external events than about who we are and why things happen as they must. They do not show us what we can do but allow us to see things in a more comprehensive way and within a broader context. However, if we begin with the assumption that everything we experience in the external world reflects our inner being, examining these series offers us the opportunity for knowing ourselves. As a result, unused energies can be set into motion and become available to us in our external lives. This brings us into the realm that esotericism calls inner inspiration or cosmic consciousness. However, this is not a voice from above but an inner concept that is more than we believe ourselves to be - but less than we believe that God is. It is the threshold over which everything that we have removed from ourselves with all our might can flow back into the soul. It doesn’t matter whether we have raised it up to heaven or sent it down to hell so that we can use this detour to play off God and the Devil against each other through our projections, true to the motto: Evil is always in others!
Warning
Before we begin the spread, which means drawing cards as we hold them in our hands like a fan or from cards spread out on a surface, we shuffle all of them so that some of the trumps are “reversed.”
If this is new to you, it is advisable to begin with the third spread group (spread systems VII–IX). These emphasize what the past or present state of a certain situation and what can or must be done in a specific situation.
I BAPHOMET
Questions
This spread is very useful if you have no specific questions and simply want to ask your subconscious mind what portions of your self should be developed beyond the normal way in which you perceive yourself. Here we find ourselves in the realm of paradoxical processes of the inner nature that normally cannot be understood by means of logic thought. They reveal portions of the soul that are inaccessible parts to the conscious mind, at whose mercy we often feel ourselves to be (even though they are a part of us). As a result, we often battle against them in their external projections. The focus here is on questions such as the following:
• What do my own inner images bring into a situation?
• How do I build (reconstruct) the given situation with the help of my senses and what contribution do I make towards the development of this situation?
Allegory (Baphomet’s Invocation)
In the first eon, I was the Great Spirit.
In the second eon, Men knew me as the Horned God,
Pangenitor Panphage.
In the third eon, I was the Dark One, the Devil.
In the fourth eon, Men know me not, for I am the
Hidden one.
In this new eon, I appear before you as Baphomet
The God before all gods, who shall endure to the end of the Earth.
Peter J. Carroll: Liber Null – Psychonaut
York Beach, Me. (Samuel Weiser)
1987, page 131f.
Interpretation
1 The Great Spirit (The Self)
This card shows the great self, which is more than you are, yet nothing that exists outside of you. It may be what you call God, but perhaps it also disguises itself as the shadow. In any case, it looks after your interests and you can therefore call upon it in a personal way.
2 The Horned One (The Other)
In this card you encounter the unconscious fears lurking deep inside you. In the deepest levels of your brain, you are still enmeshed with the primitive forms of consciousness from the primal stage of human evolution. All dragons, spiders, and snakes, as well as the concepts of monsters and demons, are the patterns of past experiences, which emerge once more from the older parts of your brain. They have not disappeared because they are psycho-energetically charged. Deep within the subconscious you are still linked with them because they represent a portion of your psychological inheritance.
3 The Devil (The Id)
This picture depicts the Devil, frightening you because you repress him as the unacceptable part of yourself and because he compensates for your shortcomings – hidden from yourself – with his threatening behavior.
4 The Hidden (The Superego)
The fourth card represents what you recognize that you do not understand. This aspect feels sorry for itself because although it perceives the truth, no one listens to it. It is the mysterium magnum, which penetrates all the material bounds, understands all secrets, demands the truth, and recognizes God.
5 Baphomet (The Light)
This card shows everything-that-is, namely the cosmic consciousness that is aware of itself as a part of its own self and therefore points to itself. Cosmic consciousness represents the highest level of spiritual perception available to us.
II THE GREEN ANGEL
Questions
Just like the first spread, this second method of laying the cards is appropriate when you have no concrete questions but would simply like to forage in the primal ooze of your unconscious mind. Use it to discover who you are outside of who you believe you are – beyond the ego with which you only identify to a limited degree because you suspect that someone else also exists here. If “Baphomet” (I) shows you what portion of your inner images you bring into a situation, “The Green Angel” personifies the images that the subconscious mind reflects back to you from the situation: These are the dark unconscious formations that are dramatized through your directions in the past.
Allegory (The Green Angel)
For a moment I am once again the one who sits at the writing desk staring into the crystal ball. Just for a brief fleeting moment I once again change into my forefather, John Dee, and stray into the oldest and most depraved quarter of Prague, not knowing where my feet will take me. I have the vague need to dive down into the muddy bed of the nameless, unscrupulous, irresponsible rabble that passes its mindless days in the pleasure of smoke-enveloped instinct and is only happy when belly and lechery are satisfied. What is the end of all endeavor? Weariness … loathing … doubt. The feces of nobility and the excrement of the mob are one and the same filth. The King digests the same things as the sewer sweeper. What an error to look up to the imperial in the Prague Castle as if looking up to Heaven! And what comes from the heavens? Fog and rain and the endless filthy watery snow. For hours I have waded through heavenly excrement that fell down sticky from the leaden heights. Heaven’s digestion:
