The Inner Zodiac
 

 

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Man hath weav’d out a net and this net thrown, Upon the Heavens, and now they are his own - John Donne (Anatomie of the World)

Tarot, Astrology, Kabala, and Numerology are sister disciplines. They are not meant to be considered, studied, taught, or practiced separately, as is all too common today.

Those who would practice the arts esoterically must combine and use the four together. However, the precise manner in which this is to be done has not been of central concern to the vast majority of exoteric practitioners, the "New-Age" dabblers and so-called “experts” of the Hermetic Tradition. The “glue,” so to speak, that holds the four great Arts together has been ignored and forgotten. Fortunately it has been re-discovered and thoroughly explained in the Taroscopic System, which synthesizes the four great Arts, as the Tarot's Major Arcana (by way of its imagery and numerology), instructs us to do.

In this regard, the Taroscopic System signals a major revision of what is presently known about the Hermetic Arts of Divination.

...astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity - Carl Gustav Jung

Whether the origin of the zodiac is Aryan or Egyptian, it is still of immense antiquity. Simplicius (sixth century AD) writes that he had always heard that the Egyptians had kept astronomical observations and records for at least 630,000 years...Diogenes Laertius carried back the astronomical calculations of the Egyptians to 48,863 years before Alexander the Great. Maritanus Capella corroborates the same by telling posterity that the Egyptians had secretly studied astronomy for over 40,000 years before they imparted their knowledge to the world - J. Lewis (Astronomy of the Ancients)

Of the many differences between Taroscopic and conventional astrology, that of greatest import concerns what I refer to as "The Inner Zodiac." Contrary to what is believed by exoteric practitioners of the ancient "Round Art," the zodiac is not merely an external phenomenon but is, rather, an inner psychic apparatus. It is an inherent attribute of the individual and collective psyche, an eidetic image embedded within our so-called "Race Memory." In Jungian parlance, it is an archetype projected by consciousness onto the external world. It is, therefore, utter folly to presume the zodiac to be purely external in nature. Thinking of the zodiac this way is comparable to thinking that trees stand without roots or that skyscrapers tower without subterranean foundations. It is this egregious error that handicaps practitioners, believers, and interested students. It prevents the true and fascinating story of astrology from coming to light.

A man’s destiny, they say, is written in the stars. All he’ll ever do, all he’ll ever love, all he’ll ever be… If this be true, as I now suppose it must, only one question remains: who does the writing? - (Introduction: The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, Curtis Signature Collection)

The story of astrology is truly magical. Philosophically, it is a story that has a great deal to do with the "mind versus matter" question. As seasoned students of astrology know, the study of astrology and its sister divination arts reveals the secrets concerning the intimate connections between psychic and physical energy and between microcosm and macrocosm.

The Irish Druids, Egyptian Magi, Native American Shaman, and members of the Lunar and Stellar Cults of the world, understood the subtle relationship between noetic processes and physical events. Long before the advent of modern philosophy and science – long before the advent of quantum scientific paradigms and holographic theory - the members of these groups knew about the so-called “Implicate Order” and the deep relationship that exists between consciousness and matter.

After the great Stellar Cults fell from power, two not unconnected changes occurred which had negative consequences on man’s physical existence and on the Hermetic Arts. Firstly, in the astrological canon, the sun replaced the stars as the dominant principle; and, secondly, the ego became the prime executor of man’s psyche. Consequently the antique precepts of astrological divination were ignored. Knowledge of the inner zodiac was lost and men ended up believing the preposterous fallacy that human consciousness and destiny are affected, in some undefined manner, by distant rocks floating in space. This "magic rays" nonsense continues to be accepted. The prevalence of the fallacy ensures that scientifically-minded men of the world remain contemptuously dismissive of the sacred arts. They turn away from the arcane metasciences which might otherwise receive their positive attention.

The word zodiac (from the Greek zoon) means "living creatures" or "living beings," emphasizing the fact that the true zodiac is within. If the signs of the zodiac are discovered to be out there in the heavens, they get there by way of human consciousness. They get there by way of the psyche's strange but scientifically acknowledged capacities of projection and inflation. In short, the round of the zodiac, the famous horoscope of twelve signs, exists above us as a omnidirectional, cinema-like projection of the inherent twelve-fold matrix that subdivides the Collective Unconscious. As the twelve disciples of Jesus represent aspects of his own consciousness, so do the twelve celestial signs of the zodiac represent the twelve archetypal facets of a man's psyche. Hermetic Arts that are not founded upon this fundamental precept are not authentic. An astrology not based upon this precept is not, in our opinion, true astrology.

