The Illustrated Key to the Tarot: The Veil of Divination — John Shaqi
The Illustrated Key to the Tarot: The Veil of DivinationDe Laurence, L. W. (Lauron William)
Religion
The Illustrated Key to the Tarot: The Veil of Divination
De Laurence, L. W. (Lauron William)
Fortune-telling by cards; Tarot
The sun shines in the zenith, and beneath is a great winged figure
with arms extended, pouring down influences. In the foreground
are two human figures, male and female, unveiled before
each other, as if Adam and Eve when they first occupied the
paradise of the earthly body. Behind the man is the Tree of Life,
bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining round it.
The figures suggest youth, virginity, innocence and love before
it is contaminated by gross material desire. This is in all simplicity
the card of human love, here exhibited as part of the way,
the truth and the life. It replaces, by recourse to first principles,
the old card of marriage, which I have described previously, and
the later follies which depicted man between vice and virtue. In
a very high sense, the card is a mystery of the Covenant and
Sabbath.
The suggestion in respect of the woman is that she signifies that
attraction towards the sensitive life which carries within it the
idea of the Fall of Man, but she is rather the working of a Secret
Law of Providence than a willing and conscious temptress. It is
through her imputed lapse that man shall arise ultimately, and
only by her can he complete himself. The card is therefore in its
way another intimation concerning the great mystery of womanhood.
The old meanings fall to pieces of necessity with the old
pictures, but even as interpretations of the latter, some of them
were of the order of commonplace and others were false in
symbolism.
SEVEN. THE CHARIOT
An erect and princely figure carrying a drawn sword and corresponding,
broadly speaking, to the traditional description which I
have given in the first part. On the shoulders of the victorious
hero are supposed to be the Urim and Thummim. He has led
captivity captive; he is conquest on all planes—in the mind, in
science, in progress, in certain trials of initiation. He has thus
replied to the Sphinx, and it is on this account that I have
accepted the variation of Eliphas Lévi; two sphinxes thus draw
his chariot. He is above all things triumph in the mind.
It is to be understood for this reason (a) that the question of
the sphinx is concerned with a Mystery of Nature and not of the
world of Grace, to which the charioteer could offer no answer;
(b) that the planes of his conquest are manifest or external and
not within himself; (c) that the liberation which he effects may
leave himself in the bondage of the logical understanding;
(d) that the tests of initiation through which he has passed in
triumph are to be understood physically or rationally and (e) that
if he came to the pillars of that Temple between which the High
Priestess is seated, he could not open the scroll called Tora, nor
if she questioned him could he answer. He is not hereditary
royalty and he is not priesthood.
EIGHT. STRENGTH, OR FORTITUDE
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