dust when we know it isn’t real and can be transformed with ideas into new worlds. When we get taken in by matter, we feel the mass and the heaviness of it; we all recognise that feeling. From coal to diamond, we have to experience life on the earth as heavy, dark and oppressive, so as to associate with the suffering of humanity. Every time we go through an up-lift, we release the weight of what we’re leaving behind. Remember the 8 of infinity, which tells us that every time we rise we have to go a bit lower, until eventually we touch the outer realm of our world.
The wand or baton is also used as a symbol of generation, with the idea of perpetrating a species, a race or an idea. Mass conscious ness will use this energy as brute power. In this case it would be completely lost except for its other use – the instinct of reproduction, which is needed to perpetuate the race. In mankind the instinct of reproduction carries misunderstandings and distortions. The great illusion for mankind is that we think we choose, possess and domi nate, when all the time we are only the instrument of propagation. So the initiate can easily revert to the state of the generative, biologi cal man, rather than remembering where he comes from and what he’s supposed to do. Because he is going deeper than he has ever gone before, he feels that the perseverance he has had to have to go through his many lives has all been in vain. All he needs is to become a witness, a Soul infused personality and maya will not fool him anymore.
This passion burns a path for the higher energies of love and light, to penetrate matter with the purpose of uplifting its conscious ness. It is the passion that says “I’m going for it whether I’m going to be blamed or praised”. The ultimate hallmark of any master has to be the passion of service and the fire of action. Passion receives the higher order when it is aligned to the higher will and then it is implemented into right action. The ‘sad souls’, or the souls without colour, who lived ‘without attracting blame or praise’ were the first people Dante saw in hell and these were people without passion. When we are ‘going for it’, that is when the doors of hell are open and the passion is there, ready to deliver action, devotion and sacrifice out of chaos. The passion of searching for the truth is the most dangerous passion there is, for it has to do with the slaying of an aspect of the personality, such as the glamour of being best loved of the emotional body, or the pride of the intellect. We can hold on to the idea that we are the gift, rather than understanding that the gift is working through us. When we know the latter we climb against the current many times, like the salmon, which is another symbol for the initiate. If we have not purified our personal intent or needs, it is not the fire of truth that is going to push us along, but the fire of disintegration, so the danger is real and involves survival of the Soul. There is nothing more dangerous than the pursuit of truth, but we have to be in love with it and then the danger doesn’t seem real, because love holds and transmutes any misunderstanding we might have had. So we learn to master our passion and therefore learn to transmute it, but at the beginning if there is no passion, we might as well forget it, for esoterically we have to want to die for the truth. This means to let go of our self importance and our survival mechanism. This would make us a fool according to the everyday success story of the world!
If we have taken a ‘wrong path’ then we have more coal for burn ing. We can love and transmute that path into the right path; it is as simple as that. All mistakes are allowed and it is not even a question of allowing, for there’s actually no mistake.
It is in the two or three cards after The Magician that discrimina tion and determination will be developed, because we can’t ask a Number 1 to discriminate. If we receive an impulse from the higher self we have no time to discriminate! If our impulse is from the needs of mass consciousness then we have to start learning to discriminate, because by the time we come to The Empress we have to be able to tell the difference between the two, otherwise we will be using the power of the wand for the generation of more glamour, rather than the enlightenment of nature. If we want to keep on doing that, we can do it for eternity, but if we want to get onto the path of the Soul then we have to start to discriminate.
The pentacle is gold, for gold cannot decay or be corrupted and so it doesn’t follow the rules of the material world. It is the gold in his purified solar plexus, the seat of emotional needs and impulse, which is preventing The Magician from being tainted, or brought down by mass consciousness and the lower passions.The purity of his understanding of the material world cannot be soiled; he can live in the world without being spoilt or stained and can give orders without thinking that the power is his. We have to reach that stage of incorruptibility if we want to rise above the magnetic pull of needs and desires, for it is purified matter that allows spiritual action. The beautiful Celtic, or Antioch cross of the occident which is carved on the pentacle, symbolises the union of Spirit and matter. The Magician has his index finger on the centre of the cross, which is the goal, for only from the cen tre can we transform or transmute. Spirit has no other goal but the fusion with matter in order to release it from its unconscious state.
The cup is the greatest instrument of divination, because it will always reflect and always be receptive. It is the instrument of com munion with the divine, for the cup receives the divine. Man must live in his becoming. Life is an unfolding evolution, rather than accountability, so we should not keep on measuring what we have done in the past. The cup of course is feminine and cannot give any other service but to receive.
It is the nature of the cup to receive and when she receives the light energy of the sword, she can only respond according to the level of her own understanding of the God we live in, so if the consciousness is purely focussed on nature, that energy will be transformed into babies, seasons or harvest. The cup can only form shapes that are a reflection of her own life, which is the per fection of nature imposing form on whatever she receives. This receptivity is not passive, it is receiving and creating, but it can only create a replica of itself. When suddenly the receptivity of the cup is uplifted into a higher dimension then that new vision can be replicated. For this reason it is important not to look down at the path of the life of nature, whose higher aspiration has to do with surviving in the physical. The more receptive we can be to the higher levels of thinking and ideals, the
