Michael Tsarion:
The Inner Zodiac
“Man hath weav’d out a net and this net thrown, Upon the Heavens, and now they are his own “- John Donne (Anatomie of the World)
Tarot, Astrology, Kabala, and Numerology
are sister disciplines. They are not meant to be considered, studied, taught, or practiced separately, as is all too common today. Those who would practice esoterically must combine and use the four Arts together. However, the precise manner in which this is to be done has not been of central concern to the vast majority of exoteric practitioners, “New-Age” dabblers, or so-called “experts” of the ancient Hermetic metasciences.
The “glue,” so to speak, holding the four great Arts together has been ignored and forgotten. Fortunately it has been re-discovered and thoroughly explained in the Taroscopic Approach, which synthesizes the four great Arts, as the Tarot’s Major Arcana (by way of its imagery and numerology), instructs us to do. In this regard, my Taroscopic Approach signals a major revision of what is presently known about the Hermetic Arts of Divination.
“…astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity “- Carl Gustav Jung
“Whether the origin of the zodiac is Aryan or Egyptian, it is still of immense antiquity. Simplicius (sixth century AD) writes that he had always heard that the Egyptians had kept astronomical observations and records for at least 630,000 years…Diogenes Laertius carried back the astronomical calculations of the Egyptians to 48,863 years before Alexander the Great. Maritanus Capella corroborates the same by telling posterity that the Egyptians had secretly studied astronomy for over 40,000 years before they imparted their knowledge to the world”. - J. Lewis (Astronomy of the Ancients)
Of the many differences between Taroscopic and conventional astrology, that of greatest import concerns what I refer to as “The Inner Zodiac.” Contrary to what is believed by exoteric practitioners of the ancient “Round Art,” the zodiac is not merely an external phenomenon but is, rather, an inner psychic apparatus.
It is an inherent attribute of the individual and collective psyche, a genetic encodation, an eidetic image within our so-called “Race Memory,” and an archetype projected by consciousness onto the external world. It is, therefore, utter folly to presume the zodiac to be purely external in origin. Thinking of the zodiac in this way is comparable to thinking that trees stand without roots or that skyscrapers tower without subterranean foundations. It is this egregious error that handicaps practitioners, believers, and interested students, and that prevents the true and fascinating story of astrology from coming to light.
A man’s destiny, they say, is written in the stars. All he’ll ever do, all he’ll ever love, all he’ll ever be… If this be true, as I now suppose it must, only one question remains: who does the writing? - (Introduction: The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, Curtis Signature Collection)
The story of astrology is truly magical. Astrology deals with the “mind versus world” dichotomy. The study of astrology and its sister divination arts reveals the secrets concerning the umbilical connection between psychic and physical energy and between microcosm and macrocosm.
The Irish Druids, Egyptian Magi, Native American Shaman, and members of the Lunar and Stellar Cults of the world, understood the subtle relationship between noetic processes and physical events. Long before the advent of modern quantum science, they knew about the Implicate Order and that consciousness is capable of causing matter to alter its nature. As the supplanting Solar and Saturnian Cults rose to power, two not unconnected changes occurred which had negative consequences both on existence and the Hermetic Arts.
Firstly, in the astrological canon, the sun replaced the stars as the dominant principle; and, secondly, the ego became the center or prime executor of human waking consciousness. Consequently the antique precepts of astrological divination were ignored. Knowledge of the Inner Zodiac was lost and men began believing the preposterous fallacy that human consciousness and destiny are affected, in some undefined manner, by distant rocks floating in space.
This “magic rays” nonsense continues to be accepted. The prevalence of the fallacy ensures that scientifically-minded men of the world remain contemptuously dismissive of the sacred arts. They turn away from the arcane metasciences which might otherwise receive their positive attention.
The word zodiac (from the Greek zoon) means “living creatures” or “living beings,” emphasizing the fact that the true zodiac is within. If the signs of the zodiac are discovered to be out there in the heavens, they get there by way of human consciousness.
They get there by way of the psyche’s strange but scientifically acknowledged capacities of projection and inflation. In short, the round of the zodiac, the famous horoscope of twelve signs, exist above us as a omni-directional, cinema-like projection of the inherent twelve-fold plastic matrix that sub-divides the Collective Unconscious.
As the twelve disciples of Jesus represent aspects of his own consciousness, so do the twelve celestial signs of the zodiac represent the twelve archetypal facets of a man’s being. Hermetic Arts that are not founded upon this fundamental precept are not authentic arts. Astrology that is not based upon this fact is not true astrology.
