Those who regard this ritual as a mere device to invoke or banish spirits, are unfit to possess it. Properly understood, it is the Medicine of Metals and the Stone of the Wise. — Aleister Crowley, Notes on the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram¹

Just as Crowley said, the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram is not as one-sided as many people believe. If it were a “mere device” for banishing and invoking, as a majority of modern magicians so erroneously believe, it could be easily supplanted by any number of invoking and banishing rituals developed in other systems (most notably the current known as Chaos Magic). The problem with trying to replace the LRP with other rituals is simply one of function: no other ritual that I have encountered so succinctly, efficiently and beautifully performs all of the quite necessary magical functions of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. Whatever inspiration led to the creation of this ritual deserves the thanks of all modern magicians.

Even those who do not make use of Kabbalah in their magical systems would do well to give an ample study to the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram in light of Kabbalah, as it provides a template of successful ritual design for a wide variety of purposes.

I shall attempt a step-by-step analysis of the ritual, running on the assumption that the magician has a copy of it available for comparison. The version which I use, and to which my commentary will correspond most closely, will be found in David Griffin’s The Ritual Magic Manual, and can be found for free at http://www.golden-dawn.com/ in the “Rituals” section.

The Kabbalistic Cross

The Kabbalistic Cross, the opening sub-ritual of the Lesser Pentagram Ritual, receives relatively little attention by magical commentators and practitioners. It is often viewed merely as “what you do before the LRP.” There are several functions even to this basic introductory sub-ritual, however. Consider the formulation of the magician’s Kether, Malkuth, Gevurah and Chesed (Gedulah). This is a poetic statement of intent, in one sense, and a powerful magical action in another, at the same time. What you have done when you have performed the Kabbalistic Cross is activate the Light in your Kether, your God-Self, and made it manifest in your earthly vessel, causing both to be lit up in your Sphere of Sensation (Aura). You have followed this by activating the spheres of Severity (Gevurah) and Mercy (Chesed) and, thus, the side Pillars: the Pillar of Severity and the Pillar of Mercy. In this way have you made of your Sphere of Sensation a magical Temple of the Mysteries. Regular performance of this simple rite will serve to draw the Light into your Sphere of Sensation and balance it within your own private Temple.

Simultaneously, the Kabbalistic Cross serves as a succinct prayer to the Divine. “Ateh Malkuth ve-Gevurah ve-Gedulah le-Olam Amen” translates roughly to the final line of the Protestant form of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thine art the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, forever. Amen.” Of course, the tone is not one of mainstream Christian piety, but rather of one’s aspirations toward the True Divine, however one may conceptualize It. Some people have taken to inserting the name of their particular deity at the heart center (Tiphareth) between “Ateh” and “Malkuth,” as in “Thine art, O Jesus, the Kingdom. . .” or “Thine art, O Allah, the Kingdom. . .” While this may personalize the rite somewhat, I believe it also taints the purity of one’s aspirations toward the Divine by transforming one’s own personal beliefs into an assumption of Truth. This is a dangerous assumption for any magician to make, especially a magician who already holds very strong religious beliefs. Religious beliefs themselves are not harmful and can be quite helpful, but when held with such zeal that they are never modified, augmented or reinterpreted based on new information (and a magician is almost always receiving new information!), they become counter-productive at best. In other words, it is best to leave this rite in its simplest form to allow the prayer to balance the Light and bring contact with the Divine in any way necessary rather than forcing it into a preconceived mold.

It’s interesting to note that during the Kabbalistic Cross, the magician expands his Astral form to a great height; entire galaxies revolve around it as a central pole. This exaltation of the mind is for two main purposes. The first is that of aspiration; the magician is identifying his aspirations yet again with the Highest, and thus expanding upward and outward to seek connection with that Highest. Aspiration toward the Light of Kether is a constant theme in Golden Dawn magic. The idea is common, though, to all systems of magic, even those with few or no Kabbalistic influences at all. Magic always seeks personal betterment. The differences often lie not in this goal, but in how they go about it. Even the basest forms of sorcery such as Hoodoo call upon Divine forces for aid, and their goal, ultimately, is betterment, though usually in a purely material sense. More exalted forms of magic such as Hermetic Theurgy and many forms of shamanism (especially shamanism as reinterpreted through the modern Western mind) reach much higher, while still acknowledging the importance of life right here on Earth (hence the use of talismans, spirit evocation, healing techniques, etc.). The other purpose to the expansion is that of authority through the aforementioned aspiration. That is, the magician is alerting all entities that his aspirations are holy, his intentions pure, and thus that he is deserving of their attention and aid. The whole exercise, then, is one of expansion and aggrandizement, but with an attitude of humility, placing the entire operation under the auspices of the Divine and making the statement that, “If I be not worthy, let it be! If I reach too far, redirect my attention to a better goal!”

It should go without saying that at the end of the ritual (I personally save this step for the end of all ritual activity for that session), one should return to one’s normal size and re-enter one’s physical vessel. This serves to ground the entire operation back in Malkuth and restore the magician’s attention to life here on Earth.

The Kabbalistic Cross is used at the end of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram for all of the same reasons, but especially for the purpose of balancing the activity of the entire operation.

One can find many mystical uses for the Kabbalistic Cross all on its own. I have personally used it as a brief invocation of aid by immediately preceding it with an appropriate Divine Name. While this may seem to break with the guideline I set above concerning adding the name of one’s own religious god to the structure of the Kabbalistic Cross, let me explain how it is different. The Divine Names, in the view of the Kabbalah of the Western Esoteric Tradition, are titles of the Divine, each one embodying an overarching manifestation of the Divine within Creation. Hence, Eheieh, the name associated with Kether, represents the essential indivisible unity of the Divine, its incomprehensibility from the perspective of human consciousness, and its constant motion throughout Creation (the word “Eheieh” can be translated as “I am” and “I become”; see Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates). Thus, Eheieh does not represent a different being from the Divine, but does represent a unique point of view on the Divine. Donald Michael Kraig made the comparison of a man being called many names by those who know him. He is Mr. Smith to his son’s friends, but Dad to his son; Smitty to his co-workers, but Honey to his wife; etc. (Modern Magick second edition by Donald Michael Kraig, 1999 Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota.) These are all referring to the same man, but from different perspectives. This, of course, is going far afield and well into the realm of Kabbalistic theory, so I’ll wrap it up by saying this: the Divine Names can be thought of as formulas invoking specific Forces. One of these Forces, if invoked just prior to the prayer of the Kabbalistic Cross, can be activated in a relatively weak, but also well-balanced manner so that it is drawn into the normal flow of the magician-s own energy. This is no substitute for such methods as the Vibratory Formula of the Middle Pillar (see Regardie’s The Golden Dawn), but can serve one well when only a small bit of force is wanted.

Formulation of the Pentagrams

The formulation of the Pentagrams is equally complex. In the Lesser Pentagram Ritual, whether Banishing or Invoking, only the Earth Pentagrams are used. The purpose of this is obvious to anybody who has studied Kabbalah extensively: Earth is the culmination of the three other Elements and is thus, in this case, acts as a representative of all four Elements under the presidency of Spirit.

The usage of the Neophyte Signs (the Sign of the Enterer and the Sign of Silence) to charge the Pentagrams is important. Crowley notes the assumption of the Godform of Harpocrates as one of the two most important methods of purifying and fortifying the Aura (along with the performance of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram itself). The use of the Sign of the Enterer is to charge the Pentagram. The use of the Sign of Silence, in this case, is twofold. First, it stops the force projected with the Sign of the Enterer. If you do not stop the force from flowing, it will continue pouring from you. Second, it fortifies the Sphere of Sensation and thus cements the Pentagram and the Force of the Name of Power within it. There is a lot more symbolism and practical application within each of these signs. For the purposes here, allow me to quote from The Golden Dawn: “It is the affirmation of the station of Harpocrates, wherein the Higher Soul of the Candidate is formulated in part of the admission Ceremony. It is the symbol of the Centre and of the ‘Voice of the Silence’ which answers in secret the thought of the heart.”

The Names of Power invoked during the tracing of the Pentagrams are important in two ways. First of all, each one has an independent meaning and symbolic association of its own. In the East, we invoke YHVH. This is done in the East, the quarter of the Rising Sun, because YHVH is the Beginning of All Things. It is in the quarter of Air (going by the Elemental Winds as opposed to the zodiacal quarters) because YHVH is the whirling, swirling force of Nature. This is vastly clarified if one studies the correspondences of Aleph.

In the South, we invoke Adonai. Adonai (which translates to “Lord”) is the Divine manifest through the personal Holy Guardian Angel. The South is the quarter of Fire and the noonday Sun. Thus, it is also the quarter of our aspirations toward Divinity. Adonai is the title we give to the Being to which we aspire.

Moving West, we invoke Eheieh. Eheieh is often translated as “I am.” This is appropriate, for the West is the quarter of Water, and Water is the Sea of Being. Further, Eheieh is translated also as “I become” or “I am becoming” according to some (including Israel Regardie in A Garden of Pomegranates). Water is a perfect symbol of constant Becoming due to its flowing, and its tendency to conform to any container into which it is poured.

Facing North, we invoke AGLA. This is notariqon for the phrase “Ateh gibor le-Olam Adonai,” which we can translate as, “Thine is the strength forever, O Lord.” “Strength” in this case may be thought of as “fortitude.” The North is the quarter of Earth, and Earth is the magician’s fortitude and ability to withstand all pain and inconvenience in the name of his Divine aspirations.

The second importance of the Names chosen is the fact that all four names are four-letter names (Tetragrammaton). To transliterate the Hebrew letters they are:

YHVH (Yod Heh Vav Heh)
ADNY (Aleph Daleth Nun Yod) — Adonai
AHYH (Aleph Heh Yod Heh) — Eheieh
AGLA (Aleph Gimel Lamed Aleph)

The importance of this should be apparent to those who have followed the Elemental attributions thus far; the four names of four letters each signify that this ritual is concerned with the balancing of all four Elements within the sphere of the magician.

A note should be made concerning the colors involved. There are many variations on this ritual extant. Regardie’s TThe Golden Dawn, in the First Knowledge Lecture, suggests that the Pentagrams and Circle of Light should be visualized as being fiery. For somebody not well-versed in Kabbalah, who is using the LRP “as a mere device to invoke or banish spirits (Crowley),” this would work just fine.

For those looking deeper, hoping to get all of the functionality available from the LRP, a set of kabbalistic associations would far better serve. The Circle should be White, representing the Unity of Kether and the purity of the Divine LVX. The Pentagrams should be formulated in electric blue flames with golden-white sparks (“like the flame of a gas stove,” Griffin).² The Pentagram, having five points, is a symbol of Gevurah (Strength, Severity). The LRP is intended to be a fully balanced invocation and, thus, the coloration of the Pentagrams must serve this purpose. They are colored blue, the color of Chesed (in Briah, the Queen Scale, the Creative World, or the Plane of Archangels) to directly balance the force of Gevurah with Mercy. This blue flame is flecked with golden-white sparks to represent the balanced action of Tiphareth and to reinforce the purity of Kether as the ultimate focus of one’s magical work.

The Invocation of the Archangels

The forms of the Archangels in this ritual are as Elemental Rulers, more powerful even than the Elemental Kings, for they possess a Divine Intelligence superior to that of the Elemental Kings.

Crowley remarked that if the ritual is performed properly, the Archangels should appear when invoked automatically; the magician will be so lit up and exalted that the Archangels will come to his aid of their own accord and will present themselves as his Guardians. (See Notes on the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.) I have found this to be true in my own sessions, though it may take a bit of practice with the proper visualizations and intonations before this level is reached. In the meantime, it is advisable to provide the Archangels with your own visualized image to inhabit.

Immediately following the call to the Archangels is a re-formulation of the Pentagrams. As the magician says, “For about me flame the Pentagrams,” the magician should re-visualize the Pentagrams and the Circle of Light in order to reinforce their reality in his mind. The Microcosm of the Pentagram is balanced in the Aura by the formulation of a Golden Hexagram: “. . . and in the Column shines the Six-Rayed Star.” The “column” referred to is the Middle Pillar. The Hexagram should be formulated in the Tiphareth center of the chest. This makes it a representative of the Planets revolving around the Sun and the linking of the Macrocosm with the personal Microcosm of the magician.

The LRP as a Ritual Template

The LRP can also be seen as a formula for the construction of more complex and specific magical ceremonies. I’ll take this step by step as well.

Kabbalistic Cross — Aspiration: The first step in a well-constructed ceremony is aspiration to the Divine. The Kabbalistic Cross serves this function nicely, though there are many other ways a clever magician could fulfill a similar purpose. Essentially, this is a brief prayer to the Divine and invocation of your own Higher Self to aid you in your work and to guide you in ensuring that you’ve made the right decision in this work. Also in this step, you would Banish any unwanted forces from your Temple. The LBRP itself, as well as the LBRH (Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram) are quite suitable for this purpose, and serve both to Banish unwanted forces and to aspire to the Divine.

Formulation of the Pentagrams — Invoking the Forces: In kabbalistic magic, an appropriate Divine Name is always invoked, and usually this step is used to invoke a specific Force appropriate to the work at hand. If you were to design a ceremony for gaining fiery inspiration, you would want to invoke YHVH Tzabaoth and draw an Invoking Fire Pentagram to draw in the Force of Fire. In the Golden Dawn system and most variants, this would be done by performing the Greater Fire Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram which combines kabbalistic and Enochian Divine Names and other methods.

Invocation of the Archangels — Invocation/Evocation: This is the part of the ceremony where the magician projects the invoked Force in an appropriate direction for the purpose of creating the intended change. In many cases, this will involve invoking appropriate Archangels or other Angelic forces, such as the Choirs or an Olympic Spirit of an associated planet. If your goals are more material, you may also at this point perform an Evocation, calling upon the aid of a Spirit, Intelligence, Elemental or Demon appropriate to your goal. With the invoked Force and the Divine Name of the previous step flowing through you, you’re well prepared for this step already. It is also at this time that you might project the invoked Force into a Talisman or use it to consecrate a magical artifact. This is the most flexible step of the formula because it’s the step in which you actually perform the intended magical act.

Kabbalistic Cross — Conclusion: At this time, the magician may conclude by thanking the Force invoked, releasing any beings evoked, and Banishing to return to regular consciousness, but with a balanced and spiritually aspiring attitude. Most systems of evocation contain a License to Depart for any spirits. The LBRP (and LBRH, if any Planetary Forces were invoked) is appropriate for Banishing and the final aspiration via the Kabbalistic Cross (and Analysis of the Keyword, if the LBRH is used).

Conclusion

It should go without saying that the above is incomplete. It is merely an analysis based on what I know and what I have experienced. I can only hope that it will serve as a jumping off point for the further investigations of any magician interested in exploring the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, or interested in making use of its design characteristics for the creation of their own, non-kabbalistic rituals for similar purposes. Being merely a Neophyte in the Work myself, I must in good conscience provide a disclaimer: “The final speech of the Hierophant is further intended besides its apparent meaning, to affirm that a person only partially initiated is neither fitted to teach nor to instruct even the outer and more ignorant in Sublime Knowledge. He is certain, through misunderstanding the principles, to formulate error instead of truth (Regardie, The Golden Dawn.)³.”

Footnotes

1. Crowley’s essay may be found on page 690 of Magick: Book 4, Liber ABA (revised and expanded edition), published in the form of the “Big Blue Brick” by Weiser Books, Inc. (York Beach, Maine) in 1997. Crowley makes some interesting points, but I must take issue with his statement that the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram is designed so that the magician stands in Tiphareth. It is clear from the Golden Dawn material that the magician stands in Malkuth for the performance of this ritual.
2. Page 46 of The Ritual Magic Manual: A Complete Course in Practical Magic by David Griffin (1999 Golden Dawn Publishing, Beverly Hills, CA). I suggest the acquisition of this book to anybody interested in Golden Dawn and/or Kabbalistic ceremonial magic.
3. For this quotation, see pg. 370 of Regardie’s The Golden Dawn sixth edition, 1997 Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota.

©2007 Nicholas Graham.
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

Nicholas Graham is the author of The Four Powers. You can read his blog here.

This leg of the Witches’ Pyramid is probably the simplest on the surface, since it involves doing the process that you’ve already decided upon. The decision to do the spell has been made; the caster’s Will is honed and ready to force the change; but now you get your tools out and start the chants to cast the spell. Sounds simple, right?

But there is much more than that to this aspect of magic. Daring to do a spell means you have a self-confidence that says you have the divine right to impose your Will on the universe, that you have the right to actually make things happen simply because you want them to happen.

To my mind, that takes a special kind of arrogance. To say to the Universe and to whatever form of Deity you honor, “I know better than you do, and I am going to make this action happen.” That sounds pretty severe and arrogant in my opinion.

It is saying that your life is not good enough. It is saying that you know how your life should be, in opposition to how it actually is, and it is saying that no matter what, you will use any methods, fair or foul, to force the outcome you wish to see.

It is daring the Universe to do its worst to you.

It is acceptance of not only the outcome, but also all the additional problems and unintended consequences of this spell.

Daring to do something can be a problem if you are going against the powers-that-be. If a deity has decided that the person you are trying to help is supposed to be sick at the same time you are trying to make them well, and you heal them anyhow, despite all the warnings and problems of that healing, there may be divine retribution. To Dare means you are willing and able to accept that and deal with it.

No matter what anyone says, there are powers in the universe that could be upset that you are doing this spell. Perhaps, it is because there will be unknown “butterfly effect” problems in another segment of creation. Maybe it is because there will be a power drain from something else that is needed and it may simply be that the desired outcome is supposed to be one that is out of reach. It is possible the binding you are doing is in opposition to the protection this God has promised to His follower.

Daring to do this spell then sets you up to be in direct conflict with that power. It means that there is the possibility that They will be upset with you and make your life “interesting” for a while as retribution and punishment.

Now, assuming that your Will and your Knowledge is up to snuff in this whole process, the Dare stage is when you actually start doing the spell. At this point, the recriminations and self-examination should be done, the decision made and now you actually get out your tools and start the spell. Just that act should throw you into an altered state of consciousness. This is the physical stage.

If we relate these legs of the pyramid to different sections of our being, then To Know is the mental preparation part; To Will is the spiritual part; and To Dare is the physical part of this entire process.

Remember what I was saying before about humanity being wish generators? Well, wishing for something is only part of the whole process. Wishing will only get you so far magickally; it’s the actual process of doing the spell that will achieve results.

But then there is still one part that needs to be addressed, and thankfully it is showing up in more and more teaching texts. Part of the To Dare process has to be actually doing the mundane things that will help the spell along.

In other words, if doing a spell for a job, Knowing what job you want is good; Willing that job into your life is another good part; Daring to actually do the spell is good; but having the courage to go out and face rejection over and over is the most important part.

Daring must also encompass the mundane. It does take effort and courage to follow through on the mundane side of things, if only because we might fail.

In a post he made in his LiveJournal, Taylor Ellwood made the very interesting point that most people are conditioned to avoid failure at all costs. As part of that, we are also not trained to accept success, and current societal standards are doing no favor by encouraging a similar mindset of “it’s okay to fail” in the next generation.

In any spell, simply beginning the process of the spell will open the door for failure. Failure will become an option. So one of the goals in any spellcasting process must be accepting that the spell might fail, and striving to prevent that failure. Don’t go into the spell with the thought that it will fail, but accept that the ‘nature of the beast’ is going to include the failure of the spell, and then strive to overcome it.

Of course, the standard excuse is to blame other factors for that failure. “The Stars weren’t right,” or “Goddess must have other plans for me,” or “It will happen eventually,” are all excuses that come very rapidly on the lips of those who try spells and fail.

But as one Doctor Who episode¹ pointed out, what if we dream the impossible? What if, despite all things to the contrary, we actually make it and make our dreams come true?

No one is trained to consider that, but we are trained to fail. So Daring to be courageous, to actually do what we say we want – that is real magick. To think that it is possible to achieve what we want, to have what we dream about – that’s wonder.

This attitude is prevalent in most of modern Western Society. The very first word that most children learn to understand is “no.” From then on it is “don’t,” “can’t,” “Ain’t gonna happen,” and more negative assertions. Very few opportunities in our life teach us how to succeed and what to do when one achieves a goal.

This is one reason that there are so many books and seminars that try to show people how to succeed. But I have rarely seen anything that shows you what to do when you do succeed.

Our culture is built on the supposition of failure, and thus to actually attempt something that is highly unlikely to work is an incredible step of confidence. Actually taking the step to face that possible rejection for the bare slim chance that we could have a better life is truly Daring.

This is the core of To Dare. It’s taking that leap of faith, that step that may pay off and may not, even after been told all your life that you probably aren’t going to make anything of yourself. You must be ready to take that step despite the array of problems in your way, from the mundane to the deities themselves. You must take that step, knowing that it may not pan out, but trusting yourself, your knowledge and your training to see it through anyhow.

Then you must have the confidence to follow through with the mundane work as well, to see the process through.

Then, to add another layer, Daring to continue, even if the original spell didn’t work – doing it again, despite disappointment in the past. Making sure that you do not, do not, do not quit, even when logic says “give up,” even when reason says “enough already,” and even when the universe orders you to cease, stubbornly going on is the essence of, the heart and soul of, To Dare.

Footnotes

1. Transcript of the relevant episode is found at here. The exact quote is this, when speaking of the End of the Human Race: “You lot. You spend all your time thinking about dying. Like you’re going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible. Maybe you survive. This is the year 5.5/apple/26. Five billion years in your future.” —The Ninth Doctor, “The End of the World”

©2007 Daven
Edited by Sheta Kaey

This is an excerpt from Taylor’s upcoming book, Space/Time Magick II.

In Space/Time Magic, in my chapter on divination, I argued against using divination in magical practice every time a magician decided to do a ritual, because divination only reveals a few possibilities, while potentially limiting awareness of other possibilities. The other potential danger is that the very act of reading the future will change that actual future through the perception of it. In other words, divination can sometimes bring a very specific possibility into reality through the act of reading and that possibility may not be what the magician wants. The reason this happens is that the divination reading is imprinted into the subconscious of the magician¹. So s/he acts on the reading and manifests it into reality, even if its not a favorable outcome. This is admittedly a pessimistic perception of divination. I do think that conscious awareness of the magician’s emotions and thoughts at the time of the reading can help hir avoid such problems in divination. Nonetheless, I often wonder if divination is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For that reason, my use of tarot and other divinatory tools has gone in several different directions. When I have used Tarot for divination readings, instead of using standard spreads, I use free-form spreads in my readings. One of the reasons I suspect divination readings can be problematic has to do with the actual spread. Different spreads have meanings associated with them. These meanings bias the reader with regard to the overall reading, because they set certain standards into the reading. My way of getting around this issue, both for myself and other people I do readings for, is to do free form spreads, which means the spread can and will change and isn’t regulated to a set number of cards. The placement of the cards in the spread is done intuitively with this approach, as opposed to using a rote formula for the spread. The benefit of the intuitive placement of the cards is that any meaning associated with the placement of the cards is solely derived from the reader. This filters out biases that traditional spreads would otherwise introduce into the reading.

