Summer Oracle 3 – the Dying and the Guardians

Posted on August 1, 2018 by janeadamsart

Aslan and Annika

Here is Part Three of the “Summer Oracle” sequence, containing a second Tarot reading, about three weeks after the first one. For my method, see Part One (23 June) in the series. Again there was a local-interest prompt, but it turned out to mean much more than that, and to develop the earlier one further. It was partly because I didn’t shuffle the deck thoroughly, but … there are no accidents.

In this post, my journal preambles along up until the Tarot spread itself (about half way through), to develop the sense and setting.

Journal, 14 July 2018

Right now? A weight of sorrow and fatigue in my stomach; frail legs and soreness in my being. I go to see my mother this afternoon. It is Le Quatorze, my parents’ wedding anniversary (1947). Hot cloud inside. And be gentle and go slow and be present. Thank God I have no spouse to walkie-talkie all my bad habits at. Sit still and listen. The Infinite Resource is here.

Head by Brancusi, in Paris

That watery break-in yesterday – deluge of sudden rain tossed through wide open windows when I was out – might have damaged a few gramophone records and cds which I hardly ever listen to anyway? … but jogged me again to start clearing excess from the corners of my mind, my house.

Memento Mori – remember death. There is the stillness deep inside. The lighthouse keeper kindles lamp again. Regarding my old friend and teacher whose health recently broke down – which Tarot Key is ‘on call’ for him right now?

Temperance – 14 – the Guardian angel. Just this one, for now.

Key 14 is the “DIVINE REGULATOR” since my childhood. Patience! As Eliphas Levi said, the Tarot keyboard is an encyclopaedia of the cosmos. A student of the Magical Life needs no other book.

So blow fair or foul, the wind is pure.

BOTA Tarot Tableau: three septenaries, seven columns: the keyboard. This deck is published by the Builders of the Adytum in black and white: each student colours and thereby empowers his or her own deck, following the Builders’ strict guidelines. The colours of the Keys have audial resonance also.

Journal 17 July 2018 Brambles and Roses

At my mother’s house in Somerset, huge engagement with a beast of mature bramble, shaggy rose bush and overgrown buddleia – I barbered it all back, cleared the undergrowth and deadwood inside and knitted the rose streamers around the big rotten maple stump to keep it standing. All day: and heavily scratched. Top of ladder gingerly to barber the buddleia. Then we chopped up the vast pile of thorny streamers into three large bags for the dump and enjoyed much fun together about my grandmother, especially her “Let’s hope it’s not twins” the day my sister went into labour with Toby. We also joked about “slavery to the body” – the tyranny of my mother’s old age self-maintenance. I see at the same time, the rhapsodic teenager at Scatwell in Easter Ross – her Land Army experiences during the war … I have all her letters of that time, they were preserved – and her hoity toity upbringing as an Ede – root and branches of her long life. Her new neighbours are delightful. Three thrilled brown children, their strong, warm mother, elegant dad and two cats … all the way from Qatar desert and skyscrapers to green grass, hills, beasts and flowers!

Back in London, I went to visit my old friend, who is in respite care at the moment. The long death runway is a sobering leveller. Those with great esoteric learning are no more protected from the ravages of dislocated ego than anyone else. Watch the thorns, roses and mannerisms – which I know well – coming out. Watch my own, as they are NOW, and what it must be like to be collapsed, weak and fearful. You can’t concentrate to read and you are totally dependent on others, and trapped in your personal unease nightmare. Yet Nature is breaking down the container to release the essence.

Journal 18 July 2018 Ice Cream

Oh my yattering wittering droning Yesod! It is one thing to live with and suffer it all day and every now and then remember to send it a blast from Siva’s third eye. It is another thing to consider how its type – my weed – may blossom into full glory when the rest of my Tree loses its leaves. The personal type comes out as the inexorable process tidies up.

The inexorable process is like an Angel. It isn’t sentimental. It has its job to do, the heart of which is cosmic compassion … transcending and yet still within daily human stress and feeling. When the body of an old teacher breaks down, his feeling of helplessness must be enraging, desperate and dark. Sometimes nothing and no one is reliable. His adventure craves care and tenderness. Sometimes it shines through him, and sometimes it fragments. It is a landscape. All his lifetimes are at work.

I think what’s needed is an accepting silence so he feels heard – and hears the condition and life as it is. And for myself? A golden opportunity to sweep my reactive mind and identify the Complainer. Don’t allow my Complainer to trot endlessly. Send in a searchlight: illumine the reactive chitchat, slow it down. The pudding is in the eating. We are in the Aquarian age; rather than sit at another’s feet, we teach ourselves to be responsible. Recognise the personal drivel and drone and … seeing it, enter its flowering branch of feeling; and pause. That pause is love, which changes its nature!

My life meets an adventurous beauty with the dying: the unknown portal of their birth and moment of illumination. I began “preparing for my death” when I left my parents’ home all those years ago, and sat bound hand and foot to my Chief Feature in the Tree – (the Chief Feature is a Gurdjieff term for the Shadow) – sitting in a big beech at Brockwood after a Krishnamurti talk in 1974; I was in despair. How to liberate? My apparent lack of success over nearly half a century is relative! I made two great discoveries. One was when I identified poetically with the homing-pigeon above the world. In that moment of freedom I outgrew blaming others for my sorrows. I valued my sorrows and stresses in the breadth and varied contour of the landscape I had chosen to fly along.

The other discovery was to slow down my Mercurial thought-centre to align with my physical moving-centre (another Gurdjieff theme). When I slowed it down to the rate of physical speech it lost interest in itself verbally and became a living being. That is what I mean by “entering its branch”. Thinking is unconsciously generated, but when I enter the branch the narrative slows down, becomes aware and even stops.

To enter the branch is to face and value the living space; for most of my automatic thinking is dead.

Ramana Arunachala

“Mind is a bundle of thoughts.”

Another discovery was with Ramana Maharishi – his teaching of the aham-vritti, the Raft on which all the vegetation grows. When I notice these things I don’t take the stuff so seriously, and when I don’t take it seriously I start to wean the battle. Moving into the flowering branch (for any thought amounts to that), a living sap replaces the monologue.

Recognise the voice which is being allowed to chair; and let it go transparent. Let my sense of dislocation dissolve back into the unconditional unity of my being. I often find nothing to say, and stay rather long, and complain afterwards. Do I listen to what others say about their doings? Or do I “ice-cream” them with my own flavours?

The Emerald Table of Hermes

In the GREAT WORK OF ALCHEMY Paul Foster Case writes about Libra, Sublimation – the conversion of a solid into vapour bypassing the liquid form, and back to solid as in the Emerald Table. In the Four Worlds the solid is Assiyah, the aerial vapour is Beriah. Liquid in formation are the reflections in Yetzirah between these states. Clouds drift through the alchemical glass vase. Libra’s Tarot Key is 11 – Justice.

This key is called “the Faithful Intelligence”. Justice midpoints the Tarot spectrum of 22 with an illustration of the perfect Law of balance. Discover the “I AM” at the core of human personality by going causally upstream of the world of effects. In the human field, the transformative Life-breaths are incarnations: the rise and fall of samsara or thought. Paul Foster Case mentions the One Law maker: the green apples which ripen on the tree; he says “It takes just as much practice to think an unfamiliar thought as it does to perform an unfamiliar action.” He means, to reverse or change a deep seated mental habit. As my old teacher always said, “Keep practicing”. Fidelity to the practice here and now in the everyday text of my soul, is the intelligence.

This comes near what I am writing about today, concerning my Chief Feature on the skids. PFC says also that true thinking (i.e. not on the skids) is a bodily action. Sublimation is physical labour, and it begins in our minds. Facilitate it visually with the inner eye’s arrangement of complementary colours and balances in Key 11. Regarding my physical activities with climbing and with garden clearance – the labour in these is to stay in balance: core stability. Appraising an art work, from Tifareth towards Gevurah, the aesthetic or critical faculty commands with sword and scales. It earths the heart and throat centres. The cool work of Saturn in Venusian Libra is the Sun’s great work: equipoise.

Before going away at the weekend, I asked the Tarot for a Reflection – for a picture of my old friend and teacher’s condition. The first card was Temperance. I cut the deck 3 times 3 in my usual way (as described in Part One of this sequence), and first I turned over just the centre one.

Now turning over the cards to each side, and the three which underlie Temperance … I find it flanked by Key 18 – the long hard path of the Moon – and Key 19, the Sun’s work with children in the field. Under it there is the same sequence as in the 23 June reading: 20, 6, 16 (followed by 8). Add up 14,20,6,16 to find their apex or central “SHIN” … the sum is 56, reducing to 11 Justice. As in the physical body, she regulates the Tower’s catabolic breakdown and Archangel Gabriel’s Ascension of the human family. Her equipoise is encircled by the four Archangels: Mikael as Yod, Gabriel as Heh, Rafael Vav and Uriel as 2^nd Heh.

Tarot Reflection 14.7.2018

What a beautiful portal!

The Archangelic guardians around cosmic centre; they hold my friend at a point between controlled and uncontrolled ascension. Remember also, his Gene Key profile has big Ascension energy through it. The vertical plane descends gently through the horizontal one – the Temperance angel’s regulation: the Healing angel’s blessing on the lovers in Gemini; the horizontal and vertical balance in the round.

“… but to apprehend
the point of intersection of the timeless
with time, is an occupation for the saint …”

T S Eliot, Four Quartets (the Dry Selvages)

Such a glimpse suggests such profound order, that it is the true position of our world. My thought was moving into the capacity to apprehend this pattern which I laid out the other day. I didn’t open it to look until this morning.

I am shown that the Tower now at 2^nd Heh in fact performs and completes a role of perfection. Particles of disorder are rearranged through Tarot’s depth into the beautiful resonance of our natural state breaking its seedcase and giving voice. The seed splits to germinate. This is implicit through all phenomena. All phenomena contain their origin. That is what stops the mind.

Archangel Gabriel of the Waters 2002

Journal 19 July 2018 THE GREAT BREATH

My friend T-Wigg took me last night to a Prom of Messiaen’s Turangalila. And how! – There within massive musical mandalas stood the four shouting Archangels with their jaws falling right open and down to the ground! In Tarot they look very demure.