“Know that the philosopher has power over the stars, and not the stars over him – Paracelsus It is an erroneous interpretation of astrology to opine that special forces emanate from the planets and the stars “- R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (Sacred Science)
“The collective unconscious appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious. We can see this most clearly if we look at the heavenly constellations, whose originally chaotic forms are organized through the projection of images. This explains the influence of the stars as asserted by astrologers. These influences are nothing but unconscious introspective perceptions of the collective unconscious” - Carl Jung
“As we all know science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the “gods,” as well as the curious psychological qualities of the Zodiac: a complete projected theory of human character “- Carl Jung
“The idea is to demonstrate that the zodiac is an archetype, not only within the collective unconscious, but within the fabric of reality itself…as a ground plan of creation. This archetype has not been invented. It exists, and knowledge of it has been developed in step with evolving human consciousness “- Denis Elwell
“It is beyond question that the great ancient design of the zodiac is a wondrously conceived graph aimed to depict the structure of the Logos, the pattern or creative evolution, the essential constitution of the universe and the course of the current of life in the cosmos, and by analogy in man the microcosmic replica of the macrocosm…Man…was to fashion his new body of spiritual glory “after the pattern of the heavens,” the frame of the heavenly or zodiacal man, the primal Adam “- Alvin Boyd Kuhn
Another important difference between the Taroscopic Approach and conventional Divination studies, concerns the intimate connections between the Astrology and Tarot. Indeed, we can go so far as to say that, in our opinion, the Tarot is the most important and precious of the Hermetic Arts.
This is because it alone makes use of a rich palate of archetypal images that resonate strongly with the deeper layers and dimensions of consciousness and which (like mandalas or yantras) serve as iconic guides along the “roads” of self-realization and personal empowerment. The true connections between the Tarot and the zodiac are fundamental to the Taroscopic Approach.
Sadly, like astrology, the Tarot is constantly misused. For centuries it has suffered desecration under the hands of cunning exotericists and “New-Age” charlatans.
“…the Alphabet of Thoth can be dimly traced in the modern Tarot which can be had at almost every bookseller in Paris. As for it being understood or utilized, the many fortune-tellers in Paris, who make a professional living by it, are sad specimens of failures of attempts at reading, let alone correctly interpreting the symbolism of the Tarot without a preliminary philosophical study of the Science” - Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
“The medieval packs are hopelessly corrupt or otherwise far from presenting the Ancient Truth of the Book in a coherent system or shape of lucid beauty” - Aleister Crowley (The Book of Thoth)
The sincere practitioner of the Divination Arts must realize that the adepts of the ancient world taught that a men are their own priests and women their own priestess. A study of ancient Hermetic metascience makes this fact abundantly clear. A study of the Alchemical Process, for example, reveals to the student just how important the “Individuation Process” was to the adepts of old. (We refer the reader to the works of Carl Gustav Jung, Erich Neumann, and Edward Edinger for more information on the true meaning of Alchemy.)
The ancient elders emphasized independent moral and spiritual development. The job of the mystery school adepts, and the purpose of the Hermetic Arts, was to lead men to psychic wholeness. The adepts knew that the fragmented mind and virtueless heart can not hope to initiate or sustain a healthy relationship with other human beings or with the world. On the contrary, such an individual will be a danger to himself and to everyone he encounters.
“Self-Realization is necessary before God-Realization “- Vedantic Motto
“Know Thyself” - (Ancient inscription at Delphi)
“He who knows himself knows god “– Clement of Alexandria
“When two plus two equal one,” wrote the Pythagoreans, then will the Christ take birth within. Now, interestingly, the first card of the Tarot’s Major Arcana, entitled The Magician, happens to depict a Hermetic adept or initiator in the very process of uniting Fourness into Oneness. The Four are represented by a Wand, a Cup, a Sword, and a Disk, which sit upon his strange three-legged table.
These objects represent the four elements (Fire, Water, Air, and Earth), the four suits of the Tarot, and the four modalities of consciousness (Intellect, Emotion, Sensation, and Intuition). They also represent the four sister Divination disciplines which also require unification. In fact, we may wonder how consciousness could possibly experience unity if the tools for the job are not first unified.
“When thou hast made the quadrangle round, Then is all the secret found” – George Ripley (Alchemist, 1490)
“Through circumrotation, or a circular philosophical revolving of the quaternity, it is brought back to the highest and purest simplicity of the monad. Out of the gross and impure One there cometh an exceeding pure and subtile Monad ” - Heinrich Khunrath (Alchemist, 1597)
“…the Kabalists hold that these four principles penetrate and create everything. Therefore, when the man finds these four principles in things and phenomena of quite different categories (where before he had not seen similarity), he begins to see analogy between these phenomena. And, gradually, he becomes convinced that the whole world is built according to one and the same law, on one and the same plan.
