them so we create many subtle cover-ups, but they all have to be visited. The re-visiting is happening in this lifetime, but the entities were created over many lifetimes, not because of particular situations, but because it is our job to put a name on nature’s experience, so we have to create situations to exteriorise the feelings.
We dissolve the problems by completely associating with them; it doesn’t take that long, even if it feels like it. We are not just helping our own individual case, but bursting a huge entity in the world that cries out that it is being used and abused, therefore we are working in the collective. There is a job to be done and it can only be done by the work of completely owning, releasing and transmuting. There can be so much disgust and hate; we must name and see these nega tives, then soothe, love and understand them on behalf of the God we live in. We can’t blame our grandmother for being self-pitying! We can go to her and tell her we love her! The minute we do that she is happy and for five minutes she is free of self-pity; that is a great relief for the world!
Life is clever; it will put us in front of a karmic pattern that needs looking at and which will be very close to one of our shadows. That is why we have to remember it is in us and is not the other per son’s fault. If we refuse the knowledge from within, we refuse our selves and the God in us and start the work of self-destruction. As we self-destruct all aspects of true spirituality within us will stop. The inner life will die within us if we do not accept our work. If we want the world to do it for us, then we are as nature, destroyed and renewed until the light of awareness gives birth in the cave of the heart once more.
The big difference between our initiate and the ordinary man is that the ordinary man is taken in by life and is a puppet of life. The initiate knows that he is a channel for releasing spiritual energy on behalf of something greater than himself, so he is not being taken in by the shadows of life. It is like a great river; either we are buffeted like a puppet, or the river is in us and we can let the waters of life flow when it is needed. It carries us and if we think something needs to be done, we will do it automatically.
‘Man know thyself’, is what we are doing when we have recog nised everything we have been. We must find ourselves in all the events of our existence and understand the situations, attitudes and reactions. We have made strangers of ourselves because we haven’t wanted to see a lot of the things that have happened to us. Some times we didn’t know whether we liked them or not, so we had to hide those experiences just in case we didn’t like them; this game can go on for a long time. Because we were uncertain whether an experience was good or bad we covered it up and kept playing the game, hoping we would get the answer. We call it confronta tion when we look, but the confrontation only comes from the intel lect, which retains all the virtual experiences that we have lived. The dweller on the threshold fights, because the pain and the drama of the previous experiences feel so real; these are the ones that will be burned by the sulphur, because of the resistance. When we as personalities are resisting and causing problems, we cannot blame things on past lives, for our past experiences were opportunities to wake up and witness. The sphinx will keep staring but will not speak, for a dialogue would be too easy and helpful, so it is up to us to get the message.
If we know that life is a state of unfolding and no action is defini-tive, then we can meet the dweller or guardian on the threshold and start doing the work of cleansing. By revisiting past situations with the intense awareness of the perception of the Soul, we see them for what they are. Whether we find a manipulating abuser or a manip ulated victim, it matters not, because it is only a part of the great dance and everything can be harmonised.
An initiation can only happen when the mind comes into the darkness of the flesh of the Soul of nature, to see whether it can receive the star, we don’t get initiation up there in the stars. In the past, every initiation started with a descent underground or a retreat into the desert. It had to be night and it had to be done alone; this is symbolic of the process of the inner work. The mystical star shows the descent of spirit into matter and the ascent back; the deeper it goes down, the higher it will shoot up towards the source, like a firework into the skies.
The keynote to this card is that, through true will and vision the unfolding of the Soul can happen. The work of descending into the cave has been an act of will and the intelligence of man cannot con tent itself with the intellectual life.
The wisdom of The High Priestess is the wisdom of Isis, the high sacred science of the initiate and the sacred world. We are talking of the beginning and the end, the lost and found and above all, grace. We are not doing anything from a personal angle, because we are doing it on behalf of our brothers and sisters. It can only be grace because we are not coming back to judge, but to love. There is no judgment or punishment here, only awareness and that is what grace is, to know that whatever the other human being is doing, you are doing it as well and it is all okay, but ‘Shall we stop doing it now? Let’s go in!” The good news is that there is no punishing God; there is only the book of life and the key of life. We are unfolding into 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