The Archangels – as in Ezekiel’s Chariot – are four of everything: the compass points North, East, West, South: the News.

My depressions with this and that are an obscuring veil, behind which stands the Archangelic Fact with its wondrous music. When I cannot integrate the keynote, it oppresses rather than uplifts. Key 11 in the centre is the attunement. The resonance is found when mind is at rest.

So of course I can. Choose Reality. In Turangalila the Angels don’t only shout, they weave a profoundly tender pattern of ascendent birdsongs.

Many messages are in this new reading. The Sun and Moon – the wolf-and-dog shadow the children. The Archangels’ explicit nature is to regulate, to announce, to heal and to arouse – and their protective field whether I know it or not, is omnipresent. Why? Not because I’m special or do good works, but because I ask and recognise. It demonstrates that the veil by which the human surface and its political sores is generally interpreted, is an incomplete and erratic picture. I am able to see this because I live in a stable environment, not in a refugee concentration camp or a bad marriage. Again as I so often repeat, I must honour what is Real, and not bury my nose in newspaper. So Mr T went to tea with the Queen … ? What’s new? I am the human condition. When I start to die, I don’t want to be distracted. Make Reality my aim! and call on the beloved Master R.

In the Sun key the children play: in the Moon the wolf-and-dog strive and seek. The Guardians appear to us in these different ways. “Sun” “And” “Moon” in Hebrew (letters Resh Vav Cheth) spell RVCh, Ruach, the holy breath of cosmic harmony. (NB, the Ch refers to Key 7 the Chariot whose sign is Cancer ruled by the Moon. Tarot Key 18 is the Moon vibration itself, in the deck. The letter Vav’s symbol is a nail, joining parts of speech together; the conjunction ‘and’.)

The mood swings the scales in the steady hand of Justice. She holds the lifted Sword, the Word, in her right. To her right is the sound of one hand clapping. To her left is the thunderclap. At her feet is the human landscape cleansed with rain: “love and you shall know”. Above her head the Weather making angel twixt Sun and Moon … awakens the lion and eagle from the mud.

I started to study Sublimation in the Great Work, whose Key is 11; then my Tarot reflection added up to 11 its apex! But of course … The addition sum of the Four Archangels (whichever way round) is bound to be 11, cosmic equilibrium, the Tarot midpoint. The Queen of Justice sits likewise at the heart of the Tarot Tableau (see above) with its interwoven sequence of Tetragrams.

In my concern for my old friend, I stumbled on this heavenly order … the Guardians of his soul, the Tree and the teaching.

Justice is a Karmic goad. Her pressure is painful until alignment is slipped into. In this Reflection she midpoints horizontally (20, 11, 16) the keys of Resurrection and Catastrophe. Give to her my centre of gravity as a human mite, and calm the mental waters. In the Vertical sequence (14, 11, 6), the garden is watered and fired, and grows up into conscious Life and Love. Rather than label the Eternal Life, rediscover it. Gradually the resting-place dawns. The letter SAMEKh is the royal tent-peg.

Elementally the four Archangels are: Mikael Fire, Gabriel Water, Rafael Air and Uriel Earth. They came out in the order of the Tetragram Cross which I learned with Mouni Sadhu. The Hermetic Virtues in the order of fire, water, air, earth are: to Dare, to Keep Silent, to Know and to Try. My present way of life strange as it may seem, with so much coming and going, is my Temple’s architectural footprint. Draw water from the well. Cultivate optimism – the higher wavelength – in the face of pessimist default. Make your thinking different!

Regarding spiritual labels: it is the habit of most humans to label and wear their spiritual affinity. For me this felt nice at the beginning, but it deteriorates and eventually dies into political badges. Best not to wear it, but to find it. To label and wear is the natural desire for security. The Great Work only needs watering with the continual art of discovery.

Identifying with any teaching exclusively becomes a badge and makes dying difficult. We must transmit the good NEWS but paradoxically keep it silent. This seems to be my general task, as I can write it, but not so easily speak it. “Love and you shall know.” I love the Archangels of Justice and their cosmic joke for me with Messiaen’s Turangalila symphony. All things decay and are reborn. Decay in our earthly terms is painful, but as the dross dissolves, there is joy.

Sublimation. What an important stage in Alchemy this is!

Paul Foster Case writes that rather than “lean on some supposedly higher personality” it behoves us to take responsibility for our cosmic debts. Although the Law has perfect precision in this respect, her highest expression transcends the “eye for eye”. Our debt may be forgiven upstream by invoking a higher cosmic currency of the same Law. An alchemist’s inner work enables him or her to “strike the balance without pain”.

Saturn – alchemical lead – is exalted in Libra, whose ruler is Venus. The Libran element is Air: a balanced deep breath – then pause – then exhale. Paul Foster Case suggests ten-minute periods for this practice: sunrise, noon and sunset. I think this kumbakha principle with the breath is common to all traditions, for it harnesses the mental root. Ramana Maharshi counselled to be gently conscious with the breath, like a rider guiding a horse; the rise and fall in the heart.

We are a School of the Soul. I have a potential “being-present relationship” with my teacher, over the last thirty years. We are both Capricorn – gate keepers to the field of asphodel. Get ice-cream on your face – pick up, brush down, look to the Archangelic Guardians for perspective and try again. Yesterday I told him the hardest workers in life are those who are just born and those who are going to die: “now she tells me!” said he.

As for my personal Yesodic monster – it is fear and anxiety, a thin pollution-miasm through my being, about whether I can fit in and get to places during the day. Sublimation is a process of selective elimination: use the Sword of Justice to cut away the brambles and embody the kind of “actions which nourish courage, confidence and decision“. Discard wasteful arguments and controversial topics. Eliphas Levi: “the way to see is not to be always looking.” Choose refreshing amusements! “I” (She of Justice in the book of Tokens) “am the goad of action.” Creative clarity and purity of mind may precipitate mental images swiftly into the physical world: and the miraculous Way appears.

“I am the power of equilibrium
which holds Ruach in balance
between formation and destruction
as a driver with his goad
keeps his ox from straying off the highway.
Yet is this directive power inherent in RVCh itself
for I myself am that great Breath of Life.”

Key 11, The Book of Tokens
by Paul Foster Case

Is this not marvellous with the Tarot reflection? And Ruach the Spirit or divine breath is the Rower of the seas. The GREAT BREATH may be simply visualised as the wavelets to and fro, and the exposed wet sand between.

I feel stronger now. I felt weakly identified with situations and the weather and the glaring miasm which humankind believes itself to be in. It doesn’t matter how much or how often I fail, so long as I pick myself up again and keep going. The daily Underground travel is noisy and exhausting. In the morning here, the well fills up again with wonder.

20 July 2018 Stone Crucible

I love these Archangels (yesterday), and wonder if they demonstrate an incarnation and its rise and fall of embodied life? The breath of life of course is that. I find this (like any practice) not easy to perform formally, but do often remember to come into solar plexus present and breathe consciously a couple of times.

Last night I dreamed I embraced my cher ami in Trieste and rested my head on his right shoulder. He was extraordinarily broad, earthy, firm, warm and trusted. He wore soft dark-brown leather slippers, old ones with a bit of worn fur trim. They were comfortable and much wider than his not large feet. The beauty and strength of the Zodiacal bull embodies an archetypal tenderness – what privilege – I love these nuances. The ordinary human engine does not often notice them and seeks bigger signals perhaps. In the crucible, the nuance is the ineffable nous of Alchemy: trust it.

Asphodel by Paul & Pam Markwell

I saw the other day a washbasin fixed to an outside wall for gardeners: it was hollowed from a big grey Stone, the interior polished smooth. I love the feel of it. Alchemy is the profound treasury of the heart of things: cultivation of the nous. The natural life-breath (as instructed by Paul Foster Case) is soft and joyous acceptance.

Today I went Castling – indoor rock climbing in North London. It was hot and I was tired, but I managed to do that Green traverse a few times – not fluently, but with better balance. I just potter around, doing the same little climbs and overhangs again and again – by now needing proper outdoor rocks and slabs to dance with. The core stability feeling improves. Core stability is in the bones, a balanced flow of movement taking and transferring fleshy weight and stretch. Use not brute strength but the movement.

Alchemy is as alchemy does in “The Violet Crystal”; the jewels in life’s un-ideal management. Alchemy in solitary laboratory does not glow with life, like alchemy which bristles with human oddity, relationship and paradox out of doors and every day. An alchemist lives and lurches along potential stress and pain, occasionally balancing beautifully, the thread. That sums up my way of life. The thread is a musical string, sometimes at perfect pitch. The Archangelic Tetragram Keys 14, 20, 6 and 16 demonstrates the process of any thought or creative intention.

John York and Claudio Jaffe, Wigmore Hall 1986

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2018. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Summer Oracle 1: for Gaia

Posted on July 20, 2018 by janeadamsart

This is the first of three posts, about a Tarot reading just after midsummer this year. The oracle opened up (as usual) a contemplation including and far transcending the strange local event which triggered it. Those private and universal threads continue to flow, and only now have I time to collect and edit them together.. You may not want to read it all, but dip here and there in the lake for possible echoes ! The Hanging Man and the Tower (reflecting one another) are traditionally the least popular cards in the deck; but what profound alchemical treasure they reveal …

Here is part One – Journal 23 June 2018

Keep cool. The cracks flowed richly together, like the Golden Net all over Gaia. Contemplate this fact. Watch the space. Love the space – that means embrace it, keeping still. Let the sea of it flow through, and reflect the way of martial art to deftly step aside, forgive, give way to the force.

I am shown what the Higher Power electrifies in my soul and centre of gravity. Peace.

The problem for me, is that yesterday’s serendipitous encounter with a violent stranger may generate enemies and their own trains. The answer is that everywhere in life there is risk or apparent risk; and when the soul is focused, she navigates with place, time and precision. Keep thinking Golden Net and the crisscrossing delta traces in sand. Time and space with this event in my soul gives it digestion.

Digestion is alchemical – assimilation means conversion to energy – and I am reminded of Tarot Key 8 and the Heracles with Lion in a cave, which Midi Berry sent me.

Master R, what is your view?

Tarot Keys to reflect … my method is to shuffle the deck, wait a moment for the lake to quieten, then cut the deck with left hand and repeat three times (no need to reshuffle). This reading is with just the 22 Major Arcana. From the three piles face down, turn over the centre top card, and then the ones to the right and left. The first card is the reading’s YOD or intention. The ones to each side enhance or qualify its character.