The reason the cards aren’t limited to a specific number is to allow the intuitive possibilities that are present in the reading to gain better exposure than might occur with a limited number of cards. While this approach can be occasionally problematic (such as when I did a reading for someone, and due to the number of cards she pulled, the reading last for over an hour) I find that this approach tends to be more accurate both for myself and the people I do readings for. More detail is allowed into the reading, which opens up the perception of more possibilities. At the same time, the level of detail is also raised because the cards will modify each other and the meanings that are presented to the reader.

My other approach to divination involves using it for ritual and/or pathworking capabilities. To really learn the meaning of the cards, for instance, Knight has suggested that the reader treat each card like a door way and go into the card to interact with the archetypal force that the card represents². So if a person wants to know the meaning of The Fool, the best way to find out is to actually do a meditative journey into the card to meet The Fool. I’ve found this technique to be useful to get to know the cards, but inspired as well by anime and the idea of summoning the spirit of card, I’ve also taken to using tarot for evocation purposes³. By evoking The Fool or another tarot card, I can interact with that force on this plane of reality. The evocation approach has been useful for opening up a number of possibilities for me. I’ve evoked The Chariot to help me travel more and get into events, while I’ve evoked The Wheel of Fortune to steer me toward better financial opportunities. As long as you have a well developed understanding of the cards, you can do fairly successful evocations of the archetypal spirits in the cards.

Yet another practical approach for tarot cards has been derived from Greer’s work. What I like about her approach is that it’s focused more on enchantment then divination. Instead of shuffling the cards and then pulling the top cards off, the practitioner pulls out cards that specifically represent the situation that needs to be addressed. Then cards are pulled that represent potential solutions. The goal is to put together a spread that creates a different conceptual approach to how the practitioner perceives the situation⁴. I’ve used this technique in several manners. I’ve used it as a mind mapping technique, where I map out a particular problem and the associated meanings that go with it. I then map out solutions and associated meanings with those and determine if there is any meshing of associations, which could create vectors of approach to solving a particular problem.

The other method I use with this technique is where I apply evocation magic to the problem. I’ll put the problem card in the center and then put the solution cards in a circle around it. I’ll cast a circle with the solution cards, basically evoking the archetypal entity of each card as a guardian. I’ll then evoke the archetypal spirit of the problem card. When that spirit comes forth I’ll explain that I need it to turn into the solution for me. Instead of binding the spirit of the card, I’ll ask it to confer with the spirits of the solution cards and then provide me a solution to what it represents. I usually get an intuitive explanation and may find myself following courses of action on instinct. Every time I’ve used this approach, it’s worked. The problem situation has turned into a solution. A person might think that the spirit of the problem card would be tempted to mislead me, but that’s why the spirits of the solution cards work with it. They not only confer with it, but also make sure that the intuitions I receive are carefully filtered. In other words the entity of the problem card doesn’t mislead me. And in time it becomes a solution for me. This kind of method involves the concept of taking energy directed toward you and turning that energy into your own advantage.

Most recently, however, I’ve come across a technique that allows me to expand the ritual magic components of tarot and at the same time allows me to further refine the divinatory and enchantment aspects I’ve worked with before. In Portable Magic, Tyson provides a ritual magic technique based off Golden Dawn ceremonial magic, but intended to drastically simplify the ceremonial magic aspects, and overall he succeeds. I’ve taken his approach and modified it further for my own uses. For instance, I simplified the system, taking out the astrological and planetary correspondences, because while they can be useful, I found it overly complicated for what I wanted to do. As is, none of my workings using Tyson’s system suffered because of the alterations. If anything, it proved to me that a personalized system of magic is more effective than adopting someone else’s approach to magic.

I mainly used Tyson’s concept of the ritual of union. In my own writing I’ve discussed the technique of invoking yourself into other people, and his technique seemed like a useful variation of my own technique.⁵ In his case, he used the example of contacting the consciousness of a magician such as Mathers, explaining that, “It is possible to form links with those who have died, or at least with spiritual intelligences who have assumed their identities and personalities and assert themselves to be the souls of those who were once alive⁶.” To my mind, this explanation didn’t work. It was too linear. And this is where the space/time aspects comes in, because if we contact people across distances, we can also interact with them across time. Working with Mathers, for instance, wouldn’t involve working with his ghost, as his consciousness very well could be dispersed at this moment in time. Instead it would involve working with his consciousness when it was alive, even if the magician doing the working didn’t live in the same temporal frame of reference as Mathers did. As long as Mathers existed at some point in time, then he could be connected with across time. I decided to apply some experiments testing my idea. The experiments involved people in the present, a dead relative, and a some attempts to interact with people in the future.

Readers should refer to Tyson’s work to get the basic technique, though I’ll summarize it here. I used the Voyager Tarot deck in my workings, so some of the titles of the cards are different from the ones he uses in his book. I created an altar out of each ace card in the four suits of the minor arcana. I also picked out a card that represented me, from the child, man, woman, or sage cards of the minor arcana. In my case, I used the Woman of Crystals card, because of my work with the Earth for most of 2007 and because I felt that the imagery really resonated with me. In the case of each person I chose to contact, I let my intuition guide me toward the correct card, using what I sensed about each person as a guidance. In most cases, this was helped by knowing the people at least somewhat well in real life, but in two cases, I didn’t really know either person and was still able to pick cards that I felt resonated with them.

To set up the triangle of summoning I used The Fool, The Hanged Man, and The Time-Space trump cards. To set up the ritual circle, I used the cards that Tyson has recommended, with some changes, using the Art trump for Temperance and the Balance trump for Justice. Again I refer readers to his book, not only for the suggested layout, but also a full explanation of the technique and what the magician is supposed to do to make the ritual work. I mostly followed his instructions, though again I personalized what I did to some degree.

My first experiment was focused on just making a connection with each person and determining if the person felt my presence when I did the connection. I asked each person before I did this working, and so I had their permission, but they didn’t know when I’d try to connect with them. In each case, around the time of the ritual, the people I contacted did feel my presence. An intriguing side effect of this experiment was that most of them experienced some form of bleed over, when it came to some current situations occurring in my life and natural abilities I have. In one instance, the person felt moved to write about desire and attachment, something I’d been reading about a lot at the time. In the second case, the person became very empathic while the ritual occurred and for a short time after, before it faded away. My description of his shields were also accurate. In the third case, the person only felt my presence.

My next experiment was to actually connect with each person, do a tarot reading of their present circumstances, and determine if the reading of the problem facing the person was accurate, while at the same time aligning that person with possibilities that were favorable for solving the situation. I used the Voyager deck for the summoning, and then used the Buckland Alchemy deck for the readings. In each case, they felt my presence once again. Also in each case, the readings I did were accurate and related to activities the person was engaged in at the time. In one case, the person was looking through her art portfolio and dealing with feelings of empowerment over it, but also feelings of conflict and fear, as a result of her school experiences. In another case, the reading for the person reflected the fact that he was in a business meeting and had to take charge to solve the situation. In both cases, they also noted that they felt charged up around the time of the reading, which I thought of as imparting those favorable possibilities into their reality. As a final challenge, one of my friends suggested I contact someone I didn’t know at all to see if the experiences and readings were accurate. I was only given the first name of the person. I told him I would do it two days later, but decided to do a double blinder and do the working the day before I told him I would do it. The reading for the person I didn’t know was also accurate. I not only was able to provide a general description of her experience, but I also was able to provide a very accurate of her personality. I knew once I tried these experiments that the connection with other consciousnesses worked in the present. The question that remained was if they would work in the past or future.

For the past, I decided to contact the consciousness of one of my ancestors, my grandfather who had died many years before I was born. I didn’t know a lot about him, so I figured it was a perfect test, because I could then confirm details received with people in my family who did know him. My goal wasn’t to contact his spirit, but to contact him when he was alive. I used a picture of him as part of my focus. The connection I received was more in terms of emotions than actual information, but the emotions were accurate to the time the picture was taken. I confirmed details via my relatives.

For the future, I did a similar reading like I had in the present. The difference was that I would connect with the person, but that the connection would be directed to the future of that person. My first connection was directed to one day later, in that person’s life. On that day she did feel my presence and the reading for her circumstances turned out to be very accurate, dealing with her ongoing attempts to communicate with people and with herself. In the second case, the connection was focused four days later. I wanted to determine if there was a difference in the connection or accuracy of the reading by length of time. The connection didn’t feel as strong, but the reading was still accurate for the person and what he was dealing with at the time.

I have further experiments planned, which will be used in a fuller version of this chapter. However, I did feel that, for all intents and purposes, the technique I adapted to my own standards has worked rather well. Each connection has been made successfully and in each case has been accurate. However, there is easily room for expansion in several different directions, including connecting with past and future versions of the self. The important aspect to note however is that tarot has more uses for it than just divination and that divination can combined with enchantment, as was the case where I not only read the circumstance, but then used the cards to introduce favorable possibilities to solve the problems. Tyson’s core technique has lots of adaptibility to it and will certainly be a tool I continue to use for a long time to come.

Footnotes

1. Renee, Janina. (1990). Tarot Spells. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications.
2. Ellwood, Taylor. (2005). Space/Time Magic. Stafford: Immanion Press.
3. Knight, Gareth. (1996). The Magical World of the Tarot: Fourfold Mirror of the Universe. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc.
4. Ellwood, Taylor. (2004). Pop Culture Magick. Stafford: Immanion Press.
5. Greer, Mary K. (1988). Tarot Mirrors: Reflections of Personal Meaning. North Hollywood: New Castle Publishing Co., Inc.
6. Tyson, Donald (2006). Portable Magic: Tarot Is the Only Tool You Need. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications. p. 158

©2007 Taylor Ellwood
Edited by Sheta Kaey

I intend to describe in this article a fundamental technique of Hermetic Theurgy that I have developed over the last 20 years, and with any luck the reader will find in my words something of value for themselves. It’s probably best to describe it as “active imagination” as Carl Jung coined the term. Jung noticed that he could find revealing and non-self-gratifying imagery just below the surface of the mind, by making a suggestion to himself and then sitting quietly to see what might develop in his thinking. He found that if he did not steer his thoughts in any particular direction, merely sat as a passive viewer of what his mind might show him, many wondrous things would arise, including solutions to troublesome problems, intuitions, insights into his own nature (and those of others), often with a wash of curiosities that would set him to further pondering. Stillness, of course, is they key. While I have not meditated as often as I probably should, I have heard stories from others using Transcendental Meditation and related techniques about this very thing. Of course, most meditation practices of an Eastern flavor tend to warn against following these story lines and vistas too far, as they are a hinderance to the stillness of mind the meditator desires. I propose that these stories and vistas of imagination can be a key to unlocking the inner area of the deep mind and a conduit for conversation with one’s Holy Guardian Angel (HGA).

I do not say this lightly. About 22 years ago I had a long and intense conversation with the being who is very much in charge of my destiny, and I took the time to write down what I can remember of it in my book Biting Through. What was then a very direct conversation with what seemed like another, infinitely wiser intelligence is now little more than a memory that from time to time provides me with the most startling of insights and memories, typically when I need them the most. It stands to reason that other folks can access this part of their consciousness too, and so long as one doesn’t take it as gospel truth (the revelations are often highly symbolic), one shouldn’t get into much trouble. The caveat here is to keep an open mind and try not to decide that a certain experience means this or that thing. One should merely observe, keep an open mind, and look for the full depth of any possible truths as they might arise later.

We’ve lightly brushed on the key of it here – the suspension of judgement. I once read a book called Applied Imagination, which recommended a non-judgemental approach to creative problem solving, as it seems that instant judgement of a thought or an idea is enough to derail it from its true course. This book told of a group of problem solvers in a highly productive think tank atmosphere and noted that these people wrote down all ideas that occurred to them, regardless of how silly or inappropriate they might have initially seemed. By this method, they were rewarded with a greater number of creative solutions that might have gone unnoticed had they been squelched promptly. It was as if the free-ranging creative process needed impropriety, silliness and whimsy to operate correctly and to arrive by whatever crooked path at useful solutions. It is much the same way with active imagination – one doesn’t discard the odd bits of imagery or data that float by the mind’s eye; one merely accepts it and remembers it long enough to write it down later. There will be both signal and noise, to be certain, and often layers of meaning that are not initially apparent and that will require the passage of time to understand in greater depth. Much of it will resemble poetry, with unusually linked ideas or foreshortened concepts that seem important pieces of an incomplete picture. When it’s really happening in a big way, and one has the ability to surrender to it and simply write or speak what comes, as it comes, one is directly in the groove, as they say.

This technique has direct application for magickal practice, especially with the meditations that happen in connection with the Star Rites or with the Contact of the Power Deeps in the matter of Planetary Magick. The ritual serves to formalize the business of being on the receiving end of a transmission from the deep mind, just as the invocation serves to focus its content. It’s a simple formula really – magickally clear the space by casting a circle or setting the wards, tune your mind to the frequency of the matter by invocations and orisons, then still your mind to the degree that somewhere between the chatterings of the “monkey mind,” other data emerge. With time and practice and patient retrospection at a later date, story lines can emerge. While entertaining, these story lines say a whole lot about what is happening inside of one’s head, and in a way not normally encountered by ordinary rational thinking.

Speaking of ordinary thinking, it is good to know that sometimes this data comes in large packets… It is difficult to describe exactly, but I’ll say what I can about it. “Normal” creative problem solving (at least as it happens in my mind) typically proceeds from one concept to the next in more or less straight lines, each idea depending in some way upon the one before it. Occasionally, one has a Eureka! moment where some intuition allows one to assemble observations and facts in a very different and productive way, not unlike the story of Archimedes at his bath. For those that do not know the story, it is sufficiently illustrative to retell here.

The regent d´jour of Archimedes’ time was having a royal crown made and he did not trust the maker completely, so he beseeched Archimedes to find a way to learn whether or not the maker had made the crown from the all of the gold supplied to him for the task and had not transferred some of it into his pocket. Of course, weighing the initial gold and the resulting crown would seem a ready test, but it’s quite possible that, say, lead could be used, then gilded such that it would not be noticed without sawing into the crown and looking for it. Puzzling over how this might be accomplished, Archimedes slipped into a hot bath to soak for a while, and noticed that the water rose a bit more than it once did, doubtless due to the dreaded ‘middle-age spread.’ So far, so good – he had all the data he started out with for this equation, but he suddenly saw it in a different way. He realized that the initial gold displaced a certain amount of water and would do so whether it was formed into a brick or a crown. If lead was introduced (and gold subtracted from the crown) it would displace a different amount of water, even though care may be taken to make it weigh the same. It was at this point that the cry of “Eureka!” sprang from his lips and he ran naked into the street to shout about it, the story goes.

This eureka moment may happen from time to time in creative visualization, but I’d like to introduce the reader to a slightly more bizarre concept, the story-all-at-once phenomenon. The only other time I’ve even heard of the notion was from the late Ben Rowe’s (Josh Norton) web site accounts of his scrying into the Enochian Aethers. He wrote that sometimes he would receive discrete packages of information of which reception he was aware, that would unfold over time and present entire catalogs of information to him, seemingly all at once. The analogy I like to make to describe this thought process is this: Imagine you have a large collection of small, symbolically interrelated objects in a simple, starchy sort of handkerchief, corners held together as a loose bindle. You drop it on a table and it lays open all at once, exposing the objects. Imagine too that you instantly apprehend not just the meanings of the individual objects, but also perceive how they are interrelated with each other and even what sort of relationship they have with each other in Time. Clear as mud?

History Trips

In terms of the active imagination this articles tries to describe, it’s a bit like drinking out of a firehose. Imagine that, for a moment, you can be behind someone else’s eyes, experience the observations of their senses, reach into the their memories and the swirl of emotions that lurk just beneath thought, the hopes and fears… This information from the active imagination can sometimes take that shape, just as certain rich and deeply integral dreams can. The following is an excerpt from Passage D´aur (annotated), a book of writings that describes one such instance.

For ever so few moments, I felt as if I were in the mind of a court minstrel, called to a place to play a sort of role-playing game which was instituted by the Comte of that Court, and which was resounding in a social way throughout the land. Parties were held, ranging from summer picnics to gala balls and it amounted to us poor lads from the neighboring villages and shires, who were sufficiently schooled in the arte musicale to make this calling, going there as a seeming wooing of the ladies that were presented to us. This was no Pagan feast of flesh, I assure you!

This game had rules and had a framework in which these rules might be bent with a perfect cover to a real expression of the game, happening in it’s midst, as it were. While we were most of all boys and young men of no greater fortune than our poor academies can produce, some were young men of foreign courts (or so ’tis said) who come to gaze upon their prospective.

There is a dimension of this game that is just beginning to dawn on me. I was told but I did not understand at first. They say that a man’s soul is female and that is why Botticelli and others paint in the obscure symbols they seem to prefer. They further indicate that praise of the Soul is praise of God and so we are acting in a kind of mummery with song and dance to praise our very Souls, as played by the young ladies of the court and whatever Great Aunt’s Handmaiden might gift her way in. It not only made men of us, but made men of others, by hearing our songs, borne of the praise of the most ancient of Beauties, ever expressing itself in the flower of the present, and filling in those short spans of time between songs sung of War, daring-do and the generally mad howling of apes that otherwise constitutes the music of our streets.

Annotation: It was very real and very personal but nothing like the contents of my ordinary life. I felt as if I were in another’s mind for the space of a few moments and that I had access to everything they knew about the world around them and the moment they were soon to face. Of course, as a bit of a minstrel myself and with an interest in the courtly traditions, I’ve read about some of this, but the depth of what was there to see and feel was breathtaking. Of course, it is an extension of a discussion I’d had with [someone] about being in touch with my anima which I had countered with an illumination about the feminine nature of the soul, as viewed by Dante and his ilk.

Ultimately, these words are but an impoverished sketch of what took place in my mind for those very few moments, for I could hear, taste, see and feel my surroundings and I could think back to my not-so-happy home in a village an unknown distance away. I could almost hang names on dozens of faces of people I’ve certainly never met in this life. Have I touched upon a past life, I wonder? Or is my deep mind wrapping up an answer in fairy-tale clothing with an astonishing depth of scenery? I still don’t know, but am open to any possibility, including attempting to dig out some corroborating evidence of an equally dodgy nature via past life regression hypnosis. Of course, this proves nothing but can add dimension to the study of a given story, by which one might unravel the reason it was presented in the first place.

Another time I beheld a story the setting of which seems close the A.S. current, even if only for its perceived ancient Florentine location:

I enter a chamber at a friend’s or relative’s house and I observe a chessboard. I know that the arrangement of the chessboard is not a game in progress as such, but it represents the deliberate arrangement of pieces in such a way as to describe a situation that he has called me there of which to learn. It is likely that he has guests of some sort and his are the sort of guests that do not need to hear of our news as they are far too central to its power and promise.

Our Uncle is the Duke, and his wife the Duchess, so I expect to see them as the King and Queen of the color opposite the doorway into this room. Their advisor is the Abess of (…) who came to this court from the Duchess’s family, so she is the Queen’s Bishop of course. I see that both knights are on the King’s side of the board and that they oppose the other side’s King’s bishop and by that I learn that Charles and Rodney are at odds with the Bishop of (…), but I also see that the opposite Queen holds the King in check, and that was what I was there to see. There is a curious pattern of [rooks] that suggests they are moving to cover their Lords, but I cannot discern more without some clues. Ignoring guests, I select a pawn and move it one step to the lateral edge of the game to show that I understood most of what was being presented to me, then I repositioned the knights in such a way as it seemed a whole lot more natural than the result of the tour upon which they had been supposed to ride. It is a game to fight the spies.

I don’t really know who I was in this story, only that my uncle was a powerful and rich man and that my loose lips might sink their ship which necessitated that my cousin (whom I was visiting) and I played a code-game upon the chess set that resided in the drawing room of this mansion. The pieces represented different members of our extended family and showed their current political relationships. My movement of the pieces indicated that I understood the message. I felt as if my cousin could enter the room at any moment and we might play a few turns to provide cover for our communications.

Nikito and Eshabirodja

These scenes are but deep moments in a reverie, but the storytelling function can take on a large scale, offering key moments in the history of a whole life, it would seem. Such is the tale of Nikito and Eshabirodja. Fair warning: this story is terribly personal and rather sad. It has features I’ve never encountered before in my active imagination and they are well worth pointing out. Like much of Passage d’Aur, this story came in direct response to my seeking a greater depth of information in my real life, for I had come to hold a deep and unexpected attraction for someone I have known for many years and was aware over the entire course of time (in which we came to deal with it productively) that there was a pronounced spiritual or karmic dimension to it. Naturally, I wanted to explore that and I felt that my exercises in active imagination might open up some new vistas. I was not disappointed. Bits and pieces of this story came to me over many months.

This place was black almost all the time, else black on gray with some fitful snow. We kept a hearth going on every hour of every day and the aroma of our scat fuel permeated everything and seemed to do so for generations into our past. There was a gentle slope to the river and our living was made from that river, but I can only guess how… fish maybe… and there may have been beaver or other furs…

I think it was a summer camp, an ancestral place where we stayed in that season. It was the only time we had alone. At our other home we lived in the lodge with all the others. On our bitter cold journeys by the river, I came to know you as I know you now. You were called Eshabirodja, for the delight you brought to our repast.

We kept to that way as we grew very old and were venerated, then taken for granted, then ignored. We did what we said we would do and spent ourselves to our last days giving the Salmon to the Family.