Know that the philosopher has power over the stars, and not the stars over him - Paracelsus It is an erroneous interpretation of astrology to opine that special forces emanate from the planets and the stars - R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (Sacred Science)

The collective unconscious appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious. We can see this most clearly if we look at the heavenly constellations, whose originally chaotic forms are organized through the projection of images. This explains the influence of the stars as asserted by astrologers. These influences are nothing but unconscious introspective perceptions of the collective unconscious - Carl Jung

As we all know science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the “gods,” as well as the curious psychological qualities of the Zodiac: a complete projected theory of human character - Carl Jung

The idea is to demonstrate that the zodiac is an archetype, not only within the collective unconscious, but within the fabric of reality itself...as a ground plan of creation. This archetype has not been invented. It exists, and knowledge of it has been developed in step with evolving human consciousness - Denis Elwell

Another important difference between the Taroscopic System and conventional systems concerns the connections between Astrology and Tarot. Indeed, we can go so far as to say that the Tarot is the most precious of the Hermetic Arts. This is because it alone makes use of a rich palate of archetypal images that resonate strongly with the deeper dimensions of consciousness and which, like mandalas, serve as iconic guides along the paths of self-realization. The largely hidden connections between the Tarot and zodiac are fundamental to the Taroscopic System.

Sadly, as in the case of astrology, the Tarot too is constantly misused. For centuries it has suffered desecration under the hands of cunning exoteric practitioners and New Age charlatans.

...the Alphabet of Thoth can be dimly traced in the modern Tarot which can be had at almost every bookseller in Paris. As for it being understood or utilized, the many fortune-tellers in Paris, who make a professional living by it, are sad specimens of failures of attempts at reading, let alone correctly interpreting the symbolism of the Tarot without a preliminary philosophical study of the Science - Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The medieval packs are hopelessly corrupt or otherwise far from presenting the Ancient Truth of the Book in a coherent system or shape of lucid beauty - Aleister Crowley (The Book of Thoth)

In our work we emphasize that each man is his own priest, and each woman her own priestess. This doctrine was taught to the adepts in ancient times, before the advent of exploitative religions and oppressive political and educational orgs. The ancient elders emphasized the need for independent moral and spiritual development. The job of the mystery school adepts, and the purpose of the Hermetic Arts, was to aid men on their journey toward to psychic wholeness, or, as Carl Jung expressed it, toward Individuation.

The adepts knew that the fragmented mind and virtueless heart can not hope to initiate or sustain a healthy relationship with other human beings or the world. On the contrary, such an individual will be a danger to himself and to everyone he encounters.

Self-Realization is necessary before God-Realization - Vedic Adage

Know Thyself - (ancient inscription at Delphi)

He who knows himself knows god – Clement of Alexandria

The adepts and Hermetic initiators of old had an important cryptic adage that reads “When two and two equal one, then shall the light of Christ be born within.”

 

In order to analyze this strange motto we need to look no further than the first card of the Tarot – the Magician. Apparently, the card shows what appears to be a Hermetic adept in the very process of uniting Fourness into Oneness.

 

The Fourness I am referring to are symbolized by four objects on the table before the Magician figure. The objects are the symbols of the four suits of the Tarot, namely, the Wand, Cup, Sword, and Disk. The table upon which the four sacred diadems sit has a mystery of its own to decoded. The table’s top is square, but it has only three legs. This is the case in most decks one examines. And we might ask why this design was chosen. Is the Magician’s table meant to symbolize the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the edifice with a base of four and sides of three?

 

In any case, if we examine the objects on the Magician’s table we see that they also represent more than just the four suits of the Tarot. They also symbolize the four elements of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, and the four modalities of consciousness - Intellect, Emotion, Sensation, and Intuition. Additionally, in our opinion, they also represent the four sister divination arts, which, as we said, must be unified by the Hermetic adept. After all, we may wonder how consciousness could possibly experience unity if the tools meant for the job are themselves not first unified.