From the first card, turn over the three cards underneath it in the pile. They represent H, V, H of Tetragrammaton YHVH. Y (Yod) is the father, H (Heh) is the mother, V (Vav) is the child and H (second Heh) is the family of the first three in its concerted action, decay or momentum. It contains and generates within it a new Yod or cycle.

The 2nd HEH (fem) generates new YOD (masc)

Finally, add together the numbers of Y H V H in the reading for an overview. Consider Y H V H as sides of a pyramid: the fifth card is the apex. It is represented by the three-pronged 21st Hebrew letter SHIN. As YHVH is Jahweh, YHShVH is Yeshua, who liberates. So the fifth and central card, representing the SHIN, may be seen as a liberating overview, with altitude or perspective: the Hermetic relationship of Above and Below.

Here, Key12 the Hanging Man (it was reversed) walks contra the way of the world; also suggesting a sacrifice. He is flanked by 20/Ascension and 14/Temperance.

The Hanged Man is Yod for the Lovers, the Tower and Tarot Key 8 the woman with the lion. 12+6+16+8 = 42 = 6; the Lovers at the apex, as in the Heh card ‘below’. The Tower cracked open. The woman contains the red lion. The lovers – twice 6 are 12 – are equilibrium. The Hanging Man on the inner plane equilibrates the pendulum at rest – the birth into earth: seed drops.

The Tower mirrors the Hanging Man. Come to meet or unify the male and female consciousness tumbling out. The Tower is a well. I wondered deeply at the mirroring. The Tower in alchemy is a Grail vessel which periodically cracks shell. Nothing in nature remains static. The Hanging Man is a lake. The Tower is a lightning flash.

I just noticed the ‘contact pattern’ of numbers in this reflection: 6 12, 16 8. For me, this kind of pattern indicates that a Master’s eye is near; for what small wit of mine could casually bestow the spontaneous harmonic? The oracle is a relationship with the inner plane and its wisdom.

Regarding yesterday’s encounter, shown to me twice in different places where I just ‘happened to be’ – it was a Sky-hawk’s view: as the heavenly eye and the earthly detailed eye of Horus homed into the Bull & Bush (a pub near Golders Green). I was given a view behind the stage into private rooms.

Journal 26 June 2018 THE WHITE EAGLE IN ALCHEMY

Deeply tired. Physically … It is very hot weather, I got back from Nether Stowey yesterday and went in the evening to the Castle to sample the “women’s bouldering” – no vitality at first, on my own! bored and dull. But when I met up with shapely Christine and large dreadlocked Jamaican Marie I discovered what a huge difference it makes to be encouraged and to take turns at a pitch and watch each other. I discovered that I climb quite well, considering I’ve only done it for a month, and can attempt what the other two do, who’ve done it for two years. I did a V1 Yellow route – very pleased. When people get together it is called a Session, and the venue is cooperatively social. Next time, take my harness and do a top-rope climb with the automatic belay. Just as it was getting a bit routine, I am through the roof again. With leg work, do “small steps”. This positions and balances much better for long reaches. My new friends try going up slabs with just their feet – palms on slab, no hold. I tried it too. Getting a little more confident with those nasty moments which rely on vertical balance, perched on the wall. Also discovered I recover quickly from each effort and am ready to go again. But this morning … EXHAUSTED! Maybe the heat. Sweating.

Tired – let go into it – lovely walk at the weekend up into Quantock woods with my mother, her slow fragile pace being my opportunity to contact with the ground and flow – weightless sole of feet and hips: sweet leafy tunnels, dark earth and great populations of young dancing oaks shot through with light. What will I do, what will I feel when she is gone? How vivid and intense is her descending imprint of life. Here today but in a few years, gone! Her imprint, her sticks, her soul pattern are a flower through the wooded hills.

Now, that Tarot on Saturday morning …

   14, Equilibrium         12             20 Ascension
                         Pendulum
                         Midpoint
..
              6            6              8
     Secret garden        secret        Strength/
                          garden        Digestion
..
                           16
                        Awakening
                        Eruption

I love this one. Lay it out again. The Hanging Man is the Waters and therefore the Well – and dangles head down into the erupting lightning-struck tower. What appears violent in one plane is peaceful in another. At apex the pendulum rests at midpoint pivoting. In the pendulum’s returning arcs to each side are the Archangels Mikael and Gabriel!

The Lovers – twice – are Rafael.The Tower represents Archangel Uriel’s flash of lightning. The Great Four Guardians are in the belly of the woman with her red lion!

Three great Scarlet Keys – 20, the mother-fire letter SHIN (Archangel Gabriel with trumpet), the red lion in 8, and red fiery Mars,16.

The beautiful Tempering element or balancing – Keys 14, 12 and 6.

The simple way with the oracle is to visualise and contemplate its image or reflection. The oracle does the rest. Visualise the pictures and their integrity and speech – the power. Do I begin life this way? The tower is a figure of speech – where God opens mouth. In the same way, the woman guides the red lion’s mouth to sing, rather than roar. The Lovers in their nude grace give space for each other beneath Rafael’s wings, with Mount Binah in the landscape between them. The Binah landscape is the Understanding. The Understanding is Ramesh Balsekar’s beautiful unadorned word for the teaching.

What a lot of wings! Three pairs upraise that invincible perfumed power of the angels. The angels bear vast power. Nothing can oppose them, for they are the Law. They carry out the Law and beneath the shelter and shadow of their Wings are my rod and staff. Gabriel’s wings are raised up: Mikael’s and Rafael’s are at rest.

My first insight with this on Saturday 23 June was to meet all things with deep surrendering equanimity. Eruptions and fireballs in the earth plane, local and at large, are within the Provenance of these Higher Beings. Who can predict what They see at a glance? I feel the hawk’s eye. I love the way the Hanging Man peacefully drops down into the drama of the Tower erupting. The Hanging Man is the dew of heaven. Regarded the wrong way round, he gets a bad press. The Hanging Man is the power of offering no resistance to the event great or small – the event is blessed by the angels.

On the Tree of Life diagram is shown Mars-sulphur glyph and Hanging Man as the Venusian descent of Mezla, dew of heaven.

On the horizontal beam of JHVH cross – the two HEHs, keys 6 and 8 – note the same green landscape with its distant violet mountain. That mountain, a simple cone in the drawing, signifies all mountain ranges and their inspiration; Binah is the alchemical salt or crystal of Saturn. Saturn governs the maturity of any unfolding process. The exploding Tower is the crack in earth I’ve been registering recently. There are events elsewhere in which this crack is catastrophic.

I love to be here the gentle power of the woman with the Lion – her hands in the corners of his smile, the red rose garland binding woman and beast in a figure of eight, her long white robe, the flowers in her hair, the golden sky.

It is a version of the 34th Gene Key, the ancient Beauty of the Beast. See, her spine straightens up as she tunes his vocal cords. The serpent power of his tail is electro-magnetic.

The pair of lovers in Key 16 are hurled from the cracking tower into manifestation – seeds burst from splitting pod – but in Key 6 their marriage is made in heaven. The mental plane with the Archangel through which they see each other and speak, is veiled by cloud from the generative organs of Earth. Nature’s instinctive work is attuned to the power of Consciousness. The Buddhic and Causality regions through the mental, astral and physical planes are depicted here. Packages of history are layered as in a jamjar containing salts, gravels and silts. From the Golden Source shines Rafael’s countenance and hands. There are the fruits and flames of Eden; there emerge just above the cloudy veil the Lovers’ faces; their reciprocal intelligence allows their hands to join with the Holy One. Trusting their body they stand by their Trees.

In Temperance the design is the same, but the Lovers are in the animal kingdom, lion and eagle; and Archangel Mikael cooks and cools them (see the BOTA version). Fire flows; and water burns. There’s the distant Mountain also! – crowned with the Solar genius.

In Judgement 20, the Lovers co-created their Child who ascends with them to Gabriel’s intimate trumpet call. Although this is a Fire Key, it is filled with icebergs and floating stone. It is primordial before, through and transcending biological Life. The Lovers in the centre of the reading are fertile. The Mountain in the distance is the Child growing within them. With the repeated mountain symbol, the dew of YOD and VAV falls into the volcanic well.

Life blossoms in the universality of death, the downward flowing brook.

Snake, water, stone …

And now bring in my other main area of study, the 64 Gene Keys transmission (Richard Rudd and friends):

Which I Ching hexagram does the Hanging Man over lightning-struck Tower suggest to me? In the Hebrew alphabet the Hanging Man is MIM the Waters, and the Tower is PEH the spitting fire of Mars and speech.

Looking up the I Ching trigrams of water over fire, I find their union is the 3rd hexagram: Difficulty at the Beginning. In the Gene Keys transmission which is based on the I Ching, the 3rd hexagram/Gene Key is called ‘Through the Eyes of a Child‘. The Shadow, Gift and Siddhi archetypes of this Gene Key are Chaos, Innovation, Innocence.

The innovative Gift within the 3rd Shadow is called “The end of island mentality”! In this gene key is coded the fact that the cell’s innovative and relational genius lies not in the nucleus but within the interactive cellular membrane between each cell. On this principle may be based the coming social revolution of Solar fusion energy. Why? because the Solar photon which moves and is kindled in all directions, is coming and will come into its own. Is not the Tower itself, seemingly destructive but seminally creative, a solar photon of this kind?

The eyes of the Hanging Man Child are wide open and filled with light, diving through and into the membrane which we used to believe kept us separate. He wears blue tunic and red hose – the woman and man fall out of the dark tower headfirst – and golden shoes. He unifies their torment of separateness. As one even with the refugee catastrophe all over the world is this one’s peace. Blessed are the fractured for they shall be made whole.

..
I just turned to some pages from Paul Foster Case’s “The Great Work” and found the chapter on “Digestion”. It is the fifth stage and it is Hebrew letter TETh, Key 8 – Tarot key 9, of Strength, woman with lion. I will abridge it, for the original material is copyrighted to the Builders of the Adytum. In brief, PFC says,

“Chemically, the digestive process exposes a foodstuff to the action of a liquid with the aid of heat (the elements of fire and water), to extract its subtle constituents.

