Five FiveHe revealed to me the hidden mystery that was hidden from the worlds and the generations: the mystery of the Depth and the Height: he revealed to me the mystery of the Light and the Darkness, the mystery of the conflict and the great war which the Darkness stirred up … Thus was revealed to me by the Paraclete all that has been and all that shall be and all that the eye sees and the ear hears and the thought thinks. Through him I learned to know everything, I saw All through him and I became one body and one spirit with him.
his proclamation was spoken by Mani, founder of Manichaeism, in the Coptic text Kephalaia. Mani was adopted and raised by a wealthy widow in Sassanian Babylonia during the third century. Mesopotamia (now Iraq and Iran) at this time was steeped in ancient Babylonian mythology, Persian Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and numerous variants of Judeo-Christian belief. Mani was indoctrinated in the Jewish-Christian Baptist sect of the Elchasaites. Although rooted in Jewish traditions reaching back to the Qumran community, the sect’s founder, Elchasaios, considered himself a Christian when he preached his message around the turn of the second century. Mani left the sect at the age of twenty-four and started a new religion based on the revelations of his Heavenly Twin, the Paraclete mentioned above.
Mani’s teachings were unique in their syncretic fusion of Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Christian elements with dualistic doctrines of Gnosticism. He declared himself the fourth and final prophet in a historical lineage that elevated newly birthed myths of Gnosticism to the pinnacle of spiritual revelation. The Sassanid Dynasty of Persia served as Mani’s missionary base. From there, he successfully established missions west to Egypt, north to Central Asia, and east to Afghanistan, home of the civilly advanced Kushan kingdom. In 240, Mani himself sailed to the Indus Valley and converted the Buddhist king Turan Shah. His influence was intense but short-lived. He returned to the Sassanian capital, where the next two kings allowed his religion to thrive. This too was not to last, for in 273 a king was enthroned under the influence of the Zoroastrian Church. Manicheans were promptly persecuted; Mani was tortured, dying in chains in 276.
Mani’s death did not halt the growth of his Church, which spread to encompass much of the known world. The Manichean canon included works left to us in Coptic, Iranian, Turkish, and Chinese. Mani speculated upon Gnostic myths of cosmic exile and salvation. His genius lay in his ability to weave terminology of the world’s great religions into a superficial but elaborately integrated system pitting eternal Light against eternal Darkness. By appropriating linguistic patterns of established teachings, particularly those of Neoplatonism, and projecting onto them a fantastic mythology, Mani and his followers were able to insinuate their doctrines into international centers of learning and cultural exchange.
It was Mani’s version of Gnosticism that repeatedly challenged the Christian world – from Augustine, who converted from Manichaeism, to occult heresies in the late medieval era, which were often branded as neo-Manichean. According to his dualistic cosmology, Evil had stood in opposition to the Good from the beginning of time. Darkness, equated with matter and evil, somehow caught a glimpse of Light, equated with spirit and goodness. Darkness then desired to merge with Light and so attacked it. Light, in response, created Primal Man to defend it from Darkness. Primal Man, or Soul of Light, allowed itself to be defeated by being devoured by Darkness or Chaos. This satisfied Darkness, but also poisoned it. The Soul of Light, now imprisoned or put to sleep by evil matter, needed to be saved. So Light created the Heavenly Cosmos or World Soul as a fantastic mechanism for the separation of Primal Man from Darkness, that he might be redeemed forever.
Lost in a realm of magic and spirits, the Questor loses all sense of identity and yet remains in equanimity.
Extraction of the myriad bits of trapped Light-substance from the lower world was partly enacted through divine Messengers who seduced the evil Archons, or children of Darkness carrying the stolen Light, into a state of orgasmic excitement. A Messenger would appear before each Archon in a most beautiful form of the opposite sex. The Archons would then expel their Light, which would be received by the Angels of Light, purified and loaded onto Lightships to return home. In a similar way, the Cosmos itself, through the agency of the Zodiac of Stars, would dip into the realm of matter or Dark Earth. It scooped up buckets of Light and deposited them into the temporary storage space of the Moon, which would deliver the Light-substance back to the Sun.
Erotic usage of female sexuality in Manichean practice no doubt helped to establish the religion in areas that were generating tantric traditions, such as Northern India and Central Asia. Amongst the learned and practical in nondual Buddhism, Taoism, and Tantric Hinduism, Gnostic mythology involving erotic justification would have been seen as unnecessary – a perverse misunderstanding of natural alchemy and the intercourse of vital life with essential nature, earth-soul with heaven-soul, samsara with nirvana.
Mani’s mythological descriptions of the realms of Light and Darkness were wildly fantastic. He combined abstract hypostases such as Wisdom and Matter with animalistic deities such as a dragon-headed Demon King. While this is not the place to delve further into Manichean mythology, we need to observe that discursive philosophy found so prominently in Greek thought did not serve as Mani’s revelatory vehicle. Rather, Mani used rationality to create a vast and integrated magical mythology, which served as a spawning ground for occult propagation.
The Empress assures the possibility of spirited Release for her warded minions; Earth as Source naturally transcends the ancestral biosphere.
Either one believed in Mani’s secret knowledge of cosmic war or one was doomed to remain a slumbering slave of Darkness. Mani’s Church did its best to convert followers of other religions by using terminology familiar to them. This was done by arguing that great sages such as Buddha and Jesus had come to prepare the imprisoned minds of humankind for the beautiful orgasmic seduction of salvation, which Mani and his Church were fully manifesting. Concepts founded upon nondual wisdom were misappropriated for dualistic, communal agendas.
Mani’s occult revelation of a new age contains patterns that have been repeated into modern times. Fourth-stage devotion, spiritual affirmation, and intuition of spiritual hierarchy were systematically channeled into, co-opted by, and finally shackled to a second-stage regression of pathological mythology based on separation, fear, and domination.
Mani’s convictions of cosmic war influenced Augustine and other early fathers of the Church of Rome. Roman bishops often posited that Satan’s power held sway in the realm of common earthly existence. Augustine, although a former Manichean, rejected Gnostic demonization of the cosmos. However, it was he who imparted to Christianity the doctrines of original sin, civitas diaboli (or “realm of the devil”), and predestination (or the absolute separation of the called and the rejected, the saved and the condemned).
Gnosticism was a belief system that defined the cosmos dualistically. This differed from the type of dualism found in Hellenic Platonism. Although Plato distinguished two realms of existence, one of eternal ideal forms and one of temporal material forms, he did not equate evil with the latter; nor did most other metaphysical cosmologies of the great traditions, even though they posited the fundamental existence of polarities.
Just as Grace enters the world from an unfathomable source, so the Questing soul must find the ineffable way out.
For instance, the Vedic doctrine of Being, with its eternal attributes, and Becoming, with its temporal appearances, often identified Maya or Buddhist Mara (comparable to the Sufi Devil, Iblis) – the popular representation of delusion and suffering – with the latter. Nonetheless, as Gautama and the Upanishads (classical summaries of the Vedas, written before Buddha’s era) proclaimed, illusion is suffering and suffering is illusion – Mara does not ontologically embody Reality. Suffering and evil are produced by man’s mind, not by nature’s laws, nor by divine hypostases. The Myriad called Maya is marked by change, temporality, and flux – the Causal Emptiness of Chaos Becoming the Cosmos. This is felt as suffering and pain only when one identifies with a separate self – only when consciousness does not feel its profound and real interdependency with all else.
Put another way, arrest Life by denying the infinitude of Essence and there will be suffering. Flow with the emergence of discernible synchronicities, becoming empty through wholly transforming with Chaos, and the way of bliss will become apparent. In any case, Gnosticism was resolute in its anti-cosmic conviction. The visible universe and its creator were identified with Evil. Later in this chapter and in chapter 7, we will follow, from Babylonian times on, the development of underworld cosmology as it became equated with a “lower-world prison” of earthbound sentient life.
The dualistic problem of mind/body separation was introduced in the previous chapter. Plotinus, we recall, did not buy it:
No-one therefore may find fault with our universe on the ground that it is not beautiful or not the most perfect of beings associated with the body; nor again quarrel with the originator of its existence and certainly not because it has come into existence of necessity, not on the basis of a reflection but because the higher being brought forth its likeness according to the law of nature.
So states Plotinus in his first treatise, On Providence. A more concise refutation of the Gnostic myth will not be found. Furthermore, “not on the basis of a reflection” radically refutes any dualistic, existential need for an Aristotelian “reflecting psyche.” We have seen that later Christian metaphysics, lending credence to a cosmic ontology and spiritual hierarchy of angelic, phantasmic, and imaged exemplar-spheres, was further developed by Sufis. Light realms of angels were envisioned connecting distinct worlds of matter and spirit. This attempt to bridge dualistic and nondualistic cosmology via angelic/phantasmic/psychic/spiritual intermediation ultimately found resolution in the Tarot. This was obtained by identifying human reality with cosmic reality and both with a universal, transcendental hierarchy.
Limitations can become so numerous as to be overwhelming, even as the open floodgates of gnosis allow and then demand an extinction of ideal intentions; thus, the Emperor in Truth remains dispassionate in his authority.
The Tarot Image-Exemplars were created as psychic representations of immortal realization through corporeal existence. They obviate any need to imagine supernatural angelic states of evolution (although such is represented in total by the World Triumph). Even the most exalted Trionfi of Sun, Angel, and Justice represent corporeally realized states of both cosmos and consciousness. Every Immortal Exemplar realizes an aspect of the Angelic; however, for Questors to absolutely know this, they must realize the Sun/Angel stage of Enlightenment.
As has been mentioned in previous chapters (still to be fully elaborated), in Tarot theogony the Devil and Tower do not represent dominion over “fallen” archetypes below them. Rather, the seventh-stage cards of divinely chaotic breakthrough present a necessary and warranted challenge and transformation inherent to any and all procession into Immortality and Quest for Conscious Bliss.
Plotinus later wrote a treatise entitled Against the Gnostics, in which he criticized Gnostic cosmology as ridiculous and erroneous. He then pointed to Gnostic disregard for civil and metaphysical law, “the virtue whose building up goes back over a long development from the beginning of all time … they make our human discipline into a mockery – in this world there may be nothing noble to be seen – and thereby they make discipline and righteousness of no importance.”
Can passions be Blessed, emotions be Purified, opposites be Wedded; or are the Sacraments merely phantasms of the psyche formed via social conspiracy and subtle expediency?
Our book began with a consideration of fundamental differences between occult beliefs based on ritualistic magic and provincial myths, and disciplines of esoteric knowledge stemming from the great traditions. Gnosticism, although pervasive in its influence during early Christian centuries, never established itself as a world tradition. It did not develop lineages of yogis, saints, and sages; teachings which could be self-authenticated; and communities beyond those directly controlled by cultic leaders via dominating hierarchies.
Contrasting examples could include the native religions of Tibetan Bön, Chinese Tao, and Japanese Shinto (literally “Spirit-Tao”). These were magic-and-myth-based traditions that grew to incorporate fully developed rational and vision-logic worldviews, ultimately transforming awareness of ancestry into a gnosis of universal virtue. It could be said that Persian Sufi gnostics such as Suhrawardi, standing in the tradition of Islam, attempted the same for Near Eastern Gnosticism.
The Greek concept of gnosis involved knowledge of spiritual truth akin to the Indian concept of sunyata (or “emptiness”). Such subtle awareness has been emphasized throughout the Great Tradition as a primary way of realizing communal wisdom. Gnosis is an ancient and universal awareness, which has evolved with every stage of humanity’s psychosocial development. In experiencing it, Questors open a portal to the very heart of spiritual realization. Through gnosis, esoteric cultivation and teaching have been historically transmitted in subtle fullness from masters to disciples. Attaining to gnosis, however, requires self-discipline, service, meditation, and devotion, all of which cannot be “taken”; they have to be cultivated through practice, study, and direct communion.
True gnosis is the primary sign of spiritual and devotional maturity. As such, it is the ineffable fifth-stage knowledge of ancestral presence, represented in the Tarot as the agencies of the Wheel and the Hermit, bonding a truly spiritual community. Gnostics usurped all claim to true gnosis; basing their claim upon a communal belief in ancestors as defined by one of the variant cosmological myths that formed the backbone of every Gnostic sect. Such politicized myths differed dramatically from sublime awareness of Universal and Sacred Emptiness.
Once the course is charted it must be unflaggingly maintained; only then is the horizon brought within reach, for that which is afar is found to be always already present.
In all great traditions, magical-mythical-rational consciousness matures and then emerges into psychic gnosis purposed toward magnifying and realizing the ineffable subtlety of ancestral presence. Within each of these stages, however, societies can become pathologically exclusive, championing their state of development as far superior to any other. Every stage of holistic actualization must fully include preceding stages and not reduce proceeding stages.
For instance, tribes undeveloped in rational and vision-logic stages did not solely rely on their myths to impart a sense of tribal spirituality. Rather, daily psychophysical patterns of relating with nature were first sensorially translated into social forms of ritualistic magic. These served to affect those parts of the brain, central nervous system, glands, and organs associated with feeling-awareness of spiritual domains. Magical sensation was then encapsulated by mythic feeling. Myths were an emotional way of knowing and communicating communally organized feelings.
A similar process rightfully occurred with early Greek philosophers such as those mentioned in the last chapter, who then advanced into mentally rational stages of development. Discursive thought is an advanced form of communicative logic, capable of universally conveying – even while defined and limited contextually – complex states of feeling-awareness embedded in myths themselves. Such is the beauty and joy of knowledge, be that in the sciences, humanities, or arts. Non-discursive yet fully rational states of mind referred to as intuitive vision-logic and virtue, or psychic and subtle awareness, are yet further advancements of human consciousness. Gnosis is attained through the development of transrational, subtle, ancestral awareness. It is effectively the “best practice” that antecedes a true and present witnessing of immortal realization.
Sharing the living memory of recurrent Eros, the heart springs in joy; this is how each generation resurrects its ancestors.
