by Tony Willis
Court de Gébelin and, after him, Eliphas Levi and ‘Papus’, took the Tarot de Marseille as their model for what a tarot pack should be. After the tarot first appeared in Italy around 1425, it assumed several forms. There were three ways of arranging the Major Arcana widely in use, for instance; and some Trumps bore illustrations significantly at odds with those we are familiar with today, and were named differently, too, notably The Hermit and The Tower. Over the course of a century, the order, names, and designs of the Major Arcana crystalized into the formula we today call the Marseille Tarot. De Gébelin, Levi, and others of the French school of tarot accepted that order, those names and designs. Only those who wanted to reconstruct the mythical, but devoutly believed in, Egyptian tarot instituted some minor alterations, mainly concerning the way the Trumps were named. For these enthusiasts, The Devil became Typhon, The Chariot became The Chariot of Osiris, The Lovers became The Two Paths, and so forth. The pictures on the cards, however, in the main replicated those of the Tarot de Marseille deck, while locating them in a faux ancient Egyptian setting and mimicking the style of ancient Egyptian art.
Trumps 15, 16, & 17 from the Egyptian Tarot
In the Marseille Tarot, the Trump Justice is numbered 8 with Strength numbered 11, and The Fool, while unnumbered, is placed at the end of the Major Arcana. The Trumps were sometimes thought of as forming a circle with the Fool as either the final card in the series or the first. Numerically, the Fool could be Zero or Twenty-two. In tarot-based numerology, that is how The Fool functions: in mathematical terms, it acts as a modular number. When counting, using tarot-numerology, one progresses from Twenty-two to One, from the last number in the series to the first. If a calculation yields a Zero result, The Fool is indicated, and the next number after Zero will be, quite logically, One. Auntie Tarot and I spent years experimenting with tarot numerology and we concluded that the Tarot de Marseille order gave the most reliable results – that an Eight year, for instance, either had legal overtones (such as benefiting from a will) or marked a time when the subject found themself judged by the people around them.
The Tarot de Marseille order has its own logic. There is an obvious progression from The Juggler, as Trump 1 is named in the Marseille Tarot, to The Chariot, and much has been made of this in novels based on the so-called Journey of the Fool. Towards the other end of the Major Arcana, there is an obvious progression taking in The Star, The Moon, and The Sun. There are other links between cards, too. If the temptations foreshadowed by The Devil are given in to, the result is likely to be a fall from grace (The Tower). However, after every fall, Fate offers us the opportunity to regroup, reassess, and resolve to make a fresh start in life (The Star).
In the predictive tarot, the Star’s meaning is a new beginning. The large star on the illustration is identified with the morning star heralding the dawn of another day. Metaphorically, the message is: a clean break with the past, a chance to start anew, a better day is breaking in the inquirer’s life. If the Star is followed by cards with positive associations then the new beginning will lead to success or fulfillment, depending on the question the inquirer has posed. The occult principle animating Trump 17 is Recovery and it is the symbol of the successful comeback.
Many older books on tarot give only the keyword Hope in relation to the divinatory significance of the Star, offering no explanation of how the word is to be interpreted when it comes up in a reading. Sepharial is more helpful; he says one meaning of the card is the realization of hope. British occultist Frank Lind came up with a useful phrase, too: Promising outlook. This is a concept any competent tarot reader can easily weave into the narrative they are telling to their inquirer. Easier to incorporate into the reading, at any rate, than ‘hope’, offered up without any guidance as to how it might materialize in the life of an average human being.
In the past, many oddball meanings became associated with Trump 17. One collector of cartomantic lore gathered together the divinatory meanings of the card in use in the 1920s, and came up with this list: creation, song, speech, music, hope, immortality, eternal youth, beauty. Hope is among them, still not explained, as is another meaning one regularly comes across when reading about the Star, immortality. This meaning comes from Eliphas Levi. In relation to this, some commentators have declared the figure on the card to be Hebe, demi-goddess of youth, stretching the implied notion of eternal youth into the grander concept of physical immortality. It is more likely that, when assigning immortality to the Star, Levi had another kind of immortality in mind. Levi, working with a set of correspondences that runs counter to the set used by the Golden Dawn, attributed the planet Mercury to the card. Astrologically Mercury indicates communication at all levels. Hence the inclusion of speech, song, and music in the list given above. The list might well have contained the written word as well as the spoken word. Another term on the list is ‘creation’. Creative people leave something behind them. Henry James has left us his novels, Caravaggio and Raphael their paintings, Arthur Miller and Sophocles their plays; some of Sophocles’ plays being performed today, two thousand years after they were written: that is a kind of immortality, in that Sophocles’ name has been kept alive over the course of two millennia, a feat very few of his contemporaries accomplished. The numerologist Cheiro, writing about the number 17, says: ‘It is considered a “number of immortality” in that the person’s name “lives on after him”.’
