Читать книгу The Spirit of the Tarot - Claudine Aegerter - Страница 20

At The Empress the first part of the cycle is complete, for the first three cards together form the Trinity. She is the third principle of Active Intel ligence that enables the work of Spirit to be expressed in matter though the universal mind. She is winged; her halo of stars speaks of unconditional love and purified matter, for she is Mary the universal mother. Her blue coat tells us that she is focussed on infinity, which she brings down into the world of matter. Her left foot, resting on the inverted crescent moon, reminds us not to be taken in by the illusion and drama of everyday life. She is the star of love and light that we must find in ourselves, to enable us to transform the dark shadows within.

The world we live in is not real, but virtual. It is entirely created by the interpretation that our minds give to it. The beauty of the greater plan is that each mind is unique and therefore the creation is being seen from as many perspectives as is possible. That is why we have to have a great respect for everybody’s point of view, because all those combined views make up the level of perception that the God we live in is at, as it looks at itself. They are all God’s point of view even if they are the opposite of ours.

We are all little points of light or stars. The star symbolises spir ituality in the world of virtuality and the higher mind in the Soul. The Star we are is the original forgotten sound which can guide us to our original self. Sound is the medium between concept and creation and it has the same role as the Soul. It is forgotten because it is inaudible and invisible and the first manifestation of it was too bright, so it is hidden in the densest place. The sound is inaudible because we haven’t reached the right level of consciousness to be able to hear it. We take a name (which is sound) to focus our mind, as we listen for that forgotten sound, which is the first manifesta tion of the creative energy coming into the time and space of the Solar System.

We have to sense the Soul of the Mary of nature to decipher the sound that we are seeking, because all manifestation ended up in a crystallised form, such as an animal or plant, which then can be named. Everything vibrates to a sound and then the matter that is subsequently created is the final destination of that sound at the time. As we re-incarnate with the guidance of our inner light, the crystal lisation of our name becomes more and more invisible as we develop the understanding of the symbol that we perceive, then we can reflect it into our etheric mirror. We know that the impulse from the Great Architect comes from within the sound, so the sound is only the result of the movement of the impulse, re-organising the original chaotic sound into crystallised units. That first point of manifestation break ing through from the spiritual will into space, was the forgotten name of God and our name was part of it. This is the secret that all the tra ditions are helping us to bring back, because it is the origin or source of everything on Earth. Our original name is part of that first sound, which is made of light. The Star is a virtual mirror of the brighter self. The brighter we become the more cosmic we are. Finding the sound in the present automatically mirrors back the Star.

In Number 1 we saw that The Magician is truly a juggler or Baton-holder, who holds the baton to direct energy and learn to achieve another level of understanding. This means that eventually he will allow the divine energy that flows through him to be in charge. If he thinks he is in charge he’s playing at being God, but by allowing that flow, understanding the world that is around him and know ing what his needs are, he won’t fall into any illusion. He is learn ing non-action, but at the same time he has to be very active, for if he doesn’t act he will never understand what non-action is. When people are using their instrument very intensively they eventually let things happen through them. For example if we sing a lot, even tually it isn’t us singing but the Spirit of singing coming through us; we are just letting it happen.

Figure 1. Spiral. Movement of Spirit into the space of the universal egg.

The Magician comes in and is faced straight away with that moving spiral. He is going to have to go through many rounds of it before he will achieve higher initiation. The first thing that he has to do is to open the door to wisdom. This is not human or shamanic wisdom, but divine wisdom represented by The High Priestess. She is not funny and she is not going to say, “I will touch your cheek with a feather and make it better”, rather she will stare at your cheek and it will hurt even more. This wisdom is not subject to the laws we know of and it doesn’t come through recognition, for the divine wisdom is beyond that. It is the veil that we need to come through if we are going to have a chance to follow our cosmic star.

We are looking here at the great energetic work of alchemy, which is about being able to internalise the whole understanding, then transmute the water of the emotional body into love and wisdom. It is an energetic work and we only truly exteriorise and emanate the star we are by internalising and rendering ourselves alchemical.

The initiate comes back carrying an awful lot of knowledge; he knows he can be a magician but he is aware that there is a lot to do to avoid the pitfalls. At this point a lot of people will withdraw; a few others will jump in before they are ready and what they will find is awesome to them and might blow their minds away, because they haven’t done much of that deep internal work. Those that are ready have to start doing the inner work before the veil is lifted. The second card, The High Priestess, is the great door to higher con sciousness and is the alpha omega of all there is. The initiate has to have enough humility to be ready to come in front of The High Priestess, for she is the aim of the whole of the Tarot deck. This aim is to acquire divine wisdom and fuse with the divine mind. The rest of the major Arcana tell us about all the energetic trials we have to go through to achieve the initiation. It is a transforming journey. So every time this break through is not achieved we cannot go onto the next stage. It is not a drama or a test, it is just an energetic process that we have to endure and accept.

It is a question of choice. We all have heavy luggage and if we keep on with the drama we know by playing the same old games, it is because we want to. When we make the choice to serve ourselves, we are denying our Star and denying God, so making the load even heavier for ourselves and everyone else. The minute we make a true choice of affirmation to look up or away from whatever game we are playing, it is instant and we need not play that game again. It is not controlling, hiding, or covering up any more, because we can now see that the game is only a habit we can remove. The virtual reality we live in can be dispelled, but if our true self loves it better we can choose to go back into it. Any tenuous, tiny particle of an emotional link that we attach onto the game makes us stay in it. It is not about love/hate; it is not being a victim, or being weak; neither is it saying “It is to do with my childhood” or “It is past-life”. It is none of those, it is a question of what we want to love; either an impersonal God, or a self-centred little god of personality. Both are still God, so nobody punishes or judges, we just have to recognise which one we love the best.