When thou hast made the quadrangle round, Then is all the secret found - George Ripley (Alchemist, 1490)

Through circumrotation, or a circular philosophical revolving of the quaternity, it is brought back to the highest and purest simplicity of the monad. Out of the gross and impure One there cometh an exceeding pure and subtile Monad - Heinrich Khunrath (Alchemist, 1597)

…the Kabalists hold that these four principles penetrate and create everything. Therefore, when the man finds these four principles in things and phenomena of quite different categories (where before he had not seen similarity), he begins to see analogy between these phenomena. And, gradually, he becomes convinced that the whole world is built according to one and the same law, on one and the same plan. The richness and growth of his intellect consists in the widening of his faculty for finding analogies. Therefore the study of the law of the four letters, or the name of Jehovah presents a powerful means for widening consciousness - P. D. Ouspensky

A look at the various cards of the Tarot captivates us and leads us to investigate that Tarot’s mysteries, one of which involves its true connections to Astrology and Kabala.

The Major Arcana alone has esoteric correspondences to the Egyptian, Hebrew, Irish, and English magical alphabets, to the Kabalistic Tree of Life, the chakra system, the alchemical process, the so-called "Emerald Tablets of Hermes," to sacred numerology (Pythagorean and other), the physical orbit and movement of the luminaries and planets, the astrological phenomenon known as the "Precession of the Equinoxes," the process of human individuation, the yearly maturation of the human-being, the personality types, the sequential movement of the historical centuries (from the first to the twenty first), the periodic table of elements, and several other esoteric and exoteric phenomena.

It is not without good reason that the sages of old referred to the Tarot as the “Book of Life.” In fact, when students of Alchemy are pontificating about the mysterious “Emerald Tablets of Hermes,” they fail to realize that they are referring to the seventy-eight cards of the Tarot.

The antiquity of this book is lost in the night of time...And goes back to an epoch long before Moses…It was written upon detached leaves, which at the first were of fine gold and precious metals…It is symbolical, and its combinations adapt themselves to all the wonders of the Spirit. Altered by its passage across the Ages, it is nevertheless preserved - thanks to the ignorance of the curious - Eliphas Levi

As an erudite Kabalistic book, all combinations of which reveal the harmonies preexisting between signs, letters and numbers, the practical value of the Tarot is truly and above all marvelous. A prisoner devoid of books, had he only a Tarot of which he knew how to make use, could in a few years acquire a universal science, and converse with an unequalled doctrine and inexhaustible eloquence - ibid

The Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few of truths embedded in the consciousness of all - A. E. Waite (The Key to the Tarot, Part II)

The Tarot can be considered one chapter, so to speak, of the greater Book of Symbolism. Its seventy-eight enigmatic pages of composite images, together with their geometrical, numerological, sidereal, and Astro-Theological motifs, assist the adept to open direct access to the inner wisdom body or “Living Oracle” housed within his own consciousness.

The means of entering into dialogue with this Living Oracle involves the correct usage of, and meditation upon, iconic images such as those of the esoteric Tarot. The images seen on the Major Arcana cards, in particular, are figurative representations one’s own archetypal intelligence, and intelligence not normally accessible to the ego. It is an intelligence that is often described as that of the “Whole Brain.” It emanates from the deeper hemispheres of consciousness, or from what psychologists refer to as the unconscious mind.

As the atom is to matter, so the archetypes are to consciousness. The archetypes, as the Alchemists of old understood, prefer to express themselves via images, colors, numbers, geometric shapes, and in musical harmonics and arrangements. This fact was eventually re-discovered and reiterated by psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, and has been confirmed more recently by investigators and experts such as Joseph Campbell, Leonard Shlain, and Bruce Lipton.

True symbolism depends on the fact that things, which may differ from one another in time, space, material nature, and many other limitative characteristics, can possess and exhibit the same essential quality - Titus Burckhardt (Alchemy)

Technically speaking, it is the so-called "right-hemisphere" of the brain that contains the ancestral program or Living Oracle. This field of intelligence was referred to by the poet William Blake as the “Imagination.” It is the field of intelligence that gets blocked and redirected shortly after we are born into the world. It’s the field that must be reopened if we are to live the life we are truly born to live, rather than that which we have been compelled to live.