The religion known as Gnosticism was a product of rational societies. As urban dwellers, Mani and his followers did not establish the sect’s communal identity through an involvement with nature. Nor did they rationally study nature in the manner that philosophical schools around the planet were by then doing. To Gnostics, Nature itself was rationally identified with degraded existence. Gnostic theology was built upon seeking a “way out” of the natural world. Rationality was glorified, but only to the degree that it dogmatically supported Gnostic mythologizing of cosmic nature.
Through an arrogant reduction and enforced limitation of rational knowledge, growth, and thereby true philosophical gnosis, Gnosticism kept itself from forming into a world tradition. Spiritual traditions expand into greatness through their ability to adapt and evolve beyond the constraints of their foundational myths.
Evolution beyond minor adaptations is inevitably hierarchical. Evolution emerges from the full realization of a natural sphere; it having in turn arisen from – and thereby included – previous spheres of existence. For instance, second-stage mythos cannot fully mature and evolve into third-stage rationality without first incorporating fully the positive reality of first-stage, earth-based magic. Likewise, if the fourth stage of hierarchical intuition is to be attained, third-stage rationality must include but not pathologically adhere to second-stage, mythic definitions. It is the fourth stage and its inherently esoteric, psychic fecundity that promotes a spiritual tradition into greatness. Fully integrating rationality, fourth-stage psychosocial development emerges as fifth-stage gnosis.
All Gnostic sects were systemically limited by the structure of their myths. Manichaeism was, however, unusual in its method of assimilating surface patterns of metaphysical and theistic systems. This was done by focusing on established terminologies of mythic imagery, rather than by evolving theories arising through discursive argumentation. Manichean metaphysical adaptation remained on a horizontal level of superficially relative signification carrying little depth of meaning. Thus, by necessity, Manichean systems were restricted to constructions that did not allow organically evolving complexity. In contrast, neither the scientific method nor hermetic alchemy, to give two very different examples, evinces such limitation. Without free growth through organic complexity and intelligent, open argumentation and inquiry, an emergence of evolved psychosocial order that manifests vertically subtle and deeply causal signification is unable to occur.
To renounce is to re-announce; to deny the temptations of greed, malice, and delusion is to affirm the guidance of virtue.
In Gnosticism, third-stage rational development was purposefully limited, disrespected, and subverted into supporting a regressively mythic and political Church structure. Publicly vocal scientists have held back few punches in striking out at modern Christianity as being a mere continuation of such. However, systems of pathological rationality such as scientific materialism also become regressive by arresting growth in personal, social, and cultural stages of intuitive psychological development. Examples of this abound in modern times, as traditionally evolved systems of vertical, hierarchical insight (actualizing instead of dominating in their function) are popularly and academically reduced to a flattened dialectic of contextual relativity. Concurrently, it is a sign of postmodern evolution that domination hierarchies are being radically dismantled. Readers are directed to the corpus of Integral Studies for an in-depth consideration of this topic.
Second-stage attributes of any holistic state are marked by elements of polar structure. When natural growth is arrested, an integrated body tends to regress in its identity to a second-stage level of structure. As an example of how the six stages of any growing body, once arrested, collapse into a second-stage state before either dying altogether or regenerating, let us look at an elegant theory of corporate growth. In the theory of Total Quality Management, a seven-stage model was developed by McKinsey & Company depicting how any corporation holistically integrates quality. Quality is incorporated through:
The power of nature dwells in its brightness, the illumination of the myriad; the quantity of impermanence – infinitude of articulated selves – is outshined by the quality of pure lineage: that One which is always alive.
The first stage drives a corporation’s mission, purpose, and vision. Without a strategic awareness of quality, holistic success (i.e., beyond mere profit) will be nowhere in sight. The second stage sets the minimal reality of corporate existence. Regardless of how simplistic corporate strategy may be (perhaps it does not go beyond simply maintaining existence), without structure, existence is no more than a potential. Systems create flow in a structure, giving actual life to a company. Systems are readily rationalized and, if not too complex, reproducible. Skills are needed to govern the systems, for they are not contained within the systems themselves. Skills involve levels of intuition beyond machine automation, computation, and manipulation. Shared values are the invisible bonds unifying a company’s members. They are the implicitly agreed-upon virtues and qualities that the whole company and each of its members strive to realize. Staff managers constitute the root engine of the corporation’s growth. Through hiring, firing, motivating, networking, isolating, and terminating, staff cause a corporation to function, align, cooperate, and compete internally and externally with both customers and other companies. Without managers and directors a corporation can only exist as a parasite connected to another body that is whole. The Style of the Chief Executive is like the judgment of a demigod; he is the company in a way that no corporation can afford to underestimate. Even if the preceding six stages of corporate process collapse into structure and structure itself ceases to exist, the CEO can carry on the identity of the company into a new body. In this way, the seventh stage represents transference and re-creation of the corporate soul.
From whence does Fortune arrive, to whither does Fortune go; through existential Emptiness life is naturally curtailed, tamed through interdependent currents of migration and livelihood.
A corporation becomes unbalanced when it underemphasizes the relative level of quality in one or more of these aspects during its weekly existence and seasonal process of growth. When this occurs, owners, employees, and customers experience a corporate-wide tendency to regress into temporary security based upon corporate structure. If the CEO sells out, staff quit, values evaporate, skills become scarce, systems crash, or strategies become obsolete, all hands, thoughts, and routines will adhere to structure. If structure itself collapses, the company must be completely reformed or it will die.
Conceptual and legal frameworks for forming incorporated structures proved to be one of the Roman Empire’s major contributions to the advancement of civil society. A case can be made, however, that in the modern age, international corporate growth has pathologically regressed into stages of empire-building. In turn, a postmodern era is bringing about a usurpation of corporate control through mass-driven mechanisms of communication enabling decentralized stock speculation, price comparison shopping, employee head-hunting, services outsourcing, etc. This has been fueled by a phase advancement of telecommunication and communal information sharing. Network-based market and information access and communication are not bound by orthodox principles of capitalism. Peer-to-peer and decentralized exchanges are to a large and unstoppable degree appropriating from dominant hierarchies the process of capital creation and utilization.
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the global financial system underwent a Great Disruption. This occurred through a valuation collapse of what had become internationally co-dependent asset classes, e.g., real estate, debt payments, publicly held corporate shares, commodities, bonds, and above all else “securities” derived from those assets.
An imagined invisible force or “hand” was attributed to a conceptualized Global Marketplace. Through this practically “divine” law or force (defined through a great many mathematical formulas representing endless contradictions and variant beliefs) the economic cosmos of humankind and planet earth was thought to be always “led” or otherwise “returned” to a state of “perfect equilibrium.” A worldview broadly based on the theories of Adam Smith (d. 1790), the great Scottish moral philosopher and father of modern economics, was pathologically misinterpreted. Ethics were abandoned, along with the fundamentally crucial importance of agricultural workers and artisans, along with their skills and products. Primary values of a globalized political economy were shackled to the Invisible Hand’s dualistic nature of Greed and Fear. The Wheel of Fortune’s cycle of Inflation and Contraction was allowed to run amok by governments and corporations unable or unwilling to regulate it in a context of integral evolution.
Drawing upon the verdant Life of earth, the Hermit merges vitality with the essence of empirical observation – sublimating midbrain distillation in a steadfast radiance of prudent virtue.
A twenty-first-century universally applicable model of sociocultural-political economy is now required. Viewed from a perennially integral and holistic perspective, sustainable development of what may be called Cultural Economics proceeds through essentially foundational spheres:
1. Agriculture Cooperatives
2. Artisan Guilds
3. Market Exchanges
4. Valuation Networks
5. Sovereign Clearinghouses
6. Global Resources
Existing beyond all human machinations, these immortal forces of universal law cannot be reduced to an “invisible hand of the market”:
1. Natural Disruption
2. Creative Complexity
3. Conscious Transparency
4. Just Purpose
Having walked into the darkness of a vast and obscure realm, and having then unearthed a light of magnificent yet unknown source, the Questor exists at once empowered yet unable to affect the World.
Shared values are often the weakest link in the corporate process of manifesting quality. On the other hand, when company members are intently aligned to the same values, coherence with a company’s agenda can become quite zealous. History has proven this through a diversity of corporate organizations, including religious sects, military legions, engineering corps, political parties, high-tech startups, law firms, etc. It is a grave matter for any company to mistake shared values for instituted structures. This reduces the purpose of corporate community (which is of equal necessity to company health as corporate culture and law) to the efficient implementation of controlling dictates. Organization men are reduced to being routine cogs in a corporate machine. It is then that hierarchy becomes dominantly pathological.
Shared values must emerge naturally from sincere strategy, strong structure, smart systems, and spirited skills. If a company is to be successful, it cannot institute values via forced surrendering of member identification to the technical rules of structure. The rise of the Nazi Party from within the Weimar Republic represents one of the most disastrous attempts during the twentieth century to subjugate ancestral values and virtues to C3 (Command – Control – Communications) structures. The opening years of the twenty-first century, driven by wholly fabricated, manipulated, and self-perpetuating fears of terrorism, produced yet more global examples of this.
Ancestral knowledge of the psyche, devotional feeling of the soul, subliminal practice of the body – subtract these from life and Death will proceed to replace them.
Gnostic organizations reduced fifth-stage virtue into second-stage politics. Building social structures that reinforced their emotional-mythic positions became tantamount to identifying spiritual communion. Ironically, this marked both their social and spiritual downfall. Manichaeism forestalled this destiny by pretending to hold in common potential converts’ cultural, communal, and moral values. Most of the Gnostic sects in the first centuries after Jesus were not so clever; although a large proportion of them did manage to assimilate the Jesus movement.
The messages of Zarathustra, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Plotinus were monistic in orientation. Even the first two, who had strong dualistic inclinations, did not believe that the divine cause of cosmos, nature, and humanity was essentially marked by an Evil God associated with manifested existence and a Good God totally disjunct from the whole cosmos.
Gnostic worldviews allowed for a cosmology of hierarchical emanation, but solely in reference to a central, evil creator-god. Except for a most concealed spark of spirit in the human soul, no element of the natural world could be identified as sacred. Zealous, exclusive stances of dualistic dogma could not succeed in usurping the authority of spiritual masters such as Jesus who pointed to a causal-heart state of nondual witnessing as the portal to immortal realization. Respect for such sagacious guidance required fourth- and fifth-stage psychological maturity, which Gnostics lacked.
In an earlier chapter, the astronomical cosmology widely accepted in late antiquity was introduced. Seven spheres, domains of planetary control, surrounded by an eighth sphere of the fixed stars were seen as composing the Kingdom of Fate. Under these cosmic influences, earthly events were deterministically affected. Gnostics incorporated this cosmology and encapsulated it with two more kingdoms: a ninth of Spirit and Soul, and a tenth of Divine Father and Son. Sects varied as to whether the Zodiac (sphere of stars) was on the side of Light or Darkness, but there was unanimous agreement that the other seven realms were ruled by a malevolent demiurgic creator-god. The seventh sphere was understood to be home to the serpent Leviathan (though it also went under other guises), who was the god called Yahweh in the Old Testament. Under the Moon was the Behemoth (i.e., Devil) and under him, Earth and the realm of the underworld, Tartarus.
The Seventh Seal, Stage, or Sphere was from this point on identified in dualistic camps with either Salvation or Evil. In the medieval Tarot, the Devil and Tower represent this stage. As will be reiterated later, however, this stage in Tarot development represents awakening through and beyond chaotic illusion. Divine sacrifice, sacred fire, and the Tower of the Devil are not opposed to the Good.
Stillness combats the phantasmic challenge of the Devil; while the sight of natural essence aligns his roaming mind to the radiantly bright and the mysteriously veiled, only when hearing beliefs does the Guardian disrupt self-made flaws.
The Gnostic kingdom of Spirit and Soul also contained the realms of Sophia and Life. Sophia (meaning “wisdom”), was marked by the intersection of gnosis and insight. Through that intersection, divine Light entered the soul of man. In and of itself, such understanding of gnosis was genuine and wide ranging. However, it was common in Gnostic myths to have Sophia in the position of turning her attention away from the divine realm of the Father, creating a “son” in the realm of darkness, alienated from Holy Spirit. In such a context, Sophia was often called Whore, which at the time indicated an excess of eroticism. Her desire to create without being bound to a partner and to act without consulting the Father or Pleroma lay at the root of her fall. In the influential Valentinian versions of the myth, her error was to ascend to the father, as her erotic passion became uncontrollable; eroticism, immaturity, and evil influences of “friends” compounded to create Wisdom’s undoing. The Cathars of France believed similarly. This cast an evil shadow over Eros. Even though such cosmology is superficially similar to that of the Tarot, it differs radically in its worldview and is not actually represented in the Triumphs (contrary to the “secret interpretations” of many occult Tarot sects).
In modern years, Gnosticism has been imagined as being politically and spiritually more feminist than the great traditions. In fundamental ways, Judaic and Christian Gnosticism was in fact just the opposite. Sophia as the Divine Mother was implicated with feminine-born ignorance and desire, as was the seductive sexuality of unwed women deemed sinful unless twisted into a manipulative power righteously controlled by cultic male leaders.
Still, it was recognized that the Fallen Whore was also the Divine Mother and thus paradoxically the light of spiritual gnosis came to humans through and returned via Sophia. A thousand years later, Jewish Kabbalists continued to wrestle with these contradictory positions regarding primary aspects of the Goddess. Like their Gnostic Sufi brethren, however, they developed far more sophisticated concepts of Feminine Creation, Power, and Compassion. In Kabbalist terms, divine female presence is channeled through the creative spirit called Shekhinah, from Hebrew to dwell, indicating visible manifestation of divine presence. Lowest of the ten stages of divine emanation, the Shekhinah may be compared to the Triumphal archetypes of Empress and Popess. (However, traditional Kabbalists would likely find that comparison to involve a mistaken reduction of the Shekhinah Mystery.)
Specialization will restrict a Questor’s alchemical resources and ability to adapt to radical changes – internally and externally; he who exalts inheritance will be Abased, he who builds humility will be Valued.