If we go into the practice of affirmation in order to drop some negative emotional mindset and later find we haven’t dropped it, we need to see whether we are using the name of truth as a witness to feed and reinforce our malaise. If we love drama best and love the survival nature of God better than the uplifting part, we might be using the power of the light to further and feed our infant drama even more. If we realise that this is what we are doing, we need to stop it straight away for this is the path of self-destruction, which can drag others down with its magnetic powers. There is nothing cleverer than a twisted intellect that feeds the ‘black dog of hell’ or the ‘the dweller the threshold’. This is Active Intelligence that hasn’t recognised its divinity and thinks it is the only God, in fact it is just one aspect of the divinity wanting to remain in charge of everything. This is when the human being is encouraged by the emotional game that the personality is using, which involves being clever in order to resist the Soul’s message. Most personalities resist the break through to the Soul, through the belief that they are masters of their own lives. They think that if they don’t persist in this affirmation, they will be martyrs or victims again and never be themselves. This is the cleverest trick in the book of affirmation! It re-enforces the walls of separation so that the inner light is never seen amongst the glitzy light of glamour.

It is so important that we drop the covering up and the games we play, so as to involve deep into the inner light. The little black dog of hell really only wants one thing, which is to obey a master, so let it be the light that it obeys! The love-hate of the drama is very strong and we are all in it. Any tiny critical little thought we have about ourselves, or about other people is of the drama nature; all these are manifestations of the little black dog of hell! If we think we are too fat or to thin for instance, we have the capability of either doing some thing about it, or just knowing why and liking the way we are at the time. We need to de-focus the mind from the emotional drama that wants the game of feeling bad or guilty; this drama takes the mind away from the light. If we bring the light in to look at the size of our bellies that is quite funny, but it is also a tragic misuse and a self-centred use of light. Whatever we think about ourselves, whether it is over inflated like; “I’m a great spiritual person” or coming down on ourselves as in “I’m a worm”, both are virtual, self-centred and the wasteful use of the light. Looking inside can only relate to the outside and what we see out there we have within; the knowledge of that is what renders us transparent. Whatever reactions come into our instrument, we should allow them for we need them. It is only through owning our reactions and understanding them with com passion, that we can reach transparency. To sin by pride or by false meekness doesn’t allow the work to carry on. The question is, do we react honestly and admit there’s a reaction or a bit of shadow there? Do we have a look at it and clear it or do we react because we like the game? If it is the latter, this is addiction setting in.

Without The Empress we are in Maya or illusion in whatever we do. The Empress is Active Intelligence that has completely regained its divinity. We are in the process of beginning to recognise what we have to do with our minds; without the qualities of The Empress we cannot ever begin to do the work. In starting that work, we look for our own original sound by trying out many different songs. In that process we may find some vibrations that are in tune with parts of our sound or Soul, vibrating to its spiritual guidance. When we travel deep into our space we might find some aspects of ourselves that we don’t like, this is when the work of transmutation has to take place. We need to remember the first sound behind our name; to do that we have to let ourselves drop as if we were falling from a mountain. Then, as we fall deeper and deeper, we will align with our sound and eventually it will become the chord, or silver thread.

Once we have connected to it we will be able to go anywhere with it, because we will always be completely aligned with the orig inal sound within ourselves and always be at home.

Figure 2. The work of the evolving

Figure 3. The goal of the disciple. consciousness.

The alignment of the Soul-driven personality with its higher mind has the ultimate goal of building a direct link to the divine plan.

The naming of the animals that God asked Adam to do, is so important because it was saying “If, on my behalf, you can make sounds which represent all things, such as trees, cats or clouds, then you are actually vibrating with those things that you are naming and so bringing them back to me”.

We can qualify this further by saying “Beautiful flower, sweet cat and great tree” and even if it is ‘murky yuck’, all that can be brought back to God, for they are all part of God and God knows how to love. If there is only love, simplicity, humility and the understand ing of the process, then transmutation predominates and we may ask “Why should anyone want to be the best and what for?” We are all alchemical instruments and not one of us is better as an instru ment than any other. Who cares which one goes first and which one is recognised or is the fairest? As we drop all the descriptions such as, ‘fairest’, ‘prettiest’ and ‘cleverest’ by owning them and admit ting that we wanted to be this or that, we can transmute them. The question is always “What do I love best? Do I love God best, or my position in the system?” Once we know the answer to that, we stop feeding the drama and everything else that might look like a fall isn’t one. Everything difficult that comes up is like a bubble coming to the surface and is released. So we should not pull it back by think ing that we are bad again or by hating it, because that is feeding the drama; we can just love the process of witnessing.

All the Tarot cards are archetypes. We are all archetypes, because it is a virtual world; we are as we thought, loved and feared yester day. Archetypes are illusionary thought forms, but they are a neces sary part of recognising the big drama we play. Archetypes are mostly elemental gods and thought-forms. We are required to fly with the archetype without getting lost; this is how we survive in the inner world of the psyche and the mind. Archetypes are not reality, but they are ways and mind-sets that help us to recognise each energy we are dealing with, so enabling us to touch the fire without burning.

The only archetype that is not virtual is the great life we live in; energetically this is just movement in space. It is important to deperson alise the greater entity we live in, otherwise we go back into the arche type of the father-mother God. This is a beautiful concept but is still an archetype. It is an energetic life, that is all and though that is a mind-set too, it is the clearest mind-set we can have so it stops us from going back into the emotional. If we can only see the world as archetypal we might have locked ourselves into a virtual system, whereas if we really see it as energy, see matter as crystallised Spirit and Spirit as refined matter, it is so much easier to have a transpersonal point of view.