The richness and growth of his intellect consists in the widening of his faculty for finding analogies. Therefore the study of the law of the four letters, or the name of Jehovah presents a powerful means for widening consciousness ” - P. D. Ouspensky
A look at the various cards of the Tarot captivates us and leads us to investigate its mysteries. And the Tarot has many mysteries, not least its true connection to Astrology and Kabala. The imagery of the so-called Major Arcana has esoteric correspondences to the Egyptian, Hebrew, Irish, and English magical alphabets, to the Kabalistic Tree of Life, the Chakra System, the Alchemical process, the so-called “Emerald Tablets of Hermes,” to sacred Numerology (Pythagorean and other), the physical orbit and movement of the luminaries and planets, the astrological phenomenon known as the “Precession of the Equinoxes,” the process of Human Individuation, the yearly maturation of the human-being, the Personality Types, the zodiac, the sequential movement of the historical centuries (1st – 21st), the Periodic Table of Elements, and several other esoteric and exoteric phenomena. It without good reason that the sages of old referred to the Tarot as the Book of Life.
In fact, when students of Alchemy are pontificating about the mysterious “Emerald Tablets of Hermes,” they fail to realize that they are referring to the seventy-eight cards of the Tarot.
“The antiquity of this book is lost in the night of time…And goes back to an epoch long before Moses…It was written upon detached leaves, which at the first were of fine gold and precious metals…It is symbolical, and its combinations adapt themselves to all the wonders of the Spirit. Altered by its passage across the Ages, it is nevertheless preserved – thanks to the ignorance of the curious ” - Eliphas Levi
“As an erudite Kabalistic book, all combinations of which reveal the harmonies preexisting between signs, letters and numbers, the practical value of the Tarot is truly and above all marvelous. A prisoner devoid of books, had he only a Tarot of which he knew how to make use, could in a few years acquire a universal science, and converse with an unequalled doctrine and inexhaustible eloquence “- ibid
“The Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few of truths embedded in the consciousness of all “- A. E. Waite (The Key to the Tarot, Part II)
The Tarot can be considered to be one chapter, so to speak, of the greater Book of Symbolism. Its seventy-eight enigmatic pages of composite images, together with their geometrical, numerological, sabean, and Astro-Theological motifs, assist the adept to open direct access to his inner wisdom body, to the “Living Oracle” housed within his own consciousness.
The means of entering into dialogue with this Living Oracle involves the correct usage of, and meditation upon, iconic images such as those of the esoteric Tarot. The images seen on the Major Arcana cards, in particular, are figurative representations of numinous archetypal concepts which provide the active link between man and world, consciousness and matter, microcosm and macrocosm.
As the atom is to matter, so are the archetypes to consciousness. And archetypes, as the Alchemists of old understood, prefer to express themselves via images, colors, numbers, geometric shapes, and in musical harmonics and arrangements. This fact was eventually re-discovered and reiterated by psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, and has been confirmed more recently by investigators and experts such as Joseph Campbell and Leonard Schlain.
“True symbolism depends on the fact that things, which may differ from one another in time, space, material nature, and many other limitative characteristics, can possess and exhibit the same essential quality” - Titus Burckhardt (Alchemy)
It is the so-called “right-hemisphere” of the brain that possesses the ancestral program, so to speak, to decode and conduct these archetypal ciphers and transmit the subsequent gnosis, with its mysterious qualities, to the rest of consciousness for psychic and practical application. Unlike pedantic tutoring and instruction, the archetypes are personalized. They do not relate to or communicate with any two people in the same way.
Each “stereotype” (individual) is formed and shaped differently and is a unique expression of the archetypal matrix. It is this uniqueness that our modern technocratic world seeks to erase. For all the erasure of ritual, in our present anti-culture, the fact remains that we each have a different relationship with the color green than we do with the color red. We each have a different relationship to the air than we do with the fire.
Contrary to what is commonly believed, wisdom is not merely knowledge. And we are not automatically distinguished by wisdom after a long life of sundry experiences. Experience merely affords us the ability to finally realize the depth of our folly, which is a great step for most of us.
True wisdom, however, is not merely the realization of our errors. It is a quality that comes when our lives are in synch with the ever-flowing, nameless, ambient force that is without beginning or end, center or circumference, limit or boundary, and that is rooted in our innermost core, in a similar way as the roots of great oaks are in the earth.
The first step toward a relationship with wisdom is, as the Oracle said: Gnothi Seauthon, that is, to “Know Thyself.” And the first stage toward this state involves work with the High Arts of Hermetic Divination. If these Arts were good enough for the builders of pyramids, the masters of the High Renaissance, then they are certainly good enough for the educated and open-minded men of today.