Returning to the list of 1920s meanings one last time to tie up the remaining loose ends, we find the word beauty included on it. This is not a meaning that is at all helpful from the divinatory point of view. Little wonder then that it has had no real impact on the history of the predictive tarot.
In reverse, the Star indicates, “hopes not fulfilled, expectations disappointed or fulfilled in a minor degree.” The effect has also been summed up as: the negation of hope, and presaging difficulties. When expounding the tarot, Aleister Crowley writes very much in the Golden Dawn vein. Of the Star, he says, “if ill-dignified [the G.D. doesn’t deal in reversals], can mean error of judgement, dreaminess, disappointment.” The theme is clear.
In terms of the occult tarot, at the spiritual level Trump 17 represents Natural Divine Forces. At the astral or psychic level, it represents Nature, in the form usually referred to as Mother Nature. At the material level it represents Fecundity or Fertility of mind, hence its connection, in divination, with the creative arts. The card is also said to indicate Natural Divination, a term that needs explaining. It is an oblique reference to Astrology. The Natural Divine Forces of the spiritual level relay their influences to Earth via the stars of the material world. The stars in questions are not just the planets, known to our forebears as wandering stars, but encompass also individual fixed stars and those stella groupings that make up the constellations. Thus astrology represents the materialization of certain Natural Divine Forces and for that reason the lore of the occult tarot describes astrology as ‘Natural Divination’. The seven smaller stars found on the Star card correspond to the seven planets of ancient astrology; in some tarot decks, the sigils of those planets are found inscribed on the smaller stars. The large star, from which Trump 17 takes its name, stands for the unifying force that holds the planets and constellations together as the moving parts in that great system of divination called astrology. As Madame Blavatsky said, “Humanity and the stars are bound together indissolubly, because of the Intelligences that rule the latter.” The Intelligences behind the stars are governed by one Supreme Intelligence; that is the message convey by the picture found on the Star in Tarot de Marseille-type decks and in the Waite-Smith deck, where the large central star dominates the seven smaller ones gathered about it.
On the psychological level, the card can indicate a talent for astrology, but one should not assume that it always does so. Generally, when the Star describes somebody’s personality, it represents a forward-thinking attitude, astuteness, and an up-beat frame of mind, alert to any chance to gain an advantage that presents itself. That is the card when upright, in the first house of a horoscope spread, for example. In reverse, the psychology described is more fanciful, pointing to the dreamer of dreams who never finds the time or the energy to clothe their plans with flesh and give them form on the material plane.
by Tony Willis
The Devil tarot card represents, at one level, pure logic, logic divorced from feeling. When this kind of logic is brought into play the results can be chilling. In the seventies I read a newspaper article about a man, living in London, England, who had killed his mother so that he could inherit her assigned parking space. He explained his thinking in the most logical terms. In London, he argued, people were common as snow in January; parking spaces, on the other hand, were scarce. The sacrifice seemed to him to be perfectly warranted, given the circumstances.
Logic has its place in the world, but logic devoid of feeling leads to heartless acts. Humans, therefore, at some point in their mental evolution, need to move beyond logic. They need to combine it with emotion and to work out which ought to take precedence in any given situation. They also need to realize that neither should ever be used alone, one excluding the other.
For the occult student, the situation is slightly different. The passage from Logic to what lies beyond Logic brings the seeker after the secret wisdom of the unseen forces to a confrontation with paradox. The phase has been aptly summed up in this way: The occultist must take the formula 2 plus 2, realize that the result might be either 4 or 22, and proceed if as both answers were correct. That is the general principle; it can be applied to a wide variety of decisions the student of occultism has to make. To give one instance: When studying the deities of various pantheons, the student may read that the very important Egyptian god Osiris was equated by the Greeks with their own Dionysus. But Osiris is lord of the Underworld and sits in judgment on the souls of the dead. Dionysus, on the other hand, is the god of wine, the ecstasy of inebriation and the ecstasy of exalted consciousness. There appear to be no parallels between the two. The seeker who remains in thrall to the old devil logic will reject the attribution and in doing so lose their hold on the thread that enables occultists to find their way through the labyrinth of esoteric symbolism. Whereas, the seeker who has broken through the barrier posed by the form of logic that is unable to cope with paradox will move forward along the road leading to the Greater Mysteries. The latter will make progress with their understanding of the secret wisdom; the former will come to a halt on the road to higher knowledge, occupying a frame of mind they are comfortable inhabiting, but paused in their spiritual evolution, awaiting the realization that will enable them move on.
At the material level, the Tower has been allotted divinatory meanings such as sudden alterations, unexpected changes, and disappointments in life. The Golden Dawn understood it to represent “[r]evolution as distinguished from transmutation or sublimation; the destructive, as opposed to the conservative energy, attacking inertia.” In a mundane tarot reading the card stands for surprising events, generally, but not always, having unfortunate consequences. Everything depends on the cards surrounding the Tower in the spread, especially those coming after it. For one should never lose sight of the fact that, out of tragedy, success can come, even as the phoenix rises up out of the fire on which it has immolated itself.