This is the first time I ever really felt I got more than mental pictures from this exercise. This time I heard the wind blow, smelled the smoke from turd-fires, and heard her laughter and someone call her name as she came down the lane towards me. It sounded Russian and I thought the caller said something that sounded like “Siberia.” I listen carefully and the name was repeated with different stresses, but still sounded oddly familiar. When I wrote down the name the way it must be spelled and puzzled over why it might be so, I quickly discovered that an actual person’s name was buried amongst it, the letters appearing in exactly the same order as they do in my love’s real name, and that this was the person I was asking about. Typical stuff from the puzzle-maker of my unconscious mind, come to think of it. Thinking about it later, I sorted this out into 2 boxes, one being labeled “past life, mine or someone else’s,” and one being labeled “symbolic story from the unconscious.” I still have no good tools to figure out which words to put in which box. In no event do I believe that the puzzle of the name is anything but my deep mind telling me that this story is about her after some fashion and I’d better pay it some attention. I didn’t know how far it would go. I kept drilling away at it, trying to get some sense of my own name or the name of this place or of my tribe or time but all I got was a collection of letters that could’ve meant anything: N…k…i? Nicholas? Nikita? It took awhile, but I think I came close.

We sat at the edge of the river and dropped our stakes. I thought about how you are and how you look and that made me think about how I see. Uncle Shadow-vision told me something a long time ago about how he sees, part in color and part in black and white, and I wondered if something like that could make people see different faces on others or maybe not be able to tell anyone apart? I told him that I once mistook someone else for him and called him by that name, but he just said, “I ain’t yer ‘Uncle Scatter-vision.’ Scram!”

After awhile, I get up to pee, and I see that it is I that has put your line out for you, even if you are not here to tend it. When I got back, I rolled up a bomber and sat smoking it while the bats started to come out of the trees that hugged the wide bend in the river. The tops of them were touched with the same pink fire that licked across the ragged horizon.

Nikito is back on the river with Eshabirodja here, but it changes to a memory of my own, seen through the eyes of another. The bomber seems like an invasive thought, or just my word for Nikito was doing.

The moon wasn’t up yet, but when it did come up, I knew I would be reminded of a certain thing. I once actually talked to someone who knew what I was talking about – the sight of the moon passing from cloud to cloud and drawing a silver veil over the things you see so that they seem to change. I remember the night I had my first woman, I held her on the couch where the window was, so we could both feel the restless wind that breathed there in the hot summer, the only cool place just then. She had blond hair and blue eyes but she didn’t look bad at all for a White woman. I did not look at her for very long just then, but even as I did for just a short time, I saw that her face looked a lot like another girl I knew when I was in The School at Madras and again like someone else, a teacher I had. For a minute or two it seemed like she could be just anybody… anybody. What a blessing, I thought.

It’s worth pointing out, as I have done in the annotation above, that there is indeed signal and noise and one cannot often tell which is which. If I have no word for what someone is doing or what sort of people they are, my unconscious mind will substitute something more familiar. Nikito and Eshabirodja seem to be primitive Eastern Europeans, but my mind persists in presenting them as Native Americans, probably because my knowledge of the former is almost non-existent and of the latter more familiar. I considered it a possibility that we have two similar stories ‘cut and pasted’ together by my unconscious to illustrate a theme.

This reminds me of the Saki story called The Window. Nikito is very sad because Eshabirodja is gone, but I do not know until the last line if she has gone to pee, gone to town, gone to visit her mother for a year, or gone for good. I’m not sure if Nikito knows either, and there is a hint of madness or forgetfulness about it. His mind feels like a child who is left alone for a time and wonders if his guardian will ever return. Perhaps he enjoys lamenting for its own sake. It’s hard to describe exactly what it feels like to be in his head here, but it mostly feels very hurtful and sad.

These things were written chronologically, and this is the first bit where I realized (a few months later) that the river can be viewed as a symbol of life and death like the rivers Styx and Lethe (or the Jordan, for that matter). He “crosses over the river” and views his life from that side, then returns with a different perspective. Or does he go mad and flee to a hallucination? I sense other layers. Also, I sense that this way of life for him is an adaptation to something very big that changed everything about they way his people interact with the world. The world has changed in some big way and this life is part of his tribe’s adaptation to that change (and there’s a bit of a metaphor to that, too, isn’t there?). Maybe a freak storm changed the course of migrations, maybe a conquering people changed how he earns his keep. It seems to shadow everything he does and I wonder if he is giving Salmon to his people as a fisher might or is he giving this Salmon to traders, to Caesar, to Massah. Salmon, of course, is a Mercurial symbol associated with knowledge and communication and a pretty short trip from “Solomon.”

The face of the sun is hours away, but its light graces the river at my feet and lovingly sweats the fog off the crisp, slow waters. Ducks have been flying by in pairs and groups since there has been enough light to see them – maybe an hour. They don’t know where to go, for it is not warm anywhere right now.

I think you have been gone a long time now, for there is a hole in my wind where your words used to blow, where the scent of your perfume and the glint of eyes still glow. I keep talking to you as if you are there and I also know that you are not there and maybe I wonder if it matters any more. My ass is sore from sitting on the cold ground, but I can scarcely care enough to shift and stretch.

There is here a perfect picture of everything one could want from the great gift of the Spirit: The wide river of Life running through the wasteland of our new world, the knowledge of what needs to be done, who needs to do it and the honor of being one to so dare. Too, there is the further grace that my life and your love may intersect for such a time as they can and give to me this special melancholy moment. It is a hard and cruel diamond, but it shines.

I must have dozed. I pulled myself up and hauled on our lines. I put the fish above where the fire would be if I had remembered to actually build it. I hooked our lines across the limbs of the trees and inspected every knot, wiggled the tiniest scrap of meat onto every barb, then waded out to the log that I could walk across and drop it back into the waters. I decided then to sit on the opposite side of the river.

Things looked different here, aside from just being on the other side of the waters. I could look across the way and see our camp laid out in the pattern dictated by the fewest steps: there was our wanagan, our ramada, our fire, our snowshoes, our sledges and our shivering ponies. Mmm. For them I will build a fire! There is a lot of dry wood on this side of the river.

The fire has been warm now for an hour and the ponies would draw almost as near as I. Will the sun never come over the edge of the canyon? I think about how long you have been gone and I have to weep until I’m done. I cannot remember. I cannot remember anything but placing our lines, building our fire and taking the Salmon to The People.

Later there is a faint sound, as a bird leaping from a slight branch at the top of a tree, and it is at some distance. I hear the calls that come after and listen for what the wind will offer. It passes and is quiet again but only until I hear and feel a pat-pat-pat in the soil – almost, but not yet a sound. I stand, against all odds, against the frost that has frozen my blanket into a strange shape, and I lean against the tree to see farther down the path to our place beside the waters.

Eshabirodja… I see you come down the path home again.

Nikito’s last day on earth. He is either mad with grief or just mad period. Eshabirodja is gone and he doesn’t know or cannot remember why or to where, and he cannot cope with his grief. He ceases to care for himself and dies (I think) from pneumonia. His last words are actually a northwestern Native dialect, but it’s the only way I could say what he meant to say.

I do not know what is real, at least in the sense that the White man thinks of a thing as real. I think everything is real and that unreal things are misunderstandings; truth is everywhere and in every thing, but fear and monkey-shine make them seem to be less real than they are or make us so confused that we cannot connect with it and hear its words to us. I am no different than any other man.

Eshabirodja had been gone for such a long time that I did not know whether or not she was real any more. What made it hurt the most is that I did not know what happened to her, and I had to live with that unknowing until it drove me mad and alone into the place of the spirits. I think she went away because she did not like our life and wanted to do something she thought was better than [connecting] Salmon with [People]. Maybe there was a city and she wanted to go there, or maybe there was nothing and she just wanted to walk away, away and keep going away until she learned what else to do. I lived with the torture of believing that she had been savaged and killed on the road by bandits or that she had become a camp follower to give herself in that small way to the greater need. I was sick and I did not get better. I felt the frost on me like a gnawing animal, crouched on my chest as I lay in reeking animal skins. I think the ponies are sick and I haven’t heard the voice of one for all the time I have lain inside out of the snow. I find I have nothing to do but pray that the spirits will come and take me away from this terrible loss… spirit-helper have pity on me.
Mai-hee-ahh-nivenoh
Spirit-helper have pity on me.

Again we have an illustration of a shift in language and content to show an unfamiliarity with what must be the actual language and content. The final phrase is a Siletz or Kallipuia Indian phrase I heard many years ago when I made a recording of two medicine men singing peyote songs at a gathering.

The truly odd thing about this story is that it doesn’t seem to portray in any sense the actual goings-on of my waking life. No one was leaving me (quite the reverse) and I was not terribly sad about the things I was going through. I reminded myself at the time that it is often useful to put myself in the place of other people in the story and try to see it through their eyes in order to gain a different perspective. It seems that these stories are reflections of real events around me, but told from different perspectives to help me see around corners in my mind. There is yet an even deeper version of this phenomenon.

Angel-Speak

From time to time, it will seem as if the storyteller pauses in the narrative and addresses me directly, offering words of wisdom, couched in the oddest of contradictory phrases. This is usually accompanied by a complete stillness of mind which slowly blooms into a sort of joyous weeping and a cathartic swirl of suppressed emotions. I can typically feel this shift in consciousness very distinctly, it seeming as if my creative faculties are suspended and I am just listening intently to what is said to me. When this happens, I signal it by the use of italics.

Sometimes, and on this occasion certainly, the ‘narrator’ of this story stops telling the story and addresses me directly. I can feel it happen. There is a shift in content, in word and meaning. It is as if a storyteller stops telling the illustrative tale long enough to tell me, the listener, what it means to me personally. These words almost always have many, many layers of meaning and interpretation and so, when I can identify them, I put them in italics. I don’t know whose memory this is, but I don’t think it’s mine. There is no electricity here and it happens at night by the light of glass lamps and fireflies. It seems like Nebraska in the ’30′s for some reason.

Not always in a lonely place do I behold you – sometimes it is at a café on a piazza I cannot name, sometimes on your grandparents’ farm where you held my hand under the table and asked me about the stars. You’d just heard about the pictures in the stars that were put there by the men who would tell stories at the gatherings. You wanted to know what I knew and I only knew about the pictures and I pointed them out to you, if I remembered them correctly. It was enough for you then, and made for us a simple moment to treasure.

As children of Earth and the Starry Heavens, our story is in those stars, forming a long way back in the bright spiral of time and calling out to our present ears as a collection of words upon the only Tongue that speaks the Word: I am your Heart. I am your Pain. I am the reason for your next breath. Thou art my life and I love thee. Your own love is a reflection of that and no more, but that is more than enough. Do not ever forget that.

I cannot read these words without tears.

Another:

I was mad at my wife, mad at the feelings I had in me and mad that I made the object of my love mad at me. I fell off the tobacco wagon and was struggling to climb back on. I held my wife in my arms and smelled Pall Malls distinctly, as if a cigarette was burning in the room and recalled that her mother died of cancer and that was her brand. It felt like a presence, a ghost. I don’t smoke Pall Malls. My muse speaks again and in that twisted and maddening ‘angel-speak’ that simultaneously enlightens and obscures.

You don’t need my words want my words reveal my words
Speak my words but hear my words you do in the deep of yrself.

Today I held you while we both cried and I felt your mother draw near.
Was it my own breath reeking of sticky yellow death or the touch of her love flavored by what she could not leave? Quitting is easier than this but the sea must be calmer than this I tell myself today

It cannot be every day that way

Dear heart, I suffer with you and in you

&

you are every woman I have ever known

as I am every man I have ever been

N’shallah

And finally:

Angel-speak w/o preamble. Possibly one of the most important insights I’ve received from this time. It is presented in an unusually clear fashion.

Listen to me, you had an important thought there: She (whoever She is) is the love of your life but cannot be your love of Life, dig? If I exist as a different octave of your being, it is proper to say that I am the Life of your love. This is a formula, and when you work it forwards you find Her. When you work it backwards you find Me. See again:

Life of your love… you’re love of Life… Love of yr life
Thee… Thine… Thou
Solve Coagula Est!

‘Toluca’ is your invocation
and you must know by now that you are but one more flower blooming in a bucket of shit

‘Toluca’ is a poem I wrote 20 years ago and it has always felt special to me. I’ve recorded it as a music & spoken word piece and performed it from time to time, and whether hearing it on tape or performing it live, the room is always very still. Here I am told that it is nothing less than my own personal invocation of my Holy Guardian Angel and I have since used it as such to solid effect.

There is an immense wealth of information available to us, if we’d only take the time to listen and to suspend immediate judgement. The rewards are as great as one’s patience, both with the process and with oneself. It took me many years to unravel Toluca, and it hasn’t revealed all of its secrets yet. Twenty years ago, my only clue that this poem was in any way unusual was the fact that, at some point, I began to quote verbatim the Bhagavad Gita at decent length. I have read the Gita, but I certainly have not memorized it and didn’t ever expect it to show up in such fashion. I shall close this curious essay with Toluca.

Toluca

Toluca is home sometimes where you stare down the road with black and ancient and wond’rous eyes you see your soul entangled in mine but this you do not yet know…

Can these elaborately constructed forms differ so much from one another that no route can be see of forward-going-apace? The path of metamorphos-is is the path of divine light and also horror.

Thou art desire… thou art desire

Thy beauty is in my I

Thou art madness… thou art madness

Thy beauty is in my I

Thou art God… Thou art Goddess

Thy beauty is truth & lie

Both truth & lie

I hate my masque

Seven years of de-votion Seven years of backward motion
Had I but known the words I would have penned the song
‘Voyage on your blood for it is love & no other’

The spiritual equivalent of the hydrogen bomb? Cum now be reasonable if you be know a sage then so shall it be – be not distracted that you do not perceive the slightest wisdom in what you are doing at this moment or any other who cares to seek for that perfect freedom? One man perhaps in many thousands then tell me how many of those who seek that perfect freedom shall know the total truth of my being?

Perhaps one… Perhaps every one

As we are all one and that one is all of us, who can it matter who among us would run to take the light?

(For it is all ours always was always will be) You have nothing in your I your I is in me of me it is me

I am you

©2007 Frater Auxilior Arti
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

A new column by Gerald del Campo, The Dictionary of Traditional Magic and Etherical Science features ten author-selected definitions per issue. The definitions included in Mr. del Campo’s Dictionary do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrators or other contributors of this magazine.

Abramelin Operation

(Magic) A magical operation described in The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage for the purpose of achieving Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel, and requiring a strict six-month period of isolation, meditation and asceticism. It is said that a person that completes this operation can compel the compliance all demons.

Assmosis

(From the author’s personal lexicon) The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement from the asses they kiss.

Bhakti Yoga

(Yoga) Gives mastery over love, and leads to the control of the powers of divine love. Devotional Yoga.

Categorical Imperative

(Philosophy) In Immanuel Kant’s ethical system, an unconditional moral law that applies to all rational beings and is independent of any personal motive or desire.

Cynic

(From the author’s personal lexicon) A sneering faultfinder; one who disbelieves in the goodness of human motives, and who is given to displaying his disbelief by sneers and sarcasm.

Elixir

(Alchemy) In alchemy and magick, a liquid version of the Philosopher’s Stone possessing the same ability to perfect any substance. When applied to the human body, the Elixir is said to cure diseases and restores youth.

Ethics

(Philosophy) The sphere of philosophy that deals with moral issues. Key questions in ethics include: What is the right or wrong thing to do? Which is more important, the intentions behind action or the actual outcome? Are there any ethical rules that can be applied universally?

Gnosis

(Gnostic) From the Greek knowledge, meaning a Divine knowledge gained by the union of Wisdom and Understanding. The word is a reference for a number of religious sects that existed around the time of Christ. They believed in two deities: one who is responsible for the creation of the Spirit world, commonly referred to as “the Logos,” and the other who created the world of Matter, called “the Demiurge.” Gnosticism underlines a return to the Spirit world via the development of mystical knowledge, which leads to salvation. Today, the term “gnosis” has become somewhat fashionable, and seems everyone wants a piece of it, but not badly enough to actually attain it or at least use the word correctly. Consequently, “gnosis” has been interpreted in a lot of silly ways, and is used in some ridiculously incorrect ways as a mundane “knowing” (e.g. financial gnosis, real estate gnosis, etc.) by those want to try to make everything they do “magical.” Also used, incorrectly, to mean the “state of magical readiness,” a definition applied by Chaos magicians.

Sushumna

(Yoga) Sanskrit. Also referred to in Hindu texts as “the sustainer of the universe,” “the path of the universe,” and “the path of salvation,” it is attached to the center of the spine, beginning at the same level as the anus and extends to the top of the head. Sushumna runs along the center of the spinal cord or spinal column, passing through the chakras, and is said to carry Prana. The real work of the Magician or Yogi begins once Sushumna begins to function.

Utilitarianism

(Philosophy) A form of Consequentialism. The doctrine that an act is right only if the consequences maximize the general happiness and/or pleasure. A popular and controversial argument of Utilitarianism philosophy is whether the general happiness must be interpreted as the happiness of the majority.

©2007 by Gerald del Campo.
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

Over the past several weeks, there has been a lot of talk online about bunny hunting. That’s good; talk needs to happen and debate needs to happen. But it’s when talk stops that things go bad. And in this case, talk stopped and attacks began.

I am casting no aspersions. There are a lot of people to share the blame here, no one person more so than any other. This article is not to point fingers or say “you were wrong.” This article only gives the other side of the argument, the one drowned out by the strident voices.

A lot of people have made uninformed comments, judgment calls, snap diagnoses and pop-psychology psycho babble feel-good nonsense. I have seen people call all bunnyhunters bullies, mean, hatemongers, guardians of morals and craft dogma, and other names. These aspersions include me, since I have been actively hunting bunnies.

Over my time practicing Wicca and Witchcraft actively, I have been seeing people say, “There needs to be someone who will speak out against these idiots,” for the last 13 years. It started with Laurie Cabot and her insistence on wearing all black, all the time, and it continued into wanting to distance Witchcraft from the excesses of Stevie Nicks. It has continued right up to present day and such people as Kevin Carolyn (and his spells to protect the Loch Ness Monster), Silver RavenWolf (and her books), Fiona Horne (and her infamous appearance on Mad Mad House), right up to the Wiccans and Witches who appear on reality TV and shows like Tyra Banks. But somebody should do something about it, right?

Back in the days of the infant online networking between Witches with America Online, Prodigy and Genie, there was a certain amount of fluff that had to be tolerated. Information was scattered and dispersed between multiple groups and communities, with few books available. Everyone was referencing the same three-dozen text articles, and reading the Riders of the Crystal Wind book of shadows (in fourteen volumes). Finding non-fluff information was very difficult, especially since most bookstores didn’t carry anything that was relevant, and when they did it was in their “Religious Studies,” “Self Help,” or the “Philosophy” sections.

It became imperative to spread the best information you could find. Books like the Big Blue Book or Cunningham’s were about as good as it got, then Doreen Valentie got into publishing her works, and the Farrars wrote their works. [Editor's note: The Farrars started publishing their works in 1981; Valiente in 1962. They predate Buckland and Cunningham as well as being their contemporaries.] Things started turning around.

But with these autonomous isolated communities, a problem started occurring. It was whispered about in the chat rooms, referenced in one paper, shared with a few communities, and that problem was the predator. The predator would come into a community and tear it apart simply for the joy of watching it burn. They would use and take advantage of others who didn’t know any better, under the guise of the tolerance of Wicca, to take the money, the self-respect and the sexual energy of the people they were supposed to be guiding. The insular nature of the covens only reinforced this, because other covens who didn’t have that problem would look at what was happening and say, “well, that’s not my coven, I can’t do anything about it. But somebody should do something about it.”

If questioned when the different leaders got together in a community networking event, they might say there should be a council that would keep track of predators like this and warn people, a “database of the shunned.” Everyone would agree that it was a good idea and nothing ever came of it. Stories would be shared, object lessons passed on to others, the injured might be taken to those who could help them, and everyone would shrug and move on until the next time. Again, people would say that somebody should do something about it.

And in every case, the community would be ripped apart. There were coven leaders suggesting that it was okay to do illegal drugs in the magical operations and who would make those drugs a mandatory part of the ritual (if you didn’t do it you would be expelled from the group in a time when just finding a group was a monumental task). Famous authors advocated in their books on Witchcraft that it was okay for a father to carve dildos and to use them on their pre-pubescent daughters in a public ritual, or show them how to use them (by hands-on training), or to give that same virginal daughter to the head of the Circle, even if that head was her father, to be used sexually.

Every time a story like this came to light, nothing was done. Suggestions of going to the police would be met with cries of “we police our own,” and nothing would happen. There was no kind of magical or societal retribution at all. If the community moved with one accord to shun the person in question, the one who was shunned simply packed up and moved to another area and started again, destroying the new community they met and using the new seekers they found there. Everyone would agree, again, that somebody should do something about it.

I have been a victim of these kinds of actions; it has taken me ten years to recover, and my daughter still has nightmares about it. My wife and I nearly committed suicide because of the abuse of such a leader. That leader is still in her position of power, using new members of the Craft, destroying communities and moving on. She is even lauded in publications and books as a major force for good in her area. But every story I have heard about her has been negative, such as allowing rape to occur on her covenstead grounds, which she knew about, and doing nothing either before, during or after except to blame the victim.

With the widespread use of the Internet, there is absolutely no excuse for bad information. Yes, the new seeker needs guidance, and there are groups online that will help aplenty. There are multiple people they can turn to and get good resources and information from. There are hundreds of websites that have accurate history, frank discussions about the inner workings of the Covens and the Mysteries to satisfy the curiosity of any seeker. There are websites that are the gold standard for those seeking more than just basic 101 information on how to be a Witch or a Wiccan.

Those going into the forums where new seekers are, who still claim that nine million women died in a 100 year period in Europe, or that all Christians are exactly like the fundamental bigots you see in extreme cases, or that all Wiccans are vegetarians might be uninformed, but are more likely trolling for flames and people to use.

When someone like this shows up in the typical forum or e-list, three or four people will counteract their information with accurate information, decent resources and good historical facts. Normally this is ignored or knocked down with, “Well, I don’t believe that so it can’t be true.” When more good information is made available through references online and off, and it is ignored and dismissed again — when it is decried, and the person trying to give true information is repeatedly attacked, there is a problem.

It absolutely stuns me that there are still people who consider this kind of baiting to be innocent ignorance. When multiple attempts to educate are shot down and deflected and dismissed, even when they are proven as facts, it stuns me that there are those out there who still think that it is no big deal.

I recently reviewed a book that was published by a Christian Publishing house that was about Wiccans and Witches and what we believed. It was designed to be a primer for those who didn’t know who we are and how we came to be. One of the biggest criticisms that I saw over and over in this book was that “Wiccans tend to be ignorant of their own history,” and “They believe in myths that fly in the face of all factual evidence, both archeological and anthropological.” If this problem is so bad that Christians are seeing it, then something is dramatically wrong.