“Each card is, in a sense, a living being and its relation with its neighbors are what one might call diplomatic. It is for the student to build these living stones into his living temple “- Aleister Crowley (The Book of Thoth)
Unfortunately, due to generations of indoctrination and persecution, the inhabitants of the western world have been long suffering from “symbol illiteracy.” Communication in words, we have to understand, cannot lead us anywhere spiritually. Words are, phylogenetically, a very recent form of communication. Moreover, it is only the minutest part of consciousness that expresses itself through verbal language.
It has been recently discovered that the human brain contains over 240,000 neural threads. That is enough to stretch from Earth to the Moon. On each micro-meter of these threads the data is stored as pictograms, composite images, and not as words. With the advent of verbal and written communication, humankind experienced a cognitive shift from the polyphrenic, holarchic mind to the monophrenic and hierarchic state known today.
The mythographers behind the Judeo-Christian paradigm saw to it that the Word of God replaced the more antique image of god. They did this by placing the prohibition against “graven images” in the Mosaic Commandments. It is interesting that this prohibition was inserted before the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”
“Jewish law forbids the making of any graven images of the kind. Even the Jews of the present time will not permit any sculptured figures to be set up as monuments “. – James Hewitt Brown (Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy)
What are graven images? They are pictures. They are iconic expressions of the gods or, more correctly, of the archetypes. Ireland, Egypt, and India were covered with such images, and all ancient cultures understood that the mother-tongue of the spirit, so to speak, was symbolism. They also understood that the night sky was the tablet upon which the “gods” communicated to the initiated ones who knew how to correctly interpret what was being transmitted.
“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years “- (Genesis 1:14)
In order for the Solar Cult to successfully supersede and eradicate the ecocentric, matrifocal Stellar and Lunar Cults, there had to be an all-out prohibition against iconic images and to the modality of cognition they inculcated. Although the overt agenda was suppression, the covert idea was to appropriate the symbolic language of the previous Cults.
The churchmen wished to co-opt their gnosis and weave it into their own skewed, nature-denying religion. Without this deliberate theft of knowledge from previous mystery school traditions, it is doubtful whether Judeo-Christianity would have endured or been accepted by the masses of Europe.
“The Christian church is an encyclopedia of prehistoric cults” - Fredrick Nietzsche
The Old Testament, the tome of the patristic Saturnian and Solar Cults, is believed to have been based on the Torah. What is not commonly known or readily admitted, however, is that the Jewish Torah is itself based upon the Tarot. In fact, these words Torah and Tarot come from the same Egyptian root.
They both mean “way” or “law,” and refer to one of the earliest and most revered goddesses. Long before Isis, Hathor, or Mary, the original mother goddess of the Egyptians was called Ta’urt or Tar’ut. One of her main symbols was the hippopotamus of the Nile. The masculine gods (Atum, Ptah, Osiris, Anubis, Thoth, Amen Ra, etc) were considered her children.
Even the ruling pharaoh was her terrestrial emissary. As time went by, this primordial goddess became known by a plethora of other titles and names. She became known as Apt, Ma’at, Isis, Hathor, Sophia, Demeter, Diana, and Hera, etc. We find her in the Christian canon as Mary the Madonna. However, the original Madonna, with her babe in her arms, depicted in the most ancient murals and zodiacs, was the heavenly Ta’urt.
As said, the Tarot was named after the ancient stellar goddess Ta’urt. Tarot Arcanum II, entitled The High Priestess, confirms this in an iconic manner. The Tarot was considered the goddesses “Book of Life.” It was written not in words but in images. It was this kind of hieratic, ideographic testament which the orthodox religions (the institutions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) were committed to plagiarize, cannibalize, suppress, and subsequently eradicate. The modern religions are founded upon the ruins of an ancient canon that once served as the greatest possible gospel, the holiest possible testament to the spiritual bond between man and nature.
“You shalt not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is under the water of the earth “- (Exodus 20:4)
Clearly, the second Mosaic Commandment was concocted and added to the Judaic tradition in order to ensure that men ceased composing symbolically rich images. The Solar Cult priesthoods wanted there to be no illustrations, no colorful drawings, and no artwork.
As far as we can tell, there had never before existed a people with this kind of resistance against representative art. We would do well to inquire why a prohibition against imagery turns up as the second most important rule for righteous living and, as we mentioned above, before the prohibition against killing?
“…According to the Ten Commandments, Art, therefore, is more dangerous than murder “- Leonard Schlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess)
The suppression of symbolic literacy by the elites of the ancient Solar Cult was an essential precursor to their control of thought and monopolization of belief. It was at this point that mankind not only lost connection with the flora and fauna, but with the inner “Wisdom Body.” The Bible and Torah communicate through words, the Tarot through images.