Dualistic sexual-creative theology lent itself to logical rationalizations that upheld deviant attitudes of celibacy and sexuality within communities of varying Gnostic persuasion. (Celibacy comes from Latin caelebs, meaning “unmarried”; celibacy defined as “abstention from intercourse” was a twentieth-century development.) In particular, the dual nature of Eros and Goddess as “fallen seductress” and “way of escape” lent itself to justified practices of erotic seduction outside the context of marriage. One may see how this aspect of Gnostic social behavior could be attractive to modern women seeking non-traditional ways of feminine liberation. Once seductive femininity outside of marriage is understood as a potentially Good Way of the Goddess – not enacted out of nihilistic conceit, malice, or retribution – it no longer can be called Gnostic.
Gnostics formed Christianity’s original theological systems. Note that a history of theology (or “logic-knowledge of god”) is barely to be found in Islam or Judaism. It does not apply at all to Buddhism. This is not to say that Buddhism lacks logical analysis in its teachings of Enlightenment and the human condition. On the contrary, Buddhist systems of logic are largely recognized to be as applicable to modern-day studies, such as physics and ethics, as Aristotelian logic. Buddhists, however, do not believe in gods per se and thus do not attempt to logically qualify such. Buddhist divisions of spiritual realms and realizations, while ofttimes portrayed in a manner that may appear to be heavenly and godly, refers to the always-present nondual reality underlying and interpenetrating all of nature, mind, and cosmos. This holds nothing in common with theological beliefs in universally separate gods or heavens.
Every day is a new day, every meeting a surprise; dwelling beyond the zero point of any empirical scale, find hope in spontaneity, and continuous concentration in awareness of simplicity and the wholes underlying all discontinuities of chaos.
Theosophy or wisdom-knowledge of Immortal Principles formed the insightful basis of most great traditions. Theosophy was a natural extension to philosophy and metaphysics. Theology, on the other hand, became a distinctly Christian focus, in large part due to the Gnostics and their need to legitimize their myths in a rational fashion.
Early Christians attempting to authenticate their religion did so through urban circles of upper-class intellectuals. For centuries, Greek philosophers had built up a body of wisdom-knowledge regarding universal Unity. The Christian Church found it socially and politically critical to be able to integrate Greek philosophy with its revealed Testaments. To counter Gnostic cosmology, Irenaeus of Lyons developed what became the first authoritative ecclesiastical system of the Christian Church. His theology, while refuting Gnostic myths, evinced much similarity in form and belief to their philosophical worldview.
Two seminal theologians from Alexandria, Clement and Origen, attempted to integrate into an exoteric, Pauline Church (Paul’s teaching formed the actual foundation of what became Christianity) a Gnostic emphasis on the soul’s cyclic progression of heavenly descent and ascent. Clement, positing the importance of esoteric gnosis as knowledge of God, became the most important of early Church Fathers. Origen demythologized Gnostic cosmology, extracting essential teachings of an inward ascent of the Soul back to the Divine Pleroma. He heavily leaned, like Clement, upon early formations of Neoplatonism. Although branded a heretic, Origen formulated the metaphysics that became the basis of Christian monastic mysticism, which emerged from the deserts of Egypt and Syria in the fourth century. That philosophical and spiritual movement has been perennially revived up to this day.
Practices of ascetic denial of the physical world, including rituals of self-flagellation and unnaturally extreme piety, stand in stark contrast to contemplative cultivation, which mindfully witnesses the Sacred flowing in, as, and through every thing, relationship, and process. Viewing the world as a flux of radiant Eros is far different than viewing it as made, controlled, and eternally threatened by a Dark Lord. Gnostics conjoined an ascetic avoidance of the fallen world with a solipsistic disregard for civil mores and cultural traditions. It was common for Gnostic communities to rationalize lawlessness, as they believed all laws were fundamentally “below” them or applicable only to a reality totally different than their own. This is a common attitude of dualistic sects. Wanton sexual mores and the breakdown of all actualizing hierarchies not exclusive to sectarian domination were tendencies embraced by Gnostics; as they have been by occult circles throughout the ages.
From dreams to symbols to conscience – truth, beauty, and goodness are revealed to the Questor at the threshold of existence through the soul of Providence; enter the realm of saints bearing the Insight of the Moon – Questors’ universal ancestor.
Only through practices of contemplation will Questors be able to pierce, without doubt, the clouds of dualistic mythology and egoic fantasy. Because rationality always allows for the logical possibility of a fundamentally dualistic cosmos, undeniable verification of Unity cannot come through rationality. Logically, it is not possible to prove the Goodness, Evilness, or Unity of the cosmos. In short, this is the summary fallacy of contemporary analytic philosophy: because the essential nature of the universe cannot be verified, it cannot truly be known.
True, universal essence cannot be verified via the mind separate from the body. However, through contemplation, mind/body, good/evil dualisms can be dispelled. In such realization, Unity through Diversity – the Oneness of all – may be verified. Contemplation is the way of experiencing (and thereby empirically verifying) the integration of mind and body and indeed all other essential polarities. This simple observation regarding intraphysical (a.k.a. “metaphysical”) verification directly illuminates a graceful and necessary methodology by which the mind/body, ascension/descension, transcendent/immanent dilemma may be resolved. This involves integrating and literally unifying mind and body.
Elevate above personal preferences, assertive thoughts, and relative attitudes by becoming occupied with the perennial wisdom of ancestral gnosis, re-authenticated for each new gen-eration in a continuous transmission of spiritual legacy.
Syrian monks during the fourth to eighth centuries, contemplators within Nestorian Christian communities, practiced an ascent of the immortal soul back to God while in this life. Gnostic cosmological beliefs of the descended or fallen soul, along with its malevolent stages of entrapment, were converted and rectified by Nestorian mystics as psychic and subtle spheres of contemplative ascension. Jesus himself was viewed as a human being with a human family and intimate relationships, including his female companion Mary, even while he simultaneously realized (though as a wholly different identity) the Divine Soul in Heaven – the Holy Spirit of God. Nestorians attempted to cultivate methods to raise their souls back to the perfect state of Christ Soul, called by Neoplatonists the Radiant Soul of Wisdom-Love, regardless of their human conditions.
Broadly speaking, Nestorians were deemed heretics by the Church of Rome because they did not believe Jesus could be both fully human and fully divine in human form. Their brand of dualism was logically solid. It was in many ways a natural outcome and advancement of the Gnostic movement. Nestorians held that human and divine essences of Christ were separate. Jesus the man was different from Christ the Logos or Holy Spirit, which dwelt in the human form of Jesus. Identification of God with human suffering or one who could be crucified to redeem human sins was deemed erroneous and unnecessary. The suffering human Jesus was separate from the Divine Christ. Similarly, Nestorians held that while Mary gave birth to the human Jesus, she should not be called Mother of God.
Theological issues regarding God as a Trinity, Duality, or Unity – or Jesus as divine, human, or both – have promoted not only endless arguments, but also much malice and bloodshed. Historically, conflicting sects within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have militantly posited distinct and inflexible rationalizations and mythological views concerning the true nature of immortality, divinity, and the hierarchy of realization dividing such from earthbound humanity. To the present day, this has not changed amongst exoteric religious leaders.
First, gain your health, free your obligations, join the forces of love, and devote to the way of Emptiness; then your Quest for divine gnosis will be graced with the virtue of Angelic Perfection.
In 431, the Byzantine Council of Ephesus ruled that Christ was and is one person, human body included, and that the Virgin Mary is the Mother of God. This resulted in the so-called Nestorian schism and the separation of the Assyrian Church of the East from the Byzantine Church. Yet another divide over this issue soon thereafter produced the famous Chalcedonian schism. This period in the fifth century saw Eastern and Western Churches otherwise jointly finalizing their dogma as infallible. Anyone disagreeing was condemned as a heretic.
Syrian Christians from the time soon after Jesus’s crucifixion were in close contact with India and Central Asia. A Syrian branch of Christianity, founded by the Apostle Thomas, spread through Jewish and Dravidian communities in Southern India. There is evidence suggesting that Thomas, author of the Gospel of Thomas, died in Mylapore, India. Syrian Christianity also gradually spread to the northeast into Central Asia. During the following centuries, Central Asian Nestorians became closely involved with Buddhist sanghas. Evidently, Buddhist persuasion overtook Manichean beliefs within the mature community of Nestorian monks. It was through this circle that Neoplatonic knowledge and awareness was translated for Islamic academies, consequently creating a well of esoteric understanding nourishing Sufism.
As a whole, Nestorian tradition embraced gnosis as a form of knowledge emerging as transformative ecstasy. Myths of descent rationalized theologically were mystically verified through esoteric practices of monastic contemplation. Given actual realization of higher, transcendent spheres, however, dualistic aspects of such myths were progressively dropped. This tradition of Central Asian, Syrian, and Egyptian hermits deeply influenced the Orthodox sages introduced in our previous chapter. It formed the basis of Sufi practices beginning in the eighth century. It was also this tradition that introduced Oriental Hermetic wisdom-teachings (“as below, so above; and as above, so below”) to communities sympathetic to Gnostic spirituality, substantially helping to dispel the dualistic elitism of genuine Gnostic gnosis.
To live without love in the region of eternity is to live in the stasis of hell: timeless intensity, neither bright nor veiled – the zero point of the scale, the slicing edge, never through, never through – in a state of ancestral disinheritance.
Like modern-day nihilism, Gnosticism was fundamentally purposed toward “building down” the Platonic-Jewish-Christian concept of in-this-world transcendence. Cultural and communal valuations of the Transcendental as contained in Neoplatonic and monistic doctrines of spiritual hierarchy were dismantled by cults bound to dualistic myths. They continue to be dismantled by present students convicted of rational and communal idealism, which ironically forms the basis of nihilistic conceits. While Western dualism – including twentieth-century New Age variants of Gnosticism – claims a second, real transcendence, nihilism denies reality to all transcendental processes. The “romanticism” of Blake’s Book of Urizen, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, and Byron’s Cain: A Mystery evinces a progressive wedding of Gnostic and nihilistic beliefs.
Gnosis not dissociated from ordinary reality directs attention to the unity of that which is common with that which is extraordinary. If such awareness can be called “pantheistic romanticism,” it is romanticism more akin to that of Rumi or the Tarot than to Germanic and English philosophers, mythmakers, and artists of occult persuasion popularized during the last two centuries. Such modern trends appropriating Romantic culture reflect millennial-apocalyptic movements that have continuously made false starts throughout the history of Christianity.
In reference to modern German dualists, it is notable that Hegel was an avowed millennialist. He viewed his dialectical philosophy involving spiritual alienation (spirit must alienate itself to become known to itself) as humanity’s last possible theo-philosophical system. After him, he presumed, the concept of God would become obsolete. Hegel’s focus upon Meister Eckhart’s fourteenth-century pantheistic transcendental statements of Mysterious Truth is a good example of how enlightened, nondual worldviews can be superficially and confusedly interpreted to support dualistic positions. In a similar manner, Gautama’s Buddhist teachings have been interpreted by modern rationalists (Max Müller being a prime example) as supporting dualism, if not nihilism. Marx drew upon not only Hegel (thus, Marx’s inevitable “alienation of the laborer”), but the whole of German Gnostic ideology, which included the worldviews of Luther, Kant, and Heidegger.
The Tao Surrounds each and all yet remains always One – every spirit in the world abides solely as World Spirit.
Modern philosophies of world development sanction idealizations such as the proletariat and profit that are not universal principles. Thus, they do not address stages of social, cultural, psychological, and environmental development apparent in nondual worldviews of perennial wisdom. Universal principles and immortal values are reduced to strategic laws enforcing manipulation of political structures and economic systems.
We have little room in our study of the Tarot’s origins to dedicate toward the last one hundred and fifty years of Gnostic/occult belief. W. B. Yeats stated that he “came to believe in a Great Memory passing on from generation to generation.” He held that the symbols of alchemy expressed the psychic path away from material bondage. He drew on a highly romanticized history of esoteric transmission propagated by A. E. Waite, who conceptually “channeled” the images of the famous and frequently used Rider-Waite Tarot deck, painted by Pamela Colman Smith. Along with Waite and the soon-to-be-notorious Aleister Crowley (whose spectacular Tarot deck also remains popular), Yeats belonged to the occult Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at the turn of the twentieth century. From their dualistic school, English occult movements drew much of their authority.
The Theosophical Society founded by Madame Blavatsky and later led by H. S. Olcott, Annie Besant, and C. W. Leadbeater, was another influential late-nineteenth-century occult organization. In the twentieth century, it quite wrongfully made claim to membership in the Sophia Perennis academy of traditionalist luminaries such as René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Fritjof Schuon. Nationalistic and violent Buddhist circles in Sri Lanka and India unfortunately derived much authority from the Theosophical Society’s dualistic misappropriations of the Dharma.
Neither terrestrial nor celestial, thinking consciousness as egoic self resides in a place of existential despair; in the face of such inevitable delusion, the Fool makes light of the zero point.
Before continuing with an examination of early Greek concepts regarding gnosis and cosmology, mention needs to be made of the Gnostic period from which arose what is known as the Hermetic wisdom tradition. During the seventh and eighth centuries, a short text surfaced in several Sufi books, including one attributed to Jabir, purporting to be authored by the Egyptian godman and alchemist Hermes Trismegistos. The Emerald Tablet, as the text became known, was a slab of emerald (which denoted, at the time, material ranging from green glass to green jasper) engraved by Hermes with the essence of his sacred alchemical work. It has been traditionally considered one of the finest summaries of Hellenistic principles regarding divine realization and cosmogonic alchemy. Evincing similarity to Syrian writings of the fourth century, the text is likely to be either Syrian or Central Asian in origin.
It is of interest to note the Oriental nature of this work and similar texts of wisdom-sayings, including the Q Gospel (a postulated source-text for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke) and the Gospel of Thomas. While the Gnostic corpus was strongly rooted in Jewish and Platonic dualism, Hermeticism grounded a sophisticated mix of those dualistic traditions upon a mature base of nondual Hellenic and Oriental pantheism. Radical statements of the wisdom-saying tradition underlying Hermeticism were distinct in their adamant emphasis regarding immanently transcendent Unity. The Emerald Tablet reflects that state of consciousness:
Here is Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt! That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below, working the miracles of one.
