“I deserve your Fury!” These words are attributable to Freddie Mercury, at least how he is portrayed in the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” during a scene where he attempts to re-engage his bandmates after a long absence. Freddie was seeking no truce, but a Peace. An apology would have delivered a truce. “I deserve your Fury” was going to elicit Forgiveness or not.
Today we turn to Peacemaking–and we can thank Freddie Mercury for the teachable moment. Peacemaking is the hallowed ground of the Western Mystery Tradition, and leading the way, the agency of of its hermetic practices Tarot (and the Kabbalah).
Peacemaking. Think: Freedom. Unconditional Forgiveness. Each is an attribute of divine (unsummoned) Love. Easy enough to declare—a challenge to apply in terms of direct personal experience. A tool to assist in the process–the Western hermetic arts. Today: Tarot.
Understanding how Original Light appearing on Day One (“Let there be light” Genesis 1:3) is different in kind from a Created Light of Day Four (“And G-d made two great lights” Genesis 1:16)–is where we begin our tutorial on Tarot as a channel for Peacemaking.
Original Light is Pure Potential (first cause): Created Light, Animated Potential (fulfillment). The instrument of human Personality (more on this point in a few paragraphs) a special intermediary.
Original Light v Created Light represents the minimum subsets of universe: Zero and Two. Paul Foster Case (“PFC”) cites the term “No-Thing” to reference Universe as Pure Potential. He also uses this phrase to describe the Zero attributed to Tarot’s first key, The Fool. PFC did not invent this language. Is No-Thing a serviceable term of reference?
“NO-THING; absence of quantity, quality or mass; freedom from every limitation, changelessness, the unknown immeasurable, fathomless, infinite, eternal Source; the Rootless Root of existence; the sacred ellipse, representing the endless line of eternity; the Cosmic Egg; Super-consciousness.” Source: Wisdom of Tarot, (1931) Paul Foster Case
The beginning is not the beginning. “In the end is my beginning.”
By way of our incarnation into Time and History (place) we “live, move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) in the context of animated potential. Our physicality is of Nature. Our physical mortality is of Nature. Our Personality, by contrast, is something Nature “hath not made”. G-d* is similarly described by the Adepts as “something Nature hath not made”. In this sense, we may wonder: “are we made in G-d’s image”? We are physically animated by Nature and self-aware by virtue of something special but possibly “un”-Natural. Enter: Personality.
* [Omitting the letter “o” to complete the spelling of “God” was deemed an act of hubris and thereby to be avoided. The humbler abbreviation, “G-d”, for millenia–was the convention.]
If we are listening with ears tuned to 2020 sensibilities–Paul Foster Case describes the Personality in very remarkable terms (circa 1931):
“But there is an instrument, not made by man [or Nature], which can utilize and adapt these higher vibrations, this radiant mental energy, in a manner truly wonderful. That instrument is the human personality and you are its possessor.” Wisdom of Tarot, 1931, PFC
For many reasons, one hundred plus years of Psychological research, the pluralization of Western societies, improvements in infant rates of survival, growing interest among Western culture for insights we can only call “Alternative” or “Eastern”, longevity generally, social media innovations specifically, gender equity advocacy and, for a time, a keen interest in the acquisition of moral perspective in children (Piaget), the role and purposes of Personality have undergone much review–little of which elevates its “reason for being” as an instrument for acknowledging, let alone utilizing, “radiant mental energy”. A more serviceable moniker for describing today’s expectation of Personality as an instrument capable of ameliorating suffering of any stripe might be–“managed hysteria”.
As if the rough hands of psychology aren’t enough, even fewer words are needed to describe how the Church and the Personality have traveled a shared if Quixotic road to mutual disquietude.
Must we then secularize all?
How else do we buck the Church and the Psychologist? Each speaks ex cathedra about sin or its counterpart, inadequacy intrinsic to character. Heaven help us!
The self-discovery awaiting the serious Tarot student is amazing and inexhaustible. If the intention of one’s Tarot practice is to serve peacemaking– the power of the Tarot and its utility are at the ready.
In a moment we will discuss the first five Major Keys—three of which were introduced in a recent post, then we will spend some sentences discussing how modern day ideas of Personality and unconditional Love pose special challenges to Peacemaking.
In the course of our human journey, we touch the face of peacemaking whenever we experience forgiveness without conditions. Peacemaking goes beyond family and state. “I deserve your Fury” is such a strategy. All other conflict resolution outcomes are truce making–a shadow form of peacemaking–helpful but not otherwise liberating.
Truce making begins with contrition followed by apology. Tarot helps us remember why our personal pain as well as the pain others attribute to us cannot be assuaged by contrition or apology. A state of unconditional forgiveness is requisite to peacemaking. The Peacemaker knows this to be so. The truce maker considers forgiveness evidence of weakness.
Enter: unconditional Love. Modern day conventional wisdom holds unconditional Love in high regard. This is a conundrum—see if you concur.
The AF teachings have presented Love as “the unsummoned quanta of meaning“. The term “unsummoned” is important. It suggests Love to be always present—it cannot be beckoned (summoned) or called; neither can it be “conditioned”. Unconditional Forgiveness, when it is wanting, masks Love. We may wonder, should Peacemaking allude us, is suffering the meaning of Life? Love unmasked with Unconditional Forgiveness relieves suffering.
Unconditional Forgiveness disempowers Fury.
