself moving into the Donkey in the Cradle House in Prague on Halloween and living next to a hideously haunted dimensional rip for a year.  As readers of this blog know I certainly found myself at the edge of reality.  But most serious mutations are deleterious*** - if we were to walk away from our replicated cycles right this second, take all the money we have, board a train and head north and hike out towards the pole of the Earth we would likely not survive but if we did we would find the edge of reality, if you see what I mean?

At the level of Raziel though, replication and deviation**** are forms of movement - I believe that when one being of this type is occupying a particular cell one is in a state of replication (like treading water...) and when one is moving between cells one is deviating (freescaling between cells) - there are no other states possible.  From the perspective of higher dimensional entities you wouldn't move from the room with the toilet to a room with a computer rather the room with the toilet would be reconfigured to be a room with a computer - you would never move.  ''When'' they visit us, this kind of spirit does not ''move'' in a spatial sense they reconfigure their cell to have us in it, to be the one with us in it, their cell overlaps our cell in a ''psychic'' sense.


*I would argue psycho-physiological explanations for rate of replication.
**As I may have done with the ginger girl when I first encountered her, I may have thought this was something different as opposed to the same thing at a different rate/scale - be discerning.
***Without continuous DNA repair most mutations would lead towards rapid genetic drift.
****It is clear that replication and deviation are associated with Chesed and Gevurah respectively and can be related the concepts of similarity and difference.  It also helps us explore the role of Gevurah in the Shevirat haKelim.