The whole of life is symbolic and archetypal; it is only a film or tapestry. The Empress is the beginning of the esoteric life or mind. Being the goddess of clear reason she is serene and poised. We need to remember that if we recognise a good or bad archetype in some one else, we have been there ourselves.

The initiate comes right into the market place in order to learn, for the only viable place to wield energy is in matter, on the Earth. He knows that he can’t give his life to God because it already belongs to God, but because he has understood the idea of fusion and aligning he is able to go through the door for the last purification. Divine wis dom, or the second aspect of the Trinity is in every single one of the atoms of our body; it is really here in matter, not somewhere up in the clouds. The alchemical process is one of recognising and dissolv ing the separative little self into the light and heat of the Soul, again and again. The initiate is dealing with the daily reaction of the heavy matter of his body and he knows that his brain/body apparatus is a wonderful sounding board. It enables him to align progressively to the light that is flowing through him, revealing the understanding of all the wisdom and knowledge that his karmic biological lives have gathered. He knows as well that there is no more intellectual knowledge to explore, for we can keep on reading books for a long time until eventually we realise that it doesn’t actually change any thing, since we are still reacting to life and have to experience these lessons to release the wisdom. We know that the reactions are not there to be taken personally, therefore there is a deeper burning that enables a true transmutation to happen. This is the giving up of self, but at the same time knowing that it is not up to us to give ourselves to the greater life, because we already belong to it; this enables us to avoid the martyr archetype.

The High Priestess is the guardian of the door; she is also an archetype and we need to absorb and translate the ‘pass-me-not’ of cosmic wisdom. So we should not take ourselves seriously, because whichever archetype we have projected for ourselves, we can for get ourselves in knowing that we are just an instrument or cell for the greater life we live in. Removing an archetype can be a tricky thing, because behind it there is nothing but reality and reality is quite shocking. This is because we recognise the games that we are playing. To do this we have to be completely dead to any self-intent and while we think either that we have nothing left to give up, or so much to let go, we put ourselves in the realm of the archetype of the self-obsessed! After The Empress, the rest of the Major Arcana describes the conditions and the right ingredients for the alchemical process to be realised within the initiate, so that he can pass through the opened door to divine wisdom.

The inner man is where the great Saturn of Capricorn operates, for this is the initiate. He has climbed the mountain and is very sin gle minded and resilient to the point of stubbornness, so as to reach the top. It is important to transmute stubbornness into the spiritual quality of endurance and use it when it is needed. If we know stubborn people, we should help them to use their stubbornness for the work of the light. To climb the mountain we have to be as tough as the mountain, but remember we do not have to carry it on our shoul ders, the mountain carries us on its back and the mountain invites us to its summit. Once we have understood that we can climb it, so we have to make light of the task. Endurance is a wonderful qual ity; this is the lesson, for if we mean to live as we affirm we mustn’t move from our affirmation. The mountain will come and go, but that affirmation will remain.

The French word for Empress is ‘Imperatrice’ and is linked to the word ‘imperative’, which means absolutely necessary. It is impera tive that the mind is clear, poised and impersonal. Because it is a virtual world, man is there to recreate it through his own thoughts; this means changing his perception, so The Empress works though impressing thoughts. If there are enough of us seeing the world in a particular way, it will happen. So we have to understand the impor tance of how we perceive the world and in which direction we align our mind.

The Empress is Active Intelligence, which knows itself as a mind with a mission. It is intelligence being conscious of itself and there fore can open to the higher spiritual truth. With The Empress we have started to understand that it is a virtual world created by our minds and because each mind is unique, the creation is seen from as many angles and points of view as is possible. If we understand this, we can respect everybody’s point of view, knowing that we are all an expression of the great life.

The Empress is a mighty hermaphrodite – she is Mercury in all its beauty. She is a perfectly receptive intellect. The intellect is the mas culine characteristic of the personality, but because she has rendered it receptive she is represented as feminine. This is why we get the double qualities of masculine and feminine in her. She is the qual ity of mind that becomes the silver thread, linking the divine to the higher intelligence of the initiate as he goes back into life. He can then make sense of the process, redeem it and render it sacred through a pure heart and an open and loving mind. She teaches the human family to recognise its spiritual heritage and to develop wisdom.

The book that The High Priestess was holding is now opened by The Empress. To open that book requires intelligence and wis dom; this is why Number 3, The Empress, represents intelligence. It is the wisdom of application which appears in humans as eternal wisdom, when a state of humility is present. It is that intelligence and wisdom that The Emperor will give to the initiate. The Empress represents Active Intelligence, which pervades the whole of the sys tem and enables it to manifest in its manifold glory.

The High Priestess has to be veiled, for she’s a mystery and therefore she will only address a minority. On the other hand The Empress is available for everybody to see and appeals to all men of goodwill, meaning those who can listen to the message of life. It is here that we start to point our will towards good and God and away from ourselves.

The Empress is mercurial; she is the equivalent of Athena (Greek), or Minerva (Roman). She’s the intellect when it is self-conscious. The initiate has to have a complete understanding of life at the intel lectual level to be able to use all the knowledge that is locked into Active Intelligence or life on this Earth. If the intellect is developed it can then fly and reach the higher mind, so The Empress has a com pletely open, playful mind, obsessed with the love of understanding the energy behind things and the knowledge that truth is universal. In this way the eternal student becomes the eternal teacher. People’s level of perception reflects how much endurance they can bring to bear on coping with the suffering of reality. Most human beings are still cocooned in the mind-set that all they need to do is to be com fortable at home in front of the TV with two nice meals a day, thank you very much!