At one end of the scale, Trump 16 predicts disgrace, even ruin; at the other, an unforeseen or unexpected calamity. At all events the card presages disruption of the inquirer’s plans. When it appears in a spread, it is the tarot reader’s job to pinpoint where exactly on this continuum the card is functioning in the layout under review. The cards surrounding the Tower will show the way. With the 8 of Swords preceding it and the 3 of Pentacles coming after, the message is an ultimately uplifting one: A confining situation, that the inquirer possibly could not see a way out of (8 Swords), will be transformed by some force beyond their control, and while the immediate upshot may be disappointment and disruption (Tower), the inquirer’s life can be restructured, most probably in a better, stabler form (3 Pentacles).
Two keywords traditionally associated with the Tower are ‘ruin’ and ‘catastrophe’. They resonate to the material or predictive level of interpretation. One of the card’s secret titles is ‘Astral Constriction’; it references the psychic or astral level. The astral plane is not open to the scrutiny of the five physical senses. Those people who have spent time on the astral plane have no option but to report back to those who have no experience of it using the language of analogy. Over the centuries, astral explorers have turned over and over again to the same comparisons. From one angle, the Astral acts like a sea or ocean; it rises and falls, ebbs and flows, and is perpetually in motion. From another angle, the Astral has airy qualities (without actually being Air, as we are talking analogically). Humans live surrounded by air but hardly notice that they do. Not until, on a blustery day, the wind threatens to blow our hat off or turn our umbrella inside out, and then we are reminded, not only of air’s constant presence, but also its latent power. Both water and air can be treacherous mediums to the unwary or unprepared. What Water and Air have in common is the tendency to move. Water flows in a tidal motion while Air blows in any direction it chooses. Astral Constriction, then, is something of a contradiction in terms.
The astral level is also the level of psyche. Viewed from one angle, the word psyche refers to the soul, and viewed from another it refers to an aspect of consciousness, the aspect of consciousness people are referring to when they talk of ‘consciousness raising’ or ‘the expansion of consciousness’. These are the same thing, raising consciousness being simply the expansion of consciousness in an upward direction. However, there comes a point where the psyche needs to rest from its consciousness-raising exertions, regroup and reassess. Not until this process has been gone through is it safe for the occult student to attempt further expansion of consciousness or to raise their consciousness to a higher level. This is the Astral, or psychic, Constriction adverted to by the secret title of the Tower card. It is a necessary pause and when it is imposed upon us should be embraced. Adequate sleep is essential to the health of the body and adequate rest is essential to the health of the psyche. Those who ignore either of these truths do so at their own peril.
The Tower’s other secret title, ‘Logical Elimination’, operates at the spiritual level, and that has been dealt with already, in the discussion about how the Tower’s energies relate to those of the Devil, one of whose secret titles is ‘Logic’.
The predictive tarot and the psychological tarot are, these days, treated as separate entities. But the predictive tarot has a psychological side to it and always did have. Some excellent examples of the psychological approach to tarot interleaved with its predictive aspect are to be found in Basil Rákóczi’s The Painted Caravan. Despite the title, the book is about the predictive tarot. Unfortunately these days copies, supposing you can get your hands on any, are selling for £600.
What then does Trump 16 denote from the psychological point of view? The Tower, upright, signifies a person, unremarkable in many ways, who acts as a catalyst. Startling events happen around them rather than to them. Those events start when the person enters your life and cease when they move on. In reverse, the Tower denotes one who, consciously or unconsciously, fulfils the role of Trickster. They may lie, dissemble, or manipulate; the ultimate Trickster engaging in all three. Some tricksters tease or torment, unerringly homing in on their victim’s sore spots. The worst of the type enjoy wreaking havoc and are best avoided by the rest of humanity.
Finally, let us imagine that the inquirer has asked about their spirituality or the condition of their immortal soul. Under those circumstances, The Tower in the first house of a horoscope spread is a sign that the inquirer’s current incarnation is one of spiritual transition, during which an important advance in knowledge and understanding will be made. As a result, the emphasis of the inquirer’s life will shift from the gathering of material experience in the direction of more spiritually oriented goals. It is the symbol of the seeker after higher things taking their first stumbling steps towards the next spiritual level open to them.
In reverse in the first house of a horoscope spread, where the question relates to spiritual or soul-experience, The Tower denotes someone who delights in stirring up trouble in order to further their own ends. Its presence in the first house, reversed, indicates that the person the card refers to has entered a spiritual cul de sac; they may remain stalled in that dead end for some time before coming to their senses and retracing their footsteps. The more educated the person is in their general outlook on life, the more likely it is that they will cause trouble within an esoteric school or a study group investigating the occult. The less advanced will play their games at their place of work or within their family. They may get away with their antics for a time but inevitably they will be found out and suffer censure or even ostracism. When the card comes up reversed in the first house and the question asked concerns spiritual matters, the best advice the reader can give the inquirer is that, for the foreseeable future, they examine their motives very carefully before taking any action whatsoever on the physical plane.