As all things have been and arose from contemplation of the One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing through adaptation.
The Sun is its father, the Moon its mother. The Earth carried it in her belly, and the Wind nourished it in her belly. It is the Father of all talismans; Perfection in the world.
If turned towards the earth, it will separate earth from fire, the subtle from the gross. It ascends from the earth to heaven and again descends to earth, receiving the force of all things superior and inferior.
By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing.
Thus is the structure of the microcosm in accordance with the structure of the macrocosm. From this comes marvelous adaptations, whose process is just this.
Hence I am called Hermes Trismegistos, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.
Described in this complete text of the Emerald Tablet (derived largely from a translation by Sir Isaac Newton) is the philosopher’s stone, the golden elixir, the panacea of health and wisdom.
Taoist teachings from this era referring to the Tao and its universal alchemy might readily be mistaken for such Hermetic philosophy. The Tablet – like Alexandria, from where the text was purported to come – appears to have been associated with or otherwise influenced by Central and Western Asian metaphysical development. Buddhist representation was strong in these areas during this time; the Tablet could be interpreted as referring to the nature of Buddha Mind and self-realization of noble wisdom. More obviously reflected in the Tablet is an essential distillation of Plotinus’s teachings. Aspects of Heraclitus’s One Thing, Divine Fire, and Earthly Eros, along with Pythagoras’s mage-like attaining of divine power, are also clearly evident in this short description of spiritual union, unity, and the obtainable wisdom-power that derives from such. The wisdom-sayings of Jesus also evince parallels. All of these Great Tradition teachings comport with principles of immortality, through which knowledge of wisdom-realization is imparted.
The earliest document generally agreed by scholars as belonging to the Hermetic corpus is entitled Poimanders. This text shows strong affiliations with Jewish liturgy and monastic communities during the era after the failed Jewish revolt of A.D. 117 in Egypt. However, that said, the Hermetic creed it espouses – Let the man who has mind recognize himself as immortal – is distinctly non-Jewish. Those who chose Hermes Trismegistos as their Teacher, embracing knowledge of the inner self as knowledge of God, ultimately discarded the Law of Moses.
As mentioned, Hermeticism held much in common with Jesus’s wisdom-teachings. It is widely surmised that the Gospel of Thomas stemmed from the same original body of statements attributable to Jesus as the Q (from German Quelle, “source”) Gospel was redacted from. The latter has itself been distilled by scholars from the four canonical gospels. Conjectured to be a source for some material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, it has been reconstructed through rigorous biblical and linguistic study. Q was redacted from a collection of wisdom-sayings; however, added to those original statements of Jesus was an eschatological message derived from Jewish apocalyptic doctrine. Conduct appropriate to dualistic beliefs in a necessary end to this world and the salvation of an elected few into a future incorporeal world formed an important aspect of Q.
In contrast to Q and later gospels, the Gospel of Thomas shows no sign of such apocalyptic dualism. In 1945, Thomas was discovered along with a collection of other early Christian manuscripts near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi. Objective study of the Nag Hammadi Library has made evident to many scholars the primary position that Jesus’s wisdom-teachings held amongst his early followers.
Thomas’s branch of apostolic succession developed in the second half of the first century in Palestine and Syria. In this tradition, Jesus was often identified with Sophia or Wisdom, historically viewed in Greco-Roman culture as a Supreme Goddess. A tantric integration of feminine and masculine attributes of divinity was made. Perhaps this was the cause of the success of Thomas’s Christianity in Southern India, where it is believed Thomas preached and died. Numerous branches of what may be called Syro-Malabar Christianity – centered in Kerala, India, which still maintains a matriarchal tradition and devotion to Shakti as Wisdom – thrive to this day.
This positive view of Sophia was directly opposed by Gnostic sects appropriating the Christ-cult in the following century. While agreeing that Sophia dwelled in the sphere of Spirit and Soul – marked, we may recall, by the intersection of gnosis and insight – Gnostics paradoxically viewed Her as the fallen cause and mother of the malevolent Demiurge. Mother and son together composed an erotic myth identifying the world-creator with the root of all evil. Wisdom-teachings of Unity emanating as the Myriad and realized as Eros-Love for all were reinterpreted and reversed by Gnostics.
Jewish-Platonic dualism was channeled into Gnosticism, apocalyptic Judaism, and Pauline Christianity. James, brother of Jesus, was closely involved with apocalyptic (in particular, Zealot) strains of Judaic politics. Thomas (presented in early texts as Jesus’s twin, apparently meaning “closest companion”) stood opposed to this, although his gospel shows reserved respect for James’s authority, even while disagreeing with his beliefs. The nondual wisdom tradition in which Jesus and his companion Thomas stood was embraced by Plotinian Neoplatonists, mystical Hermeticists, Eastern Christian desert-hermits, and finally by medieval Sufis and radical Kabbalists. One must note, of course, that for many disciples, divisions between these camps were not hard and fast. This will also be the situation for many modern-day Tarot devotees, as it likely was with A. E. Waite and much of his fellowship. By now it is no doubt clear that this book aspires to persuade readers toward an understanding of nondual realization and an emanationist interpretation of the Triumphs.
Previously mentioned Alexandrian theologians attempted to bridge these two fundamentally different worldviews. As evidenced by the difficulty of the material presented in chapter 4, that bridge-work was neither simple nor particularly successful. Augustine remained theologically trapped by the dualism of matter and soul. Origen was deemed a heretic. Clement, whose profound understanding was widely regarded, kept most of his views to himself – a course of action strongly recommended by Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. Modern, existential theologians such as the sagacious Paul Tillich have continued an attempt to universalize Christian doctrine, reforming the essence of Christian Catholicism, which literally means Universalism. Liberation Theology, which became greatly influential in impoverished twentieth-century countries with large Catholic populations, is also distinguished in this way.
Were Synoptic sayings and wisdom-teachings of Jesus influenced by schools of thought other than those of Judaism and Hellenism? Reasonable arguments have been made that Jesus was familiar with Eastern teachings, in particular those of Buddhism. Certainly his sayings fit well with Buddhist thought. A well-known Pythagorean contemporary of Jesus, Apollonius of Tyana, had famously traveled to India and brought back wisdom from Buddhist and Vedic teachers. Apollonius was said to have performed miracles remarkably similar to those of Jesus.
Since the time of Alexander the Great, whose generals after his death established dynasties spanning the territories between India and Greece (the Seleucid Dynasty, for instance, ruled much of Asia Minor from 312 to 64 B.C.), cultural exchange between Buddhist and Near Eastern Hellenistic societies was rich. King Asoka, historically regarded as the greatest of Indian rulers, died a century after Alexander. He and his successors spread Buddhism far and wide, including into Alexandria, Egypt, itself.
In 250 B.C. Ashoka sent to King Ptolemy of Egypt an envoy of monks called Therapeutae, likely a Hellenization of Pali Theravada (Greek therapeuein came to mean “to naturally treat and heal”). Philo Judaeus, a contemporary of Jesus, describes in a tract entitled De Vita Contemplativa the Therapeutae as a reclusive brotherhood vowed to poverty, celibacy, charity, and compassion. No similar religious sect was known in the Judaic world.
When the Seleucid Kingdom began to break apart, its eastern section formed the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom that in turn became the Indo-Greek Kingdom, which extended into India until the time of Jesus. The latter’s most famous emperor, King Menander of the second century B.C., was of Greek heritage. As a Buddhist King he became as respected as Ashoka of the earlier Mauryan Dynasty and King Kanishka of the later Kushan Empire. His conversion and recorded considerations with the Buddhist sage Nagasena (recorded in Questions of Milinda) are legendary. Both Theravadan and later Mahayanan communities revered him as a guardian of the Dharma. There appears to have been close alignment between Indo-Bactrian Greeks and Mauryans, who ruled India as the country’s most powerful and successful empire in the centuries before the Common Era.
Toward the end of the great Greco-Indo empires, during the Gnostic centuries after Jesus, the first human depictions of Buddha were sculpted in Gandhara (the area of Kashmir and Punjab). Buddha had previously only been represented symbolically by stupas, Dharma wheels, etc. Greco-Buddhist statues are elegant and graceful in their depiction of enlightened peace. They potently evince Greek aesthetics. King Kanishka, who initiated this important aspect of Mahayanan art, ruled a civilization led by Central Asian Kushans (who were the farthest eastward speakers of Indo-European language, related to the Tocharian speakers of Western China) stretching from Bengal to Central Asia to China.
Thus began a great age of Buddhist migration into all of Asia. Interaction between Greek, Central Asian, and Buddhist cultures influenced the emergence of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, which developed highly refined metaphysical and shamanistic approaches to psychophysical realization of Bodhisattvahood. Such may be appropriately compared with sophisticated Hellenic self-realization of wisdom through veneration of and contemplation upon the nondual Way of godmen such as Dionysus and Hermes. As a whole, this composes a Great Traditional lineage and wisdom-way of immortality.
Accounts regarding a visit by Jesus to India reportedly exist within Vajrayana (the “Diamond-Lightning-vehicle”) Buddhist communities of the Himalayas. Allegedly, manuscripts have been found and translated that would support such. Given the provocative aspects of this to most Christians, dialogue between Biblical researchers and Buddhist lamas who control access to pertinent manuscripts has been minimal. In any case, there are a great many undeniable similarities between the Gospels’ stories of Jesus’s birth and traditional Pali stories of Buddha’s birth. Of greatest import, similarities between the wisdom teachings of Jesus and Buddha are striking. These warrant more attention by comparative religion scholars than they have received to date.
It was known at the time of Jesus that given prevailing monsoon winds, sailing to India across the Arabian Sea took only forty days. (Israel and Egypt connect to the Arabian Sea via the Red Sea.) That Thomas sailed there is factually probable (though the Roman Church remains noncommittal, at times positing instead that Thomas traveled to Pakistan via Persia). That Syrian Christians a few hundred years later did is undisputed. We may speculate that Thomas’s motivation to travel to India may have been related to contact during Jesus’s lifetime with travelers indigenous to the Subcontinent.
Unlike Q, the Gospel of Thomas contains no trace of Jesus’s passiondrama, death, or resurrection. Many of the sayings in Q are found in Thomas. Those that speak of a “future coming of the Son of Man” are not. Sayings regarding the “Kingdom of the Father,” particularly its very real presence in and as this world, on the other hand, are frequent. There is strong evidence that Thomas is derived from the earliest recordings of Jesus. The text itself states that Thomas was entrusted with the esoteric teachings of the Lord. To reiterate, it presents Jesus’s parables as instructions for the realization of wisdom. What it does not present is concealed revelations involving cosmic powers, mythological battles, or the salvation of an elected few. Viewed from the perspective of a cosmopolitan intellectual during Jesus’s time, the Gospel of Thomas would appear very Oriental if not Buddhist in nature.
Socially and ritualistically, both Gnosticism and Hermeticism drew on Jewish and Hellenistic cultures of the first and second centuries. Essential building blocks of Gnostic mythology were taken from Jewish scriptures and exegetical traditions. Primary, mythic structural design, however, was appropriated from middle-Platonic mythology. As Jews fully imbibed Greek philosophy, Mosaic Law was reinterpreted allegorically. The outcome of this was a splitting off of philosophical factions that did not strictly adhere to old Judaic laws. Some of these heretical sects made claim to gnosis and sophia as pointed to in the wisdom-sayings of Jesus and various Asian traditions.
As Gnostics assimilated the quickly growing Christian religion, Jesus supplanted Seth and other previous heretical Jewish redeemers. By de-emphasizing the evilness and complex mythos of cosmological descent and formation (which was inherited from Judeo-Babylonian tradition and then dramatically revised), a system of progressive gnostic spiritualization was legitimized and integrated into a Western stream of metaphysics affected by Platonic tradition. As late Gnosticism dropped all remnants of uniquely interpreted biblical mythology and history, the movement was co-opted into various branches of Eastern Christianity, Hermeticism, Neopythagoreanism, and subsequently Neoplatonism.
Like Neoplatonism, late Gnosticism taught a method of intellectual ascent while in this world. Gnostics rationalized this as being precursor to the soul’s ascent once it escaped its physical prison. Purposed toward that ascent, psychic use was made of letters in the alphabet and their syllabic combinations. These magical letters were believed to be directly connected to angelic realms. Through their use, Gnostic adepts imagined traversing angelic spheres in a way that was clearly influenced by Middle Platonic doctrines. Practical introduction of angelic presence and influence during each stage of spiritual ascent lessened anti-cosmic dogmas of earlier Gnostic belief. In this way, Manichean influence upon Nestorians was mitigated and transformed via a focus upon contemplative practice.
Again, though, it was not until late in Gnostic development that such Neoplatonic influence grew to be more than superficial. It was not until the twelfth century, as covered in chapter 3, that the esoteric science of letters and names was fully developed, concomitantly by Islamic Sufis and Jewish Kabbalists. Nonetheless, Ibn 
rabi’s cosmological system of Divine Names and Image-Exemplars, from which this book suggests the Triumphs’ hierarchy was derived, was essentially founded upon (via Western Asian Christian translation and elaboration) contemplative realizations and cosmological considerations that emerged during the Neoplatonic-Hermetic-Gnostic era of the third and fourth centuries A.D.
Late Gnostic texts delineated in a precisely Platonic manner the soul’s ascent to heavenly domains. Middle-Platonic esotericism taught of:
1. The One beyond being
2. The Intellect of pure being
3. The Soul of Intellect and Cosmos
4. The Material Cosmos
Post-Plotinian Neoplatonic systems expanded upon these four stages using triadic subdivisions. Although such systems varied, they served to produce an essential template for the Christian metaphysicians and Sufis mentioned in previous chapters. The most elegant of these systems was the division of the cosmos into six realms emanating from three transcendental realms that in turn emanated from one absolute realm. Each realm then developed a polar nature: one side connected it to the previous realm, the other side to the next realm. In other terms, one axis connected a realm vertically and one connected it horizontally; or similarly, one aspect formed as the mind or internal of a realm and another formed as the body or external of a realm. To have a right view of these realms was to be on the path of Wisdom. Such was the way of gnosis. Such remains the cosmological and theosophical teaching embodied by the Tarot.