The intellect, curiosity and open mind of The Empress help to break down the mind-sets where we are stuck in prejudices and pre conceptions. Ultimately she searches for the one universal truth and so she knows that all the little truths along the way are quite useful, even if they aren’t complete.

She has a peaceful, placid face to symbolise the mature intellect. She’s at peace with her environ ment, because she’s in complete possession of the mind that has created it. The mind learns speedily and eventually, through knowledge and open mind-edness, it knows how to discriminate, eliminate and choose – this is what The Empress does. If the result of her work is not practical and viable, the higher intelligence will soon abort it. Nothing is ever wasted, everything is used in the best possible way.

Her feet being in contact with the Earth brings a grounded qual ity to whatever The Empress has to do. It is only because of this quality that self re-creation can happen, and then it is through her own effort and her love of fusing with the truth that she knows how to re-create. She knows she is only the messenger and not God, so she sees her limitation. The breaking through of the intellectual life is absolutely necessary for the initiate to access the cosmic wisdom, so in her we see the willingness to break through and uplift her mind beyond the control she thought she had over creation; this is why she has wings.

When our intellect is flowing with life, love, discrimination and observation, it is marvelling at its own Active Intelligence and we have to bring it back to terra firma to apply its findings practically. Without the grounding and assimilation, the vision and the knowl edge aren’t used.

The planetary preoccupation of the survival of matter is needed as much as anything else; it is all the same divine process. We tend to open our hearts and feel pain for tiny unimportant things, when we should know that we are here for one job only; yet for that important job we have no time. This is where humanity is. We have to see how much beauty there is on the planet and cherish it all as we would our child; this is the incredible job we have to do. In the next few hundred years we have to de-personalise any hurt that has been done to us. The hurt had to happen in the first place for we had to feel and know it, but now we have to own our part of it so that when we tell people that there is no guilt in humanity, only responsibility, we sound real. Until we are grounded we can’t do that, for without the grounding the vision can’t be used by the Earth as it stays in the higher planes.

Our repeated incarnation is, to a large extent, motivated by the gathering of our experiences; it is through this that we acquire a good solid base of understanding and knowledge. This is what awareness is: we come in, we go through an experiment and then affirm that we already know about that particular one, so we need never go back in and do it again, unless we recognise an addiction to the feeling of unease through the experience. The light that comes in through the ‘déjà-vu’ feeling enables us not to be taken in by any thing degenerative and wasteful.

One of the poignant aspects of transformation can be illustrated by what happens when the butterfly comes out of its chrysalis; for a few minutes it is wet and cannot fly because its wings have to dry. It has had to let go of its protective case and there’s an incredible fragility in that instant, when for a few minutes it is completely at the mercy of any bird or anything that can eat it. This is like baby humanity, completely in danger because it is so new. We are co-crea tors and as such our perception and discrimination has to be right, for God uses us for witnesses. Suddenly we are out there and it is so new and so different, that we might lose our minds because we don’t recognise anything. Sound is so important, for if we are so lost that we don’t recognise the room we are sitting in, sounding our name can re-crystallise our skills and put us on auto-pilot. Our name is the sound that the family group has given us and it is what grounds and cocoons us. We can also sound a special, sacred name such as Mary, Allah, or a mantra. These will carry us through pain, but our name will remind us of our responsibility to the group.

Ultimately we have to let go of the concept of freedom. Like the intellect, freedom is separation because it makes us want to stand apart and be different. However, we do not acquire freedom of mind without knowing what freedom is about. A truly free mind, which is a pure mind, has a connection with the divine via the Soul, so it has learnt freedom in the real sense. If it hasn’t understood that freedom creates separation, it will be a rebellious mind and against the idea of God. To reach God the mind has to fuse with an unknown mind vibration, which is the opposite of separation and is a giving up. Freedom is good in that it pushes us up and gives us our autonomy, but it is not inclusive, it is separative. We have to assimilate, love and transmute all the pride and needs so as to acquire a mind free of fear and separation. This is why we have to learn through endur ance to be really tough, as we could get lost on the way to a more rarefied vibration of the higher mind.

Think of experience as intelligence. An animal doesn’t do an experience; it just lives, whereas we ‘do’ an experience. Eventually we know that no experience or knowledge fulfils, for it is insuffi-cient and lacking, but we really have to do it to find that out, even if someone advises us not to. If we do not do it then we do not under stand. This is why we cannot ever blame the courageous souls who have made all the mistakes, for if we haven’t made the mistakes then we don’t know when to stop. We can only watch in compassion when the experience takes over, for if we know how to stop we must have got lost sometimes before.

If we look at the pattern of an average life, nobody tries to teach a tiny child something by reasoning; rather we do it by distracting and changing the mood of the child. The minute there are some fac ulties of reasoning then the initial teaching we give a child has to be dogmatic, so we give them hard knowledge and exams. The intellect is developed first for it is the flower of nature, then the true fruit will be the intelligence of the Soul. As a child develops the teaching is less imperative, allowing the child to think for itself more and more. In most cases the child will think as the society around it dictates, for example through TV or fashion, but that cannot be helped. So if you are a teacher you will look for children who aren’t taken up by society, sleeping, or sweets; these are the bright ones who have the autonomy to think for themselves and so can free and separate themselves from the mass consciousness. Then the problem is that they get so used to being separate, that at a later stage that sepa-rateness can stop them working with group, whereas the real intel ligence develops from fusing, co-operating and communicating. We might reach a very high level, but we need to watch out for the mind-set of ‘I am lonely, nobody understands me’. Adaptation is so important; the group work will teach everyone in it how to best utilise the incoming light according to each unique capability of the instruments. Some are receptors, some are translators, some are best at distributing the crystallised outcome to the public and so on.

