The Emperor ~ Meaning and Symbolism

THE EMPEROR.

After I learned the first three numbers I was given to

understand the Great Law of Four—the alpha and omega

of all.

I saw the Emperor on a lofty stone throne, ornament-

ed by four rams' heads. On his forehead shone a golden

helmet. His white beard fell over a purple mantle. In one

hand he held a sphere, the symbol of his possession, and

in the other, a sceptre in the form of an Egyptian cross—

the sign of his power over birth.

"I am The Great Law," the Emperor said. 

"I am the

name of God. The four letters of his name are in me and

I am in all.

"I am in the four principles. I am in the four elements

I am in the four seasons. I am in the four cardinal points I

am in the four signs of the Tarot.

"I am the beginning; I am action; I am completion I

am the result.

"For him who knows how to see me there are no

mysteries on earth.

"I am the great Pentacle.

"As the earth encloses in itself fire, water and air;

as the fourth letter of the Name encloses in itself the first

three and becomes itself the first, so my sceptre encloses

the complete triangle and bears in itself the seed of a new

triangle.

"I am the Logos in the full aspect and the beginning of

a new Logos."

And while the Emperor spoke, his helmet shone

brighter and brighter, and his golden armour gleamed

beneath his mantle. I could not bear his glory and 1

lowered my eyes.

When I tried to lift them again a vivid light of radiant

fire was before me, and I prostrated myself and made

obeisance to the Fiery Word.

The Sun ~ Meaning and Symbolism

THE SUN.

As soon as I perceived the Sun, I understood that It,

Itself, is the expression of the Fiery Word and the sign of

the Emperor.

The great luminary shone with an intense heat upon the

large golden heads of sun-flowers.

And I saw a naked boy, whose head was wreathed with

roses, galloping on a white horse and waving a bright-red

banner.

I shut my eyes for a moment and when I opened them

again I saw that each ray of the Sun is the sceptre of the

Emperor and bears life. And I saw how under the

concentration of these rays the mystic flowers of the waters

open and receive the rays into themselves and how all

Nature is constantly born from the union of two principles.

The Chariot ~ Meaning and Symbolism

THE CHARIOT.

I saw a chariot drawn by two sphinxes, one white. the

other black. Four pillars supported a blue canopy, on

which were scattered five-pointed stars. The Conqueror,

clad in steel armour, stood under this canopy guiding the

sphinxes. He held a sceptre, on the end of which were a

globe, a triangle and a square. A golden pentagram

sparkled in his crown. On the front of the chariot there

was represented a winged sphere and beneath that the

symbol of the mystical lingam, signifying the union of two

principles.

"Everything in this picture has a significance. Look and

try to understand", said the voice.

"This is Will armed with Knowledge. We see here,

however, the wish to achieve, rather than achievement

itself. The man in the chariot thought himself a conqueror

before he had really conquered, and he believes that

victory must come to the conqueror. There are true

possibilities in this beautiful conception, but also many

false ones. Illusory fires and numerous dangers are hidden

here.

He controls the sphinxes by the power of a magic

word, but the tension of his Will may fail and then the

magic word will lose its power and he may be devoured

by the sphinxes.

This is indeed the Conqueror, but only for the

moment; he has not yet conquered Time, and the

succeeding moment is unknown to him.

This is the Conqueror, not by love, but by fire and the

sword,—a conqueror against whom the conquered may

arise. Do you see behind him the towers of the conquered

city? Perhaps the flame of uprising burns already there.

And he is unaware that the city vanquished by means

of fire and the sword is the city within his own

consciousness, that the magic chariot is in himself and that

the blood-thirsty sphynxes, also a state of consciousness

within, watch his every movement. He has externalized

all these phases of his mind and sees them only outside

himself. This is his fundamental error. He entered the

outer court of the Temple of knowledge, but thinks he

has been in the Temple itself. He regarded the rituals of

the first tests as initiation, and he mistook for the goddess,

the priestess who guarded the threshold. Because of this

misconception great perils await him.