The first step toward a relationship with our Inner Oracle is to “Know Thyself.” These were the words inscribed at the physical oracle at Delphi. In our opinion, it is through usage of the four arts of divination that one is best suited to “know themselves.”

If the great arts were good enough for Pythagoras and the Egyptian sages who constructed the Pyramids and temples of the Nile Valley, I’d say they’re good enough for modern man.

Each card is, in a sense, a living being and its relation with its neighbors are what one might call diplomatic. It is for the student to build these living stones into his living temple - Aleister Crowley (The Book of Thoth)

Unfortunately, due to generations of indoctrination and persecution, the inhabitants of the western world have long suffered from “symbolic illiteracy.” Western man certainly excels at verbal communication, but words communicate information that is useless to the deeper hemispheres of consciousness. They have little power to open the way to the Living Oracle. That job is done best by symbols.

Scientists know all to well that words are, as a means of communication, a phylogenetically recent phenomenon. Moreover, as we said, it is only the smallest part of consciousness that expresses itself through verbal language. It has been recently discovered that the human brain contains over 240,000 neural threads, enough to stretch from the earth to the moon. On each micrometer of these threads the data is stored as pictograms or composite images, not words.

With the advent of verbal and written communication, humankind experienced a cognitive shift from a polyphrenic and holarchic mindset to the monophrenic and hierarchic mindset known today. The mythographers behind the Judeo-Christian paradigm saw to it that the word of god replaced the more antique image of god. They did this by placing the prohibition against “graven images” in the Mosaic Commandments. It is interesting that this prohibition was inserted before the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”

…According to the Ten Commandments, art, therefore, is more dangerous than murder - Leonard Shlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess)

You shalt not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is under the water of the earth - (Exodus 20:4)

Jewish law forbids the making of any graven images of the kind. Even the Jews of the present time will not permit any sculptured figures to be set up as monuments - James Hewitt Brown (Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy)

What are graven images? They are pictures. They are images of the gods or, more correctly, of the archetypes. Ireland, Egypt, and India were covered with such images, and all ancient cultures understood that the mother-tongue of the spirit, so to speak, was symbolism. They also understood that the night sky was the tablet upon which the "gods" communicated to the initiated ones who knew how to correctly interpret what was being transmitted.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years - (Genesis 1:14)

In order for the Solar Cult to successfully supersede and eradicate the ecocentric, matrifocal Stellar and Lunar Cults, there had to be an all-out prohibition against iconic images. This blatant act of colonization had several motivations. It served to suppress and eventually eradicate the pagans and their ways, and also allowed their destroyers to appropriate and plagiarize their symbolic canon. In other words, the very archive of symbols that once served to uplift the soul of man was rescripted for the opposite purpose, namely, to enslave the soul of man.

The Christian church is an encyclopedia of prehistoric cults - Fredrick Nietzsche

The Old Testament, the tome of the patristic Saturnian and Solar Cults, is believed to have been based on the Torah. What is not commonly known or readily admitted, however, is that the Jewish Torah is itself based upon the Egyptian and Irish (Aryan) Tarot. In fact, the words Torah and Tarot come from the same root meaning “way” or “law.” They originally derive from the name of a most ancient stellar goddess known as Taurt (pronounced Ta - Urt). Taurt or Tarut was the antetype of later sky and earth goddesses such as Isis, Hathor, Nuith, and even the Christian Mary. However, the original Madonna, with her babe in her arms, depicted in the most ancient murals and zodiacs, was the heavenly Taurt. The masculine gods (Atum, Amen Ra, Ptah, Osiris, Anubis, Thoth, etc) were considered her children. Even the ruling pharaoh was her terrestrial emissary. Several cards of the Major Arcana, such as the High Priestess, Empress, Star, and Universe, etc, refer directly to Taurt or other stellar goddesses of the ancient pantheons.