Active Intelligence is the instrument and when the fully obedient personality aligns to its Soul/spiritual direction, Active Intelligence rules the waves. People can be full of light but restricted in expressing that light, so their capabilities and faculties must be encouraged and fuelled in the best way, for everything is of use. The idea is to find the best possible way of shining, by letting the light use our skills. Some times a simple pane of glass can be more useful for our purposes at the time than a multifaceted crystal. We can only fly from a solid base, where we know how to use what we have in the most economical way for the task ahead. The Empress will naturally give us the best solution to any question and will hold it humbly for the Soul to smile.

There are many contradictions in us that scramble our minds. When we go deep into the knowledge, we look into ourselves and humanity and see both good and bad. The contradictions are so painful that we have difficulty finding the way to bring the good into the bad, so we look for the next method or teacher to sort it out for us. As long as we hope for a fix, a book, or a method that is going to do it for us, we live in contradiction and false hope. The mind is lost, so we have to turn towards the Soul, for this is the only com passionate place where our mind can get the cosmic joke when the higher mind winks at it.

In Dante the envoy of the Soul is Beatrice, whose name means blessed, therefore fusion with the mind of God. We have gone to hell, then we have to come back again; the Soul will guide us out of the darkness. The life of the Soul holds the sum total of all the experiences that the mind as Spirit, has gone through as it dances with matter. Purgatory is not a place but a state of mind in which we allow all the emotions we have to torture our conscience, as our new awareness of responsibility and reality is too hard to take. We have to trace the whole of our lives backwards, to remove the drama of it, in order to love it all completely. All the minute lit tle emotional ties we have with people or with situations will still link us to purgatory. It is only the vision of Soul, in touch with the higher mind, that can dissolve all that. Soul has a link with the higher quality of mind as well as the intellect, so these two have to talk to each other.

We have to love and forgive all the details of our lives, as we had to go bravely where angels will not dare to tread. This is our job; to live our lives fully and be well equipped in experiences for the Soul to do its work. The Soul will eventually guide us up from the contradic tory experience of the world we live in, with all its thousand and one possibilities or contradictions, then the progressive alignment of light and wisdom will culminate at the Soul’s crucifixion. The veil has to be torn for the Soul to die, as it fuses with its last karmic incarnation. It is a death but at the same time it is a fantastic rebirth, where the atomic substance of our being will have the quality of Soul and therefore the love-wisdom energy, working at one with Active Intelligence.

The Empress is the quality of mind which determines the nature of whatever is in manifestation. The Soul is in charge of bringing in the divine energy and its manifestation into the awareness of life. All the love-hate relationships we’ve had with the world of illusion are linked with the fact that these two have to recognise that they are one, so that we can have the wonderful understanding behind it. So don’t be attached to what stirs you, it is not yours! See it for what it is; it is the two cosmic lovers wanting to fuse. Our Soul awareness is the third one, making it whole.

The Empress prepares us for the spiritual life and this is where endurance comes in. Endurance is being able to look into your Soul clearly to see all the things you haven’t done in the Spirit of truth. Until we do that, the Soul is completely lost in the game and all that happens is addiction. We are addicted to life through the part of our Soul which is in biology and has survived by having fiercely addictive behaviour; addicted to survival as it is held in all the different species of nature, in all its kingdoms. We live on the edge of this universe in a very old, dark and dense past vibration. So we have the difficult task of exploring and restoring clear per ception. Meanwhile we are subject to illusion, drama and maya, which are fed by the imagination of our species, thinking we can rule the world! Imagination is a wonderful tool, but we have to recognise those times when we use it to keep ourselves locked into the drama.

The Soul of nature loves drama, because it is made of feelings; feeling is its nature. Active Intelli gence responds to nature’s spiritual input through the urge of its Soul, so we retrieve our Active Intelli gence through our Soul, which is in touch with Spirit. The Empress’ foot on the inverted moon crescent demonstrates her dominion over the exalted Soul of nature. She has the solutions, she is in control. She can use her imagination, dreams and the whole realm of the astral, yet not be swamped or taken in by them. She is discriminating and can see which part of the puzzle is needed; she has them all and more! She directs rather than follows, using all her resources to manifest the next phase of the vision.

Without Active Intelligence nothing could work on the planet, for it has all the possibilities of imagination and dreams that can receive the message of the divine. It is in contact with the vision, but is not in a dreamy state so is in active control. Survival, protection, playing games and selling ourselves should all be seen for what they are, put in per spective and understood as the great attributes of nature’s abundant gifts. If this level of comprehension of our work is not achieved, there can be no progress towards our source, or the end of our journey.

The mind of man has infinite possibilities; only a tiny little aspect of those will be realised and expressed in one life. None of the expe riences we have had in virtuality really matter, because what we are actually doing is looking for ourselves, looking for our name, or our allocated job. We are reflective grains of dust that grow into bigger stars, so the shine starts to show. As each one grows bigger and big ger, the thread which guides us back home to the source becomes more and more apparent.