The Tower as a Predictive Anomaly
There are a number of schools of thought active in the tarot world. In my opinion none is superior to any other; there is something to be learnt from all of them. One tradition relating to the Tower assigns it a unique attribution. Whereas all other Trumps take on negative connotations when they fall in reverse, and those with an unfortunate significance when upright become even more malignant when they appear upside down in a spread, the Tower assumes a better tone in reverse. Charles Platt, in his The Art of Card Fortune-Telling (1921), says that, when reversed, the Tower loses much of its malevolence, though he feels that in association with cards of negative import it might predict imprisonment. In a book published in 1936, Richard Huson stated: If reversed, its evil influence is lessened considerably. If placed near a card of deniers [pentacles], especially the seven, it foreshadows, strangely enough, an unexpected legacy.
As I’ve already said, more often than not, where the predictive tarot is concerned, the meaning of a card when reversed is the exact opposite of its meaning when upright. But here we have an instance where an upright meaning can be worked out from the reversed meaning. If the Tower reversed signifies imprisonment, as Platt says it does, then one of its upright meanings should be ‘freedom from imprisonment’. I have, on a number of occasions, found this meaning to apply metaphorically to the upright Tower. That is to say, for me, it has signified the inquirer ‘seeing the light’, coming to their senses, or experiencing a eureka moment that freed them from a confining mindset that had held them in its grip for a number of years.
Everybody’s interaction with the tarot is unique. I am merely pointing out that the card meanings that find their way into books arrive there for a reason. Charles Platt must have seen the Tower forecasting imprisonment in readings he made or he would not have been promoting that meaning for the card.
For the sake of completeness, I am going to say a few words about the way the Four Elements correspond to the Three Planes. The physical plane is aligned with Earth. The astral plane is aligned with Water and Air, as described in the body of this post. The Lower Astral is more emotional (Watery) in nature and the Upper Astral more mental or thought-orientated (Airy). The spiritual plane is associated with Fire, that aspect of fire which, the poet tells us, burns but does not consume; for spiritual Fire is not mundane fire, although the latter is a physical manifestation of the former.
by Tony Willis
I have been reluctant to post anything on this blogsite, which is devoted to the tarot, about my other occult work. However, followers of the blog are aware that I had concerned myself with the plight of Ukraine, and recently questions have been raised as to what I was doing and how successful my efforts were. Therefore, to satisfy people’s curiosity, I am going to give a brief account of my occult work in this area.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, I formed a group that sent emotional support to the people of Ukraine at a time when it looked as though their country would fall to the invading Russian army. This work was carried out on the Higher Planes. It went on for ten months, until Ukraine was receiving sufficient arms, tanks, etc. from Western powers to enable her to fend off Russian forces.
When that work came to an end, I was invited to join the efforts being made by a Mystery School centered in Poland. It was founded a hundred years ago by Russian emigres who had fled the revolution. The work of this School was to enlighten the Russian group mind. It was literally sending Light to Russia with the intention of getting ordinary Russian people to see through the lies their politicians were telling them.
That work has gone on for a year and changes to the Russian group mind are apparent today. There have been indications over the past six to nine months that many Russians were dissatisfied with the continuation of the war with Ukraine. Though these indications have not been widely reported in the UK, where I am resident.
But in the past week, the signs of unrest have been unmistakable. Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin made his annual Address to the Nation. The address is broadcast on tv and radio. It was also shown in cinemas across Russia, admission free. The cinemas remained empty, however, which is a message in itself. Then came Alexei Navalny’s funeral. Thousands took to the streets and chanted anti-Putin slogans and anti-war slogans. Inevitably there were arrests. But the groundswell of protest is apparent.
Even so, the war hasn’t ended. That means the work of the Mystery School I’m allied with hasn’t finished. It continues and will continue until our Inner Plane Contact advises us to desist or until the war is over.
I am touched by all the tributes that have come in for Auntie Tarot, most of them posted in the comments section of the blog, others sent directly to me. I know Auntie would have been moved by these tributes herself. She knew that she had done a good job in starting the blog and keeping it going, but appreciative feedback is always uplifting. Reading all those comments, seeing what readers of the blog thought of her, would have meant a great deal to her, I can assure you.
Tony Willis
I recently uploaded a post on The Fifteenth Principle, The Tarot Devil. There had been no posts for almost two years. I apologize to all followers of the Auntie Tarot Blog for that.
It has been a trying time. Auntie’s husband of almost six decades was declared terminally ill. She took time off from all major occult work to act as his carer and I assumed responsibility for the blog. Things came to a head on all fronts in the second half of 2022. Auntie’s beloved husband passed on; I had a knee replacement operation that knocked the stuffing out of me – I am, after all, in my late seventies. As I was getting back on my feet, physically as well as figuratively, Auntie’s health went into a sudden decline.