“The cosmic mental energy is ‘watery’ because it flows in streams as current, forms vibrational waves, is tidal and reflects like a mirror..

“Alchemical fire is the electric vital force taking form as solar radiance and heat, the animating principle of all creatures. The fiery action breaks down and consumes the forms through which it came to conscious life.

“On the Tree of Life the Hebrew letter TETh joins Hesed (water of life), to Gevurah (fire of life). The way in which these two occult elements combine is called ‘the intelligence of the secret of works’.

“Hesed is … centred in the solar plexus or Jupiter centre. Gevurah the sphere of Mars … works through the Mars centre. Digestion as understood in alchemy, blends the forces of the Jupiter and Mars chakras … …(with the action of the Sun and Virgo).

“As TETh means “serpent”, the Secret Intelligence concerns the raising of the serpent power. An alchemist transforms it into the WHITE EAGLE. As the eagle is of Zeus or Jupiter, alchemical work essentially transmutes Mars (the Tower, key 16) into Jupiter (the Wheel, Key 10).

“What else is this, but the transformation of the destructive force which overthrows form into that perfect comprehension of Reality which fulfils our real desires?”

Abridged from the writing of Paul Foster Case

The Hawk, the far-seeing Horus Child is the White Eagle.

The Mars and Jupiter centres together constitute the solar plexus intelligence in the Gene Keys transmission and teachings. Add to it, Saturn the root chakra. And stand firm, and glide and climb and undulate and blossom!

The Hanging Man’s facial expression is let down into all unquiet scenes.

Parts Two and Three to follow

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

Tarot Keys 8 & 1 & 9

Posted on May 8, 2017 by janeadamsart

I did a Tarot reading last week by cutting my deck of 22 Major Arcana three times three, then turning over the top card of each pile. This orderly picture was not what I expected to see, because I’d caught a bad cold and was all over the place; so I studied it carefully to find its higher message or ‘music’. The first or centre one means Tifareth, with the Tree’s feminine and masculine pillars to the left and right. Here is my reflection:

Key 1, the Magician (Mercury) wears a casual red mantle (Mars) over the inner robe which is white, and he gardens roses and lilies. He conducts the force down from heaven to earth. To his left are the tools – wand, cup, sword, pentacle – J H V H. Above his head swirls the symbol of infinity. If Amnesty is a kind of I-am-nesty, he is the One-nesty: an ‘intelligence of transparency’. A turquoise snake girdles his waist to remind me of Key 13, the Reaper of life’s cycles. Serpent symbolism is cyclic and regenerates itself. The circle round his waist and 8 over his head, combine pleasingly; that which appears to be bounded (circle) is infinite inside. Be planted in your garden.

The Keys – Hermit and Soul Strength – to each side of the Magus indicate what he is doing just now. All three – representing the Kingdoms, animal, plant and mineral – gaze downward. The Hermit stands on a snowy mountain top like a lighthouse keeper. The Magus grows roses and lilies in the garden, while Mistress Soul Strength tames her alchemical Red Lion. The Lion is our vital force, the Magus is our conscious self and the Hermit is All-Consciousness.

The woman with the Lion is a female magus – a lemniscate swirls above the flowers in her hair. She wears the Magus’s shining white robe: the loose red mantle of Mars is now the power of her Hermetic Lion whom she tames by opening his mouth for him to roar TUNEFULLY. Binding him to her belly with a wreath of Magus roses, she is the higher Self/subconscious relationship. Giving birth through the lion’s mouth, she is particular with the offspring she lets out. She contains that power, like a breeze tossing birds on hilltop or green meadow. Behind them is a wide open landscape for long walks, and in the distance rises the Hermit’s mountain; the lion frisks his tail. The buttercup-yellow sky and background is (in Tarot) the colour of our sun or SOL.

Alchemy is called ‘the Sun’s work’. It moves through and transforms our bodies, with what we eat, and pushes daffodil, buttercup and primrose through the ground. Within the mountain the hidden veins of gold are ‘congealed sunlight’.

Annika and Aslan

The Hermit is ship’s mast, lighthouse column, SOLitude. The staff he holds is himself: the rod with which our Magus brings down the light. The Hermit IS ‘be still and know’. His cloak the colour of grey rocks conceals pure light. The lamp refracts and directs the beam. In the dark, where the other two are in full sunlight, he is the maker of Light. Light emerges through darkness.

The Hermit’s sign is Virgo. (Magus is Mercury and the sign of Strength is the Sun’s own – Leo). Virgo rules the dark labyrinth through which we process solar atoms into the blood stream. He is seeing right down into his own digestive process, and he wears a YOD cap whose colour has feminine sensitivity – blue, like the priestess. His hebrew letter YOD is the tenth: it carries the same meaning as linga in Sanskrit – the phallus as a kindler of light.

Contemplate these three Keys, two of them sunlight, one of them night. The edge of the Hermit’s key is Venusian green flecked with sunlight, like early leaves in spring. Darkness generates that power of Light. Any condition might be brought to realise so.

Alchemists call our gut the Black Dragon. Solar atoms (golden yellow) are diffused through its walls into the bloodstream by means of lacteals called chyle, the virgin’s milk. Red and white ‘soldiers’ (blood cells or corpuscles) then travel to the various cities and castles (organs) around the body where they are required. The old alchemical engravings are filled with these ideas. We may value also the interior splendour of our bodies: the hidden rainbow hues, the cosmic integrity and balance of each organ, vessel, enzyme and cellular memory in its place, the solar pulse and flow of life. Virgo keeps the SECRET things in order, like a secretary. The Hermit’s cap is phallic and feminine. YOD the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, is spermatic, a tiny fish: the seed of all the other letters. Reflect on the fluid mystery of masculinity and the androgyne; they put the king and queen to bed together in the Hermetica.

Conditions (and bad colds) pass, along with the idea of standing still in the flowery meadow; another temporary adjustment to the tides of tempo: a fruitful opportunity. In the darkest part of the body is confected the light of life. Life is something to live slowly, because no matter where or how I am, it is full with light, sound, space and sensation. This open tempo prevails, even within an accelerated human topsoil. I only have to stop and see and be it, and not be in a hurry. It produces an almost imperceptible yet delectable manna from heaven.

Leo, Mercury, Virgo; let these three add up to 18 which is 9, which always reduces to itself. 8 + 1 = 9

Astrologically, Key 1 is ‘Mercury’ wearing a red mantle of Mars – nowadays Mars is chugging along in Gemini, the sign ruled by Mercury. Mercury changed direction last week in Aries (ruled by Mars). It is now going Direct. Mercury and Mars are in each other’s signs – in mutual reception. So is it surprising to see their clarity in the oracle? What did surprise me was my transparency, because I felt blurred. I think I had asked, ‘what’s this about? What should I do?”

My ascendant (physical vehicle) is on the cusp Leo-Virgo; here, Mercury stands between them on the cusp, in beautiful white, red and gold; the signifier. Mercury is the mental body, and its vitality; Mars the physical body and its regulation. The Inner Plane or oracle reflects and advises the outer, and brings peace. Make way for the Higher Hermetic Mercury. He wears the Mars garment casually and he adapts the situation. The Higher Hermetic Mercury is a healing staff: Egyptian ankh, the Caduceus.

I find in my soul, a caduceus. It is made from ebony or yew, and it has subtle powers of alignment.

The mental body (Hermetic Mercury) is the template from birth for our volatile physical body. From its constancy come needful repairs and healing to physical tissues; but that depends on what we identify with. Many healers call upon the subtle template to assist them with repairs to the physical. Jesus did, without even thinking of it.

Yeshua, loaves and fishes

The highest Mercurial operation in Tarot is in key 6 the Lovers, whose sign is Gemini. Mercurius within their reciprocal space sets everything in its place, like a table laid for God.

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2016. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Approaching Death is Life

Posted on December 7, 2015 by janeadamsart

Forest Medicine 2000

“What will you do God, when I die?” (Rilke). What will I do when my father dies?

I am reading the Castaneda books again. The Teachings (which terrified me in my psychedelic twenties) leaves me unmoved now, but the next book, A Separate Reality, awakens my seeing. This idea and its practice is seminal to my vital life. It gets submerged and reappears as a reality and re-membering.

What is seeing? It is when my heart-path sees through appearances and chimes the interconnecting filaments which bond every unique thing like gossamer. We humans are not those mere shapes in which we depress and die: we are egg-auras of the omnipresent flowing filaments, filled with awe and pulsation. When I stop looking, and see, I let go of depressing worries about my father’s discomfort as he grows much weaker, and my mother’s fret, and instead I focus the current. To see is to receive.

The current has within it the wisdom of time, place and providence. It gives me freedom, space and sanity. It touches the other with that strength of purpose and surrender. For me, everything boils down into the practice of seeing. When this way is open, the silly mind is silent. Seeing floods the mental engine and stops its opera. Real mind then works efficiently: connections and arrangements are made; the right level of care falls into place; patience knits.

Paths of Awakening

Tree of Life as a Garden - Kabbalah 1989

In fact the trap-door opens. In the Tree of Life, the Daat catflap opens, so the transpersonal informs and revitalises the personal vehicle Yesod.

I must keep this way open for when I too am crumbling and dying and losing the plot. When it is closed up, I am tired, querulous and crazy. When it is open, I am my real self and sane. The worst thing for we humans about old age and dying, is the conditioned fears, papers and complicated houses, which crowd in and clog us up.

A warrior learns throughout life to dance to his or her dying: crows (turned silver) fly along the sunset – the image from the Teachings of Don Juan is very beautiful. The only thing I can do for my dying parent is to be mindful of my warrior-dance and his: to see. Over his house each morning at dawn flies a carol of starlings almost in murmuration. (See this link for videos).

A family carries the same principle as a murmuration. (A spiritual or martial movement does the same.) A murmuration is a flock of birds forming fish-like patterns in the sky. The murmuration carries single birds in a singing cloud, constantly changing its shape, and greater by far, than the sum of all its fluttering hearts.

It is the same with the cells and all the moving parts of the body: the individual element serves the greater intelligence, in the natural state. Joy is a dissolution of conflict, as waves become the sea. Through conflict, we grow. It arises, settles, changes and vanishes.