Nevertheless it may be that even in his errors and

perils the Great Conception lies concealed. He seeks to

know and, perhaps, in order to attain, mistakes, dangers

and even failures are necessary.

Understand that this is the same man whom you saw

uniting Heaven and Earth, and again walking across a hot

desert to a precipice.

The Moon ~ Meaning and Symbolism

THE MOON.

A desolate plain stretched before me. A full moon

looked down as if in contemplative hesitation. Under her

wavering light the shadows lived their own peculiar life.

On the horizon I saw blue hills, and over them wound a

path which stretched between two grey towers far away

into the distance. On either side the path a wolf and dog

sat and howled at the moon. I remembered that dogs

believe in thieves and ghosts. A large black crab crawled

out of the rivulet into the sands. A heavy, cold dew was

falling.

Dread fell upon me. I sensed the presence of a

mysterious world, a world of hostile spirits, of corpses

rising from graves, of wailing ghosts. In this pale moonlight

I seemed to feel the presence of apparitions;

someone watched me from behind the towers,—and I

knew it was dangerous to look back.

The Lovers: Meaning & Symbolism

LOVERS.

I saw a blooming garden in a green valley, surrounded

by soft blue hills.

In the garden I saw a Man and a Woman naked and

beautiful. They loved each other and their Love was their

service to the Great Conception, a prayer and a sacrifice;

through It they communed with God, through It they

received the highest revelations; in Its light the deepest

truths came to them; the magic world opened its gate;

elves, undines, sylphs and gnomes came openly to them;

the three kingdoms of nature, the mineral, plant and

animal, and the four elements—fire, water, air and

earth—served them.

Through their Love they saw the mystery of the

world's equilibrium, and that they themselves were a

symbol and expression of this balance. Two triangles

united in them into a six-pointed star. Two magnets

melted into an ellipsis. They were two. The third was the

Unknown Future. The three made One.

I saw the woman looking out upon the world as

though enraptured with its beauty. And from the tree on

which ripened golden fruit I saw a serpent creep.

It whispered in the woman's ear, and I saw her

listening, smiling at first suspiciously, then with curiosity

which merged into joy. Then I saw her speak to the man. I

noticed that he seemed to admire only her and smiled

with an expression of joy and sympathy at all she told

him.

"This picture you see, is a picture of temptation and

fall", said the voice. "What constitutes the Fall? Do you

understand its nature?

"Life is so good", I said, "and the world so beautiful, and

this man and woman wanted to believe in the reality of

the world and of themselves. They wanted to forget

service and take from the world what it can give. So they

made a distinction between themselves and the world.

They said, "We are here, the world is there." And the

world separated from them and became hostile.

"Yes", said the Voice, this is true. "The everlasting

mistake with men is that they see the fall in love. But

Love is not a fall, it is a soaring above an abyss. And the

higher the flight, the more beautiful and alluring appears

the earth. But that wisdom, which crawls on earth, advises

belief in the earth and in the present. This is the

Temptation. And the man and woman yielded to it. They

dropped from the eternal realms and submitted to time

and death. The balance was disturbed. The fairyland was

closed upon them. The elves, undines, sylphs and gnomes

became invisible.

The Face of God ceased to reveal Itself to them, and all

things appeared upside down.

"This Fall, this first sin of man, repeats itself

perpetually, because man continues to believe in his

separateness and in the Present. And only by means of

great suffering can he liberate himself from the control of

time and return to Eternity—leave darkness and return to

Light."

The Star - Meaning and Symbolism

THE STAR.

A strange emotion seized me. A fiery trembling ran in

waves through all my body. My heart quickened its

beating, tumult agitated my mind.

I felt that I was surrounded by portentous mysteries.

And presently shafts of Light penetrated my being and

illuminated many things before in darkness, whose

existence even I had never suspected. Veils vanished of

which I had been before unaware. Voices spoke to me.

And suddenly all my former knowledge took a new and

different meaning.

I discovered unexpected correlations in things which

hitherto I had thought foreign to each other. Objects

distant and different from one another appeared near and

similar. The facts of the world arranged themselves before

my eyes according to a new pattern.