Although their concepts of salvation differed, for both Gnostic and Hermetic, gnosis was primarily requisite. It was the knowledge of self that in essence was identical to knowledge of God. Though the two groups had this in common, Hermeticism did not share the theology, cosmology, anthropology, or eschatology of Gnosticism. Hermeticism did not hold to the theological belief that a supreme God existed totally separate from worldly forces. It did not hold to the cosmological belief that the cosmos was a terrible prison holding the soul captive. It did not hold to the anthropological belief that the human body was part of that cosmic prison, from which only an essential, inner “spark” was redeemable. Nor did Hermeticism hold to the eschatological belief that the self’s total release from its prison would occur only when the material world ended. The Oriental, nondual nature of Hermetic wisdom regarding the similarity of microcosmic and macrocosmic worlds, with each being inherently endowed with and as the presence of the One, did not allow for the preceding Gnostic beliefs.
Following crushing defeats of the Jewish polity circa A.D. 70, there emerged a history of disappointed messianism in apocalyptic sects of Palestinian and Egyptian Jews. From this movement and its perverse twist on the significance of worldly wisdom, Gnosticism came into being, parasitically attaching itself to religious and metaphysical traditions. The effects of this pernicious appendage can be felt today. In many new religions of our current era, frequently grouped under the rubric of “New Age,” we find an uncanny repeat of the era two thousand years ago. In Gnosticism, Man was a designation for the God of Perfection. Son of Man and Race of the Perfect Man became self-designations.
In an era of post-humanistic narcissism, the universality and perfection of inherent Unity (made transparently evident through mindful, concentrated contemplation) is all too frequently confused with a psychic glorification of the personal soul of man. Advaita realization that Atman Is Brahman is reduced to a narcissistic “Ego is Everything” or inflated into an “I am the Greatest and Only True One.” Rational, psychic, and subtle egos can readily presume superiority over nature (the dimensional reality of space), ancestors (the energetic reality of time), and interdependently caused spiritual hierarchy.
Ibn rabi’s identification with a unity-realized Perfect Man has been denounced by his detractors as crossing the fine line between nondual realization and megalomaniac conceit. However, his life evinces little indication of this. Such conceit has historically led to violent arrogance and dictatorial ethno-cultic centrism. Extensive evidence of this can be found among the conquering leaders of twentieth-century nationalism and warfare. Violently brutish “intellectuals” such as Benito Mussolini laid claim to Great Tradition hierarchy in appalling ways, identifying themselves and their gangsters with twisted concepts of “unity” and “perfection.” Certain Japanese Zen masters who lent support to Japanese fascism also serve as unfortunate examples of this.
Idealization of Perfection and its signs of realization rest at the heart of spiritual and ethical law. It is critical in our current era that representatives of the world’s religions and philosophical schools come into dialog if not subtle alignment regarding historical, global evidence of Unity Realization and human development of Perfection. To do this, spiritual practitioners and leaders must move beyond political and humanistic ecumenism.
So far, little mention has been made of the Tarot in this chapter’s exploration of dualistic Gnosticism, which was a vehicle for occult Chaldean beliefs to be examined shortly. The equating of Hellenic, Egyptian, or otherwise Pagan views of spiritual hierarchy with Gnostic secrets has been a root cause of Tarot misinterpretation. The latter denies any need to study, understand, and contemplate the former. Occult misinterpretations of the Tarot identify with surreptitious claims of spiritual exclusivity substantiated solely through egoic mental-psychic projection. They are not grounded in authenticated realizations and practices consciously carried forward generation to generation by sagacious spiritual teachings and lineages. Spiritual rule divorced from common reality was not the basis of ancient pantheism, Neoplatonism, or Hermeticism.
As we have seen, Neoplatonic concepts of hierarchical emergence involved spiritual ascent in conjunction with cosmic descent. Archetypal forces represented by the Tarot Exemplars hold to a Hermetic understanding that it is below as it is above and it is above as it is below. As do Jesus’s statements of wisdom in Thomas. How to realize Truth, Beauty, and Goodness – the Liberation of Enlightenment – as an integral body/mind is the supreme and crucial message conveyed via the Triumphs’ esoteric procession. Every Triumph, from Empress to World, is a divine agent. From Right View to Right Liberation, every phase of consciousness must be appreciated by Questors. The Quest, put most succinctly, involves the Magician as Self being transformed into the Fool as No-self. Every station of that transformative process is to be celebrated as innately necessary and true.
Platonic dualism as stated by Plato himself tended toward conscious union of mind and the transcendentally perfect while being corporeally embodied. Plato and his peers were initiated into veneration of the Mystery Rite. Although material body was graded lower than soul, intellect, and the Good beyond all individuated being, Plato did not fall into the trap of totally separating cosmic involution from spiritual evolution.
Centuries later, Neoplatonists radically affirmed a nondual worldview. Plotinus reformed the ancient Greek understanding of Divine Realization. About Plotinus, Porphyry wrote:
To this God-like man above all, who often raised himself in thought according to the very ways Plato teaches in the Symposium to the First and Transcendent God, that God appeared who has neither shape nor any intelligible form, but is enthroned above Intellect and the Intelligible.
Gnostics believed in the consubstantiality of an anti-cosmic God with a supra-cosmic Self trapped in a cosmic body. This denied the value of what is represented in the first six stages of the Tarot Trionfi: the common sense, feeling, intelligence, spirit, gnosis, and heart of humanity. It pretended to a Gnostic exclusive: an ascetically conceited, fifth-stage claim to total and privileged divine virtue. Nihilistic, schizophrenic, and psychotic stages of alienation and rejection resulting from this beg comparison with modern and postmodern progressions of chronic, if not glorified, angst. Hierarchy in terms of mythic, logic, or psychic escape from the cosmos or claims of personal dominion over spiritual realms is exactly not what the Tarot represents. Beliefs in such “salvation” or privileged rulership did not form the basis of genuinely mature Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Jesus’s wisdom-teachings, or later Sufism and Kabbalism.
It is time to trace back the roots of Western esotericism and Tarot metaphysics to the earliest of Greek philosophers. Much of what we know about the early Greeks comes down to us from Aristotle. Scholars have come to perceive, however, that Aristotle was a biased and somewhat narrow-minded thinker regarding myth-and-mystery-oriented pre-Socratic philosophers. We have seen in previous chapters how third-stage patterns of responsible rationality naturally develop into fourth-stage abilities to intuit patterns via psychological, intuitive gestalts. Likewise, magical rituals and mythical tales contain their own forms of lawful, proto-rational sense. First- and second-stage ways of magic and myth become naturally encapsulated by reason, their mature outcome. This occurs through embracing, not denying, their truth. Aristotle’s worldviews rejected first- and second-stage patterns of knowing.
Such a mind-set stands in contrast to that of Neoplatonists, Hermetic Christians, and Sufis that have been presented herein as exemplar integrative philosophers. Examined from their vantage, the metaphysical worldviews of early Greek teachers such as Pythagoras and Heraclitus come under a far clearer light than when viewed from the materialistic and reductionistic logical vantage of Aristotle. Modern research has helped to elucidate archaic Greek cosmology, bringing to the fore aspects of it that were embodied or dispelled by nondual Neoplatonists, Sufis, and consequently the original Tarot.
Early Greek history is inexorably entwined with that of Persia. After King Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylonia in 539 B.C., Zoroastrians initiated a two-hundred-year integration of Persian and Mesopotamian mythic thought based upon a philosophical dualism that posited an ultimate Goodness to the world. When the Persian Empire threatened Greek territories, then composed of non-unified city-states, Greeks banded together via an attitude of cultural superiority and survival, focused upon a common enemy. Up until that time, distinctions between “East and West,” or “Persian and Greek,” were not hard and fast. Worldviews were as numerous as dialects, which differed everywhere; yet nature-based, cultural similarities between the Greek Isles, Asia Minor, and Greater Persia were pervasive. Given that the area’s Indo-European branches developed from the same linguistic and cultural trunk, it is not surprising that there existed many similarities between them.
After the Persian-Greek wars, however, all non-Greeks were branded as barbarians, meaning “speakers of babble.” Only the Greeks, it was believed, had realized a progressive state of political independence and democracy. Indeed, second-stage empire, which the Persians excelled at, was being advanced upon in Greece through third-stage patterns of communicative civility. The Greeks however, had not established civil maturity. For instance, only ten percent of any given polis actually had say in Greek democracy (literally “might of the people”).
At this time, Greek metaphysical development began to split into two distinct movements. One went down a path of rationality that led to practices of transcendental union through Neoplatonic contemplation and Hermetic methods of alchemy. The other secretly embraced dualistic worldviews based upon Chaldean convictions (i.e., beliefs that “others have been proven wrong because they have been conquered”). It is from the latter school that nineteenth- and twentieth-century occultists presumed the Tarot Arcana emerged. Sociopolitical histories delineating domination hierarchies and socio-intellectual histories uncovering actualizing hierarchies are different histories indeed. Spiritual quests transcend political conquests.
The term Chaldean came to be used when referencing the aforementioned Iranian-Mesopotamian convergence. (This may be viewed as a historical indication of the capability for Iran, Iraq, and Kurdistan to live at peace with one another in their corner of the world.) On one hand, there was a strong anti-Chaldean bias in Greek society. On the other hand, Assyrian and Babylonian influences were pervasive. They radically shaped the formation of Judaism during the centuries that Judaic tribes were ruled by the Babylonian state. They were also intimately present in Pythagorean interpretation of old chthonic mystery sects that were partly Oriental in flavor. (The latter primarily stemmed from early Anatolian and Indus Valley cultures that gestated and nurtured ancient Indo-European rituals of initiation into further-evolved patterns of consciousness.)
A branch of late Platonism encapsulated this Near Eastern/Central Asian worldview of magic and mythos in Platonic terminology. The famous Chaldean Oracles, a collection of mystical poetry, presents a syncretic version of this dualistic religious path, which we may reasonably identify as being a primary root of occult movements throughout Western history (Germanic/Norse mythology being another, which was largely drawn upon by Tolkien in his Lord of the Rings trilogy). During the period of Gnostic development, this pre-rational tradition became legitimized, encased by a shell of urbanized philosophy. Neopythagoreans and subsequent Neoplatonists integrated it. However, a general historical tendency toward transcendental monism as witnessed in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic metaphysics arrested the popularization of Chaldean dualism. Importantly, Neoplatonists reinterpreted the Oracles from an essentially nondual point of view.
Great Tradition esoteric teachings and communities that have been mentioned in this book never abandoned their chthonic, magical, and mythological foundations. Nor did they avoid fully incorporating rational, critical enquiry into their expositions regarding cosmology and spirituality. On the contrary, those early stages of realization holistically integrated to form a foundation for trans-rational, psychically intuitive, subtly virtuous, and causally heartful ways of spiritual culture recognized perennially via ten stages of hierarchical development. In contrast, Neopythagoreans and other Chaldean-influenced, magic-based sects following them fell into a pre/trans fallacy: pre-rational states were equated with trans-rational states.
We will examine Pythagorean cosmology through the thought of Empedocles; and will then contrast it to the wisdom of Heraclitus, which points to an early Greek cosmological worldview underlying the medieval Tarot. Comparing Pythagorean and Heraclitean thought will serve to illuminate how and why Tarot cosmology and spiritual hierarchy are understood by so few, even while so many presume that the Arcana represent both an ancient and advanced understanding of cosmic and spiritual law.
Pythagoreanism, like Hermeticism, drew upon Oriental, Egyptian, and archaic Greek practices in which magic mixed with philosophical enquiry. Similarities exist between the more exotic Hermetic alchemical literature and Pythagorean tracts. The importance of alchemy in varying traditions during the era after Jesus will be considered in the next chapter. Its development was paralleled and in some cases influenced by a Greco-Egyptian tradition of magic encased in what was originally Mesopotamian mythology. Gnosticism was also heavily influenced by this Chaldean affected tradition. Evidence of it can be found in the cosmic poetry of late Egyptian magical papyri and in a large body of popular literature that grew around pseudo-godmen and miracle workers such as Empedocles.
Whereas we know little about Pythagoras, significant pieces of poetry written by his successor Empedocles have survived the millennia; as have a great deal of stories that refer to Empedocles’ mage-like heroic powers. Empedocles was a theurgist (from theourgia, meaning “sacramental rite and mystery”). He was famous for performing miracles and magic through spiritual assistance. This enabled him to call forth supernatural intervention into human affairs. Empedocles viewed theurgy as a progressive way of making his soul divine – raising his human self to a level of godhood. From a rational point of view, this would appear to have involved regression through pre-rational rituals and imagined myths, conflating a sense of self with that of demiurgic power. In modern psychological terms, Empedocles’ identification with god-power would likely denote patterns of megalomania.
Be that as it may, Empedocles apparently realized a hierarchy of transcendental states, witnessing similarity of that which was external (health, weather, peoples’ behavior, outcome of battles, etc.) to that which was felt internally as psychophysical energy and consciousness traditionally called spirituality. The genius of Pythagoras and his successor dwelt in their ability to rationally explain the magical ways of nature and mythic forces in terms involving sophisticated logical relationships. What they propounded proved crucial in the development of mathematics, geometry, philosophy, and medicine. They combined their generally insightful proclamations with yogic practices in ways that held much in common with Indian Vedic practice.
Throughout esoteric Greek religion, rationality served as a bridge between immanently chthonic, magical mystery rituals associated with Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus, and Orpheus (who was a later interpretation of the earlier three) and transcendentally intelligent philosophies initiated by Pythagoras, idealized by Plato, and epitomized by Plotinus.
From Fabre d’Olivet’s translation of The Golden Verses of Pythagoras (“Perfection”):
God! Thou couldst save them by opening their eyes.