As a whole, society views us as freaks, fools or predators, mainly because of people like this. Because they shout the loudest, those who spread inaccurate information, those who live in dream worlds of escapism, those who perpetually are the victims of something, and who have to find other people to blame for all that is wrong in their lives — these are the public faces of Neopaganism.

There is nothing wrong with believing in fairies, unless you insist that every single houseplant has a colony of fairies living in it and you must feed them all when you have people over. There is nothing wrong with casting spells to help in your daily life, until you only cast spells and do nothing else to bring what you want to you. Acknowledging your cat as a familiar is fine, but calling your cookbooks “grimoires” probably isn’t. And there is still nothing wrong with that until you go on TV on Wife Swap or Trading Spouses, or a show to get a new house, or a talk show, and spout that as what all Wiccans believe.

I’m tired of my religion and my way of life being trivialized and demonized by insane practitioners simply to get their 15 minutes of fame. I’m sick to death of people who have less time in the Craft than the age of my roll of toilet paper telling me what I must believe and do to be Wiccan. And I’m sick of those people who play up to those stereotypes.

I had this conversation at one point, and it made me physically ill when I was done:
“You think you are a witch?”
“Yes, I am a witch.”
“You really think you are a witch”
“Yes, I am a witch.”
“You really believe that stuff?”
“What stuff specifically?”
“You know, that witch stuff.”
“Yes, I do, because I am a witch.”
“You really believe you are a witch?”
And it went on like this for ten minutes, back and forth. I wanted to ask her, “Do you really think you are a Christian?”

This trend trickles over to every aspect of life. Out in your workplace as a Wiccan? Beware that your boss hasn’t watched Mad Mad House, or they may question your competence to fix that car, because Fiona did a spell to make her car run.

These kinds of attitudes keep being replayed over and over in the community and society at large, and they are affecting everyone.

This is the stereotype that is being perpetuated by these fluff bunnies. Not the typical stereotype of the nose-wiggling, green-skinned, broom-riding, black-wearing witch who eats children. But the stereotype of the ripped T-shirt, sullen, antisocial, angry and depressed emo kid who hates everyone, is under the illusion s/he can float over the ground, who is amoral and kills without a thought simply because they can.

I’ll admit it — I had my time as a fluffy bunny. I also had my ass handed to me multiple times by Elders who did know what they are doing. I’m a better person for it. I got so tired of what I was stating being criticized that I started looking up every little fact before I posted it, and I discovered that most times I was totally wrong about what I was saying. I stopped trying to teach others since so much of my basic information was wrong at that point. I have also spent time finding those Elders who kicked my backside and I’ve made amends to them, thanking them for their patience.

Please don’t misunderstand me. New people to this path are not fluffy bunnies. Let me state this again because it doesn’t seem to penetrate the brain. New people to the path are not fluffy bunnies. They are simply new. They are ignorant. They can be educated and they are desirous of education. They come seeking education and the get it for the most part. They also get advice and a support structure.

Fluffy bunnies are willfully ignorant, they are perpetrators of lies and inaccurate information, and they take articles and information from others without ever crediting the people they got it from or even asking if they can use it. They are those who have patterns of behavior including posting something that causes a negative reaction and then continue stoking the flames with more posts, deliberately trying to keep the fight going. Once it stops for various reasons, they start it again. Or they simply pack up and move to another forum and do it all over again. Anyone who disagrees with them on factual grounds is a fascist who just doesn’t understand them. They have rights and you do too — until you disagree with them. And somebody should do something! Right?

New people to the craft will never be targeted as fluffy bunnies unless they exhibit these symptoms.

Because of the spectacular failure of various education tools, the only tool left is showing these toxic bunnies as their true selves to the public. This means exposing their hypocrisy, their opinions on others, what they are teaching, their mood swings and insanity, and basically embarrassing them off the Internet. Everybody agrees somebody should do it.

As one toxic bunny complained at one point, this could ruin his/her reputation. To which I say, “Good.” Maybe the threat of having a ruined reputation will force them to actually start researching and teaching accurate facts. Somebody needs to open their eyes.

The supreme irony here is that if they would reform, all the persecution they hate would stop. But as long as they continue to attempt to teach, spread false information, tell lies and continue to be a danger to those who are truly new to the community, this kind of behavior from the bunnyhunters will continue.

Recently there has been an escalation of sorts. A group on The Bunny Trail (dot) Net has started putting up profile information on the worst of these. Once the last tool of embarrassment fails, the only step available is to enter that person in a database and warn others away from them. That way, when others go searching for information, it will be available.

Just as others in various communities have stated, it’s been needed for some time. Somebody should do it after all.

Frankly, I hope the members of The Bunny Trail succeed in their goal: warning people away from those toxic bunnies. The Gods witness I have tried my best and failed with some, and after countless attempts to communicate, even I realize when there is no use trying any more.

As someone who worships a God of Hunting, as a significant percentage of Pagans do, it is surprising how many people object to hunting online. I realize that the Lord of Hunting is supposed to be He that helps us get food, but isn’t the King Stag, as He is oftentimes called, also the protector of the Herd? Doesn’t He also drive off predators and make sure the new babies and the oldsters and those who are educating the next generation are safe to continue on their duties? Does the doe that has lived in peace, thanks to the King Stag, object to the blood on His hoofs and horns from the wolf He killed?

His mandate to us is to protect each other, to succor each other, and those who would willfully violate the directions and oaths they swore as Wiccan should be punished. They should be driven off. And if they continue to be a problem after being given a second chance, they should be driven off and not allowed to return. After all, somebody should, right?

So I call these idiots on their insanity, and I get told I’m a bully, that I’m mean and worse than they are.

I have been hunting in this manner for several months. There are those who are absolute threats to not only Wicca, but those who will be studying Wicca in the future. There are those who sully the name “Elder” and who claim things that no member of any tradition of Wicca should ever try to pass off.

There are those who, even though new on this path, “know” more than some of these teachers, and while most of their information is laughable if you have good references, in most cases, the new and innocent can be sucked into their cult of personality. The damage done, the dupe can take years to heal, and sadly sometimes they simply don’t recover. In the meantime, the toxic fool damages others, and the cry of “Something must/should be done! Somebody must…” continues to no avail.

I have made sacrifices personally. I have had my life threatened and my wife’s life threatened and my daughter’s life threatened by one of these toxic bunnies. I have had legal action threatened multiple times, and I have been told that if I ever meet these toxic bunnies that I will have my ass kicked.

It would be nice to be told, “thank you” by those I’m trying to protect from these predators. Instead, I’m hated. Instead, I am told that I am mean and that I’m no better than those I’m hunting.

Well, so be it. If that is the attitude of the group, I can live with that. It is not going to stop me, and I will use the tools at hand to succeed in this goal.

To paraphrase The Operative from the movie Serenity: “I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. There’s no place for me there; I’m a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.”

I look in the mirror every day and I wonder if what I am doing is right. I wonder if I am going too far. I check with others who are also hunters to give me a reality check, and I also slap those other hunters who are going too far. We keep checks on each other as to how we are behaving. We don’t want those who we are protecting to be hurt by us; we don’t want the innocent to be harmed. We work very hard to prevent that.

It is still a job that somebody needs to do.

For every toxic bunny that stands up and starts posting all over the Internet about how evil Christians are, there will be 500 Evangelical Christians who will see it and use that as proof that all Pagans are evil and hate them, and that we as a group should be put down and shot or put in concentration camps.

I don’ want to live in that world. And if it takes pissing off a few dozen toxic bunnies and a section of the Pagan world as well, I’m ready to make that sacrifice.

I’m somebody — Care to join me?

©2007 by Daven.
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

Okay, first things first. We like Daven quite a bit. He’s a cool person, and really knows his stuff when it comes to magic and paganism (as his many writings and correspondences attest). We just happen to be diametrically opposed to him on the subject of bunny hunting (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — it’s good when you have intelligent, experienced people on both sides of a debate, because then you get a clearer view of the issue). However, we perceive bunny hunting to be an extreme reaction to problematic pagans.

Neither one of us has participated in a bunny hunt, which as you may have read from Daven’s essay, is the art of proactively preventing the spread of misinformation (including dangerous ideas, such as suggesting that belladonna is good for you) within the pagan community. A bunny isn’t just a newbie, but rather is someone who has access to good information yet remains willfully ignorant. Lupa, however, was a part of an online community for several months that organized bunny hunts, particularly that surrounding Elder Ravenfire (ERF), a twenty-two-year-old self-proclaimed elder of his own Wiccan tradition.

For the record, we have absolutely no problem with making sure bad information gets curbed. The same goes for dangerous people, such as sexual predators and plagiarists (who are dangerous for very different reasons). The problem is that since the pagan community is still relatively young and is still in its formative stages, there really isn’t any proscribed way to deal with such problematic pagans. Most of what we’ve seen has been the “spread rumors and shun” method, along with written diatribes (primarily online) about specific people (usually authors). Rarely is there any moderation or oversight on these efforts, which raises a lot of questions as to the legality, particularly of the written actions taken, but even more importantly when such actions go beyond ethical considerations.

Then there is the bunny hunt itself. This is a relatively new phenomenon that appears to us to be somewhat of a mix between the “spread rumors and shun” method and a good old-fashioned witch war. It’s not intended to be as such, but in its more advanced stages it certainly resembles these. For example, a bunny hunt may start with people who have knowledge and experience enough to be considered authorities being on a forum where a bunny is spewing all sorts of esoteric garbage. Said authorities will do as most sensible pagans do and correct the bunny’s misinformation. The bunny, not being a sensible person hirself, will take offense and get all pissy about the fact that s/he’s just been pwned.

This is where things can get ugly, and where we disagree with what happens next. Rather than ignoring the bunny and letting hir stew in hir own juices (and make a fool of hirself in the process), the hunters may respond to the bunny’s bitching and moaning (albeit in a much calmer, informed fashion). This causes the situation to escalate to a point where nobody’;s going to convince anyone else of the Truth. And this happens in regular situations as well. Ever heard of a flame war? Even if you only have one side actually spewing epithets, the other is still contributing to the argument by continuing to respond to the bunny. This may carry on to other forums and message boards, as bunny hunters may follow the bunny from place to place to prevent misinformation from occurring elsewhere. At the same time, they are also harassing that bunny, to the point that s/he may be discouraged from trying to learn because the bunny hunters show no sign of moderation or restraint in their activities. If there was any chance of salvaging the bunny’s potential to learn saner ways, the experience of being hounded across the internet may kill whatever was left. For sure, the hunters have the best of intentions and may not see what they’re doing as harassment, but as Taylor has pointed out before, the intent you have and the impact it has on others may be entirely different — and does the end really justify the means?

Still, so far there’s nothing here that’s really out of the ordinary. A lot of this is just the usual online politicking. However, it’s the latter stages of the ERF hunt in particular that have caused us to really question the effect of the hunt in general. For example, when Lupa was on the aforementioned hunting community, she observed increased aggression on the part of the hunters. The thing that finally caused her to leave was seeing several people discussing, with obvious glee, how long it would be before ERF cracked, since he was showing signs of mental illness. Is this how community leaders and authorities (and -dare we use the term — elders) are supposed to act?

The Bunny Trail

Now, since this was in a private community, we can’t really show evidence of this particular instance beyond hearsay. What we can show you is The Bunny Trail. This website appeared at the end of January 2007 and appears to be the result of the ERF hunt. The site mainly seems to be composed of ERF’s personal information, as well as a couple of examples of flame wars he’s been in as a result of the hunt, emails (without headers) from people commenting on ERF, and the author’s personal opinions on what s/he has observed about ERF’s behavior.

Some of the site has been edited recently; as of the time of this writing, the address and phone number had been removed; however, thanks to the joys of Google cache and screen shots we have an older version of the site showing the address and phone number. We’re not going to post it here (since that’s one of our initial complaints), but if someone absolutely must have proof of this you may contact us about the possibility of getting a copy.

Obviously, with the help of the internet you can find anyone’s personal information within a matter of minutes. What we disagree with is placing that information in conjunction with a bunch of negative accusations against the person (lacking in sufficient evidence, we might add from an editorial point of view). That’s just begging for people to harass the target, even if it’s just for the sake of harassment. And it’s only recently been that internet defamation lawsuits have been awarded in favor of the plaintiff² so people often have the idea that they can say whatever they like without fear of being accused of slander or libel. After all, it’s the internet — people say all sorts of things, right?

However, we’re not here to discuss legalities; we’ll leave that to the lawyers in the event ERF decides to sue. What we’re concerned with are the ethics of this practice. For example, one of the criteria of determining a “toxic bunny” is people who are involved in slander or libel.³ To our minds, what the bunny hunters doing is dangerously close to exactly what they’re trying to protect people against. The main difference is their justification: that it’s okay for them to do this because they’re protecting the rest of us from the scourge of ERF.

And it’s that justification of actions that this whole thing seems to hinge on. It seems that whoever has designed the Bunny Trail site has determined for everyone else what a toxic bunny is. While some of these (like the aforementioned sexual predation and plagiarism, as well as teaching minors without parental consent) would probably be agreed upon unanimously, others aren’t so neatly defined. For example, “Those who continually rewrite history to suit themselves and with the goal of making themselves look to be the victim.”⁴ What the hell does that mean? Are we the only people who think that this statement could be interpreted in any of a number of ways just to get revenge on someone the hunters didn’t like? Granted, right now it would appear that the focus is still on people who spread dangerous information and otherwise are serious problems. However, the Inquisition was also set up to protect the Church and populace from dangerous people — and we all know where that went!

This introduces the idea that there doesn’t seem to be any moderation or oversight by people not belonging to the bunny hunting community. The justification of protecting people is also worrisome, because it brings to mind the Patriot Act and other decisions made by people in power to “protect” others. The question is whether protection is really occurring, and whose agenda it serves to have this kind of protection in place. Who protects us from the protectors? That none of these details have really been addressed by the bunny hunters indicates that in their zeal to protect us from others, they haven’t instituted a means to insure that someone is placing a systems of checks on what they do in their bunny hunting activities.

Additionally, let’s look at one of the details of the fifth piece of evidence: “Those who advocate illegal activities like drug-use.”⁵ So now they get to make decisions on what people do with their own bodies? I suppose that means that every traditional shaman, chemognosis psychonaut, and anyone else who happens to use peyote, psilocybin and other hallucinogens in their practice, no matter how long they’ve been doing so and no matter how respected an authority they might be, is a toxic bunny. There goes Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, a number of the essayists from the Generation Hex anthology, and a good bit of Shaman’s Drum magazine, not to mention traditional shamanic practitioners worldwide! And what about the right of people to have their privacy? Will “Mabon” start knocking on pagan doors, demanding urine for drug tests? Is an otherwise respected member of the community going to be blacklisted simply because s/he likes to indulge in a little Mary Jane now and then?

Okay, okay. We are exaggerating the effects. But our point remains the same: bunny hunting, no matter how well-intentioned, has the very real potential of leading to the ostracism of people from the pagan community who aren’t actually a danger to anyone. Whether this abuse of power leads to petty arguments turning into modern-day witch hunts, or someone deciding that a practice that they (but not all pagans) find unsavory is a problem, the result is still the same: Big Brother may soon be sporting ritual garb and carrying an athame, telling us how to conduct our spiritual lives and even tell us how we must appear in public in order to “set a good example.”

The Bunny Trail isn’t alone, either. We invite you to peruse the following links:

• http://blackthornshuntress.blogspot.com/
• http://diamondsofdumbships.blogspot.com/
• http://witchofthenorth.blogspot.com/

All three of these go well beyond correcting misinformation and into what is basically trolling and internet harassment. While ERF might not be the best representative of the pagan community, are people who stoop to this sort of petty, immature behavior any better? How is this benefiting anyone? Granted, these people don’t represent all hunters, either, but if this sort of behavior is not only condoned but encouraged among hunters, how is this any better than allowing toxic bunnies to run rampant?

Ethical Concerns

What’s not clear is whether bunny hunters have any ethical constraints or moderation placed on their activity. It seems as if the only authority bunny hunters answer to is themselves, and we question the ethics in such a case, because there is no one to provide an objective examination of what they are doing or provide some moderation on their activities should they start to go overboard. The bunny hunters have basically taken it upon themselves to police the pagan community, with no thought given to how they themselves will be policed for their activities.

What motivates the bunny hunting is also of concern. Suppose a bunny hunter claims, for instance, that hir god/dess has told hir to go and take all of the bunnies out. We have to wonder how this is any different from the far right evangelicals who make similar statements for their activities. Such claims that deity made me do it leave unexamined the hunter’s personal responsibility and why s/he feels personally motivated to do the hunting. In addition, this kind of reasoning leads to the fanaticism that has caused so many wars throughout history. It leads to dogmatism that proclaims that any other way than mine is wrong. We feel that neither fanaticism nor dogma has a place in Paganism and that such activities as bunny hunting must be questioned critically to ensure that fanaticism and dogma aren’t used as reasons for bunny hunting.

The motivation behind bunny hunting must be exposed and questioned. When bunny hunters feel it’s a holy or righteous mission they are on, they need to be reined in and questioned about how they’ve determined that motivation. It’s healthier to educate people, as opposed to harassing or punishing them. The ERF bunny hunt is an example of punishment as opposed to education. While early on attempts were made to simply correct his misinformation and prevent him from convincing people of some potentially dangerous things, we believe that in the latter stages the hunt was carried entirely too far. Not surprisingly ERF lashed back, no doubt because he felt cornered by what he perceived as personal attacks. When the bunny hunters view that as harassment, we want to ask how it justifies their activities and how they feel about the result and its effects on them. Do they spare any thought to wondering if this is how they’ve made people feel when they’ve felt the need to hunt them down and force them to recant their views?

Alternatives to Bunny Hunting

“Well, okay, Mr. and Ms. Smartypants Bunnylovers,”; you might be thinking right now, “if you know so much and you think that bunny hunting is so bad, what are you going to do about the problem?” We’ve thought about this, because we do admit that there are definitely problems that bunny hunting is an attempt to solve. And we do commend the hunters for at least trying to do something about the problems. However, we disagree that the method they’ve been using is a healthy one. So here are some alternatives that we propose.

Get more good information out there —

We are, of course, biased towards this one because we’re authors, and we like infecting people with the writing bug (more reading material!). Since we both work 40 hour a week jobs at this point along with our writing and other independent business endeavors, we’ve had to learn to be good at time management. This is why we’ve tried to limit the amount of time we spent online, other than networking and checking email. If a person spends an hour a night, five nights a week bunny hunting, that’s five hours a week that could be spent writing. Believe it or not, there’s a lot you can get done in five hours, even if it’s in one hour increments — the trick is to have the discipline to actually sit down and write rather than getting distracted (including by the shiny internet), and it does take practice.

So what do you write? Books are our favorites, but articles work, too. The advantage of writing books and articles is that you not only get to convey information to a wider audience than your average internet forum, but you also get to meet many people in person and teach classes, which can be quite useful for showing bunnies why they might want to do some research. In addition, while anyone can argue on an internet forum, the arguments on forums are mostly perceived as just opinions. Writing your book or article, and most importantly showing your research, can validate and strengthen the claims you make.

You can’t save everyone —

So you’ve written a bunch of online articles scattered across the internet, and your book is on Amazon, waiting for orders. You’ve promoted the hell out of both, and you’ve got 30 weekends a year scheduled for gatherings and classes at pagan shops. You’re doing everything you possibly can to make your information widely available. And then it happens — there’s a bunny! You counter hir argument with one of your well-written articles and maybe even refer your book. And you get ignored. Or even flamed.

Sometimes it’s best to just accept that people have free will, and they’re going to exercise it no matter what. You can’t make others’ decisions for them, nor can you change their minds if they don’t want them changed. And often, doing anything other than presenting basic information will be taken as an attempt to convert people. After all, conversion doesn’t have to be from one distinct religion to another; it can involve differing viewpoints within the same religion. Though hunters may not think that what they’re doing is conversion, it may be perceived as such by some because of the vehemence with which debates may be made.

You know that saying about horses and water? Yup. This is one of those times. Even when we’re just talking about newbies, you can’t force people to read your words or even accept them. Chances are good that if you keep pressing the issue, you’re going to come across as pushy, and turn people off. Sure, you may have the philosophy that it’s worth it if you get through to just one person — but if in the act of saving that person you turn five more away who had originally liked your work but got disgusted with your behavior, is it really worth it? There’s also something to be said for allowing people to make mistakes. Taylor learned magic on his own and made lots of mistakes over the years. But he also learned from those mistakes. The same can be true for any person, provided they have the room to make those mistakes. Correct misinformation when it can be lethal to people reading it, but if it’s just someone who’s trying to find hir way and doesn’t want to listen to you, let it go. That person will learn best by making mistakes and dealing with the consequences, as opposed to having some bunny hunter hover over hir shoulder scolding hir for everything s/he does.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from life, it’s that you can ultimately only be responsible for your own actions. That doesn’t mean that you should shut yourself in a box and hope the world either agrees with you or goes away; we need activism in many areas of life. However, at some point you have to accept that people have free will, and that no matter how much good information you throw at them they’re simply not going to listen. This is especially true if you try to muscle your way in. Being one of a couple of people on a forum who routinely correct bad information is one thing; being one of a half a dozen or more who follow a person around the internet in order to make sure s/he doesn’t dare say something wrong lest someone believe hir is counterproductive. No matter how good your intentions are, you’re still going to come across as a bully to at least some people. Trying to force people to believe what you believe or forcing them out of the community you’re a part of will eventually result in resistance to what you do, and not just from the bunnies you hunt. You can’t convince everyone to agree with you. For example, chances are there’ll be a lot of people who agree with us on this whole bunny hunting issue, and a bunch who agree with Daven, and probably even some who either don’t care, think we’re all bitching about nothing, or otherwise have another perspective on the matter.

Think (and speak) positive —

And this is where we get into the next piece of advice — keep it as positive as possible. No, we’re not saying be all sweetness and light and unicorn giggles. But the way you convey your information is very important. You can have the best information in the world, but if you come across as a jerk (even if you didn’t intend to) it doesn’t matter what your content says. For example, at one of the many events we presented at we had several people come up to us and make some pretty outlandish claims, the kind of thing you hear in fantasy novels and roleplaying games — and they’d apparently been believing it for a good long while. Instead of jumping down their throats, telling them that they were wrong, we politely presented our own perspectives and experiences. We even did healing for one of the people. The upshot was that they bought some books and they left a bit more thoughtful than before; we’d had really good conversations with them. There’s no guarantee that they’ll stop being fluff bunnies, but chances are that we got them to think and left to them form their own conclusions, without forcing our views on them.