In the sky there appeared an enormous star surround-

ed by seven smaller stars. Their rays intermingled, filling

space with immeasurable radiance and splendour. Then I

knew I saw that Heaven of which Plotinus speaks:

"Where... all things are diaphanous; and nothing is dark

and resisting, but everything is apparent to every one

internally and throughout. For light everywhere meets

with light, since everything contains all things in itself, and

again sees all things in another. So that all things are

everywhere, and all is all. Each thing likewise is

everything. And the splendour there is infinite. For

everything there is great, since even that which is small is

great.

"The sun too, which is there, is all the stars; and again

each star is the sun and all the stars. In each however, a

different property predominates, but at the same time all

things are visible in each. Motion likewise there is pure;

for motion is not confounded by a mover different from

it. Permanency also suffers no change of its nature,

because it is not mingled with the unstable. And the

beautiful there is beautiful, because it does not subsist in

beauty. Each thing, too, is there established, not as in a

foreign land, but the seat of each thing is that which each

thing is.

 .... Nor is the thing itself different from the

place in which it subsists. For the subject of it is intellect,

and it is itself intellect. ... In this sensible region, therefore,

one part is not produced by another, but each part is

alone a part. But there each part always proceeds from the

whole, and is at the same each time part and the whole.

For it appears indeed as a part; but by him whose sight is

acute, it will be seen as a whole.

"Where... is likewise no weariness of the vision which

is there, not any plenitude of perception which can bring

intuition to an end.

"For neither was there any vacuity which when filled

might cause the visible energy to cease; nor is this one

thing, but that another, so as to occasion a part of one

thing not to be amicable with that of another.

"Where... the life is wisdom; a wisdom not obtained by

a reasoning process, because the whole of it always was,

and is not in any respect deficient, so as to be in want of

investigation. But it is the first wisdom, and is not derived

from another."

I understood that all the radiance here is thought;

and the changing colours are emotions. And each ray, if we

look into it, turns into images, symbols, voices and moods.

And I saw that there is nothing inanimate, but all is soul,

all is life, all is emotion and imagination.

And beneath the radiant stars beside the blue river 1

saw a naked maiden, young and beautiful. She stooped on

one knee and poured water from two vessels, one of gold

and one of silver. A little bird in a near by bush lifted its

wings and was poised ready to fly away.

For a moment I understood that I beheld the Soul of

Nature.

"This is Nature's Imagination", said the voice gently.

"Nature dreams, improvises, creates worlds. Learn to unite

your imagination with Her Imagination

and nothing will ever be impossible for you. Lose the

external world and seek it in yourself. Then you will find

Light. "But remember, unless you have lost the Earth, you

will not find Heaven. It is impossible to see both wrongly

and rightly at the same time."

The Hierophant - Meaning and Symbolism

HIEROPHANT.

I saw the great Master in the Temple. He was siting on

a golden throne set upon a purple platform, and he wore

the robe of a high priest with a golden tiara. He held a

golden eight-pointed cross, and lying at his feet were two

crossed keys. Two initiates bowed before him and to

them he spoke:-—

"Seek the Path, do not seek attainment, Seek for the

Path within yourself.

"Do not expect to hear the truth from others, nor to

see it, or read it in books. Look for the truth in yourself,

not without yourself.

"Aspire only after the impossible and inaccessible.

Expect only that which shall not be.

"Do not hope for Me, — do not look for Me,—do not

believe—that I am outside yourself.

"Within your soul build a lofty tower by which you

may ascend to Heaven. Do not believe in external

miracles, expect miracles only within you. Beware of

believing in a mystery of the earth, in a mystery guarded

by men; for treasuries which must be guarded

are empty. Do not search for a mystery that can be

hidden by men. Seek the Mystery within yourself.

"Above all, avoid those towers built in order to

preserve the mysteries and to make an ascent to Heaven

by stone stairways. And remember that as soon as men

build such a tower they begin to dispute about the

summit.

"The Path is in yourself, and Truth is in yourself and

Mystery is in yourself.