As we said, the Tarot is the actual "Book of Life," one written not with words but images. And as we said, the suppression of symbolic tropes as used by the ancient adepts served to assist the elite members of the Solar Cults in their campaign for world control. From the advent of Judeo-Christianity, humanity began to lose contact with Nature and reality. This is an inevitable consequence of the psychic falling off. In other words, when communion with the deeper hemispheres of consciousness is occluded, man becomes less of a Self. He becomes less of an individual. And the less individual a man is, the more of a conformist he becomes socially. The more conformist he becomes, the more he demands others to conform. In order to force others to conform violence must be used. And so the vicious cycle begins. The psychically mutilated man becomes shallow, narcissistic, obedient, oppressive, and violent. Such a man uses words and symbols as means to and end, that end being the control of human thought and behavior. The Bible and other religious tomes have been used for just this purpose.

By the invincible power of traditional subservience, the inertia of the general mind, enhanced by the gullibility of ignorance, the masses have slipped under the force of a victimization that is both pitiable and tragic…Religious thought has detached itself from nature and searches in the illimitable areas of feeling, thought, and wonder for what understanding these may yield it...Religion is not the realm of knowledge, or even of thought, but purely of belief, as for the masses…All this chaos in the religious area was attended, accentuated, if not largely inspired by, one of the most staggering phenomena in the history of the race. This was - and is - the presence, power, and influence of – a book! - Alvin Boyd Kuhn (The Ultimate Canon of Knowledge)

But of course, we know that where there are words there are images. One cannot be separated from the other. When, for example, a passage of the Bible is read out loud, it conjures images in our minds. This is because the mind thinks magically, that is, imagically. The greatest words, those written by the poets, are “great” because of their capacity to convey images. We are not, therefore, moved by words as much as we are moved by images that spoken words give rise to. And the images that move us are conjured within our own consciousness. Words are merely carriers of images. Sadly, as experience shows, they are more often than not imperfect carriers.

A man seeks to give expression to his mental images. When he speaks he does so because he is expressing something that is capable of mental visualization. How often have we said or heard a phrase such as: "If I could only convey or explain what I see, then you would understand?" Or how often do we say or hear: "I'll see what I can do?" When complications arise, and when conflicts occur, it is not so much over the images we have as it is over the words we say. Conflict with others occurs not due to mental content but because of what we say and how we say it. Conflict occurs due to flawed communication. Images are essentially nonviolent. Moreover, words are of the left-brain. When we speak to someone, they are not hearing us with the whole of their mind. And when someone speaks to us, our defenses are up. We too only hear the speaker with one small part of our brain. This is why we tend to be more receptive and attentive to those we know and care for and skeptical and inattentive to those we do not know or care for.

 

Fundamentally, images do not normally foster gross misinterpretation or zealotry. They are synthetic, mutable, and anomalous. They can lead to words and speech but just as easily to silence and contemplation. They are cryptaesthetic and welcome multiple interpretations. Archetypal images, such as are found in great art, Alchemy, Tarot, or in yantras and mandalas, etc, lead the mind beyond the subject versus object dichotomy to the state of kataphatic knowledge. This is where the knower and the known do not interact as polarized entities. When a mantic image or geometric shape is deeply contemplated, it has the ability to transmute consciousness from the “hylic” (or base) level to the “phosphoric” (or spiritual) level. It opens consciousness to ancestral wisdom. This is why the Egyptians, Gaels, and Celts, relied so heavily on hierograms, and why Vedic sages preferred to employ mandalas and yantras. It explains why the adepts created the Tarot.

The man who understands a symbol not only opens himself to the objective world but at the same time succeeds in emerging from his personal situation and reaching a comprehension of the universal...thanks to the symbol, the individual experience is "awoken" and transmuted into a spiritual act - Mircea Eliade

The thought of symbolically illiterate men is confined to the frontal lobes and “left hemisphere” of the brain. It is thought that is cut off from the Living Oracle. As a result of his psychic state, the symbolically illiterate man is less able to resist the propaganda of the hidden dictators who control the world. He is vulnerable and perpetually victimized by his overlords who manipulate his beliefs and allegiances. As time goes by, the psychically infirm man becomes completely reliant on his masters. He will do and think whatever keeps him in rapport with them. If maintaining the status quo means the complete loss of individuality, it is a sacrifice most men will eventually make. As we can see when we examine the state of decay in the world today, man has just enough freedom to imprison himself, just enough will to enslave himself, and just enough understanding to remain ignorant.

