the true, the beautiful and the good and all this comes through the wisdom personified in The High Priestess. She is the true bride of Spirit and truth.
She is the teacher, who translates through her silver key what the golden key has understood in silence. So there is no action and no words. She is silent, she teaches by her presence. We are also reminded that we must not keep silent if a person needs help; we have to speak and use right actions, so the word or the intellect mustn’t be excluded.
NUMBER THREE
The Empress, L’Impératrice
The web of life
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