It falls to me to inform readers to the Auntie Tarot Blog that, following a short illness, Auntie has passed away. The blog will continue, solely under my hand now. I have no intention of changing the name of the blog. Auntie left us a great body of work, and in recognition of that, I aim to retain the name ‘Auntie Tarot Blog’.
I will continue with the ‘Occult Principles’ posts and when that series is finished, I hope to write about the minor arcana.
I hope I can do Auntie justice. We were friends for a long time. We met in the mid-nineteen-sixties when I entered a Mystery School of which Auntie was already a member. Although she was thirteen years or so older than me, we hit it off immediately. We had the same sense of humor and the same inclination to prove everything we were taught using the experimental method. By taking that approach, we sometimes got our fingers burnt. Thankfully, there was always an Elder of the School we belonged to to set matters right on the Astral Planes, and we never did more than burn our fingers. The Praemonstratrix of the School took the view that experimentation was no bad thing, that a student who never made a mistake never made anything. Auntie and I learnt many lessons over a nine-year period and, I would say, we became better occultists on account of the scrapes we got into. We were taught, or found out for ourselves, how to correct errors and expanded our knowledge of the workings of occultism in the process.
After I left the School, Auntie and I remained friends and if anything, the association consolidated even further. One thing that united us was our opinion of the tarot. We both understood that there were other valid methods of working with the tarot than that contained in the Golden Dawn’s ‘Book T’. We made our own investigations and, at irregular intervals, we would pool our knowledge, marveling at how often our discoveries matched or backed each other up.
I remember those joyous times with heartfelt gratitude. I shall miss Auntie; she leaves an enormous hole in my life. Thank you, Auntie, for everything, and may God speed you on your journey to who knows where and the reward that awaits you there.
By Tony Willis
The name of Trump number 15, the Devil, reminds us that the tarot, in its present form – 22 major and 56 minor ‘mysteries’ – is a product of an early stage of the period of European history known as the Renaissance. Its imagery and symbolism were colored by the culture into which it was born. The predominant religion was Christian Catholicism, hence we find a Pope among the Trumps and also an angel, evidently presiding over the events of the promised Day of Judgment. There was, too, among the Trumps a card named El diavolo. The devil, Christians believed, opposed God’s will. Not surprisingly, then, one of the flashcard-type keywords associated with the Devil card of the tarot is Opposition.
In divination, Trump 15 represents all forms of obstruction to the inquirer’s aims. These obstructions may manifest in a variety of ways; all manner of delays, hindrances and unforeseen problems could be portended. At the psychological level, the Devil can also indicate an inquirer’s personal opposition to an idea, to change in general or to a specific proposed project. This personal opposition may be conscious or unconscious.
The Devil is a complex card in predictive terms. One of the first things the student of tarot should note about it is that, while on the one hand it symbolizes holdups, impediments to success, and frustration of the inquirer’s wishes, on the other it represents a lesson to be learnt. Learn the lesson and the obstacles will melt away or at least be considerably reduced in size. Christian theology awards the epithet ‘the Tester’ to the Devil. The Biblical Book of Job is an essay on the function of the Tester, how he works and why he is permitted to operate in the world.
Certain occult schools associate the Devil card with the force known
to physics as inertia. Others label it the Anti-Ray, and some teach that the image on the card is a coded emblem of Fate or Destiny. Tarot students turning to the ‘old masters’ of tarotism in search of instruction find several of them saying that the Devil represents ‘fatality’. The modern mind associates ‘fatality’ with death. That is not what is intended here; ‘fatality’ in a previous era simply meant ‘the workings of Fate’ or, as one online dictionary puts it, ‘helplessness in the face of fate’. It is this ‘helplessness’ that we see reflected in many of the divinatory meanings allotted to the Trump by tarot authorities of the nineteenth-century and of the twentieth-century also up until the end of the nineteen seventies.
Such an interpretation does not, however, automatically make the Devil a ‘bad’ card, or an ‘evil influence’. A rapid scan of books on tarot divination published between 1880 and 1960 yields, where the upright card is concerned, meanings such as ‘Fatality for Good’, ‘Predestination, that which is fated – sometimes for good, sometimes for ill’, and ‘A fated happening, but not necessarily an unfortunate or unpleasant one.’ All are indications that the card, in one of its aspects at least, foreshadows an inescapable event. Few things in life are unavoidable; the whole purpose of divination is to provide inquirers with a kind of ‘weather forecast’ that lets them know if the seas that they must voyage over to attain some stated goal are calm or stormy; and, if stormy, how severe the tempest will be and how long it will last. By setting sail today, a captain might risk capsizing his ship, whereas by leaving port tomorrow his vessel could have a smoother, more rapid passage. Similarly, a woman determined to find a new job with better prospects might discover that the cards indicate she is unlikely to have success in this aim during the coming two weeks but that, once the two week limit has expired, congenial work in a harmonious atmosphere will be easier to find.