Active Intelligence is absolutely everywhere to be seen and it has to become self-aware. The Empress is Queen of the kingdom that doesn’t know of its divinity. It is only through mankind that Active Intelligence becomes Queen, for we are truly the mediators. Our role is to realise that we are Souls, for the Soul is the mediator and bridges the Spirit/matter gap. It is so important now to train the human family to understand that that is what we are. We are not animal man, we are Active Intelligence in motion and our true nature is Soul, which knows itself as sound. Eventually in contem plation, Active Intelligence will hear the harmonious silence of the wisdom within.

The Empress will freely dispense her knowledge and the treasure of her science. She doesn’t need to keep any doors shut and it is out for all to see. She gives hope to those who want to reach the point of light, sounding “I’m the way”; this is the Soul of mind. There are no tricks and no severity, but many will not use, receive, or even see the fullness of what she offers, because they will still be using it for their own security and pleasure. She’s a teacher walking alongside the initiate, but she never imposes anything on him, it is up to him to go and ask her for help. He has to use his Active Intelligent mind to go and fathom the puzzle.

Active Intelligence is an intelligent faculty bringing clarity into everything, dispersing darkness and giving strength where there is doubt and hesitation. It is the crystallisation of the esoteric mind and so brings uplifting. So far in man’s evolution we have used Active Intelligence as though we owned it, for self-aggrandisement and power, calling it our own truth but now we need to serve the truth, which is quite an up-turn. Truth cannot be domesticated to make us comfortable. Though there is a desire to contemplate the truth with no protection, its simplicity can be devastating when our heart is free of all vanity and self-centredness.

Our tragedy lies in the fact that we do not love the greater life, but rather want the greater life to love us. However, this can change overnight if we make that decision. So we need to look at our affir-mations to make sure that we are not using them to reinforce our lit tle selves thereby our self-centredness and so reinforcing the drama, because that can be addictive and is a wasteful use of the light. Nature had to be self absorbed until she found the moment when she gave birth to consciousness in the human species; we have to rise above survival to give nature back her divinity.

In the story of Theseus and Ariadne, Theseus goes into the laby rinth to confront the Minotaur, a ferocious creature who is half man and half bull. The Minotaur requires a Cretan youth as a sacrifice every year, so the people of Crete need a hero to go and kill the Minotaur. This creature represents the past and the old God from a previous culture, so it is no good giving youth to him because it only goes to feed the black dog of illusion. In all the stories and legends a hero is needed to go into the past or the dark night, so as to kill the illusion and the attachment to the past; he can only go when he knows that he has eternity in him and therefore is no longer afraid of death. It is only the initiate who can do that type of work. If we know we are going to die for something much greater than what is going on at the time, there is not the problem of being afraid of death. All that is experienced is the virtual death of the personality as it goes down and re-lives the past, but this is not real. Princess Ariadne gives a golden thread to Theseus, as a guide to help him come out of the labyrinth safely, the thread being a symbol for the Soul, linking him to the eternal life.

Mass consciousness is driven by the subconscious experiences held in the Soul of nature and therefore is the basic human being. When we reincarnate we take our biological suit from the karmic pool of human DNA. Our lighted mind reflects on our reactions to life and our thoughts go back up the stream to the source of those reactions, revealing the films of locked in emotions. We have projected so many situations to be recognised, named and seen as nature’s survival tricks. Nature is then redeemed by the greatness of her intelligence.

The idea of confession in Roman Catholicism, is to help people say “Yes, I’ve done that” as we make the confession to the priest who wears black. Black represents the black work, which is the first stage of the alchemic process and symbolises the deepest understanding of the ordinary life that is driven by the subconscious. We need to confess our sins, or our subconscious reactions, but in reality we just need to recognise what has been done in the past with the true light of the new perception, which brings no blame. In reality these past actions are not sins, because they are seen for what they are. This is the work we have to do to be at ease with our humanity and follow the guiding thread of The Empress, for she links the initiate to the divine. In this way he can make sense of the process and render it sacred, by using the perception that comes from a pure heart and a loving mind.

She has a blue cloak because she’s focussed on the infinity that will only be reached with The Fool at the end of the journey. The Fool renounces all attachments to beauty, vanity and desires. All the things that we imagine are there for us and that we think we need, such as fame, pleasure and security, are given up. We take continuously, but the objects themselves that we receive don’t offer what we want. Their virtuality is there to make us see what is in us; such is the incredible quality of mind. When we are centred on self-aggrandisement and power we plunder the world to have more and to protect what we have, when actually what we seek is the eternity of peace of mind, which does not reside in the world of dusty possessions. When we feed the world with the love that comes through our hearts and eyes, we give it back its beauty and sacredness and feed the connection we have with the divine. However, we are so used to taking from it, like the baby taking from its mother, that we’ve become very spoilt children.

The Empress has her cloak over her knees and arm; this signifies that she’s available to everyone, unlike The High Priestess who has her cloak over her shoulders to tell us that she is only available to the initiate. The Empress’ cloak is blue, lined with green; blue being the colour of clarity, the higher mind and higher intelligence, whereas green is the colour of the beauty and wisdom of manifested life. So we are here to bring the blue sky of infinity into the green world of life and that is the way we inspire and uplift it. But before man can fly he has to assimilate everything that is human in him, so that he can become the universal man. The blue also tells us that she is not a mystery like The High Priestess, for she is there to be seen by all men of goodwill. She asks us to listen to the goodwill message of the life which is in front of us.