But no: ’tis for the humans of a race divine
To discern Error and to see the Truth.
Nature serves them. Thou who fathomed it,
O wise and happy man, rest in its haven.
But observe my laws, abstaining from the things
Which thy soul must fear, distinguishing them well;
Letting intelligence o’er thy body reign.
So that, ascending into radiant Ether,
Midst the Immortals, thou shalt be thyself a God.
Hellenic beliefs in magical powers varied considerably from age to age, community to community, and person to person. Rational and contemplative maturity influenced the nature of such beliefs. Both Empedocles and later Neoplatonic theurgists (separated by some eight hundred years) were attributed supernatural powers: to make rain, stop plagues, communicate with the underworld and the gods, and realize an immortal resurrection body after having undergone ritualized, spiritual death. It is critical to note that by no means were these typical forms of magic all considered to be of the same order. In Christianity, for instance, the miracle of Jesus walking on water is considered to be of a different order than that of his resurrection. Furthermore, religious sects distinctly qualified their godmen’s miracles. Concepts of Empedocles’ immortal self differed from varying concepts of Jesus’s divine being, which differed (except perhaps, Thomas’s view) from Plotinus’s understanding of an immortally conscious and realized heart-mind.
It is to Plotinus and his nondual (self is other and both are prior-and-always-already Unity) hierarchy of cosmic, soulful consciousness that we can trace the divinatory magic, mythos, and rationality of the Tarot. Plotinus epitomized trans-rational understandings of magic through realization of prophetic powers inherent to the contemplative soul-mind: i.e., the causal-heart as sixth-stage manifestation of evolutionary consciousness. Such is the witnessing position of that converted consciousness whose self-awareness is identical to realization of Emptiness or no-self. Plotinus understood that this can only be attained through hierarchical transformations of mind/body/heart beyond rationality.
Contemplation is a necessary catalyst to actualizing spiritual mind/body transformations. Pre-rational rites of theurgy are insufficient to yield universal alchemy and wisdom. Magic based upon control of an “other,” even if that other is one’s own soul “separate” from one’s body, is far different than magic based upon holistic, transpersonal actualization and transcendence of separate self. The latter is represented by the Tarot Magician, whose name Bagatella connotes “a trifle or small thing” yet who performs for the enlightenment of all. There is, of course, no megalomania to be found in either the Magician or the Fool.
Empedocles presented his teaching as divine revelation. Not only was he considered sagacious in his dispensing of oracles – his whole cosmology was understood to be an oracle. Those who sought initiation in his school had to accept his godlike revelatory power without question. His writings were couched in enigmatic riddles.
Empedocles’ methodology involved Pythagorean purifying techniques, charging thoughts and actions into a state of katharsis (meaning to purge into being “pure,” katharos: a word and technique later revived by Crusading Cathari) via secret rituals. Those techniques included physical regimens such as not eating food that might cause intestinal gas. (This remained an important topic in Oriental medicine and yoga, largely for reasons having to do with deep belly-breathing. There is psychophysical significance in Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, and Sufi iconographical depictions of sensual, breath-filled abdomens.) Katharsis abetted by potent (including psychoactive) herbal drugs was also an important practice; here, Empedocles stood in an ancient lineage of root-cutter mages.
Once disciples were sufficiently purified, Empedocles would give them the paradosis initiatory transmission. Paradeisos, from which the English “paradise” is derived, was first coined by Greek military commander and historian Xenophon, who served with Greek mercenaries in Persia. The original Avestan word referred to Persian kings’ and nobles’ pleasure grounds. From this mundane simulacrum of the Original Garden, represented in the Tarot by Empress and Popess, Questors gain a vantage of Right View, and begin their Quest. However, there are stages to initiation itself; in both Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic traditions, rites such as the paradosis could be transmitted in full and genuinely self-authenticated only after years of purification and preparatory cultivation.
Godlike abilities that Empedocles claimed included controlling the winds and the weather; extending life indefinitely through knowledge of magical drugs; and fetching a dead man’s vital soul back from the underworld. Resurrection or life after death is represented in the Tarot by the eight post-Death Trionfi. Association with Immortality is the seed function of the Tarot. However, as pointed out in chapter 4, Tarot images were not purposed toward an occult practice of manipulating spirits in and out of icons, bodies, or environments. Nor were they specifically designed to portray a drug-based, psychotropic, astral trip. (Readers interested in how such a pack of Tarot images might appear are referred to the Aleister Crowley Thoth deck.) Nor were they ever meant to give an animistic magician ability to command forces of nature. Traditionally in fortune-telling, naming a force influencing one’s life was largely purposed toward having control over that force or demon. Techniques of manipulating psychic and natural forces, or what is commonly called “magic,” may make use of knowledge embedded in the Tarot, but the Trionfi did not themselves arise from or rely upon in any way the knowledge, schools, or methods of such magical manipulation.
In contrast, Empedocles’ oracular teachings supposedly enabled such magical control. The pre-rational magic of Empedocles’ mystery sect, however, ultimately matured through the centuries into trans-rational gnosis. Thracian Orphic tradition (introduced below and elaborated in chapter 7) underlying Pythagoreanism was intimately connected to Central Asian shamanism. Just as such shamanism matured into Buddhism and Taoism, so did Pythagoreanism mature into Neoplatonism.
If the Tarot was not in fact originally purposed toward magical control of fate and fortune, then what was its purpose? Quite simply, knowledge and wisdom of fate and fortune oriented toward realization of immortality. The Tarot is a tool abetting tantric consciousness through spiritual resonance. It addresses development of human beings and relationships in the context of body-mind integration. It represents a quest for spiritual identity that proceeds via alchemical union of essential polarities. When genuinely contemplated, its Triumphant ten-stage procession actualizes a transformative awareness of Eros via integral imagery, symbols, and meanings. For women of modern times, and here we include ladies of the Renaissance courts, the Tarot has perennially presented a most effective path for integrating yang or brightly male knowledge into their yin or mysteriously female spirituality.
Given the right playing method, a mature player or reader of the Tarot is able to tap the creative power of Eros by attuning to the Triumphs’ resonant forces and synchronicities as they are applied to Fate and Fortune. That attunement is not controlling, but rather informing. If multiple people concentrate on a Tarot spread together, their resonance with the wisdom gestalts of immortal archetypes will affect their fates and fortunes. Such concentration on spiritual presence should be taken seriously, even if playfully. This is modulated and therein magnified via actual cultivation of yoga and alchemy, both individually and socially. It is in fact blocked through psychic manipulation and occult intentionality not founded upon genuine nondual awareness.
The primary meanings of the Trionfi are embedded in their Names and Hierarchy. For this reason, the more than two thousand Tarot decks designed in modern times can display radically differing images, yet still be recognizable as Tarot cards. However, it is in the psychophysical yogic representation of human energetics that the images’ practical power can be magnified and conveyed. As examined in the previous chapter, Islam and Judaism have traditionally outlawed attempts to image That which is Immortal other than through sacred geometry. However, Christianity inherited Greek arts and knowledge regarding iconography as it can be applied to representing universally personified immortal principles. Through insight into the process of cosmic development and spiritual hierarchy, laws of heaven, earth, and man become clarified and may be artistically modeled.
Science makes great use of modeling and conceptual imaging. Modeling essential laws so as to enable manipulation of biological, social, and environmental patterns on a global and pervasive level in an attempt to imitate God is, however, likely to be disastrously shortsighted and presumptuous. Psychological and scientific arrogance may enable actions under ill-defined justifications of progress that violate natural law. Meaning “to walk or go forward,” progress is best kept to a grounded pace and socially and environmentally responsible path.
History nevertheless shows that humans are purposed to psychophysically realize conscious unity with their Gaian environment. That process is abetted by the modeling of universal principles and laws immortally governing the world. Modeling, inventing, and implementing technology certainly has the potential to abet this. There are new heights that the Tarot itself can be taken to via technology. Such technology may be called holistic and appropriate, even if not immortal and eternal. Tarot Triumphs contain within their most basic design exemplar forms of what might be called timeless technology: e.g., wheel, coin, cup, batting-stick, throne, sword, balance, etc.
Evolved conscious realization occurs more through nondual intimacy than subject-object manipulation. Every integrative and healing function of magehood technically requires application and regulation involving, yet transcending, manipulative activity. Nonetheless, realization of wisdom and compassion is a matter of whole-body enlightenment. Thus, alchemical unions of polar identities (including self and other, mind and body, man and woman, heaven and earth) are of more import to Questors and any application of the Tarot than temporary manipulations and partial modifications of varying parts of any system.
Learning the laws of Eros through compassionate tantra and yogic alchemy composes a Quest that reaches far beyond any journey limited to oneself. This necessitates physical, emotional, mental, psychic, subtle, and causal (or essentially heartful) direction. By becoming the Trionfi, Questors realize states of greater being, consciousness, and bliss. Although this naturally involves regulating and channeling life-force, Questors work and play with Fate, Death, and all other attributes of the Kosmos without deluding themselves that they are in “control” of them. In all cases, the essential nature of Brightness or Time rules the world. The creative, vital life of Eros, being immortal and prior to Death, causes cosmic laws of alchemy to manifest stages of internal and external development: birth, growth, integration, separation, change, decay, and consciousness.
That said, we return to our theurgist. Born in Sicily around 500 B.C., Empedocles became most famous for his theory of four elements, which he identified with four primary gods:
Hear first the four roots of all things: Dazzling Zeus,
life-bearing Hera, Aidoneus, and Nestis
who moistens the springs of mortals with her tears.
Zeus, god of heaven, was the personification of air. His wife Hera was that of earth. Nestis was a Sicilian cult name for Persephone, goddess of water. Aidoneus was a poetic name for Hades, the god-state of fire. Empedocles identified the constituent processes of the cosmos with two pairs of married gods. (Persephone, daughter of Demeter, was stolen away into the Underworld by Hades.) These immortal couples were then posited as literally constituting the Kosmos. The always-changing world was identified with elemental gods in tantric polarity. By establishing this cosmology, Empedocles transformed Greek mythology into a vehicle for quasi-empirical study of the world.
For Empedocles, the elements were divinely mythic in nature. Each cosmic force or principle manifested as one of four separate and immutable constituencies of the cosmos. Air was not only the air we breathe, but also the aether, which included all of space reaching into the heavens. The essence of this element was of such a pure nature as to be identified with the supreme god, Zeus. Aether’s alchemical marriage to Earth involved far more than a philosophical mixing of “airy” and “earthy” elements. It was the very alchemy of all life and being on a grand, mythological level of God and Goddess.
Comparing this to the Chinese concept of Yang and Yin, Bright and Veiled, we note that Empedocles’ cosmology conspicuously lacks a unifying Way or Tao. His polarities do not suggest a common Source or Unity integrating the elements, emptiness, chaos, and the mathematical harmony of every-thing. His Pythagorean worldview posited a complex, immortal dualism that when conjoined with Chaldean systems of cosmology produced many branches of occult science. Schools championing such dualistic beliefs continue mushrooming to this day.
Relevant to our study of Tarot hierarchy is Empedocles’ second set of dualistic principles: Hades/Fire and Persephone/Water. His identification of the underworld with fire was accepted by few of his Greek philosopher-sage peers. Even more questioned was Empedocles’ Sicilian conviction that only through a terrible sacrifice into the volcanic alchemy of the Underworld could man be reborn with a divine nature. Confusion regarding the essential elements of the world and their respective god-principles reigned throughout the history of Indo-European mythic-stage thinkers. Although detailing the complex arguments surrounding them would take us beyond the scope of this book, a few observations are in order.
Pythagorean belief that unchanging, absolute polarities composed cosmic totality lent itself to a type of dialectical analysis. The academy following Pythagoras and Empedocles laid the groundwork for logistical methods that philosophies of modern science developed two millennia later. We contrast this with the foundation of nondual cosmology established in Empedocles’ time by Heraclitus. While often described as mystical, Heraclitus viewed himself as being rigorously empirical in his observations of the world. Through intuitive witnessing of reality, his dialectic was subsumed in and as a methodical awareness of Unity. That too formed a working scientific method and was championed by leading Sufis during the prime developmental years of Islamic science. It is also proving to be a method radically suited to twenty-first-century scientific advancement, whereby whole systems are harmoniously gestated, nurtured, and modified.
Heraclitus’s worldview of cosmic alchemy holds similarity to that of early Taoists. In Taoist alchemy the house of fire (area of the chest) may be identified with a human’s heavenly soul. Likewise, the house of water (area of the abdomen) may be identified with a human’s earthly soul. Internal alchemy is a matter of unifying fire’s essential nature with water’s vital life. That process makes one aware that the elements and souls are fundamentally nondual in the Tao. Taoist theories incorporating five elements (earth, metal, water, wood, and fire) and eight trigrams (the Ba Gua as contained in the I Ching or “Book of Changes,” China’s ancient divinatory system) posit a transformative and unified cosmos.
Early Greek philosophers generally supposed that after the genesis of aether, fire was created. Empedocles developed a complex mythology to explain how it was that fire, which in his thought was native to the realm deep under earth, was overwhelmingly present in the sky as the Sun. Sicily, an island of volcanoes, was a hotbed of beliefs oriented around divine fire conjoined with ancient chthonic rites found in the earthy sects of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. This combination influenced, and was in turn influenced by, Orphic mysticism. In Orphic Pythagoreanism an initiate would enter the underworld in order to reemerge in a state divinized through his relationship with Hades. This theme was prominent in Mesopotamian myths and was likely imported to Southern Italy by Phoenicians. The ancient myth of goddess Inanna and her mortal husband who was sacrificed to the underworld was widespread and influential throughout Mesopotamia and beyond.
Persia served as an important intermediator through which Mesopotamian rituals enabling contact with the underworld were merged with magic-based Central Asiatic shamanism. Zoroastrian magi were reputed, through certain spells and rituals, to be able to open the gates of Hades and “take down safely whomever they wanted.” Syncretic practices of Persian magic were transmitted to the Greeks who reworked them into Thracian Orphic and Sicilian Pythagorean traditions, which otherwise drew upon resurrection rituals involving goddess-empowered fire well established in the Eleusian Mystery cults of Demeter and Dionysus.