The words of the Bible and the Torah, as well as of other texts considered sacred, have caused humankind to endure at least 2,000 years of nonstop bloodshed. Words are always open to misinterpretation. Man is condemned to misunderstand what he is told or what he reads. Man’s tongue has so often proven to be his worst enemy. Man’s books have often been the source of so much conflict.
“By the invincible power of traditional subservience, the inertia of the general mind, enhanced by the gullibility of ignorance, the masses have slipped under the force of a victimization that is both pitiable and tragic…Religious thought has detached itself from nature and searches in the illimitable areas of feeling, thought, and wonder for what understanding these may yield it…
Religion is not the realm of knowledge, or even of thought, but purely of belief, as for the masses…All this chaos in the religious area was attended, accentuated, if not largely inspired by, one of the most staggering phenomena in the history of the race. This was – and is – the presence, power, and influence of – a book! “- Alvin Boyd Kuhn (The Ultimate Canon of Knowledge)
Man gives meaning to his world. For anything to make sense to us, we first have to have sense. We first have to have a mind that interprets correctly. Such a mind must be intelligent, flexible and, above, all hygienic. A toxic consciousness will, like an ignorant brain, misinterpret and misapply what it accepts or learns.
Unfortunately, thinking that we have learned something important does not mean we have learned something important. Thinking we have true understanding does not necessarily mean we actually have true understanding. If only life were so simple and straightforward. In fact, a thing can have a radically different meaning to different people. It all depends on cultural background, social conditioning, level of acculturation, personal intelligence, and capacity for interpretation.
In short, words are important because they convey images. This sounds so obvious that we might not first conceive of the importance of the connection between words and images. The greatest words, those written by the poets, are “great” because of their capacity to convey images. We are not, therefore, moved by words as much as we are moved by images that spoken words give rise to. And the images that move us are conjured within our own consciousness. Words are merely carriers of images. Sadly, as experience shows, they are more often than not imperfect carriers.
A man seeks to give expression to his mental images. When he speaks he does so because he is expressing something visualized inwardly. How often have we said or heard a phrase such as: “If I could only convey or explain what I see, then you would understand?” Or how often do we say or hear: “I’ll see what I can do?” When complications arise, and when conflicts occur, it is not so much over the images we have as it is over the words we say.
Conflict with others occurs not due to mental content but because of what we say and how we say it. Conflict occurs due to flawed communication. Images are essentially non-violent. Moreover, words are of the left-brain. When we speak to someone, they are not hearing us with the whole of their mind. And when someone speaks to us, our defenses are up. We too only hear the speaker with one small part of our brain. This is why we tend to be more receptive and attentive to those we know and care for and skeptical and inattentive to those we do not know or care for. Fundamentally, images do not normally foster gross misinterpretation or zealotry. They are synthetic, mutable, and anomalous.
They can lead to words and speech but just as easily to silence and contemplation. They are crypt-aesthetic and welcome multiple interpretations. Archetypal images, such as are found in great art, Alchemy, Tarot, or in Yantras and Mandalas, etc, lead the mind beyond the subject versus object dichotomy to the state of kataphatic knowledge.
This is where the knower and the known do not interact as polarized entities. When a mantic image or geometric shape is deeply contemplated, it has the ability to transmute consciousness from the “hylic” (or base) level to the “phosphoric” (or spiritual) level. It opens the consciousness to ancestral wisdom. This explains the Egyptian reliance on hierograms, the Vedic sages’ preference for mandalas and yantras, the Druidic oral tradition, and the design of the Hermetic Tarot.
“The man who understands a symbol not only opens himself to the objective world but at the same time succeeds in emerging from his personal situation and reaching a comprehension of the universal…thanks to the symbol, the individual experience is “awoken” and transmuted into a spiritual act “- Mircea Eliade
The symbolically illiterate man is self-confined to mentation of the hyper-differentiated neo-cortex and “left brain.” He is cut off from his unconscious and does not communicate with the deeper dimensions of his own being. This leaves him psychically weak. He is vulnerable to attack from the world he secretly fears. He is perpetually victimized by what other people say and do.
His mental energy is restricted to the maintenance of his narcissistic needs and wants. Decisions and choices are made pragmatically and without deep insight. His view of his own past is unrealistic and edited, and his vision of his future is equally limited and myopic. In matters of importance the symbolically illiterate man tends to rely on external authorities to tell him what is right and wrong. Ultimately, he distrusts his own mental processes and compensates for his inner uncertainty by arrogant displays of intellectual prowess. In most cases, such a man, for all his hubris, holds and expresses few opinions that fly in the face of convention.
Additionally, the symbolically illiterate human being is wide open to attack from the many pernicious and perverse subliminal messages that subvert reason and excite primitive instincts. The habitual influx of perverse content assaults man’s emotional well being and causes serious psychic damage. While under this kind of assault, a man is even less likely to find his true life purpose.