She holds a sceptre with a cross on it, which means she has authority over the Earth, because she is the flower and procreator of it. This is a true spiritual authority, so she is flooded with light. She obeys the divine justice that stems out of love, which will help people align to her ways and cooperate with each other in her intelligence. All manifestation is held in the process of death and re-birth until the system, through mankind, realises that it is made of energy moving into space and organises its manifestation for precognitive awareness only. We will be locked in time and space on the wheel of life until this happens. This mani festation is reflected in the element water, which is able to hold the memory of biological life on the planet. We cannot possess some one else’s form, or hold anyone else’s water; divine justice naturally doesn’t allow this, it would go against the beauty of the plan, for Active Intelligence obeys the great laws of the non interference of the divine mind. True beauty is an inner process of revelation, which harmonises the petals of beingness, as we let life unfold.

Superficial politeness has to be taught, but the more we recog nise and perceive things from the point of view of energy, the more naturally polite we are, because we don’t want to interfere either with another’s individual space, or the collective environment.

The Empress holds a Coat of Arms in her right hand, on which there is a silver eagle on a red background, with its wings outstretched. The eagle is a bird that can stare at the sun without blinking, so it symbolises the highest possible aspiration of the human mind, which is to soar towards the mind of God and stare at God’s light without blinking. This is the desire to contemplate truth in all its splendour, with no protection.

A coat of arms is a symbol that is there for us to recognise a par ticular family, school or group. It is a symbolic representation of the genealogy behind the person or group. It is a very potent symbol which fixes a goal and states an aim. The message is clear for man kind; “Become the truth, the love and the wisdom through your intelligent nature!”

The Circle of Stars round her head consists of nine visible stars and three that can’t be seen, so there are twelve altogether. These symbolise the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the twelve apostles and the totality of all the experiences of creation. The three stars that are not visible are those that are working at the transfiguration of the alchemic year in the dark. The crown of stars is Mercurial. With The Empress we are looking at the universal mind, so she has to be very pure of intent. Universal intelligence wants to fuse with universal love, so she has to fly high to surpass and go beyond herself.

If we are looking at the zodiac then Saturn is the highest star right on top, for it has to reach the peak of all intellectual research, which is wisdom devoid of illusion and vanity; this is the mind which will dominate this world. The transfiguration of this world is the ideal, the free and the true. The whole of creation is moved towards spiritualization by transubstantiation, this is the great work of alchemy. So in terms of the zodiac archetype of Saturn, we have Capricorn at the top, being the symbol of the concrete world, for man is nothing if he hasn’t got his head in the stars. This enables the great work to be exteriorised through the higher thoughts and mind of man. It is impossible to separate man from the cosmos and if he can understand the truth, he can co-create, meet and fuse with the divine through his work.

Once self-awareness is born and reasoning happens, light and understanding can come in. Eventually, when our mind has learned to reach the Active Intelligence within the Soul, we look at an object or being and we can see clearly what is behind the form; we perceive its Soul rather than its form. Thus the higher intelligence is devel oped and that thought process feeds itself. Imagination and dreams are important, so as long as there’s a bit of the Saturn element there to keep it real and viable, for the mind fertilises itself from one sim ple understanding. The reality is that it is the perception we put on life’s manifestation that is truly important, rather than the object we are looking at. The thing in front of us is only there to help our mind retrace its steps.

Eventually, when we have removed the consideration of the per sonality, we see things for what they are. If we want to get rid of an addiction and see it for what it is, we should stand in front of the object of our addiction and try to see that part inside us that is saying “I want it”. The object of desire that we thought was real actually isn’t; it is virtual. The trigger to the addiction is the wanting to experience a specific set of feelings, not the object. If we realise that the need to play a game is feeding us, we own it and are at the beginning of transforming our coal into hot fire of sublimation: this is alchemy. The aim is not to separate ourselves, but to absorb the addiction so that we can own our inner drama and dissipate our shadows.

In this world we are addicted to form. It keeps our mind in the virtual world and stops our internalising, so our intelligence is blinded and overshadowed by pictures, there to give ourselves what we want to think. Our lives become driven by phantom forms, which come out of our needs and we let the unscrupulous merchant of false gold dictate our every move and thought! We are poor little stars, lost in a false paradise; let’s reclaim our minds, smile, rise and shine! We only react to the world through what is inside us. We are at the beginning of the great rise in consciousness of mankind. This is a great wakeup call from the Earth to its peo ple. We need to cleanse all the layers of accumulated shadows from the densest matter, to the rarefied mental thoughts of the clever est human being. The light is reaching deep into our history so far and bringing out all the monsters. So as long as we see it from the greater perspective of humanity and the Earth being one body, we can help the process by not interfering through blame, criticism or judgment.

Jesus, the Soul, said that we have to hate the world in order to reach the divine mind; this does work if we can see hate not as a feel ing, but as a tool which enables us to cut away from the drama of the past and embrace the work with a more compassionate mind.

We all have to be self-centred and selfish on the way to finding our centre and losing ourselves. When we are very pre-occupied with self we detach ourselves and make ourselves into the deep spiral that precipitates us into the depth of our existence, our Soul. Adam and Eve represent the moment in time when mankind was part of nature and became self-centred, so allowing the fall or the individualisation of the mind in mankind to happen. We had to fall to enable us to look at all the things we had been playing with; this is the work. There is no shame or judgment in this, for it was the work that was needed and required, so that freedom of choice could come in; we can make a conscious decision to do the work, or let our needs live our lives for us! We can’t have self-awareness without being self-centred and we can’t precipitate into hell with out having a choice. The first idea was to precipitate self-awareness into the darkness without a choice, and then the great Luciferian angel took pity on us and precipitated itself to give us the gift of discrimination. So the first real sacrifice was that of Lucifer coming down; without that influence we wouldn’t have had the choice. The word Lucifer means ‘bringer of light’, so this energy is truly a messenger of Spirit, coming down into matter. The consequent disturbance that is thus stimulated in the crystallised mindsets has caused Lucifer to be associated with evil; this is a great misunder standing and distortion.