To see is the opposite of the life-habit way of looking-at. Perhaps animals see, and know therefore far more than we do. Seeing includes the raw fear built into nature and earth’s tension and predators; but the beatitude around the seeing is radically different from our angular human bungalows.

Plants and stones see. So do stars and angels and demons. So does our planet Earth Gaia, with the sores in her skin: a different order of time. I then see the days and months and people coming and going in my father’s house and his struggle with failing heart aged 93, as an eye-blink, a preparation for the birth which is his death and planting: it awaits the astrological cadence. It could be weeks or several months, or more. It could be tomorrow. With this view I relax with the rugged rocks of necessity, and can be more present and helpful.

Seeing as a practice, is a compassionate, tender objectivity. The seer engages more intimately with the condition than she could when she dramatised about it. To see is a conscious decision to switch off the drama.

My daily drama which blankets life is death.

Approaching the reality of physical death is Life.

I am getting tentative hold of this concept. I live mostly in the walking dead – thus the conflict of nations and beliefs. As physical death draws near, Life becomes exposed – essence of life and pain: truth. An essence of life is taken through the birth canal of Daat in the Tree of Life, as the physical heart lets go of its grip, its rhythm with the viscera … and then it flies. Rekindling my sense of this, may assist my father by resonance, as we are close, we are both Capricorn-Cancer, the coastal path, the human song.

The sea beats against the cliff and the land falls into the sea. When he read the Castaneda books he said the Sonora desert is a conscious power-point, like the ions along a rocky coastal path, where waves meet the rolling fields. We live and die into this eternal sound of one hand clapping. Time passes.

Contemplatively, I hold him in my arms with this. I renew his philosophy and his quest: his name and form fade into the landscape, into the music and the birds. His body farmed the land for a teeming moment, for almost a century! Thank you for the green fields we knew and grew in, and all their names!

Contemplatively I scan the ocean ahead – what will it be like after he dies?

How can I know? I feel in touch.

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2015. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Mysteries of Master R – Part 12: Trinosofia Chapter Seven, For Give

Posted on July 8, 2015 by janeadamsart

Master R, Comte de Saint-Germain, sketch 5, 2003

For Master R’s Trinosofia meditation and Manly P Hall’s commentaries, go first to the “Trinosofia texts” page in the title bar of this blog, and scroll down to chapter seven.

Below is my understanding:

Chapter Seven of the Most Holy Trinosofia takes us through an alchemical triple distillation, although (strictly speaking), the Distillation phase in the Great Work is assigned to the 6th sign, Virgo. Students of the bota Lessons in Tarot and Alchemy will recognise the work of the Sun flowing through the black dragon.

The Seventh stage in the Great Work is in the sign Libra, ruled by Venus, and it is called the “Sublimation”. These three essential self-reflective processes – Digest, Distil, Sublimate – are ruled by the Sun, Mercury and Venus consecutively: that is, the action of Leo (Tarot 8 Strength), Virgo (Tarot 9 Hermit) and Libra (Tarot 11 Justice) in our body. Tarot Key 10 the Wheel is assigned to Jupiter.

I am considering the orbits of Mercury and Venus within the inner Solar aura.

The Tarot Key is Justice – midpoint of the Tarot, the sign Libra. Its hebrew letter ‘LAMED’ is the tallest in the alephbeis – pictorially an ox-goad. It also suggests the raised serpent of kundalini. This Key invokes Karmic equilibrium which is cosmic justice. Reconciliation of opposites is suggested in the complementary colour tones. On her breast she wears the letter T – a form of the 22nd letter, TAV, ruled by Saturn. Saturn is exalted in Venusian Libra, as “the Faithful Intelligence”. The Tarot Keys are living entities. They are profound metaphors or archetypes. Contemplating them, with the desire “to live the good life”, awakens their correspondence in our soul.

In this post I re-open my 2003 journal – a time of intense study:

Journal 6 September 2003

Most Holy brother – as the radiations copy laboriously in the shop, please help Your ray move through me effortlessly, as does the fragrance of the rose, or amber.

I dreamt in the night, of piercing thunder and lightning … I suspect my refuge in Master R is lodged in my primitive emotional strata; also within the intuition of what Kabbalah calls our Supervisors and what is elsewhere called the Masters, or the Great White Brotherhood – for the growth and refinement of the person in the soul. At the root there is this ineradicable quest.

Nothing is known for sure in Assiyah, the material world. This is why Life in the body is the most mysterious element in the universe. Only in the Higher World dimension (to which we mostly have little access) is there certainty. Have compassion with brave and fumbling scientists! Assiyah is the flambency of the mystery and bafflement of being at all – arrival as a human; projection as a human. Who and what am I?

Journal, 7 September 2003

Manly Hall’s commentary confirms that this stage in the Trinosofia initiation is governed by Libra, the Scales. In biblical times, this Sign represented the Passover of life from material into a non-material condition – the release.

S Trimosin, Splendour Solis, London 16th century. “Just as this Saturn is baptised with his own water, the black raven flies off.“

The passage is one of purification; the King sweats it out. The water of Life which the sages gave him to drink, is now his to bathe in, pollute and regenerate. The second immersion is corrosive and therefore of Mars. The traveller stays there for 16 days (the Tarot path of Mars on the Tree) immersing, drying off and becoming the water, as the water purifies itself back to white sand and no longer wets him. He has three immersions. When he leaves, he is equal to the water’s pure composition. In the core of Hermetic philosophy is our water’s nature to cleanse itself, ultimately.

Trinosphia facsimile illustration in chapter 7

The illustration is the Great Seal between green pillars of Jakin, Bohaz. The two small circles (red and black concentric rings, side by side) are interpreted as the Sun and Moon. The pendant Cross between them is the Stone of the regenerated elements – salt, sulphur, mercury – in Azoth. It has four colours, but I am not told which colours. It hangs from a gold cross-bar between the two disks. These as Sun and Moon represent heaven and earth: the Cross between them is their progeny and equilibrium.

Surrounding this symbol are two circles of hieroglyphs. The outer one is indecipherable and apparently random; the inner one has a cuneiform script which Hebrew can crack. It continues … “and is the outbreathing of Everlastingness”, and says “the Leg” (dawn of the age of Aquarius) is the beginning of the destruction before Nirvana. This boils down to the chrysalis dying off … in present times.

The text, but not the illustration, has a silver axe with a blue handle. It has a Hebrew name, which might be as Manly Hall says, “the instrument of separation”. It is called the Destroyer, but the translation is “Lift the voice to its fullness in chant or song.” This makes me think of the walls of Jericho and the trumpet. It also implies, “separate the subtle from the gross” and “IAM … IAO”. The symbolism is around the Justice figure arcanely, but plain to see. The axe is an ancient symbol of initiated builders. Its meaning is also in the Hebrew letter QOPh with which the Qabbalah begins.

Thou shalt separate the subtle from the gross,
and return it to its Nature, with prudence and wisdom.

Le Comte, terracotta sketch, 2003

This is separation through purification; in the threefold transmuting stages of the water, read the evolutionary aeons. The water in the oval vessel is the Fountain and the Shining Sea. The lunar power is John the baptist: the solar power is Christ’s baptising by messianic fire. “The gross particles of the soul – the rust – are washed away, and life is prepared for a supersubstantial existence.”

IAM is OM, and AM is the most powerful and misused word in the human universe; and AUM resonates a harmonic around the OM. SO-HAM is the ancient Sanskrit (and apparently Egyptian also) way of breathing in and out: “I am.”

… I woke in the morning with two messages: “on the path with Fear, you don’t get many Love messages” and Master R saying in the 1947 transcript, “Love and you shall know.“

Trinosofia illustration chapter 7 – give way to the force

Journal, 8 September 2003

The way forward with V – I think – is to perform in myself small and actual rites of for-giveness. To give way to the force – a wordplay which dawned on me at age 20 – is in our mutual seed, and the intention FORGIVE must be stencilled clear in our etheric body. If I do this, it may help him. Elder Brother, I loved V, but you know one loves any Tree to whom one gives so many years and so much gardening, because that in itself is the act of love, and when I met V 34 years ago at age 20, the force of what was to come was recognised and received as shock.

Meditation – the moving breath – happens at the point of connection, the interface, the agenda. The Fountain is the oval bath in the Trinosofia Seven script, and the cleansing of rusty Mars.

Note also at this point: the Sword and Scales of Justice: Saturn’s exaltation in Venus’s sign Libra. Do not overwork, but acknowledge these things in passing; the light touch, the way the subconscious delivers its operation. When I know the subconscious operates perfectly, I do not have to put a fork in it to make it work, do I? It processes this matter just fine, and does what is required, no more and no less.

And see also the operation of the red and the violet together, in Key 18. Its Hebrew letter is QOPh, meaning “an axe” and also the roof which opens up.

This key’s magenta border – reddish violet – vibrates at B-Natural. From the medulla oblongata in the brain stem at the back of the head, it governs processes of sleep, embodiment and evolution of species. The path beyond the twin towers of the body ascends gradually and undulates, so that the dark valleys are higher than the summits we attained when setting out . Upon that mountain in the far distance stands the Hermit (9) who illumines the life of our soul.

So I just now drew in colour (see above), a ‘FOR GIVE’ MANTRA in the general design of Trinosofia Seven. Thoughts which arose during this were: the first obedience is to the promptings of one’s own soul, and the severest penalties occur until one learns this for good. Secondly, I believe V gave me his angry ‘cornered dog’ story as a gesture from his soul, so I shall re-read it in the light of the mantra I drew this morning.

(As I drew it, a loose “bye bye go well”
sketch fell out of the sketch pad):

It now seems the for give drawing reveals in colours, something of my Ray structure that I wondered about yesterday. It is a powerful stencil.

(I painted on the same day, for Sacred India Tarot, Sita through the fire in the suit of Staves.)

Sacred India Tarot – 7 of Staves

7 July 2015

I mentioned the walls of Jericho (in para above – ‘The text, but not the illustration, has a silver axe with a blue handle’). These three Tarot Keys from right to left, are assigned to Aries (ruled by Mars), Mars and Pluto. Jericho’s walls fell at a blast from the Archangel’s trumpet, pictured in Key 20. The observant Emperor, the collapsing Tower and the uplifting Judgement are images of the Mars vibration (red).