On the contrary, he is, more often than not, condemned to lived as an anxious and spiritually vacant conformist. In his malaise, such a man is wont to become self-destructive. He may choose to react against his pitiful existential condition in dysfunctional and antisocial ways. He may blame god or himself. He may strike out violently at the system and at other people who appear threatening or more spiritually centered. He may commit slow suicide through compulsive and addictive behavior, or continue to exist merely as a confused and misguided shadow of his true self.
The force man refers to as “god” exists within consciousness. It is, so to speak, the river upon which the fragile boat of consciousness floats. That great river has its own mysterious and unknowable flow and its own enigmatic voice. What it tells to one man is not the same as it tells to another. It speaks to each of us in a unique manner. The voice man thinks he hears and which he has long taken for a guide is merely the voice of his own ego. It is not the ancestral voice of his spirit.
Modern man’s failure to attune to the true inner voice ensures that he experiences a banal inauthentic life full of competitiveness, envy, guilt, sorrow, and waste. Clinging to the socially-vetted roles and to the plethora of ready-made escapes from them, modern man falls victim of what critic Alexis de Tocqueville called the “tyranny of the masses.” Image-starved, he seeks to alleviate his systemic impoverishment in a compulsive manner via addiction to television, video games, sports, pornography, advertisements, drugs, and virtual realities, etc. However, these bromides and panaceas provide only temporary relief. They may satisfy the wish-fulfillments of the lower man but can never wholly fill his existential void. They certainly cannot spiritually empower him or lead to wisdom. Fortunately, there are remedies for this modern existential condition.
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Through the practice of the Divination Arts we open dialogue with the inner Wisdom Body, the “Living Oracle.” The Divination Arts are our Western Magical Tradition. They bring magic back into our lives. They inspire, unveil, and empower. The student who learns how to use them in unison discovers their true power and magnificence.
In a modern context, we can use the cards of the Tarot (or an astrological chart) to help us demarcate the stages of the great “Rites of Passage” that occur throughout our lives. There are many such rites and they cannot be avoided. They can be attended by periods of intense euphoria and considered peak-experiences. However, they can also be times of enormous emotional and spiritual challenge, when we are confronted by the resistance of authority figures or strange inner compulsions that disturb our equipoise and confuse our domestic and social interactions.
The obvious Rites of Passage have been recognized by the mainstream psychologists and philosophers for some time now. They may include: birth, entrance to school, puberty, leaving school, the first sexual experience, the first job, marriage, giving birth, loss of a parent (or similar significant trauma), the astrological “Saturn Return,” divorce, menopause, retirement, and death. There are many others, such as the moments of betrayal, or punishment for misdeeds, etc, not to mention the various euphoric experiences of a creative, religious, or mystical nature.
Philosophically speaking, the Rites of Passage exist as unavoidable phases or stages of maturation of, and for, the ego. They are periods when the “horizontal” axis of our ego-life (inauthentic existence) crosses the “vertical” axis of Self-hood (authentic existence).
Each person’s ego-life has its own particular rhythm, movement, and duration. Therefore, no two people experience the Rites in the same way. The nature of a person’s ego and the form the rites will take in one’s life are revealed within one’s Divination Chart. Through the arts of Tarot and Astrology we receive invaluable instruction as to the kinds of experiences we will have when passing through these transformative phases.
The insight that we glean from our Chart enable us to make the best of what we experience. We get a clearer understanding of what to expect and what the lessons will be. We get to understand why the rites exist and what will be expected of us as we undergo these maturation periods. The indifferent man who cares nothing for such empowerment does not pass successfully through the Rites of Passage. He does not mature or evolve and may even give way to fear and addiction in order to avoid purifying his psyche and emotional constitution.
The indifferent man remains fixed on the hylic (base) level. The magic of life passes him by. The personality of a person is connected to the fate experienced. As the Greek philosophers wrote: A man’s character is his fate. It follows, then, that the more unique a person’s character the more unique their Individuation Process will be and the more distinctive the Rites of Passage leading to it.
“The Tarot contains indeed the mystery of all such transmutations of personages into sidereal bodies and vice versa. The “Wheel of Enoch” is and archaic invention, the most ancient of all, for it is found in China. Eliphas Levi says there was not a nation but had it, its real meaning being preserved in the greatest secrecy. It is a universal heirloom” - Madame Helena Blavatsky
The Process of Individuation was known, under other names, to the Alchemists and mystics of old. They described the process, figuratively, as the “Quartering” or as “Quaternity.” It is the “Squaring of the Circle” of the Sacred Geometrists, the “Four Fold-Vision of God” of the Sophics, and the “Crucifixion” on Golgotha (“Skull Hill”) to Gnostic Christians and Druids. It was cryptically referenced in by Shamans, Brahmins, and Hopis, and every enlightened civilization on the earth who maintained a strict reverence to the rites and rituals associated with biological and psychological maturation.