The energy of Lucifer makes us do the work faster than was expected, enables us to suffer with awareness of mind and puts pain in its context as being a by-product of the work. Consequently the pain is more intense but the process is quickened; it would have been a long, slow process without Luciferian awareness of mind and we might still not have succeeded in understanding that this is a virtual world. When a light comes in, it has to find another light in the darkness, so as to have a point of recognition. The first light is the one that came by choice; the whole story of Adam and Eve is always about choice. When we are given dominion we are going to use it for ourselves to begin with.

When the mind has understanding through love in the heart, it can transcend any mindset which presents itself, especially the one of freedom. This is what is meant by; “The more I love the more I understand, the more I understand, the more I love”. The only thing love wants is to forget itself and fuse with the light. If we truly tran scend the self, then we go back home to meet our star and freedom is useless, for what is the use of freedom when we are in love? Free dom is only a notion, a mental mind-set and virtuality. It is auton omy, dominion, possession and power; love is the opposite. Love holds, builds; freedom separates and destroys.

Light has got to have a mirror to excite itself. Through falling in love with God, who represents the loving self, we become love. If we don’t love self, we can’t love God. If we do not love God we deny the purest part of ourselves. Pride is the reason that the mind will not consider some entity more intelligent than self!

The white lily by the left arm of The Empress is a symbol of purity of mind. She is pure of personal intent and so holds the idea of virginity and innocence of action. She is Mary, the universal mother, carrying the intelligence that humans can achieve. She is Number 3, the true hermaphrodite, who re-births and fecunds itself. As the mind is purified, she becomes Mary the Cosmic mother, the flower of purified matter and Active Intelligence in all her beauty. The Trinity is one person and Mary is the creative side; she is not a woman, but a symbol of what the becoming of mankind could become. Mary is co-creating all the time, because she is the creative aspect of the one creation. The Empress teaches us that through Active Intelligence we are witness ing the universal re-birthing. All creation comes through her, for she renews everything endlessly. She has an incredible amount of power and is the creative logo in the true sense.

There are many levels of transformation that we can undergo. There are nine degrees of initiation, four of those necessitate reincar nation in form; the next three proceed with the complete removal of attraction to the planetary life in the mind of the initiate. The last two are to do with this mind fusing with the cosmic life. Even if we have left personality behind, we still have more levels of transmutation to go through and all these are only really levels of refinement of energy back to the source of all. The personality will still be there with all its qualities after the fourth initiation, but the qualities that would have been centred towards aggrandisement or protection will have been refined and turned towards the work, rather than towards the personality. They are all called death, because we give up aspects of ourselves. We have less resistance and more fusing with the light of the Soul, in order to let wisdom teach us the next step.

All we are here for is to name, meaning to render nature self-conscious. As we name we love, because as we recognise and under stand, we love. We are talking about connaissance, which is the pure science of human beings, a science we are born with. This universal intelligence is the deep intimate knowledge that allows assimilation, absorption and the way back to the lost sound. It is only when we touch the heart of an atom of a living organism, that we can hear its sound and know the vibration of its Soul. As our Soul connects with that sound, we can communicate with it. Listen with your heart to your dog or cat and hear the sound that they make. This way we find the dog in us, so can ask a question and get an answer. When we become one with our dog, we become as humble as a dog, for we see the God in ourselves and hear the answer. Remember, it was thirty thousand years ago that the first jackal came to work with man and it came about through the pure, deep, intimate knowledge of Active Intelligence. If we are not pure we are going to anthro-pomorphise, or see everything in the image of man. If we haven’t got the human being out of the way, all we are doing is reflecting ourselves in the poor little dog or cat.

The more we inspire, the more we die: the more inspired we are, the more alive in the eyes of God. We are breathing the breath of God in and out all the time, the great life breathes us into its heart when we are inspired!

The key to this card is the affirmation of truth and its conse quences according to the divine plan. We tend to affirm, then deny and then wonder why it doesn’t work. For example we can recog nise “I’m addicted to chocolate!” and then say; “I mustn’t eat it!” which is a denial. So we take the light of understanding in and immediately destroy it. The true work is to find out why the addic tion is there (remember it is only a stuck record) and then love it. So we see the truth, we affirm and we feel privileged to do a fair bit of work on behalf of the group and the life we live in. In this way the judgment is done, we unite the Spirit with the wisdom, the locked light within matter is released and the two make one bright explo sion; that is what makes the star.

We become co-creators when our minds have become totally absorbed in the mind of God, so that as we think, we think on behalf of the great life of the planet. We may only have done that for a total of three minutes in ten lives and we may not even know when it hap pened, but it doesn’t matter, for that is what we are meant to do.

When we have recognised the divinity of Active Intelligence a blessing is bestowed from the light, rendering sacred the manifesta tion. As we see truth we create truth, so becoming a true co-creator. If only ten percent of the population suddenly saw the light, we would have a new dawn of peace within thirty years. What we see around us are yesterday’s thoughts and we create the future with the thoughts of today.

Everything in nature is automatic. One thing that makes us dif ferent is that we have a choice and the gift of self-consciousness, whereas nature has no choice. So we can choose either the automatic life, or our own inner truth serving the creator. We can ask ourselves the question, “Are we choosing to serve and receive the blessings of the Holy Spirit?” Because what comes next is not a May day fair on the village green, but a mayday distress signal to the universe.