It is extremely unusual for inquirers to be told that there is absolutely nothing they can do to improve their present condition. When this does happen it is almost always because the inquirer has a lesson to learn. If a person has been having problems at work, it may be that changing jobs won’t resolve the situation. At the new place of work similar difficulties may arise; and where that is the case the problem is not with job, biased superiors or unsympathetic workmates, it is something the inquirer carries with them. It could be said that this person is ‘fated’ to encounter turbulent or distressing experiences involving fellow employees until they work out what it is within themselves that is evoking these reactions.
In the area of divination, all the tarot cards operate at a variety of levels. Generally, the predictive tarot concerns itself with the Material Level, but there are times when the Psychological Level is brought into prominence. When working with the predictive tarot, the Devil is a card frequently found operating on the Psychological Level in whole or in part. Psychologically, Trump 15 represents a tendency towards self-destruction. It may mark out the individual who, when offered the chance to better themselves or improve their condition in life, always manages to make a mess of things, who is responsible in one way or another for their own failures, and is inclined to sabotage every opportunity, large or small, that they are offered which would potentially improve their lot.
Conversely, at the Material Level, Trump 15 can represent an external obstacle to success; it may be a huge obstacle or a small one, it may be insurmountable or piffling depending on the cards The Devil lies in conjunction with. Not many inquirers are interested in any of the cards’ meanings at the Spiritual Level, although those with an active involvement in occultism or mysticism may seek the tarot’s guidance in these areas from time to time. When they do, the meaning of the card is generally that the student is trying to forge ahead too quickly. The advice then is to consolidate what has been learned, and to ensure one properly understands the teaching so far imparted to one before attempting to reach the next developmental stage or grade of attainment.
Some occultists, as I have said, identify The Devil with an occult energy they name the Anti-Ray. In this respect it is worth noting that Papus says (The Tarot of the Bohemians, Studio Editions Ltd., England, p. 165) that the Devil card represents ‘the universal destroying force’. Of this force, British occultist Dion Fortune tells us: It ‘neutralizes all activity.’ While the Devil’s energies are in play, some aspect of our life is put on hold. The good news is that the action of the Anti-Ray cannot last forever; it waxes and wanes like any other occult force. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn associated The Devil with the zodiac sign Capricorn and its planetary ruler Saturn. If Trump 15 falls in a spread representing a blockage, look to the cards that come after it in the spread. The cosmic opposites of Capricorn (deep winter) and Saturn (lead) are elemental Fire and planets associated with Fire (summer), such as the Sun (gold) and Mars (ruler of Aries, the sign that ushers in spring in the northern hemisphere. The Devil followed by cards from the Fire suit or cards such as The Sun, Trump 19, indicate the diminution of the Devil’s capacity to impede, and the closer they lie to Trump 15 the more rapidly its effects will be lifted.
From a more positive perspective, students of the Magickal Tarot use the Devil card to apply the breaks to those situations they feel might be spinning out of control. Depending on the prevailing circumstances, the forces represented by Trump 15 can bring matters to a temporary halt or slow things down to a snail’s pace. If somebody feels they are being rushed into making a decision, invoking the energies working through the Devil card can buy them time to consider fully the implications of the deal being offered them or the decision they are being chivied to make.
Mystically, the Devil is associated with Logic, but the kind of logic that tells us “all that you see is all that there is”, promoting materialism at the expense of spirituality. Alchemically, the card is associated with the Latin phrase Solve et Coagula, and in some decks the words are written on the Devil’s arms. The complete phrase is Solvite Corpora et Cogulate Spiritus – Dissolve the Body and Coagulate the Spirit. Its meaning is that the student of spiritual alchemy must dissolve all that is inferior within them, including their own identity, if need be, and coagulate their eternal essence so as to form a new personality, and indeed a new body incorporating the powers of both Heaven and Earth. It is a task that cannot be completed if the student’s mind is fogged with the false logic embodied in the statement “nothing exists beyond what can be experienced via the five senses”. One cannot reach into Heaven if one doesn’t believe that Heaven exists.
The symbol representing Solve et Coagula is a torch held downwards, demonstrating the motto sometimes assigned to the card: What feeds me destroys me. The image illustrates the motto perfectly, although only meditation on the symbol will reveal the occult truth hidden behind the obvious interpretation. Continental decks generally feature the words Solve and Coagula on the arms of the Devil. The Golden Dawn represented the Latin phrase figuratively by having the Devil hold a torch downwards, omitting the words. A.E. Waite and Paul Foster Case, both products of the Golden Dawn training system, replicate the GD symbolism, the meaning of which they had been initiated into, when they produced tarot decks of their own. The popularity of the Waite-Smith tarot deck has meant that, in the English-speaking world, the down-pointing torch is a motif frequently found on tarots published in those areas of the globe.