Those who have seen fit to ignore, marginalize, denigrate, and misinterpret the Shamanic Way, and who have replaced it with anti-human ideologies, are responsible for undermining the inner constitution of mankind and for the ecocide which inwardly dirempt men frequently commit. The man whose inner nature is in tatters and whose emotions are mutilated is unlikely to act as the reverently toward the natural world he physically sees around him. To such a man the natural world is perceived as a threat. The virtue-less and psychopathic man is convinced that nature, which nature works against his best interests, is to be overcome and if necessary destroyed.
The suppression and negation of man’s instinctual nature and the lack of acknowledgment of the Rites of Passage have thrust mankind toward the precipice of psychosis and oblivion. As a result of the subtle artifice of those who prefer to have man exist as an narcissistic, addicted, dilemma-ridden servant, we now have no problem finding millions of fear-ridden people prostrating their dignity and sanity before the sterile religions which, like dead suns in the cold wastes of space, offer neither light nor warmth. The warnings of the true servants of the Holy Spirit (Higher Self) have largely gone unheeded:
“Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, But not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn; The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain, Unless within thyself it be set up again “- Angelus Silesius
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You close the Kingdom of Heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to” - (Matthew 23)
“The Imitatio Christi will forever have this disadvantage: we worship a man as a divine model, embodying the deepest meaning of life, and then out of sheer imitation we forget to make real the profound meaning present in ourselves” – Carl Gustav Jung
“According to Bishop Epiphanius, the Krist is the spiritual self within each person “- Tony Bushby (The Bible Fraud)
“The Egyptians had no vicarious atonement, no imputed righteousness, no second-hand salvation. No initiate in the Osirian mysteries could possibly have rested his hope of reaching heaven on the Galilean line of glory. His was the more crucial way of Amenta…to tread with the guidance of the word, that step by step and act by act he must himself make true “- Gerald Massey (Ancient Egypt – Light of the World)
“The Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans, had no word in their language for sin: the Israelites introduced both the word and the concept into the stream of Western civilization and by doing so diverted it” - Leonard Schlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess)
For the mundane and pragmatic “Everyman” the various Rites of Passage are experienced as uncomfortable and even alarming deviations from the clear sunny horizons which are the destinations of the amped up ego-drives.
They are considered obscene interruptions in the routine, or as punctures in the bubble of normality which is anything but. Due to these detours and times when the wires become crossed and frazzled we can find ourselves doing very strange things. The rules of the game evaporate or even appear grotesque during such traversals and our experiences from the past, like the advice of others, become as useful as sign-posts in a ghost town.
The ultimate objective of any Rite of Passage is to provide us with the opportunity to quantum-leap from the “horizontal” sphere of existence to the “vertical,” that is, to change the road we are on and get back into synch with our higher calling. In mystical terms, we get a chance to make a proactive shift from our Karmic to our Dharmic life, from monophrenic to polyphrenic thinking, and from lower chakra to higher chakra drives. When we are ruled by Karma, ignorance is king and both death and the devil are constant companions.
It matters little whether we consider our adversary to be the projection of collective ignorance or a red devil with two horns and a pitchfork. In the dark of the karmic life such matters are hardly a major priority. In the karmic life, as most can attest, there is scant protection against the storms of fate and the only reason why life carries on is that we learn train ourselves to sit quiet and accept the “rights” and “privileges” that our fellow inmates, like “Olivers” with bowl, receive.
When we are living our Dharma our lives are mutable, magical, and real. Bad things, so to speak, may still happen to us and we will still know adversity. However, our attitude toward the vagaries of life is not that of the “karmic man.” Our perspective and comprehension of what transpires is radically more mature and insightful. We are more than survivors; we are Creators. We operate in the world as our own priests or priestesses, reinventing ourselves daily. We become our own teachers and are not dependent on the fragmentary knowledge provided by others.
Our rapport with life, with god, with nature, with others, and primarily with ourselves, is radically deeper and more meaningful than others can ever guess. In order to actualize our Dharmic Life we will first have to endure many personal sacrifices. Major areas of our lives will undergo significant deconstruction and we will have to learn the difference between egotism and egocentricity, liberty and freedom, sanity and insanity, wisdom and folly.
As Sophocles wrote: “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.”