People are generally more receptive to a positive tone than a negative one, especially if they’re innocent bystanders. Additionally, the newbies that you’re attempting to save from the fluff/toxic bunnies may not really have enough context to understand why people are arguing, and so may side with the person they perceive as the “victim’ (even if that person really is a predator!). They may view you as the predator because you are coming so strongly, without consideration of how your presentation affects peoples’ responses to you. Remember that most professionally published books on paganism tend to deal less with debunking bad information, and more on actually providing information. The reason we point that out is that while you can debunk bad information, providing accurate information is more important than proving so and so is wrong and shouldn’t be listened to.

If you dislike the positive/negative dichotomy, think of it as constructive/destructive instead. Destruction might be easier to do, but construction creates longer-lasting effects. You can tear anyone down, but helping a person learn and knowing when to provide that person space can do much more for you and help spread the good information around. What needs to be remembered is that people remember how you presented yourself long after they may forget the content of your message. Show people a reason to dislike you and they will remember that and tell other people, but show them that you’re professional and chances are they’ll remember and may even come back to you for advice. The impact of how you present yourself is just as important as the intent behind the presentation.

At the same time, we do need to continue dialogue about what to do when someone really is a threat to others. In some cases, such as plagiarism and violent crime, there are legal avenues in place to deal with these issues. However, in cases where the solution isn’t so simple, there’s a lot of questioning as to what the S.O.P. ought to be. As the pagan community matures, we believe more solutions will be found, effective ones. We are still a young subculture, comparatively speaking, and problematic pagans are a part of the growing pains that can’t be ignored. However, while bunny hunting may seem like a great idea, it has the potential to become a toxic well all on its own.

We have no doubt that bunny hunting will continue, but we end this article with the thought that bunny hunters may also someday be hunted down for how they treated people. They would do well to remember that the judgment they cast on others can be cast right back. When there is no moderation, no sign that the bunny hunters answer to any authority other than their own, we must question the ethics and actions of the bunny hunters. Otherwise we risk the rise of a movement in paganism which is just as virulent as the evangelical fundamentalists and just as willing to take matters to an extreme that is unwarranted. By questioning the activities of the bunny hunters and monitoring what they do we can insure that they don’t set the standards by how someone is accepted in the spiritual communities we are all part of.

Sources—

1. ERF in Yahoo cache.
2. USA Today Internet Defamation Story.
3. ibid.
4. Quote.

©2007 by Taylor Ellwood and Lupa.
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

A friend of mine once asked me what I would do (magically speaking) if, suddenly, I had little or no leisure time left. He gave the extreme example of being stuck out in the bush and having to do my utmost to merely survive, not knowing whether or not help would arrive. Of course, the question is equally relevant to those of us who have jobs, school, families, and/or any number of other responsibilities.

My response probably came off as being a bit self-righteous, but I still stand behind the sentiment of it. Magic is not a hobby. It is not something that a person does just for the excitement of it. In fact, those who would try to use it as a means of excitement either are delusional or will quickly become bored and disappointed. Magic frequently takes a great deal of tedious work and preparation without much in the way of immediate reward. Likewise, magic is not something that a person could pick up in a weekend intensive and immediately achieve awesome physical results. If you’re a total beginner and you don’t believe me, go out, buy a medieval grimoire or one of those commercial spell books, try to make any of it work, then get back to me.

Magic is something to which a person must dedicate their entire life. Every act in life eventually becomes magical insofar as it furthers one’s magical development. Those who believe that magic is purely about fulfilling each and every whim and material or sexual desire will be as disappointed as the excitement seekers.

Let’s look at Wicca for an accessible example. Anybody who has read an introductory book on Wicca has run across the Wheel of the Year (the solar holidays, or Sabbats) and the importance of the Lunar cycle (the various lunar phases, or Esbats). Even in Crowley’s Thelema and in the Golden Dawn’s system you will find hymns and prayers to the Sun during different times of day and spiritual empowerment ceremonies timed to the Equinoxes. To some, these may seem like pointless little holidays or more excuses to party. Even many Neopagans take the Wheel of the Year and the Lunar cycles that way! I will not argue that they are perfect times to party and have fun, but that partying spirit goes along with the reverential treatment of the natural time cycles. “Reverence and Mirth” is a common phrase to hear in British Traditional Wicca, and it is also a good general approach to magic.

The celebrations of the Solar and Lunar cycles are not mere celebrations, but instead serve as a powerful magico-symbolic (or mytho-poetic, if you prefer) means of drawing even the most mundane aspects of life — those which we take most for granted like the phases of the Moon, the rising and setting of the Sun, and the amount of daylight during each season — into the realm of the magical and mythological. It is a means of both “materializing the Spirit” and of “spiritualizing matter,” not to mention of exalting the practitioner’s own awareness of these things into true consciousness.

Even the simplest spell often takes months of preparation, if you take into account all of the training that you must go through before you can make that spell work (not to mention gathering the various components and so forth you might wish to use). There is a degree of beginner’s luck in magic, whereby a total newbie might find that their first halting spell or two come out brilliantly, but you can’t count on that sort of good fortune to carry you through.

I will argue to my last breath that it is not outside the realm of possibilities for nearly everybody to find half an hour to an hour a day (as a fair minimum) for meditation and basic magical training. Even five minutes every day is better than a full hour only on Sunday. I repeat: magic is not a hobby. If you really want to be a magician, take the time and put in the effort and you will achieve your results. All the reading and talking in the world will not make you a wise mystic or powerful adept. Magic is a difficult way of walking the Path of Perfection, often creating as many obstacles as it dissolves, however it is also a means of finding Reverence and Mirth in every moment of life. Those of you who work and play hard in your magical quest will surely find the Grail.

©2007 by Nicholas Graham.
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

by
Antoine Court de Gébelin
translated from the French by Donald Tyson

(Antoine Court de Gébelin: 1728-84)

The following two essays appear in Volume 8, Book 1, pages 365-410 of the work Monde Primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne (The Primitive World, analyzed and compared with the modern world). The nine volumes of this unfinished work were published in Paris over the period 1773-82. The eighth volume appeared in 1781.

The first essay, titled Du Jeu des Tarots, was written by Court de Gébelin himself; the author of the second, titled Recherches sur les Tarots, et sur la Divination par les Cartes des Tarots, par M. Le C. de M. (Study on the Tarots, and on Divination with Tarot cards, by M. the C. of M.), has been identified as Louis Raphaël Lucrèce de Fayolle, the Comte de Mellet (1727-1804).

It appears that Court de Gébelin had the essay by the Comte de Mellet in his possession when he wrote his own work on the Tarot, and was influenced by its contents. De Mellet probably composed his work independently, prior to reading Court de Gébelin’s essay, although he was aware of some of Court de Gébelin’s ideas about the Tarot.

Court de Gébelin’s essay is noteworthy for establishing the Tarot as a repository of esoteric wisdom, for placing its origins in ancient Egypt, for linking the dissemination of the Tarot throughout Europe with the Gypsies, for alluding to the connection between the 22 trumps and 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and for placing the Fool firmly at the head of the trumps, rather than at their end, its previous traditional location. His views exerted a profound influence on later writers on the Tarot, even though most of his assertions are incorrect. The Tarot was probably not deliberately designed as a book of esoteric wisdom; it did not originate in Egypt; it has no ancient connection with the Gypsies; the similarity in number between the trumps and the Hebrew letters may be accidental; there is no hard evidence supporting the location of the Fool at the head of the trumps.

The Comte de Mellet’s essay is significant for his inverted ordering of the trumps that begins with the World and ends with the Fool, for his explicit linking of the individual trumps with individual Hebrew letters, for his exposition of the method of Tarot divination in use in his day, and for his presentation of the esoteric names and meanings associated with many of the cards.

The present English translation of these seminal treatises in the history of the Tarot arose from my current work on the esoteric evolution of these cards. I needed a full knowledge of the material contained in Court de Gébelin’s book, and discovered to my surprise that these essays were not available for free in English on the Internet. Considering the importance of these works, their age, and their relative brevity, this was quite astonishing. As a consequence, I decided to translate them and put them on this Web site so that anyone else who might want to read what Court de Gébelin and the Comte de Mellet had to write about the Tarot would not be similarly disappointed.

These translations are quite rough — I would even go so far as to call them crude. They should not be relied upon where accurate quotations from the essays are needed. My skill in French is limited, and I am sure its limitations are evident in the translations. However, bearing this in mind, most of what these two pioneers of the esoteric Tarot had to communicate on the subject may be gathered from the English version that appears here.

All of the remarks in square brackets, with one possible exception, were apparently made by Court de Gébelin. I have not inserted any editorial comments. Originally in Court de Gébelin’s essay the trump Temperance was incorrectly numbered XIII, but a note repairs this mistake — it is not clear from the French HTML copy of the work that I used as my source whether this correction was made in the original book. In the future I may find time to provide a set of notes explaining some of the errors and obscurities in the text.

The drawings of the trumps that accompany the text were executed at Court de Gébelin’s instruction by the artist Mademoiselle Linote. Many of them were inverted left to right in the process of printing — I have presented them as they appear in Monde primitif, without correcting these inversions. In Court de Gébelin’s book the drawings were gathered together in several plates, but here they are inserted individually next to the passages describing them.

— Donald Tyson

THE GAME OF TAROTS

Where one deals with the origin, where one explains the allegories,
and where one shows that it is the source of our modern playing cards, etc etc.

1.

The surprise caused by the discovery of an Egyptian book.

If one proceeded to announce that there is still nowadays a work of the former Egyptians, one of their books that escaped the flames that devoured their superb libraries, and which contains their purest doctrines on interesting subjects, everyone who heard, undoubtedly, would hasten to study such an invaluable book, such a marvel. If one also said that this book is very widespread in most of Europe, that for a number of centuries it has been in the hands of everyone, the surprise would be certain to increase. Would it not reach its height, if one gave assurances that no one ever suspected that it was Egyptian; that those who possessed it did not value it, that nobody ever sought to decipher a sheet of it; that the fruit of an exquisite wisdom is regarded as a cluster of extravagant figures which do not mean anything by themselves? Would it not be thought that the speaker wanted to amuse himself, and played on the credulity of his listeners?

2.

This Egyptian book exists.

This fact is certainly very true: this Egyptian book, the only survivor of their superb libraries, exists in our day: it is even so common, that no sage condescends to occupy himself with it; nobody before us has ever suspected its famous origin. This book is composed of 77 layers or tables, even of 78, divided into five classes, each of which offer subjects as varied as they are amusing and instructive. This book is in a word the game of Tarots, the playing of which is admittedly unknown in Paris, but very well known in Italy, in Germany, even in Provence, and also by the bizarre figures which each one of its cards offers, as well as by their multitude.

Event though the regions where it is in use are so extensive, none is more advanced than the others in understanding the value of the strange figures than it presents: and such is the antiquity of its origins, buried in the darkness of time, that no one knows either where or when it was invented, nor the reason why it is made up of so many extraordinary figures, of which so little is known that they offer collectively a single enigma that nobody has ever sought to solve.

This game even appeared so unworthy of attention, that it never came under the consideration of the eyes of those of our savants who dealt with the origins of cards: they only spoke of French cards, which are in use in Paris, whose origin is not very old; and after having proven the modern invention of them, they believed they had exhausted the matter. It is in this way indeed that one constantly confuses the establishment in a country of a certain practice with its primitive invention: it is what we already showed with regard to the compass: the Greeks and the Romans themselves confused only too thoroughly these objects, which deprived us of a multitude of interesting origins.

But the form, the disposition, the arrangement of this game, and the figures which it presents, are so obviously allegorical, and these allegories are so in conformity with the civil, philosophical and religious doctrines of the ancient Egyptians, that one cannot avoid recognizing the work of these sagacious people: they only could be its inventors, who rivaled in this respect the Indians who created the game of chess.

Division.

• We will show the allegories which the various cards of this game offer.
• The numerical formulas according to which it was made up.
• How it was transmitted down to us.
• Its relationship with a Chinese monument.
• How the Spanish cards were born from it.
• And correspondences of these last with the French cards.

This exercise will be followed by an essay where it is established how this game may be applied to the art of the divination; it is the work of a General Officer, the Governor of a province, who honors us with his benevolence, and who found in this game with a very clever sagacity the Egyptian principles on the art of prognosticating by cards, principles which distinguished the earliest bands of Egyptians, incorrectly named Bohemians, who spread themselves throughout Europe; and there still remain some vestiges in our card decks, which lend themselves to divination infinitely less by their monotony and small number of their figures.

The Egyptian game, on the contrary, is suited admirably for this effect, encompassing in a way the whole universe, and all the various conditions of the life of man. Such was the wisdom of this singular people, that they imprinted on the least of their works the seal of immortality, so that others to some extent seem hardly able to walk in their footsteps.

ARTICLE I

Allegories presented by the cards of the game of Tarots.

If this game which always remained obscure to all those which knew of it, stood revealed to our eyes, it was not the effect of some deep meditation, nor of the desire to clear up its chaos: we did not spend an instant thinking about it. Invited as a guest a few years ago to meet with a lady of our acquaintance, Madam la C. d’H., who had arrived from Germany or Switzerland, we found her occupied playing this game with some other people. We played a game which you surely do not know. . . That may be; which is it?. . . the game of Tarots. . . I had occasion to see it when I was extremely young, but I did not have any knowledge of it. . . it is a rhapsody of the most bizarre figures, the most extravagant: and here is one, for example; one has care to choose a card filled with figures, bearing no relationship to its name, it is the World: I there cast my eyes, and at once I recognize the allegory: everyone leaves off their game and comes to see this marvelous card in which I apprehend what they have never perceived: each one asks me to expound another of the cards: in one quarter of an hour the cards were comprehended, explained, declared Egyptian: and since it was not the play of our imaginations, but the effect of the deliberate and significant connections of this game with all that is known of Egyptian ideas, we promised ourselves to share the knowledge some day with the public; persuaded that it would take pleasure in the discovery of a gift of this nature, an Egyptian book that had escaped barbarity, the devastations of time, fires accidental and deliberate, and the even greater disaster of ignorance.

A necessary consequence of the frivolous and light form of this book, which made it capable of triumphing over all the ages and of passing down to us with a rare fidelity: the ignorance which until now even we have been in concerning what it represented, was a happy safe conduct that allowed it to cross every century quietly without anyone thinking of doing it harm.

It is time to recover the allegories that it had been intended to preserve, and to show that to the wisest of all peoples, everything including games was founded on allegory, and that these wise savants converted into a recreation the most useful knowledge, and made of it just a game.

We said it, the game of Tarots is composed of 77 cards, even of a 78^th, divided into atouts and four suits. So that our readers can follow us, we made engravings of the atouts; and the Ace of each suit, which we call after the Spaniards, Spadille, Baste, and Ponte.

ATOUTS

The atouts number 22, and in general represent the temporal and spiritual leaders of society, the physical leaders of agriculture, the cardinal virtues, marriage, death and resurrection or creation; the various plays of fortune, the sage and the fool, time which consumes all, etc. One understands thus in advance that all these cards are as many allegorical pictures relating to the whole of life, and susceptible to an infinitude of combinations. We will examine them one by one, and will try to decipher the particular allegory or enigma that each one of them contains.

Number 0, Zero

The Fool.

One cannot fail to recognize the Fool in this card, with his crazed look, and his apparel furnished with shells and bells: he goes very quickly, as mad as he is, bearing behind him his small pack, and thinking to escape thereby from a tiger which bites him on the haunch: as for the pack, it is the emblem of his faults that he wishes not to see; and this tiger, those of his regrets which follow it eagerly, and which jump in to bite behind him.

This beautiful idea that Horace framed so well in golden words, would thus never have been invented by him, had it not escaped destruction with the Egyptians: it would have been a vulgar idea, a commonplace; but captured in the eternal truth of Nature, and presented with all the graces of which he was capable, this pleasant and wise poet seemed to have drawn it from his own deep judgement.

As for this atout, we number it zero, though it is placed it in the order of cards after the twenty-first, because it does not count when it is alone, and possesses only the value that it gives to the others, precisely like our zero: showing thus that nothing exists without its folly.

Number I

The Game of Cups, or the Juggler.

We start with number I and proceed to XXI, because the current practice is to start with the least number and continue on to the highest: it was however that of the Egyptians to began to count with the higher, continuing down to the lower. Thus they sang the octave while going down, and not while going up like us. In the essay which follows this one, the writer follows the practice of the Egyptians, and makes the best account of it. There are thus here two approaches: ours more convenient when one wants to consider these cards only in themselves: and that other, useful in better conceiving the whole set and their relationships.

The first of all atouts while counting up, or the last while counting down, is a player at cups; this is evident by his table covered with dice, goblets, knives, balls, etc., by his staff of Jacob or rod of the Magi, by the ball which he holds between two fingers and which he will cause to disappear.

It is called the Juggler in the titles of the cards: this is the vulgar name given to it by people of this condition: is it necessary to say that the name derives from baste, stick?

At the head of all the trumps, it indicates that all of life is only a dream that vanishes away: that it is like a perpetual game of chance or the shock of a thousand circumstances which are never dependent on us, and which inevitably exerts a great influence on any general administration.

But between the Fool and Juggler, man is not well.

Numbers II, III, IV, V

Leaders of Society.

Numbers II and III represent two women: numbers IV and V, their husbands: they are the temporal and spiritual leaders of society.

King and Queen.

Number IV represents the King, and III the Queen. They have both for symbols the eagle on a shield, and a scepter surmounted by a sphere crowned with a cross, called a Tau, the sign of excellence.

The King is seen in profile, the Queen facing. They are both seated on thrones. The Queen wears a long dress, the back of her throne is high: the King is in a chair shaped like a gondola or shell, his legs crossed. His semicircular crown is surmounted by a pearl with a cross. That of the Queen terminates in a peak. The King carries an order of knighthood.

High Priest and High Priestess.

Number V represents the leader of the hierophants or the High Priest: Number II the High Priestess or his wife: it is known that among Egyptians, the leaders of the priesthood were married. If these cards were of modern invention, one would not see one titled the High Priestess, much less still bearing the name of Papesse, as the German card makers ridiculously titled this one.

The High Priestess sits in an armchair: she wears a long dress with a type of veil behind her head which descends to cross over her breast: she has a double crown with two horns like that of Isis: she holds a book open on her knees; two scarves furnished with crosses cross on her abdomen and form an X there.

The High Priest wears a long habit with a great coat which serve as his vestments: on his head is the triple crown: one hand holds a scepter with a triple cross, and the other gives the blessing with two fingers extended toward two individuals at his knees.

Italian card makers or Germans who brought back this game to their buyers, made these two characters into what the ancients called the Father and Mother, like our names Abbot and Abbess, Oriental words meaning the same thing; they called them, I say, Pope and Popess.

As for the scepter with the triple cross, it is a symbol absolutely Egyptian: one sees it on the Table of Isis, under Letter TT; an invaluable monument which we have already caused to be engraved in all its details in order to present it some day to the public. It is related to the triple Phallus that may be observed in the famous Feast of Pamylies where one rejoices to have found Osiris, and where it represents the symbol of the regeneration of plants and all of Nature.

Number VII

Osiris Triumphant.

Osiris advances; he comes in the form of a king triumphing, his scepter in hand, his crown on his head: he is in the chariot of a warrior, drawn by two white horses. Nobody is unaware that Osiris was the primary god of the Egyptians, the same one as that of all the Sabaean people, or that he is the physical sun symbol of a supreme invisible divinity, but who appears in this masterpiece of Nature. He was lost during the winter: he reappeared in springtime with a new radiance, having triumphed over all against whom he made war.

Number VI

The Marriage.

A young man and a young woman pledge themselves their mutual faith: a priest blesses them, an expression of love on his features. Card makers call this card, the Lovers. They seem also to have added themselves the figure of Love with his bow and its arrows, to make this card more eloquent in their view.

One sees in the Antiquities of Boissard [T. III. Pl. XXXVI.], a monument of the same nature, representing the marital union; but it is made up only of three figures.

The lover and his mistress who give themselves their faith: the figure of Love between the two takes the place of the witness and the priest.

This image is entitled Fidei Simulacrum, Tableau of Marital Faith: the characters in it are designated by these beautiful names, Truth, Honor and Love. It is unnecessary to say that truth designates the woman here rather than the man, not only because this word is of female gender, but because constant fidelity is more essential in a woman. This invaluable monument was raised by one named T. Fundanius Eromenus or the Pleasant One, with his very dear wife Poppée Demetrie, and with their cherished daughter Manilia Eromenis.

Numbers VIII, XI, XII, XIV

Four Cardinal Virtues.

The Figures which we have joined together in this plate, relate to the four cardinal virtues.

Number XI.

This one represents Fortitude. It is a woman who is the mistress of a lion, and who opens its mouth with the same facility as she would open that of her small spaniel; she has on her head the cap of a shepherdess.

Number XIV.

Temperance [recte: XIV]. This shows a woman who pours the water of one vase into another, to temper the liquor which it contains.

Number VIII.

Justice. It is a queen, it is Astraea sitting on her throne, holding with one hand a dagger; with the other, a balance.

Number XII.

Prudence is numbered among the four cardinal virtues: could the Egyptians forget it in this painting of human life? However, one does not find it in this game. One sees in its place under number XII, between Fortitude and Temperance, a man hanging by the feet: but why is he hung like this? It is the work of a bad and presumptuous card maker who, not understanding the beauty of the allegory contained upon this card, took on himself to correct it, and thereby has entirely disfigured it.

Prudence can only be represented in a way sensible to the eyes by a man upright, who having one foot set, advances the other, and holds it suspended while looking for the place where he will be able to safely place it. The title of this card was thus the Man with A Raised Foot, or the Suspended Foot: the card maker, not knowing what this signified, made of it a man hung by the feet.

Then one asked, why a hanged man in this game? and another did not fail to say, it is a fit punishment for the inventor of the game, to have represented a female pope.

But placed between Fortitude, Temperance and the Justice, who does not see that it is Prudence that is lacking and that must have been originally represented?

Numbers IX

The Sage, or the Seeker of Truth and Justice.

Number IX represents a worthy philosopher in a long coat, a hood on his shoulders: he goes bent on his stick, bearing a lantern in his left hand. It is the Sage who seeks justice and virtue.