Tarot students with an over-logical frame of mind are puzzled at finding the astrological sigil for Mercury on the Devil’s torso. Qabalistically, Trump 15 is associated with either Capricorn (the Golden Dawn system) or Sagittarius (Elephas Levi’s system) and neither sign has a connection with the planet Mercury. The answer to this puzzle is to be found in the annals of alchemy. For in alchemical iconography, the snake depicts the prime matter, Prima Materia, but it is also a symbol for the metal mercury, which shares its symbol with the planet of the same name. As Bernard Roger reports in his book The Initiatory Path in Fairy Tales: The Alchemical Secrets of Mother Goose:
“The name ‘serpent’ has been given to mercury because it runs like water and weaves like a snake,” Dom Pernety explains. This “serpent,” which is black and stains the fingers when extracted from the mine, has become a gleaming white at the end of the labors of the First Work. It then becomes the “faithful servant” who will henceforth never leave the artist, carrying him through all his metamorphoses like the horse the rider and the cabalah the cabalist.”
Before alchemical mercury can become ‘the faithful servant’, it must first be tamed, ‘purified’ in the language of the alchemists. Until it is purified, alchemical mercury acts within us as the Tempter and as the Diabolos, the devil, literally ‘the one who separates’, and what he separates us from is Heaven, the spiritual dimension. That is why occultism treats the Devil as the Adversary who must be overcome. Not until that Herculean task has been accomplished can the initiate proceed to psychological state represented in the tarot by Trump 16, the Tower Stuck by Lightning.
Those tarot cards so often given, at the predictive level at least, negative significances can be hard to deal with on the occult level; for on the higher planes there is no evil as most human beings understand the word; there we find progress, stasis, or regression, but no good and evil. Regression only takes on a form that might be considered evil where it runs counter to the flow of evolution, and that is something rather more than being on the wrong side of history. It happens rarely but I’m not going to pretend it never happens. However, it is also true that life’s leaden metal can be transmuted into spiritual gold. As the levels upon which the Devil card operates are travelled through, the seeker after the secret wisdom of the unseen forces witnesses, within themselves and within the world, the birth of the Sun of Truth whose ascendancy is the fulfilment of Great Work.
Warning. Do not attempt any part of this exercise unless you have already worked through the preceding exercises.
Exercise 13
Mentally clear the space around you in the way you have been taught. Sit, get comfortable and close your eyes. Relax and allow your inner vision to embrace darkness. See the darkness shift until it has the form of a deep grey, undulating mist. See that mist gradually turn from dark to pale gray. See the mist thin and separate as you become aware of yourself seated on the chair, on the raft, on the lake, in the park, with your carry-all beside you. In imagination, rise from the chair, take up the carry-all, step to the edge of the raft and plunge feetfirst into the water.
After a rapid descent, your feet touch solid ground. It is daylight on a warm spring morning. You are on a path deep within a forest. The trees around you are a mixture of oak and ash; there are some plane trees scattered among them and there are one or two thorn trees in evidence also. Beside you, next to the path, is a tall standing stone roughly shaped like a finger pointing upwards. On this stone is carved an arrow and under it the word ‘Forward’. Beneath this is another arrow pointing in the opposite direction accompanied by the word ‘Back’. High up, near the top of the stone, is the symbol astrologers use to denote the Sun – a circle with a dot at its center.
The path itself, though definitely a path, appears to be rarely used. Grass grows on it and some small plants too are scattered here and there, the usual dandelions and daisies. The path winds between the large trees in the direction the standing stone declares to be ‘Forward’. In the other direction the path is straighter and wider and the grass there has been trampled by many feet. As you face ‘Forward’, you can tell by the way the shadows fall that the sun is to your right and behind you. Insects buzz, birds cheep. Keeping a firm grasp on your carry-all, you stride off, not knowing your destination, but willing to press on ‘Forward’ to see where the path will take you.
The path makes a gentle meander through the forest sometimes rising a little, sometimes descending a little. Occasionally birds flash by overhead. It is nest-building time and the sound of birdcall periodically fills the air as you continue on your way. In time you reach a place where two paths cross at right angles. A wooden signpost stands here. Its four arms have destinations carved into them. That to your right reads ‘Somewhere’; the arm to your left reads ‘Elsewhere’. The arm pointing back the way you came reads ‘Back’ and the arm indicating the way ahead reads ‘Forward’. You continue along the path you are on.
The leaves on the trees are greener now and more profuse, the grass either side of the path more verdant; small flowers are in bloom. It is as if you had walked from Spring into Summer. At one point you see a large dragonfly with iridescent wings hovering awhile three or four feet off the ground before flying away into the green unknown above your head.