Many medieval alchemists attempted to fathom the depths of psychophysical reality via the furnace of hell. These occultists pursued ritualized Pythagorean and Gnostic convictions based upon a fanatical presumption that both cosmic and spiritual descent was primarily marked by underworld fire, into which the rivers of mysticism and generative potency (element of water) flowed. Fanatical (originally connoting “orgiastic rites of a temple”) is an appropriate description: Empedocles reportedly died by throwing himself into Hades’ supreme temple – an active volcano – in order to realize final immortality. Numerous have been the unwise alchemists who psychologically and/or physically followed his example.
To an alienated, dualistic mind-set, escaping this world may seem to necessitate a return through the portal from whence it was created – i.e., Hell. Whereas yogic alchemy is based upon dropping the fire of mind into the water of body, occult “alchemy” reverses the process, deeming an underworld fire to be the primal essence of our material world, and our bodies’ flows into it an inescapable sacrifice necessary for redemption of that divine spark of fire bound within humanity’s mind-body prison.
To Pythagoreans, the elements were immutable – they did not transmute one into another like yin into yang. A process involving water flowing into fire would logically either quench the fire or continuously evaporate the water. In either case, such elemental reaction, although evincing second-stage polarity, does not develop third-stage circulation. Water needs to transmute to a fiery form as steam and then transmute back to water to produce alchemical circulation. An “alchemy” where fire and water are eternally distinct can only be sustained if the water supernaturally “fuels” the fire from a continuously replenishing source, such as human life fueling Hell. A good description of this is found in the book of Revelations: the apocalyptic vision of a lake of fire. Since both water and fire were posited by Empedocles as immutable, absolute, and eternal essences, any Kosmic diminishment of either became unacceptable. This lent an inexplicably magical quality to Pythagorean alchemy, if indeed that is the proper term for it.
Taoist alchemy, to return to our contrasting example, is based upon the internal practice of unifying heavenly fire with earthly water – in the process of which steam emerges. Steam arises upward in the direction of fire, then in the process of cooling and condensing eases and transmutes back downward into water. Authentic alchemy involves transmutation of fire into water and water into fire (and in its more advanced stages, sublimated transmutation of earth directly into air and air into earth) via processes of heat transference, evaporation and condensation, and sublimation through circulating, merging, and transmuting elemental essences. This ultimately entails a return of elements to their Original State: the Essential Nature of Unity. We will refer to this again, along with the congealing and purifying alchemy of earth and air, in the next chapter. The first six stages of cosmological procession represented by the pre-Death Tarot images will then be identified with traditional alchemy, both East and West.
Identifying a heaven/earth polarity with immortals above and a fire/water polarity with immortals below, Pythagoreans and later occultists based their magic upon a dualistic, intentionally concealed, negative association of humankind’s mainstream elemental processes with an Underworld mythos focused upon cosmic capture-and-sacrifice. Following upon this, it was believed that descending into the terrifying, fiery domain of the underworld was a necessary precursor to ascending into an ecstatic, radiant realm of heaven and earthly paradise.
One might see in this similarity with Lao Tzu’s Taoist alchemical view that “to go high, first go low.” Philosophical aphorisms contained within the Tao Te Ching were approximately contemporaneous with Pythagorean religious teachings. However, one will not find a morally biased, emotionally dramatic, cosmic judgment in that Taoist fundamental of alchemical guidance. Furthermore, in Taoist philosophy and alchemy, low and high are essentially unified – from that realization emerge the principles of immortality.
During the early Christian era, Hermetic wisdom positing an isomorphism of that which is below with that which is above was rejected by Neopythagoreans and Gnostics. For them, that which was really below was Tartarus as jailhouse of Zeus warded over by Hades. Pythagoreans believed that it was to there that Zeus had banished his enemies the Titans. This myth stemmed from the ancient Babylonian myth of Marduk, who had bound gods into an underworld prison. The Jewish Book of Enoch contains an account of fallen angels being bound and imprisoned in a similar way. This too stemmed from Babylonian tradition, which formatively affected early Judaism.
In the occultist worldview, Hades’ realm is utterly dissimilar to Zeus’s realm. The two form a fundamental, eternal polarity demarking Evil and Good, Fallen and Raised. By identifying Tartarus with Fire, Empedocles lent the gross aspects of fire a type of divine empowerment on the order of Zeus’s ineffably subtle Aether. Through his worldview, however, Tartarus became involved not with the blessedly unified, but with the terribly alienated. Fire’s companion, Water, was deemed the sexual lifeblood of Fire. Ritualistic sacrifice to Underworld power through secret sexual rites remains one of the more compelling aspects of this mystery school.
According to Homer and Hesiod – the original purveyors of Greek theogony – Hades’ realm was a dark and damp, chthonic underworld. Popular belief identified it with underground caves; a place in which water pooled and ghosts abided. Tartarus was another realm altogether. It was “as far below Hades as Hades is below celestial Heaven.” The element of fire, which Heraclitus thought to represent the original elemental nature of the cosmos, was not associated with either. Instead, it was identified with the Sun (light and heat) and the creative power of lightning. Fire belonged to Zeus. From its mutations, all of the other elements came into being. Hades the god wore a cap of invisibility that allowed him to roam under the Moon, assisting or intervening into Zeus’s world of earthly inhabitants as he saw fit. This was later given to Hermes, allowing him to traverse a portal to the underworld in his capacity as divine messenger.
It was this version of Hades or the Devil that made its way into Hermeticism, Sufi theosophy, and the Tarot. Just as the Moon intermediates between Aether and Earth for Immortals, so does the Devil intermediate between the Afterworld and Earth for Humankind. That Afterworld cannot be avoided or passed over in the course of a human soul’s transformation from one embodiment to another or into immortal realization. Every human soul is destined to spiritually egress beyond the six spheres of earthbound cosmos apparently ruled by Death and warded by the Devil. Most souls will enter the Afterworld only upon death of their sentient forms. However, as we will discover in chapter 7, great Shamans, Heroes, and Saints may pass Death and the Devil by in their lifetime. The Principles of Immortality inherently address how this great process works.
In Greek mythology, the Underworld was manifested before the cyclic worlds of humans or procession of immortals (even immortals have processes beyond death). The realms of Hades and his water brother Poseidon were originally extensions of Chaos and Tartarus, Gaia’s womb. Their domains represented the chaotic potential underlying all manifestation. They were brothers to the supreme fire god, Zeus. In their generative potency they were an outcome of Eros and ultimately united in their principles.
Between the development of Olympian mythology and that of earlier primal myths of creation (involving Chaos, Tartarus, Gaia, and Eros), Greek myths composed a cosmology of archetypal Titans. Ouranos (Uranus), husband and son of Gaia and father of the Titans, was deemed the original creator of the cosmos. He was slain by his son Kronos (Saturn) through the severing of his chaotically generative power. His sexual member was cut off and thrown back into the ocean, creating Aphrodite – a humanized manifestation of Eros. We see her represented in the Tarot by the erotic purity and concentrated essence of the Star and Moon. (While the Star and Moon Triumphs shown in this book do not focus on goddess imagery, the Metropolitan images radiate a natural, naked sensuality that speaks of the same.) Kronos was in turn slain by his son Zeus, who led a battle against the Titans, who represented an older, Gaian and agricultural-based first-stage set of myths. The Titans were then psychoculturally banished forever to Tartarus. Tartarus may in this context be associated with humanity’s archetypal feminine unconscious, in and through which the Empress and Popess initiate a way of ancient and still universal core identity.
Greek myths, of course, changed in time and place. Rules were broken, laws invented, relationships transformed; new gods were created, old myths reworked, and many myths allowed to become obsolete. It is important to recognize that primary mythic relationships formed foundations for competing schools of rational philosophy and spiritual tradition.
Most Greeks after Aristotle recognized Tartarus as the “guardhouse” of Zeus. It did not ward a terrible prison, but rather guarded the Sacred Center of the Kosmos. The medieval Tarot’s Devil incorporated this concept of guardian. The Tarot’s Tower originally represented both House of God and House of Devil, for Zeus and Hades were brothers. The Tower bridges the worlds of humans and gods through a transformative power of sacrificial fire – the most potent form of which is the Lightning-bolt. Heaven-bound fire signifies the true way of sacrificial empowerment.
Influenced by spiritualists obsessed with sacrificial scapegoating rituals and Babylonian heaven/hell dualisms, the Tower became identified with an occult, Judeo-Christian interpretation of a fallen House of Babel. Babel is short for Babylon, a cosmopolitan city where much of Judaic culture and religion was formed. In the Old Testament, it was demonized as the center of polytheistic worship and knowledge. Construction of its heaven-reaching tower was arrested when the builders became unable to understand one another’s language. While this may sound quite plausible on several layers of meaning, its Triumphant signification as an immortal archetype lies with its success, not failure. The Tarot’s Tower of knowledge is marked and blessed by Divine Fire – the Sun and Lightning. As in many of the Triumphs, the Metropolitan’s Tower appears true to this essential meaning of the station. It does not show a collapsing building or people being flung off of it (in many decks the latter is depicted as an alchemical couple; this too has positive connotations in terms of tantric completion). Instead, the Tower’s sacrificial pyre brilliantly and directly reaches up to the Sun. Triumphs depicting a Tower with a “spine” of fire running down it (evoking a yogic build-up and release of both spinal and lingam Shakti) may be interpreted in a proper context of transformational chaos and change cycling into a continuous rebuilding of generative potency.
Ibn rabi gave the Tower’s station a status of Preciously Valued. It signifies a stage of mindfully divine potential and genuine self-sacrifice. Its potency is regenerated under the Nourishment of the Star, Empowerment of the Moon, and inscrutably Subtle Observation of the Sun. As guardian-demon and guardhouse to the divine, Devil and Tower respectively serve the Deathless realms in general. They do not function as jailers of some evil aspect of the divine; nor as malevolent, immortal states pitted against the heartful Questor, her Quest, and all cosmic forces that would naturally assist her. Put bluntly, that which is abased by the Degrader is that which pretends to the Deathless even while being self-centered, self-serving, and self-inflated. All of which is absolutely Just. (Compare to modern myths of ancient dragon-lords guarding their treasure troves and secrets of immortality.)
Tartarus, being the realm furthest below earth, was originally imagined as the center of the cosmos; for all realms above Earth revolved around it. In this way, it was the sacred womb of Gaia. However, the concept of Tartarus as a flaming center of the universe purposed toward the containment of evil fit in well with Gnostic Christian dualism regarding heaven and hell (from the old Germanic word for “underworld”). Early on in Christian cosmology, Hell, Hellfire, and Satan became universally accepted dogmas. Thus, a demonic image of the Devil as a fiery, hellish prison-keeper with demiurgical power fed the imagination of Gnostics and later Christians. Jesus apparently did not hold this view. Witness the story of his high, ethereal, desert-dry temptation by a Satan doing no more than truly testing his realization of Transcendence. A very similar story is told of Mara and the Buddha. The Metropolitan Tarot’s Devil, based as it was upon Oriental awareness of the divine role played by an archetypal Guardian Daimon, was understandably imaged differently than later-drawn Christian-occult Kings of Hell. Chapter 7 explores the history of Satan in detail. As with Death, realization of the Devil’s station in the Arcana is pivotal to understanding the esoteric truths of the Tarot.
Platonists did not care for Empedocles’ negative classification of Tartarus. As mentioned, they held that the “jailhouse of Hades” was actually the “guardhouse of Zeus.” They reasoned that the Center of the Kosmos must certainly be a realm most profound: the Womb of the World. From this came the creation of the universe, including all energy, light, and fire; including, in other words, the heavens themselves. Even though ancient myths of Darkness telling of creation through Eros, Chaos, Gaia, and Tartarus had been replaced by the Bright myths of Sky-god Zeus, initiated Platonists still engaged and respected the fertile Mysteries of goddess-consciousness.
By the time of Plotinus and later Neoplatonists, an actualizing cosmological hierarchy had developed that completely replaced the top/down, good-to-bad, heaven/hell, terrible descent and elite ascent, dualistic cosmology of the previous Chaldean-influenced millennium. These were two very different worldviews; two very different esoteric currents; two very different developments of conscious spirituality through magic, mythic, and rational stages.
The Tarot has at its origins a foundational Hermetic and Neoplatonic nondual understanding of cosmology and spirituality. This was reinterpreted in accordance with occult, dualistic beliefs shackled to a desire to control demonic unconscious forces while seducing erotic forces of good fortune. Seduction, eroticism, and daimons take their rightful place in the Tarot in a context of conscious tantra and intimate awareness of present synchronicity. Eros is truly creative when it is innocently, openly, and simply present.
Hermetic and Neoplatonic origins of the Tarot can be traced back to the cosmological wisdom of Heraclitus.
Immortals are mortals, mortals immortals, these living the death of those, those dead in the life of these …
… in his presence, they arise and become wakeful guardians of living people and corpses.
And Thunderbolt steers the totality of things.
These fragments of Heraclitus’s wisdom, which make for a good synopsis of the Angel Triumph, come by way of Hippolytus, via his Refutation of All Heresies. Over a hundred such remnants of Heraclitus’s sayings remain extant, giving us a fragmented yet in-depth view of this paradoxical sage.
Heraclitus lived a generation before Empedocles. He dwelled in one of the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan cities of Asia Minor, Ephesus. At the time, Ephesus was under Persian rule. Unlike many well-known philosophers in classical Greece, Heraclitus abstained from politics. His rational faculties were honed sharp and he did not suffer fools, be they priests, governors, or commoners. He applied his insight not toward magical, mythic, or civil patterns but toward understanding the unity of all being and becoming. Stating essential paradoxes as elegantly as possible, he acquired a nickname: The Obscure.
Heraclitus did not think much of reincarnation (a popular belief at the time, embraced by Pythagoreans) nor did he view the psyche as existing separate from the body. Rather, he understood life, death, and immortality as a continuum of flux, not unlike his contemporary in India – Gautama the Awakened. The microcosm of self-existence was felt to be isomorphic with the macrocosm of universal existence. Earth Nature was one with Sky Deity presence.