One thus imagines, based on this Egyptian painting, the story of Diogenes who with lantern in hand seeks a man in full midday. The witty remarks, know-all epigrams, are of any century: and Diogenes was the man who enacted this scene.

Card makers made of this a wise hermit. It is rather well conceived: philosophers live in voluntary retirement from those who are not cleansed from the frivolity of the times. Heraclitus passed for insane in the eyes of his dear Concitoyens: in the East, moreover, to deliver oneself to speculative or hermetic sciences, is almost the only option. The Egyptian hermits cannot approach in this respect those of the Indians, and in temples of Siam: they all were or are like as many Druids.

Number XIX

Sun.

We joined together under this plate all the cards relating to the light: thus after the cloaked lantern of the Hermit, we will review the Sun, the Moon and brilliant Sirius or glittering Dog Star, all figures in this game, with various symbols.

The Sun is represented here like the physical father of man and of Nature entire: it illuminates men in society, it regulates their cities: of its rays are distilled gold tears and pearls: thus one marks out the happy influences of this star.

The game of Tarots is perfectly in conformity here with the doctrines of the Egyptians, as we shall examine in more detail in the following article.

Number XVIII

The Moon.

Thus the Moon which goes following the Sun is also accompanied by tears of gold and pearls, to also mark what it contributes in its part to the advantages of the ground.

Pausanias teaches us in his description of Phocide, that according to the Egyptians, it was the tears of Isis which flooded each year the waters of the Nile and which thus rendered fertile the fields of Egypt. The historians of that country also speak about a drop or tear, which falls from the Moon at the time when the water of the Nile must grow bigger.

At the bottom of this card, one sees a crayfish or Cancer, either to mark the retrograde functioning of the Moon, or to indicate that it is at the time when the Sun and the Moon leave the sign of Cancer at which the flood caused by their tears arrives, at the rising of the Dog Star that one sees in the following card.

It may even be that the two reasons are joined together: is it not very common to be persuaded by a crowd of consequences which form a mass one feels too embarrassed to disentangle?

The middle of the card is occupied by two towers, one on each side to indicate the two famous Pillars of Hercules, beyond which these two large luminaries never pass.

Between the two columns are two dogs which seem to bark against the Moon and to guard it: perfectly Egyptian ideas. These people, unique for their allegories, compared the Tropics with two palaces, each one guarded by a dog, which, similar to faithful gatekeepers, held back these stars in the middle region of the skies without allowing them to slip towards one or the other Pole.

These are not fantasies of commentators on customs. Clement, himself Egyptian, since he was of Alexandria, and who consequently knew what he was talking about, assures us in his Tapestries [or Stromates, Liv. V.] that the Egyptians represented the Tropics under the figure of two dogs, which, similar to gatekeepers or faithful guards, kept the Sun and the Moon from going to the Poles.

Number XVII

The Dog Star.

Here we have under our gaze a card not allegorical, and absolutely Egyptian; it is entitled the Star. One may see there, indeed, a brilliant star, about which are seven different smaller stars. The bottom of the card is occupied by a washer woman on a knee which holds two vases, from which run two streams. Near this woman is a butterfly on a flower.

It is purely Egyptian.

This Star, preeminently, is the Dog Star or Sirius: a star which rises when the Sun leaves the sign of Cancer, in which ends the preceding card, and which this Star immediately follows.

The seven stars that are around it, and seem like courtiers, are the planets: it is to some extent their queen, since it fixes in this moment the beginning of the year; they seem to come to receive its commands in order to regulate their courses on it.

The lady which is below, and extremely attentive at this moment to spread the water of her vases, is the Queen of Heaven, Isis, to the benevolence of whom were attributed the floods of the Nile, which start with the rising of the Dog Star; thus this rising was the signal of the inundation. The reason the Dog Star was consecrated to Isis, is that it was her perfect symbol.

And as the year began simultaneously with the rising of this star, one of its names is Soth-Is, opening of the year; and it is under this name that it was devoted to Isis.

Lastly, the flower and the butterfly which it supports, represent the symbols of regeneration and resurrection: they signify at the same time the blessing of the benefits of Isis, and the rising of the Dog Star, when the lands of Egypt, which were absolutely naked, cover themselves with new crops.

Number XIII

Death.

Number XIII represents Death: it mows down humans, the kings and the queens, the great ones and the small ones; nothing can resist its murderous scythe.

It is not astonishing that it is placed under this number; the number thirteen was always looked upon as unhappy. It is likely that long ago some great misfortune arrived on a similar day, and that it influenced the memories of all the ancient nations. Can it have been by a continuation of this memory that the thirteen Hebrew tribes were never counted other than as twelve?

Let us add that it is not astonishing either that the Egyptians chose to insert Death into a game, which serves to awaken that pleasant idea: this game was a game of war, the dead thus must enter there: thus it is a game of failures finished by a stalemate, or better put, by a checkmate, the death of the king. Besides, we had occasion to recall in the calendar, that in the feasts, this wise and considered people introduced there a skeleton under the name of Màneros, undoubtedly in order to urge the guests not to commit suicide by greediness. Each one has his manner of seeing, and tastes never should be disputed.

Number XV

Typhon.

Number XV represents a famous Egyptian character, Typhon, brother of Osiris and Isis, the bad principle, the great demon of hell: he has the wings of a bat, the feet and hands of harpy; on his head, the villainous horns of a stag: he is also ugly, as devilish as one could be. At his feet are two small imps with long ears, with large tails, their lowered hands behind their backs: they themselves are bound by a cord which passes to their necks, and which is attached to the pedestal of Typhon: he never releases those that are with him; he likes those that are his own.

Number XVI

The House of God, or Castle of Plutus.

Here, we have a lesson against avarice. This card represents a tower, which one calls the House of God, that is, the highest house; it is a tower filled with gold, it is the castle of Plutus: it collapses in ruins, and its adorers fall crushed under its remains.

With this card, one can understand the history of this Egyptian prince about which Herodotus speaks, and which he calls Rhampsinitus, who, having made a large tower of stone to contain his treasures, and of which he only had the key, noticed however that they were diminishing under his very gaze, without anyone passing in any manner through the only door which existed in this building. To discover such skilful robbers, this prince proceeded to set traps around the vases which held his riches. The robbers were two sons of the architect who served Rhampsinitus: he had rigged a stone in such a manner, that it was possible to remove it and enter to steal at will without fear of capture. He taught its secret to his children who made use of it marvelously as one sees. They robbed the prince, and then they left the tower at the bottom: thus they are represented here. It is in truth the most beautiful part of the History; one will find in Herodotus the remainder of this clever tale: how one of the two brothers was taken in the nets: how he urged his brother to cut his head off: how their mother demanded that her son bring back the body of his brother: how he went with goatskin bottles loaded on an ass to steal the corpse from the guards at the palace: how, after they had taken his goatskin bottles in spite of his cunning tears, and had fallen asleep, he shaved off from all of them the right side of their beards, and he removed the body of his brother: how the king extremely astonished, urged his daughter to compel each of her lovers to reveal to her the cleverest trick which they had ever done: how this devious youth went near the beautiful one, told her all that he had done: how the beautiful one having wanted to detain him, had seized only one false arm: how, to complete this great adventure, and to lead it to a happy end, this king promised in marriage this same daughter to the clever young man who had played him so well, as the person worthiest of her; which was carried out to the great satisfaction of all.

I do not know if Herodotus took this tale for a real history; but people able to invent similar romances or Milesian Fables, could very easily invent any game.

This tale brings back another fact which proves what we said in the history of the calendar, that statues of giants that appear in various festivals, almost always designate the seasons. It says that Rhampsinitus, the same prince of which we came to speak, caused to be raised in the north and the south of the temple of Vulcan two statues of twenty-five cubits, one titled Summer and the other Winter: they adored the one, and sacrificed, on the contrary, to the other: it is thus like the savages who recognize the good principle and admire it, but who sacrifice only to the bad.

Number X

The Wheel of Fortune.

The last number of this plate is the Wheel of Fortune. Here human caricatures, in the form of monkeys, of dogs, of rabbits, etc. rise turn-with-turn on this wheel to which they are attached: it is said that it is a satire against fortune, and those which it elevates quickly, it lets fall down with the same speed.

Number XX

Card badly named the Last Judgement.

This card represents an angel sounding a trumpet: one sees immediately rising from the ground an old man, a woman, a naked child. Card makers who forgot the significance of these cards, and more still their numbers, saw here the Last Judgement; and to make it more obvious, they put into it something resembling tombs. Removing these tombs, this card is also used to indicate the creation, arrived in time, at the beginning of time, which number XXI indicates.

Number XXI

Time, badly named the World.

This card, which card makers called the World, because they regarded it as the origin of all, represents Time. One cannot be mistaken with this number. In the center is the goddess of Time, with her veil which flies, and which serves her as a belt or peplum, as the ancients called it. She is in a posture to run like time, and in a circle which represents the revolutions of time; as well as the egg where all exists in time. At the four corners of the card are the symbols of the four seasons, which form the revolutions of the year, the same which make up the four heads of the Kerubim.

These emblems are, The Eagle, the Lion, the Ox, and the Young Man:

The Eagle represents spring, when the birds return.
The Lion, the summer or burning of the Sun.
The Ox, the autumn when one plows and when one sows.
The Young Man, the winter, when one meets in company.

ARTICLE II

Suits.

In addition to the atouts, this game is composed of four suits distinguished by their symbols: they are called Sword, Cup, Baton and Coin. One can see the Aces of these four suits in Plate VIII.

A represents the Ace of Swords, surmounted by a crown which surrounds the palms.

C, the Ace of Cups: it has the appearance of a castle; it is how one made in former times large money cups.

D, the Ace of Batons; it is truly a bludgeon.

B, the Ace of Coins, surrounded by garlands.

Each one of these suits is made up of fourteen cards, that is, of ten cards numbered I to X, and of four illustrated cards, which one calls the King, the Queen, the Knight or Horseman, and his Page or Servant. These four suits relate to the four classes between which the Egyptians were divided. The Sword designates the sovereign and the military or nobility. The Cup, the clergy or priesthood. The Baton, or bludgeon of Hercules, agriculture. The Coin, trade of which money is the sign.

This game is based on the number seven.

This game is absolutely founded on the sacred number of seven. Each suit is of twice seven cards. Atouts are three time seven; the total number of the cards is seventy-seven; the Fool being like 0. However, nobody is unaware of the role that this number played among the Egyptians, and that it became in their nation a formula with which they reconciled the elements of all sciences.

The sinister idea attached in this game to the number thirteen, recollects also extremely well this same beginning.

This game can thus have been invented only by the Egyptians, that has as a base the number seven; that is related to the division of the inhabitants of Egypt into four classes; that has the majority of its atouts related absolutely to Egypt, such as the two heads of hierophants, man and woman, Isis or the Dog Star, Typhon, Osiris, the House of God, the World, the dogs which indicate the Tropics, etc; that this game, entirely allegorical, could only be the work of the Egyptians.

Invented by a man of genius, before or after the game of chess, and joining together utility with delight, it has passed down to us through all the centuries; it has endured the utter ruin of Egypt and of the wise men which distinguished that nation; and while one may have no idea of the wisdom of the lessons only they could teach, one nevertheless enjoys playing with what they have invented.

It is easy besides to trace the road which it followed to arrive in our regions. In the first centuries of the Church, the Egyptians were very widespread in Rome; they carried there their ceremonies and the worship of Isis; consequently the game in question.

This game, interesting by itself, was limited to Italy until relations between the Germans with the Italians made it known to this second nation; and until the counts from Italy living in Provence, during the stay in Avignon of all the Court from Rome, naturalized it in Provence and in Avignon.

That it did not come to Paris, should be attributed to the strangeness of its figures and the number of its cards, which were not likely to appeal to the vivacity of the ladies of France. Also one was obliged, as it will soon be seen, to excessively reduce this game in their favor.

However that same Egypt does not enjoy the fruit of its invention: reduced to the most deplorable servitude, and the most profound ignorance, deprived of all arts, its inhabitants are scarcely in a position to manufacture a card game.

If our French cards, infinitely less complicated, require the constant work of a multitude of hands and the mingling of several arts, how were these unfortunate people to preserve their own? Such are the evils which befall a subjugated nation, even to the loss of the objects of its amusements: not having been able to preserve its most invaluable advantages, of which right pretends it to what was only a pleasant recreation?

Eastern names preserved in this game.

This game preserved some names which also would declare it to be an Oriental game if one had no other evidence.

These names are those of Taro, Mat and Pagad.

1. Tarots.

The name of this game is pure Egyptian: it is composed of the word Tar, which means way, path; and of the word Ro, Ros, Rog, which means king, royal. It is, literally, the Royal Path of Life.

It indeed refers to the entire life of citizens, since it is formed of the various classes between which they are divided, and follows them from their birth to death, showing all the virtues and all physical and moral guides to which they must abide, such as the king, the queen, heads of religion, the Sun, the Moon, etc.

It teaches them at the same time by the Player at Cups and the Wheel of Fortune, that nothing is more inconstant in this world than various states of man: that his only refuge is in virtue, which never fails when needed.

2. Mat.

The Mat, which is vulgarly named the Fool, and which remains in its Italian form, come from the Eastern word mat, struck, bruised, cracked. Fools were always represented as having a cracked brain.

3. Pagad.

The Player at Cups is called Pagad in the modern version of the game. This name which resembles nothing in our Western languages, is pure Oriental and very well chosen: pag means in the East chief, master, lord: and gad, fortune. Indeed, it is represented as showing Fate with its rod of Jacob or its rod of the Magi.

Article III

The way in which one plays Tarots.

1st. Manner of dealing the cards.

One of our friends, Mr. A. R., agreed to explain to us the way in which one plays it: it is he who will speak, if we have understood well.

This game is played by two, but one deals the cards as if there were three players: each player thus has only one third of the cards: thus during the combat there is always a third of the troops which rest; one calls this the body in reserve.

For this game is a game of war, and not a peaceful game as it has incorrectly been described: however in all armies there is a body in reserve. Moreover, this reserve makes the game more difficult, since one has much more trouble guessing the cards which his adversary may have.

One deals the cards by five, or by five and five.

Of the 78 cards, there thus remain three at the end of the deal; instead of sharing them between the players and the reserve or discarding them, the dealer keeps them; what gives him the advantage of three cards.

2nd. The manner of counting points during play.

The atouts do not have all the same value.

Those numbered 21, 20, 19, 18 and 17 are termed the five large atouts.

Those numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are called the five small ones.

If there are three of the large or three of the small, five points are counted: ten points, if there are four of them; and fifteen, if there are five of them.

This is also an Egyptian manner of counting: the dinaire or denier of Pythagoras being equal to the quaternary, since one, two, three and four added together make ten.

If there are ten atouts in this game, they are spread out, and they are worth ten more points; if there are thirteen of them, one also spreads them out, and they are worth fifteen points, independently of the other combinations.

Seven cards bear the name of Tarots especially: they are the privileged cards; and here again, the number seven. These cards are:

• The World or atout 21.
• The Fool or Madman 0.
• The Juggler or atout 1.
• (Atouts-Tarots)
• And the four Kings.

If there are two of these atouts-Tarots, one asks the other whether or not he has it. If the other cannot answer by showing the third, he who asked the question marks 5 points: the other marks 15 of them if he has all three of them. Sequences or the four court figures of the same suit are worth 5 points.

3rd. Manner of playing the Cards.

The Fool takes anything, but nothing takes it: it forms an atout, and it is of any suit also.

If one plays a King, but does not have the Queen, one plays the Fool, which is called the Excuse.

The Fool with two Kings, counts 5 points: with three, 15.

A King cut, or killed, 5 points for that which delivers the blow.

If one takes the Juggler from his adversary, one marks 5 points.

Thus the game is to take from one’s adversary the figures which count the most points, and to make all efforts to form sequences: the adversary must do all he can to save his great figures: in consequence of seeing it coming, by sacrificing petty atouts, or petty cards of his suits.

He must always be willing to sacrifice, in order to save his strong cards while cutting those of his adversary.

4th. Variation for the one who deals.

The one who deals can draw aside neither atouts nor Kings; it is too beautiful a game, since it is savage without danger. All that is permitted him in favor of his primacy, it is to draw aside a sequence: because it counts, and it forces the other to give it up, it is a double advantage.

5th. Manner of counting the hands.

The division is into a hundred, as with Piquet, with this difference, that it is not the one who arrives the first at a hundred when the counting is started who gains, but he who then makes the most points; because it is necessary that all counting started continue until the end: it offers thus more resources than Piquet.

To count the points which one has in his hands, each of the seven cards called Tarots, with a card of a suit, is worth 5 points.

A Queen with a card, 4.

A Knight with a Card, 3.

A Page with a card, 2.

Two simple number cards, 1.

The surplus of the points is counted that one of the adversaries has over the other, and he marks them down: one continues the evening of play until one arrives at hundred.

Article IV

The Game of Tarots regarded as a game of political geography.

Someone showed to us in a catalogue of Italian books, the title of a work where the geography is interlaced with the Tarots: but we could not obtain this book containing it lessons of geography engraved on each card of this game: this is an application of this game to geography: the field of conjecture is without end, and perhaps by multiplying the combinations, we may steal away some of the images from this work. Without us being hindered by what may actually be written there, let us conjecture ourselves how the Egyptians would have been able to apply this game to political geography, such as it was known of in their times, three thousand years ago.

Time or the World, represents the moment when the earth left chaos, where matter took a form, being divided into lands and into seas, and where man was created to become its master, the king of this beautiful property.

The four cardinal virtues correspond to the four coasts of the world, east, west, north and south, these four points relating to man, by whom he is in the center of all; that one can call his right, his left, his front and his back, and from where his awareness extends in rays until the end of all, according to the extent of his physical eyes firstly, and then of his intellectual eyes by a different perception.

The four suits will be the four areas or parts of the world corresponding to the four cardinal points, Asia, Africa, Europe and Celto-Scythia or the frozen countries of North: a division which was increased by America since its discovery, when the polar grounds of the North and the South were substituted for the ancient region of Celto-Scythia.

The Sword represents Asia, nations of great monarchies, great conquests, great revolutions.

The Baton, Egypt, nourisher of humanity, and symbol of the South, the black peoples.

The Cup, the North, from which humanity descended, and from which came teaching and science.

The Coin, Europe or the West, rich in gold mines in the beginnings of the world that we so badly term the olden times or ancient times.

Each ten numbered cards of these four suits, will be one of the great regions of these four areas of the world.

The ten cards of Swords will represent: Arabia; Idumée, which rules over the seas of the South; Palestine populated by Egyptians; Phoenicia, mistress of the Mediterranean; Syria or Aramée; Mesopotamia or Chaldea, Média, Susiane, Persia and the Indies.

The ten numbered cards of Batons will represent the three great divisions of Egypt, Thébaide or Upper Egypt, the Delta or Lower Egypt, Heptanome or Middle Egypt divided into seven governments. Then Ethiopia, Cyrénaique, or in its place the land of Jupiter Ammon, Lybia or Carthage, the peaceful Telamones, the vagrant Numides, Maures pressed on the Atlantic Ocean; Gétules, which is placed in the south by the atlas, and spreads over those vast regions which we call today Nigeria and Guinea.

The ten cards of Coins will represent the Isle of Crete, monarchy of the famous Minos, Greece and its Isles, Italy, Sicily and its volcanoes, the Balearic Islands famous for the dress of their troops of the line, Bétique rich in herds, Celtibérie abundant in gold mines: Gadix or Cadir, Isle most closely associated with Hercules, most commercial of the universe; Lusitanie and the Fortunate Isles, or the Canaries.

The ten cards of Cups, Armenia and its Mount Ararat, Iberia, Scythes of Imaüs, Scythes of the Caucasus, Cimmerians of Palus-Méotides, Getes or Goths, the Daces, Hyperboreans so celebrated in high antiquity, the Celts wandering in their frozen forests, the Isle de Thulé at the ends of the world.

The four illustrated cards of each suit will stand for certain geographical details relative to each area.

The Kings, the state of the governments of each one, forces of the empires which compose them, and how they are more or less considerable according to whether agriculture is of use and in honor; this source of inexhaustible riches always reappearing.

The Queens, the development of their religions, their manners, their customs, especially of their opinions, opinion having always been regarded as Queen of the World. Happy he who is able to direct it; he will always be king of the universe, master of the same; he is an eloquent Hercules who leads men with a golden bridle.

The Knights, the exploits of the people, the history of their heroes or warriors; of their tournaments, of their games, their battles.

The Pages, the history of arts, their origin, their nature; all that looks at the industrious portion of each nation, that which produces machines, manufacturers, commerce which varies in one hundred ways the form of wealth without adding anything to the base, which causes to circulate in the universe these riches and the products of industry; which puts them at the use of farmers to create new riches while providing an efficient outlet for those to which they have already given birth, and how all are strangled as soon as this circulation does not play freely, since the goods are hoarded, and those who provide them discouraged.

The whole of the 21 or 22 atouts, the 22 letters of the Egyptian alphabet common to the Hebrews and to the East, and which were also used as numbers, are necessary to keep an account of so many regions.

Each one of these atouts will have had at the same time a particular use. Several will have related to the principal objects of celestial geography, if one can use such an expression. Hence:

The Sun, the Moon, Cancer, the Pillars of Hercules, the Tropics or their Dogs.

The Dog Star, this beautiful and brilliant portal of the heavens.

The Celestial Bear, on which all the stars lean by carrying out their revolutions around it, admirable constellation represented by the seven Tarots, and which seems to publish in characters of fire imprinted on our heads and in the firmament, that our solar system was founded like our sciences on the formula of seven, as was even the entire structure of the universe.

All the others can be considered relative to the political and moral geography, the true government of the states: and even with the government of each man in particular. The four atouts relating to civil and religious authority, make known the importance for a state of a united government, and of respect for the ancients.

The four cardinal virtues show that the social classes can be supported only by the kindness of government, by the excellence of instruction, by the practice of the virtues in those who control and who are controlled: Prudence to correct abuses, Fortitude to maintain peace and union, Temperance in the means, Justice towards all. How ignorance, pride, greed, stupidity in the one, generates in others a disastrous contempt: from which disorders result which shake even to their foundations the empires where justice is violated, where force is the only means, where one misuses his power, and where one lives without security. Disorders which destroyed so many families whose names had resounded so long a time across all the earth, and who ruled with such an amount of glory on the astonished nations.

These virtues are no less necessary to each individual. Temperance regulates one’s duties towards himself, especially towards his own body which he treats too often only like an unhappy slave, martyr of his disordered affections.