The force man refers to as “god” exists within consciousness. That force can be likened to a great river upon which the fragile boat of consciousness floats. The great river has its own mysterious and unknowable flow and course. It has its own enigmatic voice, and it speaks to each of man in a unique manner. The voice man thinks he hears and which he has long taken for a guide is merely the voice of his own ego, not that of the great river. Modern man's failure to attune to the true inner voice ensures that he lives inauthentically. He endures a life full of competitiveness, envy, guilt, sorrow, loss, and waste. Clinging to the socially-vetted roles and to the plethora of ready-made escapes from the roles, modern man falls victim of what Alexis de Tocqueville referred to as the “tyranny of the masses.” Image-starved, he seeks to alleviate his systemic impoverishment in a compulsive manner, via addiction to television, video games, sports, pornography, advertisements, drugs, and all manner of virtual realities. However, these bromides and panaceas provide only temporary relief. They cannot spiritually empower and lead to wisdom.

 

Fortunately, there are remedies for the state of decay. Through the practice of the Divination Arts we open dialogue with the inner Wisdom Body or the Living Oracle. The Divination Arts are the Western Magical Tradition. They bring magic back into our lives. They inspire, unveil, and empower. The student who learns how to use them correctly discovers their true power and magnificence, and, most importantly, comes to “know himself.”

The Tarot contains indeed the mystery of all such transmutations of personages into sidereal bodies and vice versa. The “Wheel of Enoch” is and archaic invention, the most ancient of all, for it is found in China. Eliphas Levi says there was not a nation but had it, its real meaning being preserved in the greatest secrecy. It is a universal heirloom - Madame Helena Blavatsky

Psychologically, the cards of the Tarot and personal Tarot chart, demarcate the stages of the great “Rites of Passage” that occur throughout our lives. There are many such rites and they cannot be avoided. Each stage is usually distinguished by intense emotional experiences. They can be considered times of peak experiences. However, they can also be times of enormous emotional and spiritual challenge, when we are confronted by the resistance of authority figures or strange inner compulsions that disturb our equipoise and confuse our domestic and social interactions.

 

The average Everyman may experience approximately seven major Rites of Passage during their lives. The awakened person can have more, while the symbolically literate and self-realized person's life may be considered one continuous Rite of Passage. The round of the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana demarcate and illustrate the strange and mythic journey of these particular types.

 

The obvious Rites of Passage have been recognized by the mainstream psychologists and philosophers for some time. They may include birth, entrance to school, puberty, leaving school, the first sexual experience, the first job, marriage, giving birth, loss of a parent (or similar significant trauma), the astrological "Saturn Return," divorce, menopause, retirement, and death. There are many others, such as the moments of betrayal, or punishment for misdeeds, and so on, not to mention the various euphoric experiences of a creative, religious, or mystical nature.

 

Philosophically speaking, the Rites of Passage exist as unavoidable phases or stages of maturation. They are periods when the “horizontal” axis of our ego-life (or inauthentic existence) crosses the “vertical” axis of Selfhood (or authentic existence). Each person’s ego life has its own particular rhythm, movement, and duration. Therefore, no two people experience the Rites in the same way. The nature of a person's ego and the form the rites will take in one's life are revealed within one's Divination Chart. By way of our Taroscopic Chart we receive invaluable instruction about the kinds of experiences we will have while passing through the transformative phases. The insight we glean from a Chart enables us to make the best of what we experience. We get a clearer understanding of what to expect and what our challenges and lessons will be. We come to understand why the stages and rites exist and what will be expected of us as we undergo them.

 

For the mundane and pragmatic "Everyman" the various Rites of Passage are experienced as uncomfortable and even alarming deviations from the clear sunny horizons which are the destinations of the ego drives. They are considered obscene interruptions in the routine, or as punctures in the bubble of normality which is anything but. Due to these detours and times when the wires get crossed and frazzled we can find ourselves doing very strange things. The rules of the game evaporate or even appear grotesque during such traversals, and our experiences from the past, like the advice of other people, become as useful as sign-posts in a ghost town.