The average Everyman may experience approximately seven major Rites of Passage during their lives. The awakened person can have more, while the symbolically literate and self-realized person’s life may be considered one continuous Rite of Passage. The round of the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana demarcate and illustrate the strange and mythic journey of these particular types. To understand what it would be like to live as such a person would be to know and feel what the Van Goghs, Dalis, and Chopins of the world knew and felt, and what the Zambezi river “feels” as it curves over the precipice of Victoria Falls, plummeting and exploding into the deep, dark, churning basalt basins below. The men and women we tend to refer to by terms such as “genius” or “eccentric” are those who know very little of the horizontal mode of life. In the words of master musician Andres Segovia, their lives are an “ascending line” along which none but they can travel.
“We don’t receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us “– Marcel Proust
“No matter to what depths I plumb, I always end with my wings beating steadily upwards toward the sun” - Aleister Crowley
Regardless of the nature or intensity of the Rites of Passage we are not condemned to go through them blindly and apprehensively. The four great Arts of Divination, when correctly applied, provide us with the pertinent information we need to predict and comprehend the variables, intensity, and impact of what we will inevitably experience. Our own responses and reactions can be foretold and, as a result of the insight afforded us, we can minimize the chance for wrong decisions and choices.
By way of the Tarot, and its sister Arts, we can receive clear information regarding the events, experiences, opportunities, relationships, obstacles, challenges, and warnings about to come our way before and during the Rites of Passage, These major turning points of life come and pass quickly and, once gone, they never return again. Life is, after all, like an invisible labyrinth in which it is very easy to get lost. It is imperative, therefore, that like Theseus we too have an “Ariadne’s Thread” to orient us during the darker moments and to guide us to our destination.
When correctly constructed and interpreted, our Tarot Spread, or Astrology or Numerology Chart, becomes our needed compass leading us safely through the shallows and depths of the omnidirectional ocean of life. After all, as already stated, the zodiac and the chart are actually extensions of our inner consciousness. The Chart is the record of the advice we are being given by our own higher Guides.
.”..perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself “- Plato
The Divination Arts, of Astrology, Tarot, Kabala, and Numerology are the only diagnostic tools to provide coherent and invaluable insight into the Rites of Passages that we each will experience. They were in the world aeons before high-priced psychologists and counselors who are good at the “patch-up” but are not much involved in the prevention aspects. These exoteric approaches can never replace the holistic Divination Arts.
In fact, exoteric scholars, in order to bolster their own artifices, continually avail themselves of esoteric wisdom that comes from the arcane canon. It is an accepted fact, for instance, that psychologist Carl Jung had a life-long interest in alchemy and astrology. And in truth, both he and his contemporaries (Freud, Adler, and Reich, and others) merely rediscovered the principles and archetypes that the Alchemists, diviners, and metaphysicians had employed for millennia. Freud and Jung merely utilized the language of science to elucidate the timeless principles they were researching.
Learning how to create and interpret one’s own Tarot spread, or one’s astrological chart, is both enjoyable and empowering. Reading for others is also one of the best ways to really serve humanity. Chart reading requires logic but also intuition and empathy. The Arts used are merely instruments which reveal the inner anatomy of a client’s psyche. They reveal what may lie hidden from their conscious minds.
The Tarot, specifically, can be thought of as a cathedral. The individual cards are like the cathedral’s beautiful stained-glass windows; and the spreads are the “light” which passes, with varied intensities, into and through these windows. The adept reader merely interprets these nuances and relates to the client what their own source is seeking to reveal. From the most mundane domestic issues to the great questions of destiny the Divination Arts provide our answers and guidance.
“Psychology text books of future generations will look back on the modern psychologists working without the aid of astrology as being like the medieval astronomers working without the aid of the telescope” - Richard Tarnas Phd
Simply put, our lives can be compared to a great and complex jig-saw puzzle. We are each committed to put the myriad pieces together and finish the picture. However, with any real puzzle we get, if we choose, to first see the picture on the “lid of the box” before we begin. Seeing the overall picture is essential if we are to be fluent and expert at what we are doing. It is this “glimpse” of the cover of our life-puzzle that the Tarot and the other three Divination Arts provide.
From the intelligence they avail us, we operate more intelligently, and are masters rather than victims in this vast and complex game of life. If we are given even a second’s glimpse of the cover our hands will move faster and we will progress with confidence in the right direction. Every day we examine ourselves in a mirror so that we are physically presentable and dignified to the world.
The time has come for us to use the Arts of Divination in the same manner, as mirrors of the soul, so that it can be presented to the world unfettered and resplendent, free, joyous, and wise; proving that the stars are not only confined to the heavens above but are shining within us with a luminosity that no amount of ignorance, deceit, or sorrow can blight or extinguish.
“…Each grain of sand every stone on the land, each rock and each hill, each fountain and rill, each herb and each tree, mountain, hill, earth and sea, cloud, meteor and star, are Men seen afar “- William Blake
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With deep gratitude and respect for his great body of research: © 2006 Michael Tsarion: http://www.taroscopes.com