Justice which regulates one’s duties towards those nearest and the Divinity itself to which he owes all.

Fortitude with which he is supported in the midst of the ruins of the universe, in spite of the vain and foolish efforts of passions which unceasingly besiege him with their impetuous floods.

Lastly, Prudence with which he patiently awaits the success of his plans, equal to any event and similar to a fine player who never risks his game and can benefit from all circumstances.

The triumphing King then becomes the emblem of that man who by means of these virtues was wise towards himself, right towards others, extreme against passions, foresighted enough to pile up resources against the times of adversity.

Time who uses all with an inconceivable speed, Fortune who is played of all; the Juggler who conjures away all, the Fool who is of all, the Miser who loses all; the Devil who is inside all: Death who absorbs all, seven singular numbers who are of all countries, can give place to observations not less significant and not less varied.

Lastly, he who has very much to gain and nothing to lose, the true King triumphing, is the true Sage who lantern in hand is unceasingly careful where he steps, does not adopt any school, knows all that is good to enjoy, and recognizes all that is evil and to be avoided.

Such is sufficient concerning the geographical-political-moral explanation of this antique game: and such must be the end of all mankind, which would be happy, if all its games ended thus!

Article V.

Relationship of this game with a Chinese monument.

Mr. Bertin who returned so great a benefit to literature and the sciences, by the excellent Memoirs that he wrote and published concerning China, told us about a unique monument which was sent to him from this vast region, and which we assume dates from the first ages of this empire, since the Chinese on it looks like an inscription by Yao relating to the receding waters of the Flood.

It is composed of characters which form large compartments in quarter-length, all equal, and precisely the same size as the cards of the game of Tarots. These compartments are distributed in six perpendicular columns, of which the first five contain fourteen compartments each, while the sixth which is not completely filled contains only seven of them.

This monument is thus composed in this way of seventy-seven figures like the set of Tarots: and it is formed according to the same combination of the number seven, since each column is of fourteen figures, and the one which is not is that with half, containing seven of them.

Without that, one would have been able to arrange these seventy-seven compartments in a manner so as to make unnecessary this sixth column: one would have had only to make each column of thirteen compartments; and the sixth would have had twelve.

This Monument is thus perfectly similar, numerically, with the set of Tarots, if one withholds from them only one card: the four suits filling the first four columns with fourteen cards each: and the atouts that number twenty-one, filling the fifth column, and precisely half of the sixth.

It seems quite strange that so similar a relationship was the result of simple chance: it is thus very apparent that both of these monuments were formed according to the same theory, and on the connection with the sacred number seven; they both seem thus to be only different applications of a single formula, perhaps anterior to the existence of the Chinese and the Egyptians: perhaps one will even find something similar among the Indians or the people of Tibet who are located between these two ancient nations.

We were extremely tempted to also make an engraving of this Chinese monument; but feared it would appear badly when reduced to a size smaller than the original, and also the impossibility, given the means available to us to do all that was required for the perfecting of our work, prevented us.

Let us not omit that the Chinese figures are in white on a jet black background; what makes them very prominent.

Article VI.

Relationship of this game with squares or tournaments.

During a great number of centuries, the nobility mounted on horseback, and divided into colors or factions, exercised between them pretended combats or tournaments perfectly similar to that carried out in the games of cards, and especially in that of the Tarots, which was a military game just as that of chess, up until the time that it came to be considered a civil game, an aspect it has taken on presently.

In the beginning, the knights of the tournaments were divided into four, even into five bands relating to the four suits of the Tarots and with the set of atouts. The last entertainment of this kind which was seen in France, was given in 1662 by Louis XIV, between Tileries and the Louvre, in that great place where is preserved the name Carousel. It was composed of five squares. The King was the leader of the Romans: his brother, head of the House of Orleans, with the leader of the Persians: the Prince of Condé commanded the Turks: the Duke of Enguien his son, the Indians: the Duke de Guise, the Americans. Three queens were seated there on a platform: the Queen Mother, the reigning Queen, the widowed Queen of England of Charles II. The Count de Sault, son of the Duke of Lesdiguieres, placed the prizes for the matches into the hands of the Queen Mother.

The squares were usually made up of 8 or 12 knights for each color: which, to 4 colors by 8 squares, gives the number 32, which forms that of the cards for the game of Piquet: and to 5 colors, the number 40 which is that of the cards for the game of Quadrille.

Article VII

Spanish card decks.

When one examines the card decks in use among Spaniards, one cannot avoid noticing that they are a diminutive form of the Tarots.

Their most distinctive games are that of Hombre which is played by three: and Quadrille which is played by four and which is only a modification of the game of Hombre.

This name signifies the game of man, or human life; it thus has a name which corresponds perfectly to that name Tarot. It is divided into four suits which bear the same titles as in the Tarots, such as Spadille or Swords, Baste or Batons, which are the two black suits; Copa or Cups, and Dinero or Coins, which are both red suits.

Several of these names were carried into France with this game: thus the Ace of Spades is called Spadille or Swords; the Ace of Clubs, Baste, that is, Batons. The Ace of Hearts is named Ponte, from the Spanish punto, having a point.

Those atouts, which are the strongest, are called Matadors, or the Slaughtermen, the triumphant who destroyed their enemies.

This game is entirely formed on the tournaments; the proof is striking, since the suits collectively are called Palos or Pales, the lances, the pikes of the knights.

The cards themselves are called Naypes, from the Oriental word nap, which means to take, to hold: literally, the Keepers.

There are thus four or five squares of knights who fight in tournaments.

They are forty, called Naypes or Keepers.

Four suits called Palos or rows of pikes.

The trumps are called Matadors or Slaughtermen, those who came in the end to demolish their enemies.

Finally the names of the four suits, that even of the game, show that it was formed entirety on the game of Tarots; that the Spanish cards are only an imitation in miniature of the Egyptian game.

>Article VIII

French cards.

According to this information, no one will have difficulty perceiving that the French cards are themselves an imitation of the Spanish cards, and that they are thus the imitation of an imitation, and in consequence a well degenerated institution, far from being an original invention and first, as is incorrectly expressed in remarks our savants, who do not focus on points of comparison, but only seek to discover the causes and relationships of all.

It is usually supposed that the French cards were invented during the reign of Charles VI, in order to amuse this feeble and infirm prince: but what we believe ourselves is right to assert, is that they were not an imitation of the southernmost games.

Perhaps we may even be right to suppose that the French cards are older than Charles VI, since it is attributed in the dictionary of Ducange [With the word charta] to St. Bernard of Sienne, contemporary of Charles V, to have condemned to fire, not only masks and the game of dice, but even the triumphal cards, or of the game called Triumph.

One finds in this same Ducange the criminal statutes of a City called Saona, which defend the legality of card games.

It is necessary that these statutes are very old, since in this work one could not indicate the time of it: this city must be that of Savone.

No doubt it happens that these games are much older than St. Bernard of Sienne: why else would he confuse dice and masks with a game lately invented to amuse a great king?

Besides, our French cards present no vision, no ingenuity, no cohesion. If they were invented according to the tournament, why was the Knight removed, while his Page was retained? why allow at the time only thirteen cards instead of fourteen per suit?

The names of the suits have degenerated at this point and offer no consistency. If one can recognize the Swords in the Spades, how did the Batons become the Clubs? how do the Hearts and the Diamonds correspond with Cups and Coins; and what ideas are revealed by these suits?

Whose idea was it to introduce the names given to the four Kings? David, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, do not correspond either to four famous monarchs of antiquity, nor with those of modern times. They are a monstrous composition.

It is the same for the names of the Queens: they are called Rachael, Judith, Pallas and Argine: it is true that one believed that they were allegorical names relating to the four ways in which a lady attracts to herself the attentions of men: that Rachael indicates beauty, Judith strength, Pallas wisdom, and Argine, where one only sees the anagram Regina, queen, birth.

But what relationships have these names with Charles VI or with France? What are these forced allegories?

It is true that among the names of Pages one finds that of Hire, which may refer to one of the French Generals of Charles VI; but is this solitary correspondence sufficient to scramble all the periods of history?

We were here when one spoke to us about a work of the Abbot Rive, which discusses the same subject: afterwards having sought it in vain at the greater number of our booksellers, M. de S. Paterne lent it to us.

This work is entitled:

Historical and critical notes of two Manuscripts of the Library of the Duke of Valliere, of which one has for its title Le Roman d’Artus, Comte de Bretaigne, and the other, Le Romant de Pertenay or de Lusignen, by M. l’Abbe Rive, etc. at Paris, 1779, in 4o. 36 pages.

On page 7, where the author starts to discuss the origin of the French cards; we saw with pleasure that it supports, (1) that these cards are older than Charles VI; (2) that they are an imitation of Spanish cards: now let us give a brief summary of his evidence.

“Cards,” he states, “date from at least the year 1330; and it is neither in France, nor in Italy, nor in Germany that they appeared for the first time. One sees them in Spain around this year, and it is a long time before one finds the least trace in any other nation.

“They were invented there, according to the Castillan Dictionary of 1734, by one named Nicolao Pepin. . .

“One finds them in Italy towards the end of this same century, under the name of Naibi, in the Chronicle of Giovan Morelli, which is of the year 1393.”

From this learned abbot we discover at the same time that the first Spanish work which attests the existence of cards is from approximately the year 1332.

“They are the Statutes of an order of knighthood established around this period in Spain, and founded by Alphonse XI, King de Castille. Those who were admitted swore an oath not to play cards.

“One then sees them in France under the reign of Charles V. Little Jean de Saintré was not honored with the favors of Charles V because he played neither with dice nor with cards, and this king proscribed them along with several others games, in his Edict of 1369. One sees them in various provinces of France; one gave to some of the figures on the cards names made to inspire horror. In Provence, one of the Knaves is named the Tuchim. The name signifies a race of robbers who, in 1361, caused in this country and that of Venaissin, a devastation so horrible, that the popes were obliged to preach a crusade to exterminate them. Cards were not introduced into the Court of France because under the successor of Charles V one feared even by their introduction, to wound the standard of morality, and consequently a pretext was conceived: it was said to be done to calm the melancholy of Charles VI. Under Charles VII the game of Piquet was invented. This game was the reason that cards spread, from France, into several other parts of Europe.”

These details are very interesting; their consequences are still more so. These cards that were condemned in the XIVth century, and proscribed by the orders of knighthood, are necessarily very old: they have been regarded as only shameful remainders of paganism: they thus must have been the cards of the Tarot; their strange figures, their odd names, such as House of God, the Devil, Popess, etc., their high antiquity which is lost in the night of time, their use in fortune telling, etc. all serve to make them look like a diabolic recreation, a work of the blackest magic, of a sorcery condemnable.

However the agony of not gaming! Thus were invented more human games, more purified, free from figures that were only good to frighten: the result, Spanish cards and French cards which were never prohibited like these bad cards that came out of Egypt, but which however lent themselves perfectly to these clever games.

Especially the game of Piquet, where two opponents play, where one draws aside, where one has sequences, where one goes in a hundred: where one counts the cards in hand, and the pickups, and where one finds a number of other correspondences too striking.

Conclusion.

We thus dare to flatter ourselves that our readers will receive with pleasure these various opinions on so common a subject as cards, and that they will find them to perfectly rectify the vague and poorly reconciled ideas that have been available until now on this subject:

• That no one can bring forth proof in support of these proposals.
• That the cards have existed only since Charles VI.
• That the Italians are the last people which adopted them.
• That the figures of the game of Tarots are extravagant.
• That it is ridiculous to seek the origin of the cards in the various states of civil life.
• That this game of cards is patterned on peaceful life, while that of chess is patterned on war.
• That the game of chess is older than that of cards.

Thus the absence of truth, in some manner or other, generates a crowd of errors of all kinds, which becomes more or less harmful, according to whether they unite with other truths, contrast with them or oppose them.

Application of this game to divination.

To finish this examination and these considerations on the Egyptian game, we will put under the eyes of the public the essay that we announced above, where it is proven how the Egyptians applied this game to the art of divination, and how this same use was transmitted down to our gaming cards, made in imitation of these former.

One will see there in particular what we already said in this volume, wherein is explained the relationship between the prophetic dreams in ancient times with the hieroglyphic and philosophical science of the sages, who sought to reduce by their science into a set of images the visions which the Divinity permitted them to receive; and that all this science declined over the course of time, but was wisely preserved, because it was reduced to vain and futile practices, which in the not very enlightened centuries that followed have managed to survive as the preoccupation of fools and the superstitious.

This judicious observer will provide us new evidence that the Spanish cards are an imitation of Egypt, since he teaches us that it is only with the game of Piquet that the fates are consulted, and that several names of these cards relate absolutely to Egyptian ideas.

• The Three of Coins is called the Lord, or Osiris.
• The three of Cups, the Sovereigness, or Isis.
• The two of Cups, the Cow, or Apis.
• The Nine of Coins, Mercury.
• The Ace of Batons, the Snake, symbol of agriculture among Egyptians.
• The Ace of Coins, the One-eyed, or Apollo.

This name of One-eyed, given to Apollo or the Sun as having only one eye, is an epithet taken from Nature that provides us a proof, along with several others, that the famous character of the Edda who lost one of his eyes in a famous allegorical fountain, is no other than the Sun, the One-eyed One or the preeminent single Eye.

This essay is so filled besides with matter, and so apt to give healthy ideas on the way in which the sages of Egypt consulted the book of destiny, that we do not doubt it will be well received by the public, until now deprived of similar research, because until now nobody has had the courage to deal with subjects which appeared lost forever in the deep night of time.

STUDY ON THE TAROTS,

and on the Divination by the Cards of the Tarots,

by M. Le C. de M.***

I The Book of Thoth.

The desire to teach developed in the heart of man as his spirit acquired new knowledge: the need to preserve it, and eagerness to transmit it, made him imagine characters of which Thoth or Mercury was looked upon as the inventor. These characters were not, in the beginning, conventional signs, and did not express, like our current letters, the sound of the words; they were the same true images that make up the pictures on the cards, which presented to the eyes the things about which one wanted to speak.

It is natural that the inventor of these images was the first historian: indeed, Thoth is regarded as having painted the gods [the gods, in the writing and the hieroglyphic expression, are the eternal and the virtues, represented with one body], that is to say, acts of absolute power, or creation, to which he joined precepts or morals. This book was to be named A-Rosh; from A, doctrines, science; and from Rosch [Rosh is the Egyptian name of Mercury and of its festival which is celebrated the first day of the new year], Mercury, which, joined to the article T, means pictures of the doctrines of Mercury; but as Rosh also means commencement, this word Ta-Rosh was particularly devoted to his cosmogony; just as Ethotia, the History of Time, was the title of his astronomy; and perhaps that Athothes, which one took for King, son of Thoth, is only the child of his genius, and the History of the kings of Egypt.

This ancient cosmogony, this book of Ta-Rosh, except for some minor corruptions, has come down to us in the cards which still bear this name [twenty-two pictures form a book not very bulky; but if, as is quite probable, the first traditions were preserved in poems, a simple image which fixed the attention of the people, by which one illustrated the event, served to help them to retain them, as well as the verse which described them.], that is to say, greed has preserved for an idle amusement, or superstition has preserved from the injury of time, mysterious symbols which serve them, as formerly they served the Magi, to mislead credulity.

The Arabs communicated this book [We still name Livret aus Lansquenet, or Lands-Knecht, the series of cards that one gives with the deal.] or game to the Spaniards, and the soldiers of Charles V carried it into Germany. It is composed of three higher series, representing the first three ages, of gold, silver and bronze: each series is made up of seven cards [Three times seven, a mystical, famous number for Kabbalists, Pythagoreans, etc.].

But like the Egyptian writing which reads to the left or the right, the twenty-first card, which was not numbered with an Arabic numeral, is nonetheless also the first, and must be read in the same way in order to understand the history; as it is the first in the game of Tarots, and in the species of divination that one performs with these images.

Lastly, there is a twenty-second card without number as without power, but which increases the value of that which it precedes; it is the zero of magic calculations: it is called the Fool.

First Series.

Age of Gold.

The twenty-first, or first card, represents the Universe by the goddess Isis in an oval, or an egg, with the four seasons in the four corners: the Man or the Angel, the Eagle, the Ox, and the Lion.

Twentieth, this one is titled the Judgement: indeed, an angel sounding a trumpet, and the men leaving the ground, had to induce a painter, not very well versed in mythology, to see in this picture only the image of the Resurrection; but the ancients looked upon the men as children of the Earth [The teeth sown by Cadmus, etc.]; Thoth wanted to express the Creation of Man by painting Osiris, a generating god, with the speaking pipe or verb which orders matter, and by tongues of fire which escape from the cloud, the Spirit [Painted even in our sacred histories.] of God reviving this same matter; finally, by men leaving the ground in order to adore and admire the Absolute Power: the posture of these men does not announce culprits who go to appear in front of their Judge.

Nineteenth, the creation of the Sun which brightens the union of man and woman, expressed by a man and a woman who give to each other their hands: this sign became, after that of Gemini, androgynous: Duo in carne una.

Eighteenth, the creation of the Moon and the terrestrial animals, expressed by a wolf and a dog, to stand for domestic animals and wild: this emblem is well chosen, in as much as the dog and the wolf are the only beasts which howl at the appearance of this star, as though regretting the loss of the day. This card makes me believe that its picture once announced very great misfortunes to those who chose to consult the Fates, since it depicts the line of the Tropic, that is to say, of the departure and the return of the Sun, which leaves the comforting hope of a beautiful day and of a better fortune. Also, two fortresses which defend a path traced in blood, and a marsh which terminates the image, inevitably suggest difficulties without number that must be surmounted in order to banish so sinister a presage.

Seventeenth, the Creation of Stars and Fishes, represented by stars and Aquarius.

Sixteenth, the House of God overthrown, or the terrestrial Paradise from which man and woman are precipitated by the blazing tail of a comet or star, joined with a fall of hailstones.

Fifteenth, the Devil or Typhon, final card of the first series, come to disturb the innocence of man and to abolish the golden age. His tail, his horns and his long ears announce that he is a degraded being: his raised left arm and folded wing, forming N, symbol of produced beings, makes us think it signifies having been created; but the torch of Prometheus which he holds with his right hand, serves to complete the letter M, which expresses generation: indeed, the history of Typhon naturally persuades us to this explanation; because it shows that, by depriving Osiris of his virility, that Typhon desired to encroach on the rights of the producing Power; also he was the father of evils which were spread on the ground.

The two beings bound at his feet mark degraded and subjected human nature, as well as a new and perverse generation, whose hooked nails express cruelty; they miss only the wings (spiritual or angelic nature), to be very similar to the devil: one of these beings touches with its claw the thigh of Typhon; a symbol which in mythological writing was always that of carnal generation [the birth of Bacchus and of Minerva are the mythological images of two such generations.]: he touches it with his left claw to signify illegitimacy.

Typhon finally is often taken for the Winter, and this picture finishing the golden age announces the bad weather of the seasons, which will torment the man driven out of the Paradise thereafter.

Second Series.

Age of Silver.

Fourteenth, the Angel of Temperance comes to inform man, to make him avoid the death to which he is lately condemned: it is painted pouring water into wine [Perhaps its attitude is marked with the culture of the vine.], to show man the need for diluting this liquor, or for moderating his emotions.

Thirteenth; this number, always unhappy, is devoted to Death, who is represented mowing crowned heads and vulgar heads.

Twelfth, the accidents which afflict human life, represented by a man hanged by the foot; which wants also to say that, to avoid them, it is necessary in this world to go with prudence: Suspenso pede.

Eleventh, the Strength that is assisted by Prudence, and overcomes the lion, which was always the symbol of the ground uncultivated and wild.

Tenth, the Wheel of Fortune, at the top of which is a crowned monkey, teaches us that after the fall of man, it was no longer virtue which gave dignities: the rabbit that goes up and the man who is precipitated, express the injustices of the inconstant goddess: this wheel at the same time is an emblem of the wheel of Pythagoras, a way of drawing lots by numbers: this form of divination is called arithomancy.

Ninth, the Hermit or the Sage, lantern in hand, seeking justice on the earth.

Eighth, Justice.

Third Series.

Age of Iron.

Seventh, the Chariot of War in which is an armored king, armed with a javelin, expresses the dissensions, the murders, the combats of the age of bronze, and announces the crimes of the age of iron.

Sixth, the man depicted wavering between vice and virtue, is not led any more by reason: Love or Desire [concupiscence], with bandaged eyes, ready to release a dart, will make him lean to the right or to the left, whichever way he is guided by chance.

Fifth, Jupiter or the Eternal together with his eagle, lightning in hand, threatens the earth, and will visit it kings with his anger.

Fourth, the king armed with a bludgeon, which ignorance thereafter made an imperial globe [Osiris is often represented with a whip in his hand, with a sphere and a T: all these things united, have produced in the head of a German card maker an imperial globe]: his helmet is furnished behind with saw-like teeth, to make known that nothing serves to appease his insatiability [Or his revenge, if it has irritated Osiris.].

Third, the Queen, bludgeon in hand; her crown has the same ornaments as the helmet of the King.

Second, the pride of power, represented by the peacock, on which Junon pointing to the sky on the right side, and to the earth of the left, announces a terrestrial religion or idolatry.

First, the Juggler holding the rod of the Magi, making miracles and misleading the credulity of the people.

It is followed by a single card representing the Fool who carries his bag or his errors behind him, while a tiger or his regrets, devouring his haunch, delays his march towards crime [This card does not have a row: it completes the sacred alphabet, and answers to the Tau which expresses completion, perfection: perhaps it was intended to represent by this image the natural result of the actions of men.].

These twenty-two first cards are not only hieroglyphics, which when placed in their natural order recall the history of the earliest times, but they are also as many letters [the Hebrew alphabet is composed of 22 letters.] which when differently combined, can form as many sentences; also their name (A-tout) is only a literal translation of their general employment and property.

II

This game applied to divination.

When the Egyptians had forgotten the first interpretation of these images, and that they had been used as simple letters for their sacred writing, it was natural that such a superstitious people attached occult virtues to the characters, respected for their antiquity [Also the science of numbers and the value of letters was extremely renowned formerly.], and that the priests, who possessed the only knowledge of them, employed them solely for religious matters.

New characters were even invented, and we see in the holy writings that the Magi along with those who were initiated into their Mysteries, used a divination by cup [Cup of Joseph.].

That they worked wonders with their wand [The rod of Moses and of the magicians of Pharaoh.].