Alchemy Tree of Life detail – LOWER FACE

The path of Mars is Tarot Key 16, the Tower (or House of God) connecting Hod to Netzach. The awakening vibration is deep scarlet. On my Alchemy Tree it has at centre a little feminine blue triangle where it crosses the royal blue path of Temperance. You can see it on the base-line of the red “Awakening” triad. Below it is a second blue downward triangle in the violet sphere of Yesod. In Malkuth, earth, there is a red masculine triangle in the indigo oval. This is the akasha-tejas tattva, combining the mars and saturn centres.

The male triangle rises towards the two descending female ones.

There is a beautiful correspondence here with the Siva Shakti Indian yantra:

Along the path of Mars where walls fall away, speech of the higher planes may be heard. When I listen carefully, the speaking tongue (hebrew letter PEH) of Mars-squared (4X4=16), carries a transmission: truth. I found that when I study this path, it leads me to the wisdom of Master R.

Netzach Hod Temperance sketch. Temperance is Tarot Key 14, with Archangel Michael.

In the Bible story, the walls around the city of Jericho – personal ego – fell when Archangel Gabriel’s trumpet sounded. Here too, the path joining Hod to Malkuth, is a scarlet field; it vibrates into the ground, like a fire stick.

In Tarot, the tonal frequency of letters SHIN and PEH is scarlet. The word RGVZ (associated with Key 14 Temperance, which crosses Key 16 Tower) is generally translated as ‘wrath’ (suggesting the wrathful expression of Mars) but actually means ‘vibration’.

The human code interprets this violently, but it is more like a whisper, a zephyr in the field, an alteration of the form. As flowers pierce, as newborn babies rotate and crown, as the desert wind softly turns your sense of direction, so the power emerges – Mars gently.

Song in Scottish mode, by Master R, 18th century

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

Discoveries in Tarot and the Garden 2011, Day Three

Posted on April 27, 2015 by janeadamsart

…

24 May 2011 – Notes from a BOTA study group
Contemplating BOTA TAROT Key 20.

We colour our own BOTA Tarot Keys by the book, to receive and embody their resonance.

Gabriel appears four-dimensionally, obeying no law of foreground or background time, but here, out of his cloud ring. He is an Archangel of Water, with fiery wings. The horn he blows is straight down the middle: the design traces the Tree Sefiroth. The horn is the spinal thread on which the chakras are strung: the inner flute. It calls the uprising child, whose arms outstretched form a Y or V.

There are seven planetary rays from its bell, and twelve zodiac rays from Gabriel’s cloud, plus a thirteenth – the horn itself: AChD, AHBH (13 = unity and love).

Note that Key 19 – the Children of the Sun – sheds 13 YODs, and how the rays of the Sun shine concentrically around. In Key 20, the 13 YODs as rays, are focused into the human condition, like a bird’s wing indrawn.

The Sun rises with Buddha’s intimate detachment as the children “cook” in their grassy vessel with sunflowers. Then Archangel Gabriel in the Judgement, the Annunciation – (for he the messenger, struck Mary’s child with divine awareness) – engages intimately with each human soul.

madonna at table 1957

Gabriel’s right hand is over his heart and his left hand over his belly. This is said to be a good mudra to summon sleep and align one’s bodies.

The stone coffins float on the waters of the subconscious: they are not only linear third-dimension cells from which the cultivated humanas grows, but also the athanor of the Children of the Sun: their protecting wall.

These Children grow up into parents: their child becomes the androgynous Union of the World in Key 21.

The woman’s gesture L is active. She smiles, because at last she is understood. The man’s gesture X over his heart is surrendered, he now looks up and receives the Archangel directly. L V X: let there be light. Let this be no mere salute.

What is Judgement? How is it different from Justice? The design echoes and develops Key 14 on the path of Probation, in which the human beings are the lion and eagle in Ezekiel’s vision. (The lion and eagle receive alchemically, the water which burns and the fire which flows.) Where Justice holds a Karmic balance, the Judgement commands an Ascension to a higher level. The Archangel Michael in Tarot Key 14 is often depicted holding the sword and scales of Justice, Key 11.

Visually, the design in Keys 20 and 14 fits over Key 6 the Lovers too, whose Archangel is Rafael. (see further down)

The subconscious responds to images. Each of the Tree of Life’s 22 paths has a Tarot Key. We contemplate the Tree visually and as a whole – the paths of intelligence and influence.

Through the Four Worlds of Jacobs Ladder, the paths of ZAIN (sword) and SHIN (tooth) “overlay” each other. The Hebrew letter ZAIN (the Lovers) is the descent of Understanding and discernment from Binah into Tifareth, the heart centre. Letter SHIN (the Judgement) is the element of promethean fire reaching Malkuth, the ground.

Pictorially, the Archangel is veiled from the Lovers by the cloud, and pierces THROUGH the cloud to the lovers of the Judgement. The Judgement is an overall cosmic grace, receiving Volition (Gevurah) and Benevolence (Hesed). The qualities of Gevurah and Hesed are constraint and expansion, the balance.

Then where is the fourth Archangel? Key 15, the Shadow, masks Archangel Uriel of the lightning flash – and presents our greatest challenge, at all levels. There are organisations. “Give me a spiritual contact and I will organise it!”

Examine the different attitudes of nakedness in the 22 Keys – how the man and woman in 15 seek to exploit and disguise it, and how in 6 and 17, the nakedness is unabashed and loves itself: the natural state.

In Key 17, the chakras in the woman’s spine are “interior stars”. The pool is all of them, reflecting the evening sky. Her foot rests lightly on the waters of the soul. This Key is also called “Meditation”, and from the same pool the evolutionary path of Key 18 will emerge – as she sees it. The hebrew letter Tzaddi resembles a fish-hook which we let down into the deep.

Painting of Arcanum 18, 2002. The idea here, is to sit with the star-woman by the well. Look up with her, through the Tree’s Sefiroth from Malkuth to Kether. Yesod is the pool of evolution, with crayfish, guardian dog and wolf. Tifareth is the golden Sun just visible at the horizon of the long path to full humanhood. Daat is the timeless presence of our unknown Guides. The ‘third eye’ Tzaddi is Key 17’s ‘fish hook’ meditation. Kether is the White Sun. The side Sefiroth are coloured in the Queen Scale. Each Tarot Key is modelled on the Tree of Life.

In Key 20, the Judgement, the great sea water congeals to ice mountains – the density of the Spirit of Ruach. We receive a fountain breath right down the centre of Key 20, from above to below, like Genesis. Let the horn wake the flute.

One of the most helpful pointers for me, was when we spontaneously saw that the seven stages of spiritual unfoldment – F’s question, doing his tarot Interpretation exam – are not just 15-21, but INCLUDE the two septenary levels above them in the Tarot Tableau: the tonal depth enriches and opens up the dimension.

BOTA Tarot Tableau, showing the three septenaries and all the intermediary relationships of the Tarot, like a keyboard.

Are the coffins in Key 20 tethered to land, or do they float? We agreed that they float, and we also caught sight of the opened lids, representing all the Karmic history which limited the parents: the child has no lid but the infinite Archangel – the Law of resurrection or growth through the planes. Those floating coffins are like the silhouettes I’ve been discussing (in previous post), pasted on the infinite, wobbling in the water surface like oil. The human Family arises like a living iris from flat-earth outline theory.

The Iris flower symbolises Key 14: the rainbow. Michaels’ wings are of fire through droplets of water.

There is an outline, and there is the living truth: they intersect at a right angle – this is displayed cryptically in the red cross flag attached to Archangel Gabriel’s horn. The red cross flag represents also the white work and the red work. The white work is spiritually inspired. The red work applies it to the earth vessel with the help of Mars, the secret fire.

It was agreed that different souls’ responses to kundalini – whether it be presented in picture form or internalised in body awareness – should not be generalised.

The flag also represents the rosicrucean vault proportions – 3 : 5, 5 : 8 – the golden mean. The cross on it echoes the man’s hands, crossed over his heart.

renaissance angel, 1957

An African told me two dreams he had, which helped him to understand one of Warren’s books perfectly (Halevi). In the first dream, a priest told him he is Jewish. In the second dream, he was shown in a graphic diagram, just how souls drop into incarnation along the line, in such a way that it changed his life. Then he could read the book, which before, he couldn’t grasp.

There!

This day of Tarot is, as it were, the other side of yesterday’s Deva page. They co exist happily, like palms together.

renaissance madonna, 1957

Each Tarot Key has a musical note, related to its colour vibration, as in Pythagoras. We learn these in the BOTA correspondence course lessons.

The council lawn mower passes back and forth, below my window. Its motor has a tonic note, to which I spontaneously chimed a fourth above; and suddenly struck a beautiful edgeless chord or vibration. This is how we can “play” the Tableau visually. The notes of Mirth, Awakening, Meditation, Embodiment, Realisation, Ascension and Completion along the base of the Tableau make chords with the Keys above them.

The lawnmower note turned out to be the first I blew on the whistle – an E. E is yellow, the tone of the Fool and the Magician and Strength. The tonic is B major – magenta – Key 18 the Moon: the questing way of embodiment.

Very nice to see these Keys together – how the Fool leads the quest, and the Magician and Strength contain and focus it.

F said yesterday, it is difficult for him to grasp the chakra correspondences in the bota system. It takes time. We have to live with it and let it grow and inform, like the Magician with his plants.

VALE

Discoveries in Tarot and the Garden 2011 – part One

Posted on April 20, 2015 by janeadamsart

Glancing back … In 2011, I studied Tarot, Alchemy, reclamation and relationship. Physically, I sanded down, varnished and restored the floors of a small concert venue in Highgate, and at the same time removed (by hand) a ten year rubbish dump from a string of neglected gardens in Alum Way near Golders Green – the task took almost 9 months. In my journal I reached ground zero and celebrated my daughter’s birthday:

21 May 2011 – ON BIRTH, HEALING AND THE GARDEN

Summer gives me a greatly extended day: getting up with full daylight, is at 5.45, earlier than ever. I finish writing between 8 and 9.30 usually; then all being well, I am active until eight or nine in the evening – how do I manage in winter? The body clock contracts accordingly, so everything adjusts. In winter I watch more TV and (obviously) sleep more, because I hit the hay about the same time.