Psyche was understood by Heraclitus as a principle that included rationality and all order of beingness just as it included change and thereby disorder of processional flux. Heraclitus held to the paradox that self both existed and did not exist; body and soul were marked by both absolute and temporal principles. Ancestors were alive through the presently living, just as humans existed in a state of prior death, but were simply unaware of it. To become aware of this was to know the Deathless and identify with immortal principles. This could be done through direct insight into the Life of Psyche beyond magical rituals, mythical revelations, and rational logic.
The word immortal in Greek meant “deathless”; eternal meant “timeless.” Heroes and sages whose destiny it was to cross into the realm of the Deathless became daimons, Greek for “divine powers.” Immortal Heroes transcendentally embodied an ancestral realm for the benefit of beings both living and dead. Hesiod had stated that thirty thousand of the golden race were transformed upon death into daimons by Zeus to become guardians of mortal men. Heraclitus knew that the body is far more than it appears to be. That is, the body is also the psyche. In fact, the psyche is prior to and greater than its transmutation as a body.
Heraclitus may have been the first European sage (if we include Asia Minor as part of Europe) to state that there exists a hierarchy of Unity (what would later be known as emanated spheres) or of, as he called it, the One Thing. We find in his thought a core of nondual pantheism. Heraclitus developed the ancient Indo-European awareness that all things are full of gods into a view that the Myriad of things is conscious. Psyche as the Myriad is in truth the One; so too is the One Way or Thing marked by Intelligent Awareness – the early Greek understanding of consciousness.
Heraclitus clearly posited a holistic world: every body is both a unity subsuming diversity and one of myriad wholes subsumed ultimately by the Unity of the Kosmos. The polarity of consonance or harmonious functioning and dissonance or fragmented functioning is outshined by a fundamental, underlying harmony and unity of the whole universe. That One Thing is a unity that includes all multiplicity. Understood properly, the Strife of dissonance is not the fundamental force of the myriad; rather, the radiant fire of divine Love or Eros is. Heraclitus’s understanding was implicit in Plato’s Good and Plotinus’s One.
Heraclitus introduced to Persian and Greek wisdom traditions an enlightened realization regarding the cosmos as an ordered system whose Law is greater than human law, yet in no way separate from it. Thus, Diké (daughter of Zeus – the Kosmic principle of Unity – and Way of Justice) rules the cosmos in a way perceivable by humans, even if only inscrutably so. Her Law is discernible, but only by those who have transmuted their body-psyche (i.e., whole psychophysical self) via a return to the divine Aether. Such is radiant realization of Sophia or Wisdom via knowledge of Eros. This is the original and true purpose of philosophy.
Like Lao Tzu (or the sages who composed the Tao Te Ching), Heraclitus wrote in a way that is readily interpreted by esoteric practitioners as pointing to yogic or psychophysical alchemy, transmuting gross elements of mortal, bodily nature into the ineffable essence of immortal flux. Aether, the most sublime state of divine fire called Zeus (the root of which means “God”), was marked not by the heat of passion, but rather by brightness and intense spontaneity. The Kosmically Lawful causal force of lightning embodied as a swift, double-edged sword called Justice served Diké as a means of keeping the world upon the Way of Truth.
The divine fire of Aether was above even the fire of the Sun. Nothing escaped, hid, or separated from this omnipresent, omniscient, primal, and encompassing principle. Zeus, in large part as Diké, was the One uniting Chaos and Eros beyond the domain of the Sun, and “was the only name Aether would take.” Aether was like the Sun, however, in that from Homer’s time the Sun was understood to be all-seeing and thus was invoked as a divine witnesser of oaths. The Metropolitan’s Sun card images this well. Ibn rabi called this Image-Exemplar the Minute Observer.
Unlike the Sun, which during the night was present only through the Moon and the Stars, Justice never set. Thus, She was the highest state of the Aether called Zeus. She saw to it that the Sun-principle did not overstep its measures. The Sun as observer of all life was kept true in His brilliant communion with the sentient world, for Justice’s ministers, the Furies, would otherwise “find him out.”
The Angel card of the Tarot, commonly known as Judgment, represents a Sufi and Christian Hermetic version of the Furies. The transcendental force needed to resurrect the dead, rectify evil, and realize the True Way (Diké, Tao, Dharma, Law, Heart) of the World was envisioned as a blast of the fiery Seraphim, Angelic Furies of Justice. With this in mind, it becomes clear that the Balance of Justice represented Infinity rather than any “zero point of the scale.” Certainly, no mortal ruler or prophet can serve as the fulcrum of such Kosmic Balance, unless that human is in truth an immortal, merciful angelic incarnation of Goddess-God Unity. This is the concept that the great Sufi saints that were introduced in chapter 3 realized, with varying focuses on the gender-based attributes of Allah.
Of course, Christians understand Jesus to be the Son of God, much as Diké was known as the Daughter of God. In fact, for Roman Catholics discovering the Tarot, acknowledging the Goddess as higher than the Angel of Judgment, identified with the Second Coming of Christ, might reasonably be difficult. Unless, perhaps, She represents the Church herself, as the Book of Revelations might be interpreted. On the far side of this thought, one might imagine a Neo-Catholicism in which the Goddess is Raised once more, beyond Virgin Mother cults and the Roman hierarchies. A crucial twenty-first-century consideration for religious leaders: How important is True Justice?
The Sun as agent of Zeus assists in constantly rejuvenating the cosmos. For Homer, to see the rays of the Sun was to be filled with Life. The equation between light and life was incorporated into the Sufi name for the Hermit’s station or attribute of Allah – the Living. When Diogenes, Greece’s ascetic Patriarch of Cynics, walked around naked in broad daylight with his lantern, he was testing who might see such rays, for only they would be on the path of Virtue and thereby deserving to be called truly alive.
Virtue as human excellence is represented by the Hermit as prudent guide and provider of life. Prudent comes from the word provide – pro-, “forward,” and videre, “to see.” The quality of a Hermit’s insight into how the Wheel of Fortune and Nature cycles forward can be intuited from important derivatives of weid-, the Indo-European root of videre: guide, wise, wisdom, guise, Hades, wit, view, visa, vision, advice, clairvoyance, evident, provide, review, supervise, survey, idea, history, story.
The virtues suggested by Plato (later to be deemed cardinal or pivotal) – Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and Justice – are arranged hierarchically in the Tarot. According to Plato, the first three relate to one’s psyche: moderation or Temperance is the virtue that orders the lower appetites and physical desires of the psyche, including those of Lovers; courage or Fortitude is the soldiering, steadfast virtue of the morally upright psyche that is represented so well in the Chariot; wisdom or prudence is the yet higher virtue of the intellectual aspect of psyche as portrayed in the Wheel’s and Hermit’s insight of gnosis or Emptiness. These virtues culminate in a Unity of Justice, which links Psyche with all else, for the three hierarchical classes of virtue and psyche are not self-sufficient – they are surrounded by the all-inclusive Law of Justice.
While the bright sky stood traditionally for life, Heraclitus identified the finest state of psychophysical reality with an intensely bright flash or ray of light. His awareness of sacred realization was intensely more present than that of later Gnostics who identified divine spirit with a “spark of the soul.” Heraclitus held to a feeling-identification of bodily being with Psyche, for as the Great Tradition’s yogis, saints, and sages have attested, divine realization is a matter of the whole psychophysical-heartful self. Dualistic separation of body and mind drains vital life and avoids essential nature intrinsic to heartful enlightenment.
Earthbound sacrifices such as those found in the ancient sects of Demeter and Dionysus, ofttimes associated with the fanaticism of intoxicated orgies, were criticized by Heraclitus for their foolish focus on passionately heated forms of fire. Pythagoreans, as revealed through Empedocles, developed these ritualized mysteries of earthbound fire, extending magic-and-myth-based forms of archaic spirituality into a rational age. Heraclitus stated that the way of Dionysus and the way of Hades were inextricably linked like life and death. However, for Heraclitus the true way of Dionysus was one of radiant ecstasy; and Hades’ afterlife domain was understood as being a soulful sphere very close to Zeus – as befits divine and supreme ruling brothers. Their Domains were connected in a way that integrated water and fire principles. Heraclitus’s cosmic paradoxical worldview might be compared to the modern cosmological theory that posits an infinite universe whose “edge” paradoxically wraps around into its center like a multidimensional Klein Bottle; or to the concept of a Black Hole galactic center reemerging as a Quasar at the edge of the Universe; or to the “dark void” emerging as “light matter” only to continuously return to the Void through and as a constant cosmic Flux of immeasurable instances.
Heraclitus suggested that human souls’ quality ranges from the moist aer of Hades to the dry pur (fire as aether/thunderbolt) of Zeus. Although existing in a hierarchy of immortally defined principles, the human soul is not marked by a cosmic duality of good and evil or by a duality of corporeal and incorporeal. Rather, as both matter and light, the One transmutes as the temporal world. Thus, Hades’ Realm Beyond Death – the Afterlife – is essentially One with the Realm of Life, epitomized by the sexual potency and profound enthusiasm of Dionysus. The Tower Triumph was originally called Arrow or Bolt because its sacrificial release transmutes passions into enlightenment, heat into brilliance. Building up of potency is necessary to attain blessed liberation in heavenly fire. This crucial “secret” to natural alchemy is highlighted in the following chapter.
Of import here is the observation that internal alchemy stands almost opposite to Neopythagorean theurgy in its methodology of spiritual realization. This was obscured by Neopythagoreans and Gnostics until Plotinus and following Hermeticists clarified precisely how the microcosm of contemplative reality develops in utter likeness to the macrocosm of Nature’s hierarchical emanation. New Age “Postmodern Pythagoreans” still view their Orphic-like focus on numerology and idealized harmony as the way of Apollonian purity beyond Dionysus’s brotherhood with wandering, warding, creatively destructive Hades and actual engagement with World transformation. They then secretly, in occult fashion, embrace cathartic psychodrama and apocalyptic tragedy with militant and fanatical focus. The outcome of this zealousness is frequently an unforgiving celibacy encased by dogmatic conceit.
Heraclitus, in keeping with the prevalent pre-Socratic hylozoic tradition (holding that all “matter has life,” which is literally the meaning of the term) described fire as the ever-living, composing the ordered world as it has been, now is, and will be manifested. Cycles of nature and soul are like tongues of flames: at times alight, at times extinguished, but always present as part of the everlasting Fire.
Again, it is important to note that divine fire was identified with aether, a purified form of fire experienced as the Bright. It was viewed as both primal constituent and directive force of the universe. Thus, Heraclitus’s statement, Thunderbolt steers the totality of things. This force, more intense than the Sun, became identified with the Way of Justice. May I be struck down by lightning is an invocation of divine justice that has been carried into modern parlance. The descending and ascending movement of Fire or Creative Change as it progressively transmutes into the more solidified states of Air, Water, and Earth can be observed through the relatively slow and gentle changes between earth and sea; the quick and stormy changes between sea and air (sea-spray, clouds, rain); and the intense, sudden changes between air and fire (exemplified in lightning).
Fire and air manifest sea and earth, which transmute back into air and fire. This alchemy of field-polarities does not presuppose fixed and immutable dualistic elements. Earth and water, water and air, air and fire all causally transmute one into the other as a continuum of flux, inclusive of the grossest and the subtlest. In Heraclitus’s worldview, the One becomes Zeus becomes Aether becomes Fire, the very principle of change, in its myriad of transformations. Lacking this insight, ignorant people suppose that the realms and elements are eternally separate. From this ignorance delusions arise; degrading, for instance, fire into the service of base passion, and refusing sensual compassion as the natural outcome of a lifelong, Towering sky-bound sacrifice to the Sun. Ignorant of Matter as Universal Flux, Pythagoreans relied upon magical techniques and mythical explanations to address the mixing of elements that were otherwise presumed eternally separate. To Heraclitus, realization of Unity, the primary insight marking real wisdom, was clearly lacking in such a fragmented cosmology.
Two hundred years later, Aristotle attempted to bridge Pythagoras’s and Heraclitus’s opposing worldviews. A propounder of material hierarchies in the natural world, the vitally essential insight of hierarchically nested, transmuting principles and processes was beyond Aristotle’s frame of consciousness. Therefore, he was compelled to address the cosmological conundrum of what cosmic substance or force could possibly keep eternally separate elements or principles, unable to interpenetrate or transmute into each other, together to form the universe. We will see in the following chapter that his unctuous water or oil of union was a materialistic solution that displaced Heraclitus’s transcendentally immanent Flux of inherent unity.
The metaphysical ramifications of Aristotle’s Platonic academy accepting without question this fundamental doctrine of material bondage were immense. It paved the way for Hellenistic conceptual development of Jesus as Christ: the one anointed (from Greek khristos, meaning “anointed”) with divine oil. This created a logical basis for theologians to believe in an abstract, unexplained, idealistic material force – Holy Spirit as Unctuous Water – that bonded two fundamentally separate domains or states of reality: divine heaven and mundane earth. Aristotelian physics and natural science were used to philosophically support a dualistic and scientifically unsupportable worldview.
All of the spiritualists, magicians, esotericists, philosophers, and cosmologists addressed in these chapters held this in common: knowledge of the world, both inner and outer, leads naturally to synthesis and then utilization of that knowledge, which inevitably equates into power. How information is gathered, knowledge synthesized then utilized, and power implemented varies dramatically in accordance to the principles that people consciously uphold. Will immortality be bestowed? How will the course of fate be influenced? Can the dead be resurrected? Is divine intervention prophesized? The medieval Tarot speaks to us even now in these terms.
The Principles of Immortality light a path to heartful identification of the Way. Through traversing and living that way, Questors may transcend cosmic cycles and realize Deathless Bliss. Through knowledge and cultivation of alchemy Questors can succeed in attaining this goal. Let us now turn a page into the history of alchemy, so that we might inquire into concepts of bondage, communion, and transmutation inevitably realized along the Liberated Way.