That they consulted talismans [The gods of Laban and the teraphim, Urim and Thummim.] or engraved stones.

That they divined future things by swords [They did more: they fixed the fate of battles; and if King Joas had struck the ground seven times, instead of three, it would have destroy Syria, II Kings, XIII, 19], by arrows, by axes, finally by weapons in general. These four signs were introduced among the religious images when the establishment of kings had brought different social classes into society.

The Sword marked royalty and power of the earth.

The priests made use of vessels for the sacrifices, and the Cup designated sacred.

The Coin, commerce.

The Baton, the Hoe, the Needle represent agriculture.

These four already mysterious characters, once joined together in the sacred pictures, gave hope of greater illuminations; and the fortuitous combination that one obtains by mixing these images forms the sentences that the Magi read or interpreted like statements of Destiny; which was to them all the easier since what is revealed by a pattern due to chance, naturally produces an obscurity sacred to the style of oracles.

Each social class thus had its symbol which characterized it; and among the different cards bearing this symbol, some were happy, others unhappy, and according to their position, the number of the symbols and their ornaments, they each served to announce happiness or misfortune.

III.

Names of various cards, preserved by the Spaniards.

The names of several of these cards preserved by the Spaniards, we think very appropriate. These names are seven.

The Three of Coins, a mysterious number, called the Lord, the Master, devoted to supreme God, with Great Jove.

Three of Cups, called the Lady, devoted to the Queen of Heaven.

The One-eyed or the Ace of Coins, Phoebeoe lampadis instar., devoted to Apollo.

The Cow or Two of Cups, devoted to Apis or Isis.

The Grand Nine, the Nine of Cups; devoted to Destiny.

The Little Nine of Coins, devoted to Mercury.

The Serpent or the Ace of Batons (Ophion) a famous and sacred symbol among the Egyptians.

IV.

Mythological attributes of several others.

Several other pictures are accompanied by mythological attributes which were intended to impart to them a particular and secret virtue.

Such as the Two of Coins surrounded by the mystical Belt of Isis.

The Four of Coins, devoted to good Fortune, painted in the midst of the card, on the ball of her foot and her veil deployed.

The Queen of Batons devoted to Ceres; this Lady is crowned with spikes, and carries the skin of a lion in the same way as Hercules, the quintessential farmer.

The Page of Cups carrying his hat in his hand, and respectfully bearing a mysterious cup, covered with a veil; he seems by extending his arm, to push away from himself this cup, to teach us that one has to approach sacred things with fear, and not to seek to know those things which are hidden by discretion.

The Ace of Swords devoted to Mars. The sword is decorated with a crown, a palm and a branch of the olive tree with its bays, to signify victory and its fruits: it is not possible to have a happier card in this suit than this one. It is single, because there is only one way of making war well; that is to prevail in order to achieve peace. This sword is supported by a left arm extended from a cloud.

The card of Batons of the Serpent, about which we spoke above, is decorated with flowers and fruits just as is that of the victorious Sword; this mysterious wand is supported by a right arm extending from a cloud, but bright with rays. These two images seem to say that agriculture and the sword are the two arms of empire and the support of society.

The Cups in general announce happiness, and the Coins wealth.

The Batons are devoted to agriculture and prognosticate more or less abundant harvests, the things which are seen in the countryside or which pertain to it.

They stand for a mixture of good and evil: the four court figures have a green wand, similar to the wand of Fortune, but the other cards express, by compensating symbols, an indication neither good or bad: two only, whose wands are the color of blood, seems devoted to misfortune.

All the Swords predict only misfortunes, especially those marked with an odd number, that carry still a bloody sword. The only sign of victory, the crowned sword, is in this suit the one sign of a happy event.

V

Comparison between these attributes and the values that one assigns to the modern cards for divination.

Our fortune tellers, not knowing how to read hieroglyphics, withdrew all the trumps from them and changed the names of Cups, Batons, Coins and Swords, of which they knew neither the etymology, nor the expression; they substituted those of Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades.

But they retained certain turnings and several expressions the use of which lets us perceive the origin of their divination. According to them,

• The Hearts, (Cups), announce happiness.
• The Clubs, (Coins), fortune.
• Spades, (Swords), misfortune.
• Diamonds, (Batons), indifference and the countryside [It is to be noticed that in their symbolic writing system the Egyptians employed squares to express the countryside.].

The Nine of Spades is a disastrous card.

That of Hearts, the card of the Sun; it is easy to recognize the Greater Nine, that of the Cups: just as it is the Lesser Nine in the Nine of Clubs, which they also regard as a happy card.

The Aces announce letters, news: indeed who is more capable to bring news than the One-eyed, (Sun) which traverses, sees and lights all the universe?

The Ace of Spades and the Eight of Hearts predict victory; the Ace Crowned prognosticates in the same way, and all the more happily when it is accompanied by the Cups or the fortunate signs.

The Hearts and more particularly the Ten, reveal the news that must arrive at the city. Cup, symbol of the priesthood, seems intended to express Memphis and the stay of the Pontiffs.

The Ace of Hearts and the Queen of Diamonds announce a happy and faithful tenderness. The Ace of Cups expresses a single happiness, that one possesses alone; the Queen of Diamonds indicates a woman who lives in the countryside, or partly in the countryside: and in which places can one aspire to more truth, of innocence, than in the villages?

The Nine of Clubs and the Queen of Hearts, mark jealousy. However, the Nine of Coins is a fortunate card, a great passion, even happiness; for a lady living in the great world, does not always leave her lover without concern, etc. etc. One finds an infinity of similar things into which it is futile to search, and here already are too many.

VI

Way in which one proceeds to consult the Fates.

Now let us suppose that two men who want to consult the Fates, have, one the twenty-two letter cards, the other the four suits, and that after having shuffled the cards, and each having cut the cards of the other, they start to count together up to the number fourteen, holding the trumps and the lesser cards in their hands face down so that only their backs are visible; then if a suit card turns up in its natural place, that is, which bears the number named, it must be put aside with the number of the accompanying letter card at the same time, which will be placed above: the one who holds the trumps places this same letter there, so that the book of Destiny is always in its entirety, and there is, in no case, an incomplete sentence; then the cards are mixed again and again receive a cut. Finally the cards are run through to the end a third time with the same attentions; and when this operation is completed, it is a question of reading the numbers which express the accompanying letters. Whatever happiness or misfortune is predicted by each one of them, must be combined with what the card announces that corresponds to them, in the same way that their greater or lesser power is determined by the number of this same card, multiplied by that which characterizes the letter. And for this reason the Fool which does not produce anything, is without number; it is, as we have said, the zero of this calculation.

VII

It made up a great portion of ancient wisdom.

But if the sages of Egypt made use of sacred pictures to predict the future, at the same time they spared no indication which could apprise them of future events, with the hope of encouraging their understanding when their search was preceded by dreams which served to help to develop the sentence produced by the images of the fates!

The priests of this ancient people formed in a good hour a learned society, charged to preserve and to extend human knowledge. The priesthood had its leaders, whose names were Jannes and Jambres, that Saint Paul preserved to us in his Second Epistle to Timothy, titles which characterize the august functions of the pontiffs. Jannes [Just as Pharaoh means the Sovereign without being the particular name of any prince who controlled Egypt.] means Explicator, and Jambres Permutater, he who makes wonders.

Jannes and Jambres wrote their interpretations, their discoveries, their miracles. The unbroken continuation of these memories [Pope Gelase I put the 491 books of Jannes and Jambres among the number of apocryphal books.] formed a body of science and doctrines, that showed their deep understanding of physics and morals: they observed, under the inspection of their leaders, the course of the stars, the floods of the Nile, the phenomena of meteorology, etc. The kings brought them together sometimes to make use of their consultings. We see that in the time of the Patriarch Joseph they were called by Pharaoh to interpret a dream; and if Joseph alone had glory to discover the sense of it, it none the less proves that one of the functions of the Magi was to explain dreams.

The Egyptians could not avoid falling into the errors of idolatry [Long still after this time the Magi recognized the finger of God in the Miracles of Moses.]; but back in those times God often moved men with an expression of his will, and if someone boldly questioned him on his eternal decrees, it was at least due to a forgivable desire to seek to penetrate them, when the Divinity seemed, not only to approve, but to even cause, by dreams, this curiosity: also their interpretation was a sublime art, a sacred science of which one made a particular study, reserved for the ministers of the altars: and when the officers of Pharaoh, prisoners with Joseph, grieved themselves not to have anybody to explain their dreams, it is not that they did not have companions in their misfortune; but it was that, locked up in prison by the leader of the militia, there remained nobody among the soldiers who could conduct the religious rituals associated with the sacred tables, let alone anyone having the knowledge to interpret them. The answer that the Patriarch spoke explains their thoughts: the interpretation, he said to them, does it not depend on the Lord? Tell me what you saw.

But to return to the functions of the priests, they began by writing in vulgar letters the dream of which they inquired, as in road divination where they make a positive request of which they proceed to seek the answer in the book of the fates, and after having mixed the sacred letters they drew the cards, with the attention of scrupulously placing under the one the words of the explanation for which they searched; the sentence formed by these cards was deciphered by Jannes.

Let us suppose, for example, that a Magus had wanted to interpret the dream of Pharaoh about which we will speak presently, as they tried to imitate the miracles of Moses, and that he had drawn the Fortunate Baton, preeminent symbol of agriculture, followed by the Knight and the King [the Page is worth 1, Knight 2, Queen 3, the King 4]; that he left at the same time from the book of destiny the cards the Sun, Fortune and the Fool, this will be the first member of the sentence which he seeks. If he draws the Two and the Five of Batons, whose symbol is marked with blood, and of the sacred trumps he draws Typhoon and Death, he has obtained a kind of interpretation of the dream of the king, which may be written thus in ordinary letters:

Seven fat cows and seven thin which devour them.

Natural calculation which results from this arrangement.

• The Ace of Batons is worth 1. The Sun announces happiness.
• The King, 4. Fortune [Preceded by a happy card.] in the same way.
• The Knight, 2. The Fool or zero puts the Sun to the hundreds.
  • Total 7.

The sign of agriculture gives seven.

One will thus read, seven years of a fortunate agriculture will give an abundance a hundred times larger than one will ever have experienced.

The second member of this sentence, closed by the Two and the Five of Batons, gives also the number of seven which, combined with Typhon and Death, announces seven years of food shortage, famine and the evils that it involves.

This explanation will prove even more natural if one pays attention to the direction and the value of the letters that these trumps represent.

The Sun answering to Gimel, signifies, in this context, remuneration, happiness.

Fortune or Lamed means rule, law, science.

The Fool does not express anything by itself, it corresponds with the Tau, it is simply a sign, a mark.

Typhon or Zain announces inconstancy, error, faith violated, crime.

Death or Teth indicates the action to reap: indeed, Death is a terrible reaper.

Teleuté, which in Greek means the end, seems to be, in this way, a derivative of Teth.

It is not difficult to find in Egyptian manners the origin of the greater part of our superstitions: for example, the practice of turning the sieve in order to discover a thief, owes its birth to the habit that these people had to mark robbers with a hot iron, of one . . . T, and of one . . . Samech [Tau, sign: Samech, adhesion], by putting these two characters, one on the other, to make a figure of it, signum adherens, which was used to announce that one should be wary of the person who bore it, by which one produces a figure which resembles a pair of scissors cutting in a circle, in a screen, which must be detached when the name of the robber is pronounced and will make it known.

Divination by the Bible, the Gospel and our Canonical Books, which is called the oracle of the saints, of which it is spoken in the 109th letter of Saint Augustine and in several Councils, among others that of Orleans; the fates of Saint Martin de Tours which were so famous, deserve to be considered an antidote to Egyptian divination by the book of destiny. It is these same presages that one drew from the Gospel, ad apperturam libri, when after the election of a bishop one sought to know which position he would control in the Episcopate.

But such is the fate of human things: of such a sublime science, which occupied powerful men, wise philosophers, the greatest saints, it remains among us only the practice of children to draw the beautiful letter.

VIII

Cards to which fortune tellers attach predictions.

It is like a game of Piquet where one shuffles and cuts for the interested person.

One draws a card which is named Ace, the second Seven, and thus while going up to the King: one puts aside all the cards which arrive in the order of calculation that one has just established: that is to say, if by naming Ace, Seven, or such, there is dealt an Ace, a Seven, or that which was named, it is that which it is necessary to put aside. One starts again, always until one has exhausted the cards; and if at the end there do not remain enough of cards to reach the King inclusively, one takes up the cards again, without mixing them nor cutting them, to complete the calculation to the King.

This operation of the whole deck is made three times in the same way. It is necessary to have the greatest care to arrange the cards which leave the deck, in the order which they arrive, and on the same line, which produces a hieroglyphic sentence; and here is the means of reading it.

All the picture or court cards represent the persons who may be concerned with the question; the first which arrives is always the one who it is all about.

The Kings represent sovereigns, parents, generals, magistrates, old men.

The Queens have the same character in their gender relative to the circumstances, that is to say in political matters, serious or merry: sometimes they are powerful, skilful, intriguing, faithful or fickle, are impassioned or indifferent, sometimes rivals, obliging, confidants, perfidious, etc. If there arrive two cards of same kind, it is the second which plays the supporting role.

The Pages are young people, warriors, those in love, dandies, those of the street, etc.

The Sevens and the Eights are young ladies of all kinds. The Nine of Hearts is named, preeminently, Card of the Sun, because it always announces brilliant things, pleasures, successes, especially if it is joined together with the Nine of Clubs, which is also a card of marvelous forecasts. The Nines of Diamonds indicates a delay in good or in evil.

The Nine of Spades is the worst card: it predicts only ruin, diseases, death.

The Ten of Hearts indicates the town; that of Diamonds, the countryside; Ten of Clubs, fortune, money; that of Spades, pains and sorrows.

The Aces announce letters, news.

If the four Queens arrive together, that means prattle, quarrels.

Several Pages together announce competition, argument and combats.

The Clubs in general, especially if they are drawn together, announce success, favors, fortune, money.

Diamonds, the countryside, indifference.

Hearts, satisfaction, happiness.

Spades, shortages, concern, sorrows, death.

It is necessary to have a care to arrange the cards in the same order that they are drawn, and on the same line, in order not to disturb the sentence, and to make interpretation easier.

The predicted events, in good or evil, can be more or less advantageous or unhappy, according to how the principal card which announces them is accompanied: Spades, for example, accompanied by Clubs, especially if they arrive between two Clubs, are less dangerous; similarly a Club between two Spades or coupled with a Spade, is less fortunate.

Sometimes the beginning announces disastrous accidents; but the end of the cards is favorable, if there are many Clubs; one regards the risks as reduced, more or less, according to the quantity: if they are followed by the Nine, by the Ace or the Ten, that proves that one ran great dangers, but that they passed, and that Fortune has had a change of face.

The Aces:

• 1 of Diamonds, 8 of Hearts, good news.
• 1 of Hearts, Queen of Spades, visit of a woman.
• 1 of Hearts, Knave of Hearts, a victory.
• 1, 9 and Page of Hearts, the happy lover.

 

• 1, 10 and 8 of Spades, misfortune.
• 1 of Spades, 8 of Hearts, a victory.

 

• 1 of Clubs, Page of Spades, friendship.

The 7s:

• 7 and 10 of Hearts, friendship of a young lady.
• 7 of Hearts, Queen of Diamonds, friendship of a woman.
• 7 of Diamonds, King of Hearts, delay.

The 9s:

• Three Nines or three Tens, success.

The 10s:

• 10 of Clubs, King of Spades, a present.
• 10 of Clubs and Page of Clubs, a lover.
• 10 of Spades, Page of Diamonds, somebody anxious.
• 10 of Hearts, King of Clubs, sincere friendship.

©2010 by Donald Tyson.
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

A teacher is never a giver of truth. He is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself. A good teacher is merely a catalyst. — Bruce Lee

Active Imagination

In his article on active imagination in the current issue of Rending the Veil, Frater Auxilior Arti describes something I found very familiar, so I elected to write a companion piece to his essay describing how I use it in my magical work. In my work with Meridjet (my spirit companion, or SC; see previous columns of Into the Aethyr), I utilize a similar method which I call Processing. In the opening paragraph of his article, Frater A. A. describes, “Jung noticed that he could find revealing and non-self-gratifying imagery just below the surface of the mind, by making a suggestion to himself and then sitting quietly to see what might develop in his thinking. He found that if he did not steer his thoughts in any particular direction, merely sat as a passive viewer of what his mind might show him, many wondrous things would arise, including solutions to troublesome problems, intuitions, insights into his own nature (and that of others) often with a wash of curiosities that would set him to further pondering.”

The Power of Free Association

He later notes, “. . . a group of problem-solvers in a highly productive think tank atmosphere . . . wrote down all ideas that occurred to them, regardless of how silly or inappropriate they might have initially seemed. By this method they were rewarded with a greater number of creative solutions that might have gone unnoticed had they been squelched promptly. It was as if the free-ranging creative process needed impropriety, silliness and whimsy to operate correctly and to arrive by whatever crooked path at useful solutions.” This method of free association is at the heart of Processing in my theurgic work with Meridjet and the other members of our Work (both words are capitalized to differentiate from the mundane sense) circle. It’s been a largely ineffable way of working, up to now, but people have asked about it so many times that I intend to do my best to describe it. I can’t claim that this is a common way to perform theurgic work; however, it works for me and for everyone who Works with us.

The bulk of our partnered Work takes place in text chat via Yahoo! Messenger; however, this is by no means a limitation — it’s simply that most of our friends live in far away places. When we begin with a new partner, we start with common ground. No doubt you’ve had the experience, particularly in magical or spiritual matters, wherein you find many parallels with new-found friends of like mind. Synchronicity can be a powerful validation at such times, and the more parallels there are, the more significant the new association appears to be. It need not stop there; if you can allow yourself free expression, synchronicity knows no bounds.

Meridjet as Director

During the get-to-know-you process, as parallels are discovered, we follow them, gaining mutual understanding and building enthusiasm. Something that Meridjet does with impressive effect is to center upon emotionally-charged events, associations, or triggers and stimulate them to bring issues to the fore. He does this with everyone, and after a certain time of working with him, the common ground we started with and the emotional triggers he uncovers become two sides of a single coin — a coin he flips at seeming random to stimulate Work. There is only one way to get to the true heart of the matter, and that is free association.

One of us will find that s/he is hurting, a mild heartache that still manages somehow to demand our focus and attention. It may come and go while she is busy with other things, but it will return at any moment of stillness, gaining intensity until she simply must Work to Process it. The source of the ache is generally a prior discussion that subtly triggered something deeper, an issue that is just now working its way to the surface as a deeply set splinter would find its way out of your finger. The difference here is that if you are serious about your Work, ignoring this is the wrong thing to do. With an almost sentient patience, the ache will wait until you face it, and like a sharply-stubborn loneliness, it gnaws at you relentlessly.

The first time this happens to a new partner, it is confusing to her. She will, depending on her personality type, either wish to talk about it incessantly or will try to bury it as not worth anyone’s attention. The resolution, however, lies not in indulgence of emotion, and not in repression of emotion, but in detachment of emotion. To suffer over your suffering is to whine without honestly dealing with your problem. To be the martyr and hide your pain (bringing it out on occasion to poke at it sadly, wondering why you feel so alone, and perhaps hinting at it to others) is merely another form of indulgence, but it is one that poisons you, rather than those around you.

Indulge in Detachment

Detachment — To feel your feelings, and to open to them, letting them flow, crying if necessary, but at no point giving in to them and suffering over them, you allow them to percolate through your consciousness and thereby heal, leave, vamoose, and get thee behind me. Anyone familiar with Dante’s Inferno will know that the way out of Hell is through the darkest, scariest reaches of the most inner circle. You don’t learn by avoidance, by escape, or by ingeniously finding ways to bury your psychological shite under layers of Happy-Shiny-People or I-Can-Cope-Alone-Cuz-I’m-The-Meanest-Fucker-In-The-Valley.

It takes practice. Once you’ve admitted your pain, you can move on to the real Work: banishing that issue by owning it. This may sound like stereotypical psychobabble of the ilk that tells you the only way to get over your childhood trauma is to relive it. No, that is not what I am saying.

Expression is the Means, Synchronicity is the Method

As you begin to verbalize (and this is the key) your issue, if you can trust yourself and the Process and let go the reins, expressing your associations as they arise (be they trivial or grave), you will find that your unconscious provides astounding insight and will offer you advice out of your own mouth. It is crucial, as Fr. A. A. stipulated, to express everything without first judging whether it’s worthy of expression. Trust your mind and your own psychological processes to lead you, and you cannot lose.

Synchronicities appear in the most innocent, inane comments. In the course of the interaction between the partner doing the Processing and the partner(s) in the support roles, little comments made off the cuff end up being huge in significance. External confirmation comes from so many directions. Perhaps a television show viewed that morning by your friend is mentioned in reply to a comment you made — because you allowed yourself to just talk — about a movie you saw in 1992, and the television show just happened to contain a scene with a tiger that she mentions precisely at the moment that you consider how you are reminded of the tiger totem you had never previously mentioned. The conversation, then, due to the shock of the validating reference, turns to totems, or tigers, or stripes, or something that leads to still further reflection — reflection that would never have occurred had you not been speaking to that friend at that moment, with both of you freely discussing whatever happened to come up, in the knowledge that this way lies resolution. Never underestimate the power of the Universe to take you precisely where you need to go, if only you don’t fight the current.

Meridjet, when he participates in the Processing chats, will not tell you like it is. He’s not a teacher who spells things out; he is a catalyst. He will talk without appearing to have any single topic or any goal or agenda. But he never does or says anything for the first perceptible reason. He will ask you questions designed to direct your thoughts so that you blurt out the answer to your own dilemma. He will answer questions with responses designed to incite emotion, for the same reason. He’s not an easy teacher, and he’s not going to coddle you — but by god, you will find the answers you need, and you will find that all he had to do was point — the answers were within you all along.

Free association and free expression of all thoughts that flitter by is the most effective way of healing past injuries, gaining understanding of the self, and growing at an astronomical rate that I have ever encountered. Stillness of mind is a wonderful thing. . . but to suppress the Process that holds the deepest, truest answers seems rather self-defeating to me.

Try it, and let me know what happens, will you?

©2007 by Sheta Kaey.

Sheta Kaey is a lifelong occultist and longtime spirit worker, as well as Editor in Chief of Rending the Veil. She counsels others with regard to spirit contact and astral work. She can be reached via her blog.