Each morning before I write, I open the Tree of Life. I say Warren Kenton’s Invocation (“let us gather together, draw together, let us form a vessel to catch the dew of heaven. Let us rise up and go to that holy place of meeting, and gather there with the Companions of the Light; and let the veil of Heaven be drawn back. Hear this: Malkuth, Yesod, Hod …”).

With the Invocation, I do Dion Fortune’s hand mudras – The Good Shepherd, Those who Sailed West to East, The Builders – and repeat Actaeon’s vision to – “part the waves, kiss the lips, turn the wheel, fingers touch numbers of the clock, enter the cave, find the jewel, and climb the mountain, through the rainbow.”

I let it dance as a physical instrument, to earth it, feet on rosewood floor. At the end of writing, I blow out the candle and “come down the Tree.” I used to neglect this, but was taught that closure is proper. In ritual I am lazy – it is pared down to the essentials – but dedicated. This sounds right. It is a hand-clap to summon and thank the guardian angel. It diminishes my weevils and opens the sky. Ritual is a statement of embodied intention: ascent.

The drawing above, is of Dion Fortune’s mudra – three gestures with the hands were transmitted to her in trance. I drew them embedded in the slanting wave-contours of Glastonbury Tor. The peak is a mental-plane arena – ring of stones, winged angel and chalice, in a subtle vesica-pisces geometry. The vertical circles intersect the horizontal one – like my painting of the Grail Table with the Tree.

The Tor angel is a cut out silhouette window of light within the tower. Recall the silhouettes we see each other as; my day’s changing modes are silhouettes. A rare opportunity permits my intimacy with another silhouette; to deepen objectively and be aware. The invitation to enter another’s room, and vice versa, rubbing shoulders, should not spell out each others’ codes, but empathise. Our vesica pisces: the circles, as on the Tor peak, enter each other just a little. Creative imagination is the Empress dressed in green. Out she comes! lush, like an apple.

Venus is lush like an apple. Yellow, green and red, with black and blue are colours of alchemical antimony, a kind of transformational corrosive, or quickening. She is pregnant, about to parturate, seated on a stone bench – cool stone to her distended fanny. Swollen seed splits. Golden stars of the zodiac dance nonchalantly around her head; her gaze eye to eye, is direct: relationship.

At 9.15am, thirty four years ago, I saw my daughter rotate out from my thighs, slippery, greyish dark pink, flecked with blood, vibrantly athletic and alive, her father’s face, her well formed female sex, her strong trumpet cry – the lady’s a survivor! In this light, the Angel descended through me a moment later, with an overwhelming maternal bonding instinct: love.

How perfectly it all fits together ! When a royal child lies in her cradle in the fairy tales, the godmothers who gather round, are zodiacal powers of love and of compromise – the gifts for life. They are titanic feelings. Every mother who has looked at her new child and been struck by lightning, knows them. Nature!

Nature is the goddess – and when I next see Ris (she says she wants a quiet birthday on her own, but might change her mind later and let me take her out for a nosh), ask her a bit more about the Goddess or feminine energy she’s reading about, and the totem stick. She told me the other day, about seven daughters of Eve, and mitochondrial DNA.

7 daughters of Eve, by Ulla Plougmand Turner

Ancient women of Gaia at first trusted the masculine deity as he rose – made trade with him – and then, as he abused them, they became atheists.

When a deep perception is on the way, it is like the child coming through the canal, and my thought in-draws silently, and waits. Labour in its fullness, is the natural coming and going of the breath. My labour hurt a lot, but after I was allowed to push with it, the massive commitment with nature replaced the pain. The essence of labour is not violent, though the sensations in transition are extremely so – the waves knock against each other. The essence of labour, as during the pregnancy, guides the little voyager through the portals; she rides her vessel through oceanic storms of emotion – which there were. Whatever the mother’s argument, tension, grief or release, that little presence deep inside, is kept safe in harbour as she grows.

The ancient women of Gaia trusted the man in the field, planting grain, and he betrayed, abused and confined them.

This fable works its way organically through the soul, like a baby through the birth canal, until it is delivered to the air. When the fable is embodied, she is conscious, and may choose to forgive. For as long as there is no “for give”, it must be born again. Eventually the forgiveness – the wholeness – is accomplished, and then there is movement.

Whatever the lifetimes in my daughter’s private inner soul, unknown to me – an outline emerges; the depth of her Karmic compassion as a certain trouble took form. Her soul was emboldened to reconcile it. Her father lost his creative path in life, and abused us with his rage and disappointment. She does not wish him ill. She may have interacted with him in previous lives, as I did, or he may have been called upon by destiny to play the bully. He knew not what he did. At a certain depth, and taking time, the action of individual souls upon each other is archetypal and transformative.

For me, Karmic issues seek a conscious breath and transmutation. If an ancient woman is abused or blamed, if men exploited her, lifetimes may fill with revenge, directed outwardly or inwardly, sometimes inflicting and sometimes receiving, sometimes as the man and sometimes as the woman. Long shadows are thrown across history, for ourselves to embody with life, growth and awareness. In time a maternal environment is found, which is alchemical, and accelerates things: we meet our full nature … and let it go.

The fertile green plants all down her stair and filling her balcony, are symbolic. On my way to Warren’s meeting on Thursday evening, I saw her sitting in her doorway among them – she has an open view up to Hampstead from her roof-terrace village – and so I sent a text, and she waved back.

Karmic issues are subtle, powerful wave-trains. It is too simplistic to make them tit for tat, because they criss-cross also (as in the Nasca lines of birth chart aspect patterns); Karma is an echo chamber. When I walk in the sea with Mercury, my soul is raised enough to glimpse the divine dimension which seems to us (who live within its walls, waves and thumb-print whorls) such a labyrinth. I see the simple noble outlines, and at the same time, their complexity; a vast world. It is a great honour to behold thus: to walk in the sea with Mercury.

Illustration from Alchemy & Mysticism by A Roob

Speaking of which, Mercury through Gemini rules The Lovers, Tarot key 6.

My daughter’s Tarot template is:

Individuality: Sun on Gemini cusp – The Lovers, key 6
Personality: Ascendant (and Moon) in Cancer – The Chariot, key 7
Problem: add 6 to 7 = Death, key 13, “Scorpio force” (the movement)
Solution: subtract 6 from 7 = key 1, the Magician, Mercury (the focus)
by what Means?: subtract 1 from 13 = 12, the Hanged Man: the Waters
Integration – sum of the previous five = 12, the Hanged Man: or 3, the Empress.

Ris tarot template, Sun Gemini (Lovers) Ascendant Cancer (Chariot)

jane tarot template, Sun Capricorn, Ascendant Virgo – only four keys, because problem & solution are both 6. The sum of the four keys reduces also to 3, the Empress.

I knew Key 12 was strong in her template: which means “reversal”, the capacity to invert a wrong and to change things round. The womans’ staff she told me about some weeks ago, is the caduceus or ankh. She has electricity and healing in her hands, still awakening, being born in the Year of the Snake.

The Tarot Keys are godmothers, the bringers of the forces.

In 1969 when I first knew him, a mantra arose, concerning her father Mr V: Give way to the Force. For-give. I intuited in those early months, a transgression which would be my life’s work and instruction, to forgive. I saw the tender child in him, not fully formed; and the soldiers around him. I projected furies with and through him, as well as an obsessive romance and fear. I enacted the woman bruised and scorned. In those days – he was 34 then – he was attractive, intense and tentative, feeling his way. I was fascinated by his warmth, and by the cold steel in his nature. He was vulnerable to my drama, as his ego was not secure, and his path was at a forking of the ways. I was just 20. I wanted a child with him.

The little fish who swam towards our first encounter and knocked at the door for life, was born seven years later in Gemini. She persisted and prevailed.

To forgive, does not erase from the slate – no one can do that except the bearer, with God. It goes to a hidden place and it opens wide. To forgive means to give away my enmity; to move apart; to respect that soul’s providence and freedom as a whole. To be able to forgive and move on, is a personal boon; I am not jailed, I am out on parole. To forgive is the holistic LAW OF THE UNIVERSE; and the Law is movement: and movement through the fields and seasons of life is Key 13, the “scorpio force”.

My friend Lyn is writing an autobiography of the scorpio force through herself. She told me she has trouble with the amount of “I” in it. I told her Actaeon left the I out of his first draft, and it was contrived and read badly. Perhaps the answer is, to ask from time to time what this “I” is – Self-enquiry. Then it becomes objective, and the dimension of cosmic mystery restores the Life. So why not study … the human who is closer to me than my heartbeat? All else is speculative.

Meanwhile, at Alum Way, there is the man, my friend David. We’ve been together for five years; we are reclaiming the string of overgrown gardens next to the woods and the brook. My building of rough timber fences is now approved of by the man; with the addition of some long apple branches, the fabric starts to flow, and is strong. Yesterday I almost finished the digging. In the corner of the garden where the recent rubbish is stacked, the earth was packed with broken pots and old barbecue coals and litter, and has died to dust, it is filled with tough thatches of dead corpuscular root fibre. Nothing will want to grow there except – possibly – nasturtiums which are said to like infertile ground. It might be a good place to put the man’s fishpond. The man wants the rubbish pile remnants to be moved into the woodpile garden, away from his sight, until it can be dealt with. But the woodpile garden is my little subconscious sanctuary – as well as being the first place last year, that I entered and cleared. Why not put it further back, in the nettle garden which no one is bothering with at the moment, and cut it up into bags for the municipal dump?

looking into the tip

Before …

… and After

For me these gardening details are psychology. After digging along the border, I raked, levelled and trod a room-size area where the high rubbish tip used to be; to lay the first turf. It is incredibly exciting and creative. Around the green “mandala”, we can seed grass and wildflower, to watch it grow. I found the man in good voice with these plans in general. The place which is trod and prepared for grass, is a magical dancing floor at dusk; darker than the lumpier ground around it.

The “I” in narrative is fine, so long as the dimension is alive through it, of a story working through a local i, like a sonata through a cello.

I’ve been reading in Self Enquiry April 2003, Jim Pym’s article on spiritual healing. It is very interesting. It is for him the attentive practice of “I do not know, nor do I try to fix it”, which clears the space for God.

