in a particular way is because it is already in our brain. This is an essential requirement for going through the veil of Isis, she is the metaphysical form of the Goddess.
The Magician in the first card now stands before her. He is already a potential initiate and he smiles, for he thinks that he has found a pot of honey. She says to him: “You want to come and show me what you have learned so far? You want to go further? Then look at me, look at me long and hard!” If we won’t face her and go forward through her, then the journey is not for us. Going through the veil is the aim of the whole twenty two cards, so in a way at this point we are almost at the end. The High Priestess is the grace/wis dom aspect of the Goddess. She is metaphysical so she can only be perceived by the metaphysical mind in us. On the other side of the veil are the cause of life and the divine knowledge. She has to guard the door so that no imprudent intruder can step through. She holds the secret.
The Magician, the Number 1, is able to have a transforming effect on the manifested world; in fact we can all have an effect on the manifested world, but not in a conscious way. We can bring a cul ture down, we can bring another culture in and we can pollute the planet; we do all this within nature’s unconscious cycle of transfor mation. The great catastrophes or wars are part of this, because they are ‘weather’ effects that needed to happen to the planet within a greater context and they help humanity to wake up to its respon sibility. When we look at all the people and at the beneficent or destructive leaders, what we see is a superficial expression, which occurs when things either need to be manifested in a particular way, or destroyed. At those times some people are used as puppets or tools in major world events, when the time is right for something to happen to shake us. However, these people are different from the great ones, whom we would call the Masters. Those who have the ability to affect things can be stimulated through these events to realise the new vision and new hope. When The Magician comes in he is ready to receive a higher revelation.
In the experience of being truly alive, our senses are so instinc tively pure, that we don’t even know that we are sensing through them. In this state we can read the landscape for miles, like a wild beast. This is what our senses should be used for rather than to be used for the gratification of whether we like chocolate, or the colour red, or a particular piece of music. Whilst we are strongly centred on using the senses for pleasure, we are still quite a way from fully understanding the impact of what it is to be a true ini tiate. The true initiate can appreciate colours and chocolate and it doesn’t mean that we mustn’t like these things, but rather that we do not need any of them. We appreciate these things because our senses are there, but in that pure state of being truly alive we do not need any sensation and if suddenly we lost all our senses, we would not miss anything at all. Have you experienced being alive, without the senses being used for sensations? This state is always approached with a sense of dread, because it is the com plete unknown: it is the divine or what is behind the veil and if we go through without being ready, madness is certain.
The initiate has come back to the world and from day one has a smile on his face. Is he naïve, over confident, or could it be dread, because what he is going to face is an unknown space? It is the space that holds all the wisdom so far and the secret of how God manifested it. This is Number 2, the great Isis or the great space. It has within it all the dust, beauty and brightness, all the life and death experiences for millions of years that have been and are to be, manifested, explored and brought back into the light.
When the initiate is truly alive, he always has that sense of dread and it is not because he doesn’t dare. We have learned to survive physically by the senses telling us what is around so that we can act accordingly; for example, if I am a rabbit and five inches away there is a fox, I run away. The acceleration of picking up the message and having to go is what we call excitement. It is life and death, it is sex and survival. Anything that accelerates the senses to make us move is an over-the-top reaction, except when it is for sur vival and to save our skin. Most of us in the western world should not be ‘in excitement’ because we are not living at a time where we have a hunter behind us about to kill us. However, the rest of the world lives on the edge of survival, so we can hold compassion for them. If mass consciousness is still using excitement in creating its own hysterical shows as part of daily life, it is really only because it has not yet grown up, for modern man is very young on the planet in comparison to the millions of years of biological life. Man is like a two or three year old infant still sucking his thumb; this is not a judgment or condemnation, just a statement of fact.
Using the senses to feel alive comforts us. We can get addicted to the laboratory rather than the research, like an artist who gets addicted to the beauty of the colours, rather than refining his art until he understands that art isn’t necessary. The fact that we need comfort is because we still have the survival aspect in us and so we find other modes besides the natural flight, fight, or rut instincts, to stimulate excitement. The rut in the animal kingdom is not really excitement, though we have described it as such, it is just the mind less push of biologic or organic creativity. This is very relevant in The High Priestess, for we have the two pillars of life that are con stantly mating and that is why they support the temple. When you have the rut in nature, you have the two pillars in action in order to procreate species. We describe it as excitement because mankind has experimented with all the deviations of the sexual act, but in real ity sex is plain and simple and doesn’t have all the bits and pieces, complicating and hiding its true nature. We had to make sensual excitement part of our luggage in order to plunge into the mud of the subconscious and see what is exciting down there, otherwise we would just never have gone for the experience, for who wants to go and get excited on dust? The gift of the senses thus enables us to do the work of purification.
So The High Priestess puts fear and dread into us. When we real ise that all is mind moving into space, as witnesses we are being used as we have abused; this is what the veil is going to reveal. Biological life has been used from the beginning of time for the purpose of birth ing awareness. We are learning to give our material life in service, as a way through for the higher consciousness. Form is only yesterday’s intent and understanding that needed manifesting, so that through it the great life can recognise itself by us being aware of our reactions. We understand that service is the only thing that we are here to do, so this is our use. Service should not be a means to achieve sainthood or mastery, for in the real energetic life there is nothing else we can be used for. The reality is that we are being used, so we are servants and it is the complete non emotional acceptance of that fait accompli that is the truth. We have to fall in love with the great life beyond the emotional to reach this stage of acceptance. We play lots of games to find out what the experience of being alive feels like from every angle and now we have to put the games away. The High Priestess or Isis knows that she serves the servants of God, who are full of love and compassion and all manner of beautiful things. She serves them because she knows that they can’t pass through that doorway with emotional luggage, so she is there to help them look into their sub conscious emotional needs. The world of God is a world of energy, where love is magnetic and truth is light. In this world of energy, matter is only a way to recognise what the space is made of and to see how beautiful the dance of the energy is. The High Priestess causes dread, because we have to drop all the dreams of childhood; we even have to drop the dreams of the initiate who thinks he is going to help some great God in the sky to save the planet. We really have to die to all that, so that the mind can soar and realise that it is just a spark of light. The message is ‘Just die to everything you aspired to achieve and become, so as to be truly alive’. This is what is meant by the veil tearing, when Jesus was dying on the cross. At this point, Jesus the Soul was pierced by the incoming divine mind, removing any hope of personal glory. The higher mind in the Soul has no other agenda than service to the great life.
If we have come in front of The High Priestess here, it is because we have surpassed and risen above the little mysteries of life such as science and psychology, which help make us into individuals who can manage life a little bit better. We would have to take several more leaps in consciousness to be in the presence of The High Priest ess. These leaps will reveal the existence of the Soul principle, until eventually we learn to associate with the concept of Soul. Higher intelligence has to be reached though