 

The indifferent man who cares nothing for such empowerment does not pass successfully through the Rites of Passage. He does not mature or evolve, and may even give way to fear and addiction in order to avoid purifying his psychic constitution. The indifferent man remains fixed on the hylic (or base) level of existence. The magic of life passes him by. He may come to lament his life without realizing that he is responsible for the kind of life he experiences. Whether he realizes it or not, he has chosen the life he lives, both the good and the bad, the ups and downs. As the Athenian philosophers stated, “a man's character is his fate.” It follows, then, that the more unique a person's character, the more unique their Individuation Process will be and the more distinctive the Rites of Passage leading to it.

 

The Process of Individuation was known, under other names, to the Alchemists and mystics of old. They described the process, figuratively, as the "Quartering" or "Quaternity." In the discipline of Sacred Geometry, as practiced by Pythagoras, Agrippa, Vitruvius, and Leonardo da Vinci, and other sages, it was depicted by a motif known as "Squaring the Circle." In Christian scriptures (themselves based on esoteric doctrines) that perfect state of consciousness is referenced in the Book of Ezekiel, chapters forty to forty eight, as was frequently known as the “fourfold vision of god.” In the New Testament the nucleation of the four hemispheres is subtextually referenced in the imagery associated with the crucifixion of Jesus on Golgotha (Skull Hill). Indeed, the phenomenon has been referenced in numerous traditions throughout the world, by North American sand paintings, Eastern mandalas, Celtic jigs and various other dances. It is a central motif for shamanic cultures that have maintained a strict reverence toward the rites and rituals associated with biological and psychological maturation. Those who have seen fit to ignore, marginalize, denigrate, and misinterpret the shamanic way, and who have replaced it with antihuman ideologies, are responsible for undermining man’s inner constitution, and for the ecocide inevitably follows when psychically unsane men gain social and political control.

The negation of man's deeper consciousness and lack of acknowledgement of the Rites of Passage have thrust mankind toward the precipice of psychosis and oblivion. As a result of subtle artifice, we now find millions of fear-ridden people prostrating their dignity and sanity before the sterile religions which, like dead suns in the cold wastes of space, offer neither light nor warmth.

Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, But not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn; The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain, Unless within thyself it be set up again - Angelus Silesius

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You close the Kingdom of Heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to - (Matthew 23)

The Imitatio Christi will forever have this disadvantage: we worship a man as a divine model, embodying the deepest meaning of life, and then out of sheer imitation we forget to make real the profound meaning present in ourselves - Carl Gustav Jung

According to Bishop Epiphanius, the Krist is the spiritual self within each person - Tony Bushby (The Bible Fraud)

The Egyptians had no vicarious atonement, no imputed righteousness, no second-hand salvation. No initiate in the Osirian mysteries could possibly have rested his hope of reaching heaven on the Galilean line of glory. His was the more crucial way of Amenta...to tread with the guidance of the word, that step by step and act by act he must himself make true - Gerald Massey (Ancient Egypt: Light of the World)

The Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans, had no word in their language for sin: the Israelites introduced both the word and the concept into the stream of Western civilization and by doing so diverted it - Leonard Shlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess)

The ultimate objective of any Rite of Passage is to provide us with the opportunity to quantum-leap from the "horizontal" sphere of existence to the "vertical," that is, to change the road we are on and get back into synch with our higher calling. In mystical terms, we get a chance to make a proactive shift from our Karmic to our Dharmic life, from monophrenic to polyphrenic thinking, and from lower chakra to higher chakra drives. When we are ruled by karma, ignorance is king and both death and the devil are constant companions. It matters little whether we consider our adversary to be the projection of collective ignorance or a red devil with two horns and a pitchfork. In the darkness of the karmic life it matters not. In the karmic life there is scant protection against the storms of fate, and the only reason why life carries on is that we train ourselves to sit quietly and accept the “rights” and “privileges” that our fellow inmates, like "Olivers" with bowl, receive.

When we are living our Dharma or Authentic Life, our lives are mutable, magical, and real. Bad things, so to speak, may still happen, and we will still know adversity. However, our attitude toward the vagaries of life is not that of the karmic man. Our perspective and comprehension of what transpires is radically more mature and insightful. We are more than survivors. We are creators. We operate in the world as our own priests or priestesses, reinventing ourselves daily. We become our own teachers and cease being dependent on the partial knowledge provided by others. Our rapport with life, god, nature, and other people - and primarily with ourselves - is radically deepened. It becomes infinitely more meaningful than we can guess when living in the worldly circus.