- Unconditional Forgiveness disempowers Fury.
- Fury disempowered = Freedom.
- Freedom = unsummoned Love.
- Peacemaking = the art of disempowering Fury.
- Peacemaking through the development of Personality is the hallowed ground of the Western Mystery Tradition.
In AF Post No. 20 we introduced Tarot Keys 0, 1 and 2, The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess. Today we introduce Keys 3 and 4, the Empress and the Emperor. The first five major Keys represent, in this order, the Personality (0 The Fool: Sun) followed by Concentration (1 The Magician: Mercury), Intuition (2 The High Priestess: Moon) Imaginative Multiplication (3 The Empress: Venus) and Reason (4 The Emperor: Mars). Keys 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively.
- 0. The Fool, is all about Freedom and Personality.
- 1. The Magician, Personality as Waking Awareness–Concentration.
- 2. The High Priestess, Personality as Non-waking Awareness—Memory, Subordination, Perfect Deduction.
- 3. The Empress, Personality as Multiplication. Creative Imagination.
- 4. The Emperor, Personality organized as Reason. The act of naming. Adam “the namer”.
Tears of joy, frustration and pain make the element of water an important symbol of human self-expression. Do human tears hydrate a desert or comprise a river’s torrent? Or both? In what physical state is water its truest self–as ice, cloud, lake or sea, clear or salted?
The great narratives of the West tell us Moses was discovered as an infant amidst the bullrushes of the Nile, and as a leader was bound to the desert. Moses strikes the Rock of Horeb and it yields a stream to water his people. He dies before reaching a Promised Land and was buried by Jehovah no less. His grave is thereby unknown. Noah survives a flood. The Red Sea was parted. During a storm Jesus walked upon water. John baptizes Jesus in a river named Jordan. The first New Testament miracle turns water to wine. We are taught the rainbow is a covenant. Jesus’ side is pierced at Calvary to release “living” water.
Water is a powerful component of Tarot imagery. It first appears as the flowing robe of the High Priestess, Key 2. Water is a visible and important element of Keys 3 and 4 where we see it cascading behind and to the right of the Empress and in full view beyond the Emperor. The water element, wherever it appears among the Major Keys, connects to water elements in all the Keys.
Enter: Reason, Key 4. Reason helps us organize the content of our waking and non-waking awareness (Keys 1 and 2). Universe appears to be simultaneously, animated (alive), changing, inanimate, curved, non-simultaneous, re-purposing, and void of straight lines. Reason helps us chart all directly apprehended visible and invisible phenomena and all questions. Reason is capable of putting things in order. Reason, Key 4, organizes–it does not originate. [Intuition and Imagination, Keys 2 and 3, originate.] Reason does not explain suffering. Reason is probably incapable of explaining Peacemaking.
If suffering is a river, it is time to rename its Ferryman. No longer shall he respond to the name, Charon. The Ferryman and the Passenger, as one person, shall call out to the other: “I Deserve Your Fury!” The Promised Land is Unconditional Forgiveness. Take me home!
Pictured left: the Buriganga River, Bangladesh. Reputed to be the most polluted river in the world. A remarkable physical metaphor, where Ferrymen and Passengers are unnumbered.
Beware: lest Contrition or Apology deny the River, the Passenger and the Ferryman.
“I moved about among them, wringing my hands and weeping over them, but I loved them perhaps more than in old days when there was no suffering in their faces and when they were innocent and so lovely. I loved the earth they had polluted even more than when it had been a paradise, if only because sorrow had come to it.” –-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
While the Astrologers’ Folio makes no claim to excellence in its chosen field of study (occult hermetic arts as practiced in the West), or prescience anticipating the direction and timing of social progress (East or West), or, in matters of philosophical consequence associated with first causes or the ultimate meaning of direct human experience–we are agnostic and disavow any special standing with truth. We believe, however, the mantle of Personality is capable of experiencing “unconditional forgiveness” directly and thereby, Peacemaking and its pursuit qualify as a noble vocation.
The Astrologers’ Folio seeks to affirm the following aspirational premises:
- G-d is something Nature hath not made.
- Love is the “unsummoned quanta of meaning”–always present.
- Some day, the sum total of all questions arising from the direct experience of all persons across all time will be answered.
- The full expression of Personality is the instrument by and through which the face “behind all manifestation” and Peacemaking may be known.
- The Personality aspires to a higher level of virtuosity by declaring: “I deserve your fury.”
We close, reviewing the following images: Original Light, Mercury, Moon, Venus, and Mars with Key 0, Key 1, Key 2, Key 3, Key 4—The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor.
“Practice makes improvement.”
We bid you Peace and blessings,
Frater A
Should you have time to consider a musical reflection to accompany this post, we refer you to Queen’s performance of “Love of My Life and Bohemian Rhapsody”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEEJOZkmIxU Key word: Trying.
A Reference of symbols, charts and definitions important to Western Mystery Tradition studies is listed as Post No. 900. Enter “900” in the Search box to be directed to this location.
Source of featured image: https://ncq.asn.au/2018/06/15-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-norse-mythology/
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For example….”Nietsche thought nihilism emerged from the dominance of Christian dogma in your Europe—not as a refutation of Christianity.” Some would attribute to Nietsche it would be nihilism that would allow society to assay the value of Christian theory of what is true and valuable.
Astrologers' Folio 