The Lovers, or, The Brothers: How to Get Away with Murder Every Day

L'Amoureux

From The Fool to The Emperor, the cards illustrated an accumulation of massive, individual concepts or energies. In The Hierophant, we reached a point of ("sexual") interaction between those energies. From there down, the Tarot is a theater of play between modes of Consciousness, strengths (or weaknesses) of Will, Physical/Emotional energies, Spiritual states of being... You get the idea; you're alive...

Every bullshit, flea market psychic hopes The Lovers will turn up in a reading. The only card that is more effective in manipulation of a client is XIII, the Nameless Arcanum, often called Death. The true lessons of both cards are more similar than you may first suspect.

Hierophant: A Secret Shared, or, The Labyrinth

The word "mystery" has been used heavily in my Tarot articles, often in reference to concepts supposed to exist beyond the scope of human understanding, like with The High Priestess. The Hierophant brings with him an experiential knowledge, theoretically attainable by all humanity, which is known as "Enlightenment" in many circles. (Ta hiera, "the holy" + phainein, "to show.") The Hierophant lives inside us, allowing occasional glimpses or, sometimes, powerful revelations of a Reality beneath, or imbued within, that which we see in our daily existence. 

Tarot is generally of interest to those persons attracted to the fringe. "Occult" means hidden, of course. These cards were created to hide in plain sight the secrets of practices (like, say, Christianity) which were punishable by death at certain times in history. The Hierophant card, previously "Le Pape," or The Pope, most explicitly reveals this side of Tarot. Very clearly, the main figure of the image is in possession of some power, ability, or wisdom sought by the characters kneeling in front of him. But what?

The Emperor's Power

The Emperor introduces a masculine conflict to the story of Tarot. The card is attributed to the astrological sign of Aries, ruled by the Roman war god, Mars; also, the alchemical concept of Sulphur, the masculine/activating principle of existence, motivated by the fire of Tetragrammaton, the four-fold name of God. [Though this significance is most explicitly assigned to The Hermit.]

The Emperor is Major Arcanum IV. The fourth Sephirah is Chesed, which is the sphere of Construction and Order. Its symbols are four-sided: the square, pyramid and equal-armed cross; symbols of physical manifestation. The attributions of Chesed and philosophy of Four are, therefore, attributed here, despite the fact that The Emperor does not come into contact with Chesed upon The Tree.

While energies of Force and Form are seen here, there is an implied threat of disharmony. Without regulation, the intensity of force would destroy and render all form into chaos. Too much emphasis placed on enforcing Law and Order in the realm is indicative of a cruel dictator, stifling of all growth. Consciously received, with full understanding of its role, the Power of The Emperor brings great satisfaction and productivity to one's life.

The Empress Fulfilled

Here we have The Empress. The High Priestess has matured. It is no accident that the first clearly gendered forms of the Major Arcana are Female. The pansexual Fool and Magus energies must either manifest in Form or dissipate into Abyss. A vessel is required for Life to occur.

I am extremely busy this week. As you've probably noticed, my opinion is that the Thoth Tarot is the only deck that matters. As my time is scarce and The Empress card is a representation of balance between ideas we've already discussed, a cursory examination of Aleister Crowley's design will suffice.

The High Priestess' Secret

In examining The Fool and The Magus, we've introduced the concept of three Paths simultaneously emanating from Kether's appearance. One of these is The High Priestess, which is the first Path on the Tree of Life to connect the Supernal Triad (Kether, Chockmah, Binah) to the Sephiroth below and the only direct Path between Kether and the lower Tree. This journey traverses The Abyss that separates Modes of Consciousness accessible to humans from those purely theoretical; the Veil of Maya.

The High Priestess is also the first Trump to depict a gendered form. Here is Divine Feminine Intuition. The Hebrew letter assigned to the card, Gimel, translates to "Camel," the pack animal capable of traveling the desert with cargo intact. Here, more than anywhere on The Tree, lie The Great Mysteries of Life and Death; here is where The Seeker of Knowledge meets She Who Knows That Which Never Is Known.

The Magus Speaks

The Fool of Tarot has been introduced as the Main Player upon the stage of The World, the One (or None) beneath the disguise that is every other human form of the Major Arcana. Travelling through the cards "in order," the first of these Masqueraders we meet is The Magus (or Magician, or Juggler.)

To properly understand this Trump, we will first need to investigate The Tree of Life (or Otz Chim) of Qabalah, which fully incorporates and organizes the subsets of symbols necessary to our aims. Next, language itself must be considered. Many occultists regard the spoken/written Word as one of only two forms of true magick available to human beings, the other being sexual energy, of course.

The Fool of the Abyss

When I walk by neon PSYCHIC READINGS signs, I think, "If the person opens the door and motions like they've been expecting me, then I'll go inside."

So, I've never seen a fortune teller.

Divination in general seems rather silly, whether derived from so-called astrology, numerology, palm reading, Tarot or whatever-else-have-you. Mind you, this isn't to say that these organizational systems are without merit, because some of them are quite useful when not profaned by cold reading con artists in the role of spiritual guide to the lonely and gullible of Earth.

Whether you believe Consciousness to be the primum mobile of existence or the culmination to-date of Evolutionary process, the inherent link between Mind and Matter seems stupefyingly obvious. Therefore, the notion of a Secret Language of Consciousness, or Logos, behind the veil of Maya, or buried in the genetic code of the species, is not so outrageous.

Adepts of Hermetic Qabalah and its countless bastard children propose to have stumbled upon The Lexicon of such a pictorial language in Tarot: that pre-Jungian blueprint of the House of Consciousness which incorporates the symbology of The Zodiac, numerology and the Tree of Life, built by a hand seemingly extraterrestrial/superhuman in skill, ostensibly with no greater purpose than to play a little game...