We don’t receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us – Marcel Proust

In order to actualize our Dharmic Life we first have to endure many personal sacrifices. Major areas of our lives undergo significant deconstruction and we have to learn the difference between egotism and egocentricity, liberty and freedom, sanity and insanity, wisdom and folly. As Sophocles wrote: “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.”

Regardless of the nature or intensity of the Rites of Passage we are not condemned to go through them blindly and apprehensively. The four great arts of divination, when correctly applied, provide us with the pertinent information we need to predict and comprehend the variables, intensity, and impact of what we will inevitably experience. Our own responses and reactions can be foreseen and we can minimize the chance for wrong decisions and choices. By way of the Tarot and its sister arts we can receive clear information regarding the events, experiences, opportunities, relationships, obstacles, challenges, and warnings that will come our way before and during the Rites of Passage. When correctly constructed and interpreted, our Chart becomes an invaluable compass leading us safely through the shallows and depths of the omnidirectional ocean of life. After all, as we said, the zodiac and the chart are actually extensions of our consciousness. The chart merely encapsulates the directions and advice of our higher self.

The divination arts of Astrology, Tarot, Kabala, and Numerology, are the only diagnostic tools to provide coherent and invaluable insight into the Rites of Passage. They were in the world long before high priced psychologists and counselors who are good at the patch-up but are not much involved in prevention. Exoteric approaches can never replace the holistic Divination Arts. In fact, psychologist Carl Jung had a life-long interest in alchemy and astrology. His contemporaries, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Wilhelm Reich, and others, merely rediscovered the principles that Alchemists, diviners, and metaphysicians employed for millennia. Freud and Jung merely utilized the language of science to elucidate the timeless principles they were researching.

Learning how to create and interpret one’s own Taroscopic Chart is both enjoyable and empowering. Doing reading for other people is also one of the best ways to serve humanity. Chart-reading requires logic but also intuition and empathy. The arts used are merely instruments which reveal the anatomy of a client’s psyche. They reveal what lies hidden from their conscious cognition.

The Tarot can be thought of as a cathedral. The individual cards operate like the cathedral’s beautiful stained-glass windows, and the spreads can be likened to the “light” which passes, with varied intensities, into and through these windows. The adept reader merely relates to his client what their own guide is seeking to reveal. From the most mundane domestic issues to the great questions of life, the divination arts provide our answers and guidance.

...perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself - Plato

It is beyond question that the great ancient design of the zodiac is a wondrously conceived graph aimed to depict the structure of the Logos, the pattern or creative evolution, the essential constitution of the universe and the course of the current of life in the cosmos, and by analogy in man the microcosmic replica of the macrocosm...Man...was to fashion his new body of spiritual glory "after the pattern of the heavens," the frame of the heavenly or zodiacal man, the primal Adam - Alvin Boyd Kuhn

Simply put, our lives can be compared to a great and complex jigsaw puzzle. We are each committed to put the myriad pieces together and finish the picture. However, with any real puzzle we get, if we choose, to first see the picture on the “lid of the box” before we begin. Seeing the overall picture is essential if we are to be expertly complete the jigsaw. It is this glimpse of the cover of our life-puzzle that the Tarot and the other three divination arts provide. From the intelligence they bestow we operate more intelligently, and become masters rather than victims in the complex game of life. If we are given even a fleeting glimpse of the cover, our hands will move faster and we will progress in the right direction with confidence.

A Taroscopic Chart is a mirror of the soul that reflect back to us who we really are. We get to discover our true life purpose and how to actualize it. By way of a physical mirror we get to see if we are presentable to the world. We get to adjust our appearance and present ourselves to the world in the way we desire. By way of the mirror of the divination arts we get to present ourselves to life itself, and to introduce ourselves to ourselves so that we can begin our journey on the road of self-discovery. We adjust our spiritual appearance and dress ourselves in the clothes of understanding, wisdom and truth, casting off the rags of indifference, ignorance, and folly.

Psychology text books of future generations will look back on the modern psychologists working without the aid of astrology as being like the medieval astronomers working without the aid of the telescope - Richard Tarnas PhD