Eventually, you enter a clearing where the path splits in two, curving round to encircle a wide, immensely tall tree, old and majestic. The tree is surrounded by a metal railing painted dark green. It is over six feet high and the railings at their top ends have sharp points. The railings are too close together for you to squeeze between them. There is, however, a gateway with a keyhole lock, slightly to one side of where you stand. You go up to the gate, set down your carry-all and take from it Hecate’s key. The key fits the lock and with a smooth turn of your wrist the gate opens. Return the key to the carry-all and pass through the gate taking care to shut it behind you.
Pausing just within the compound and looking up you are able to take in whole of the tree from its topmost branches to the impressive girth of its base where it enters the ground. As you admire the tree, you become aware of a beam of pure white light shining down on it from high above. This beam takes in the entire bole of the tree and you are aware that the light is nourishing the tree in much the same way that sunlight nourishes plants. Next you become aware of another beam of energy forcing its way upwards out of the earth. This ray is a deep shade of emerald green. Halfway up the tree the two currents of energy join and mingle. At the point of juncture the color of the combined beams of light changes to a pale but still vibrant green. Gradually the whole trunk of the tree is flooded with this pale and vibrant green light from which the tree appears to derive both strength and purpose.
A movement on the ground attracts your attention. Red, the fox, is sitting nearby, eying you curiously, his head on one side. He suggests you go up to the tree and put your arms around its trunk. Leaving your carry-all with the friendly fox, you do as he has advocated. You stand with your body against the body of the tree, laying one cheek upon the rough bark, and stretch out your arms with your palms flat on the tree’s trunk.
Once you are comfortable in this position, you begin to sense a beam of while light descending on you, too. If you give in to its influence you will find it calming, soothing and at the same time confidence-boosting. In a moment or two you become aware of the beam of deep green light shining up at you from out of the earth under your feet. If you give in to the influence of this second beam of light you will find it invigorating, enlivening and life-affirming. Little by little the two beams of light intermingle until your body is surrounded by a vital pale green radiance.
Without necessarily being able to see the image, you have the strong sense of standing within the path of an alternating current. It is as if some vast Being held one hand aloft bearing a cup and from that cup an active energy was being poured out to wash over you from head to toe. And at the same time, the vast Being held another cup down low, and from this a receptive energy shot up as if from a fountain drenching you, again, from head to toe. Where the two streams of energy met, at first a center of creativity formed, but very quickly this center grows and spreads until it surrounds your whole body, leaving your mind and spirit pregnant with possibility. You should be left feeling capable and prepared to deal with any eventuality that may occur.
Next it is as if the tree gently eased you from it. You stand, arms spread wide, your head to one side, a pace or so distant from the trunk of the tree with no conscious memory of how you came to be in that position. On the plus side, however, you probably feel revivified and buoyantly optimistic in the wake of your experience of standing within the force-field of the alternating current under the direction of the gigantic, semi-visible astral entity that held the two cups, one high up, the other low down, between which poles the current flowed; the same entity that seemed to you to be winged, long-haired, and possessed of a serene, self-contained dignity and an indomitable sense of purpose.
You drop your arms to your sides and return to Red. Taking up your carry-all, you go back to the gate, which is again locked. Unlock it using Hecate’s key and exit the sacred precinct. Red follows you out and sits waiting while you close the gate. The lock clicks; if you try the gate, you will find it has relocked itself. At the sound of the click, Red starts padding back up the path. You follow, quickly catching up with him. You are very hot for the day is warm and there is no breeze to offer some refreshing coolness. The sun shines high above casting dappled shadows on the path, the contrast of light and shade being very noticeable.
Red accompanies you as far as the crossroads. Here he bids you farewell and takes the path to the left, the one marked by the signpost as the way to ‘Somewhere’. You continue along the path that leads ‘Back’. The path bends gently and birds cry and warble as you walk. The heat has lessened, though the sun remains high in the sky. You sense activity in the forest around you and way up in the trees. You see a squirrel climbing upwards and on the other side of the path a bird perched on a branch with moss in its tiny pale-yellow beak, and you are reminded that it is the season of nest building.
You make good progress and are soon at the tall standing stone which looks like a crudely carved finger pointing heavenward and marked with the symbol for the sun. Reach out and lay the palm of your free hand flat on the stone. Then step back into the center of the path. You will find that you are lifted swiftly into the air and that as you rise the air becomes water. In only seconds you break the surface of the water and see that you are in the familiar lake, the raft no great distance from you. Swim over to the raft and climb aboard. Sit yourself in the chair and lodge your carry-all at your feet.
Close the eyes of your imagination and remain still a moment. Gradually, the sense that you are seated on a chair in a room in your own home returns to you. Detach your attention from the OtherWorld and focus it firmly on physical world instead. That state of mind achieved, stand up. Dissolve the protective atmosphere you created around yourself at the beginning of the exercise using the method taught in the article containing Exercise Ten. Take two or three steps around the room and stamp on the floor or clap your hands so as to reaffirm that your consciousness is fully anchored in the material world. Have a warm drink and/or have something to eat. Finally make a note of whatever events impressed you most as you put yourself through Exercise Thirteen.
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