The man had a bad day yesterday, with his back. He can live with a lot of physical pain, but not the fear and tension that rises to his head from it as it accumulates. His GP referred him to a pain management clinic, where they can try out drug changes. I heard (when I had toothache) that to alternate pain killers is more effective than to use just one, which habituates. He draws the line at morphine. Clive up the road wears morphine patches and he says he’s not going there. Alum Way is tenanted by brave souls in pain, crying a little in their beds at night. The Welsh lady downstairs has almost wasted away, but is as wiry as a root, thanks to the bottle. The man pulled strings through his social worker (a large black lady called Lolita whom he manipulates with great skill), and the council came along at once, and mended the steps and re-concreted the front path – he is delighted with his will with A Way. He made prints in the wet cement with stencils of a rose and a boat, and a magendovid. I told him the magendovid looks more like a paw print. He said he will make his dog walk in it. Through the ages, the cave dweller marks his dab.

Spiritual and sexual healing does not remove his pain – yet – but it does open up his resources and inner soul strength. It is a long-haul circuit. As a “soul gardener”, he manifests a physical garden and an Eve. His Aries will is powerful. My lovership with him, and in the garden, is for the whole. Does this rare opportunity stand equal with writing great screeds and getting published and influencing people?

VALE

Quantock hill waters

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

Mysteries of Master R – Part 8: Three Trinosofia paintings

Posted on November 14, 2013 by janeadamsart

The first painting – a bird shaped lamp – in fact belongs to the end of Trinosofia Chapter Two. A guiding star led the initiate through a white door to the turbulent waters of life – Chapter Three – into which he dived, and was tempted by temporal power. You can read Manly P Hall’s translation of each chapter (as I go along), in the Trinosofia Texts page in the title bar.

I have a technical problem with reproducing my drawings here. The yellow in my originals is soft and subtle. But it scans out hard and greenish. Even if I erase the yellow in the original, its shadow is still there. This happens when yellow is placed on white or next to white; if yellow is next to another strong colour, it is ok.

I love the shape of this bird-lamp. Where the wings should be, is a great curved space. The bird turns its head to see. The whole object is a dancer: a “hold” of ballroom grace. The lamp stands on a plinth of granite rocks turning gold. It illustrates the existential interface of psyche, spirit, alchemy with the flat surfaces of our world-view – the rocks bulge out from under the plane of the plinth.

Here are a pair of Lions – scarlet and black – actually indigo blue – in an alchemical sphere. The red one stands for Mars: the indigo one for Saturn.

Between them is a crown. There is an arrow to each side, a bow along the base, and red inscribed tablets above and below. Manly P.Hall translated the (illegible) Greek inscription under the lions, to English, and I had the happy idea to write it out in English: “Each must sprinkle himself with his own wine from the Mountain of Chios. He must drink to God before the wood. He must give himself in exchange for that for which he yearns.”

MPH comments: “… Wood was the symbol of Dionysius, and it was in honour of this god of the wood and of the vine that the ritual of the Communion was first established. To drink of one’s own blood or to sprinkle oneself with his own wine is to be immersed in or tinctured by the inner soul power. Fermentation was the presence of Bacchus or the life in the juice of the grape, and the Greeks used the symbol of intoxication, as do the Sufis of Islam, to represent ecstasy. A man in an ecstatic state was described by them as being one ‘intoxicated with God’.”

I assumed the Lions were alchemical ones, and the sphere a flask, or “Lens”. Not until the drawing was nearly done, did I look at Manly P Hall’s commentary at the back of the book, and discover they represent unregenerate “nobility” and “rulership”. This is because of an inverted symbol on the red lion’s flank which I didn’t spot, because the online reproduction (of the copy of Master R’s painting) blurred it. Inversion turns nobility to misuse of power, and rulership to indiscretion – it moves them backward. Charisma becomes a despot, the red lion lust, the black lion, tyranny. MPH again: “Those who would accomplish wisdom must overcome these animals if they would reach the Crown (Kether) which lies beyond. The black lion is the temptation of power … the red lion is the temptation to possess … there can be no compromise with these monsters of perversion.”

Throughout the full text, Master R signalled the perils of “misuse of power” and”indiscretion”. It is a balance in the soul Triad of the Tree – Tifareth regulates Hesed and Gevura – which must be corrected before the initiate can proceed.

At this point, I include some dakini oracle images from a recent reading for a friend …

… simply because these pictures move around in my mind just now, and form a phrase of life.

Anyway, my Lions: the sphere which contains them is a lens. To each side are the arrows – (2 of Swords, meaning polarity-tension) and under it is the strung bow: continence of the demons, their transmutation to gold mist. I don’t agree with Manly P Hall that the clouds they stand on are the world’s pomp and circumstance. I see the clouds as steam – the accelerated Karma within the alchemic flask or lens. It “sweats” out the lions and makes them glorious to see.

The inscription above them is in an unknown script – I was able just, to see and outline the letter shapes. MPH tells us it says “Bend knee and worship God who sends forth his love in winged splendour from Aries the first angle of the world. The 6th sign Virgo, is the ending and completion of the ages – the symbol of service and renunciation by which the lions may be overcome. He who gives up life for wisdom, shall receive a fuller life…”

While working on the drawing – it took several hours – I felt its vibrant mystery. This happens when the Trinosofia illustrations are tangibly recreated. I don’t know yet their full meaning, but they are energy Keys. The connection is discreet and powerful: the colours seem to glow. I use watercolour pencils and a brush.

In the evening, while watching TV, I copied this strange illustration – (at the end of Chapter Three) of a dark cave with the sea and the sun coming in – adapting it to my inner vision. It too is a lens – an eye. The lit up rocks shine like gold. There’s a little interior landscaping, of trees and a house in the dawn. It is mysterious. Compositionally I am the darkness looking out and into which the redeeming dawn shines. There is a spiral swirl of scribble rock formation.

It belongs with some earlier (1980s) sketches of the inner eye: a sunlit landscape within the cliffs of fall: the Hermetic Underbeing. A friend commissioned from me an oil painting to illustrate G M Hopkins’ poem “O Mind, thou hast Mountains, Cliffs of Fall“. The painting was subsequently stolen from him, and all that I have is this blurred photo. Some years later, I re-drew and painted it for myself. The lost original was precious to me, because a chance paint formation up in the sky suggested a seal’s head … which I developed.

The seal of the ocean was the soul soaring into the sky through a crack in the mountain strata. In the later sketch, a Capricorn goat grazes on the alp. Down the sheer dark cliffs to the right, the seeking soul or initiate tumbles … and to the left, Hermes Trismegistos receives him, opening an inner landscape of the eye.

From Manly P Hall’s commentary to the text :
(for the text, see Trinosofia page in title bar)
“The first initiation is that of earth, represented by the black passageways in the subterranean regions of the volcano. To pass this test the body must be subdued in all its parts and become a perfect instrument of the enlightened will. The bodily atoms and molecules must be vibrated anew …

“The second mystery in the order of the Memphis rite is that of water, and at the beginning of this section the candidate finds himself standing on the shore of a vast underground lake. This is the sea of ether which separates the two worlds. It is the humidic body of the earth, the sphere of generation. He who would reach the Invisible world must cross this sea, that is, become master of the generative powers of nature (and of his thought). Led by the blazing star, the candidate throws himself into the midst of the waves. With his lamp upon the crown of his head (the spirit fire lifted into the pineal gland), he struggles for mastery over the currents of the etheric world.

“His strength fails, and he cries out to the Universal Cause for help. A boat appears, in it seated the king of the earth with a golden crown on his forehead. But the boat is pointed back toward the shore from which the neophyte came. The crowned man offers the kingdoms of the earth, but the disciple of wisdom … cannot be thus easily tempted. Strengthened by the power of right decision and aided by the invisible genii, the candidate fights his way to the distant shore. Before him rises the silvery wall of the moon, the lady of the sea whose dominion he has passed.

“The fire initiation awaits him. Having mastered the vital principle of nature by which growth and propagation are controlled, the candidate next faces ambition, the fire of pride and the flaming tyranny of emotional excess. He beholds the lions, the fire symbols. The key to the course of action is revealed by the hieroglyphics. The lions, the writing and the wall dissolve. The path stretches out through the sphere of eternal flame.

“The alchemical aspect of the symbolism is one of purification or the passing of the elements of the Stone through a bath. In this process they pass from an earthy state through a vaporous or watery condition, to a fiery or gaseous quality. The lunar humidity present in all bodies must be dried out, which led the Greek philosophers to declare that ‘a wise soul is a dry one’ …

‘… The moon rules physical generation or the perpetuation of corruptible forms, but the sun has dominion over spiritual generation, the creation of incorruptible bodies. Man is the progeny of fire (sun), water (moon) and air (the bird of Thoth). The temptation by the king with the golden crown, suggests one of the most common difficulties of the alchemical tradition. Those who attempted the art in most cases failed in their quest for wisdom, because they became fascinated with dreams of wealth. Material gold tempts the alchemist away from his spiritual quest for enlightenment and immortality.”

Zain and Yod - the signs (Gemini and Virgo) which are ruled by alchemical Mercury, in the air and in the ground.

Zain and Yod – the signs of these Tarot Keys (Gemini and Virgo), are ruled by alchemical Mercury, in the air and in the ground.

I find MPH’s commentary very apt, beautiful, and directly relevant to matters I struggle over, at present: to apply the inner alchemical vision to lessons of daily life, psychology, training and practical assistance to myself and others. I feel an absolute greenhorn. The problem is one of regulating my inner vision to the exterior text. My ideas with people turn out to be raw and naive.

HOWEVER!

An awakened human life flows along the ground, admixturing, composting the subtle with the gross. The crucible, the mortar and pestle of each day, grinds fragrance. With this idea, the fragrance opens and goes out into the world a little – a tiny puff of Universe prana confected in the soul. My role is here, making, mixing and breathing it out – the subtle particle with all situations open to it. I, we, transmit solar-neutrinos which pierce the magnetic shield. The quantum is homeopathic. The mountains, the pits of daily life, are small ruts in a muddy lane.

Meet the world’s inconsolable suffering yet again, the increase of evil trafficking, and a woman in North London who rescues children from it and starts to rehabilitate them … and find yet again, that my role is not on that front-line. I am too open and easily distressed.

Here is the Master as Bulwer Lytton’s Zanoni … and a gem on the table surface.

… and here are two drawings I did for another friend last week – initiations by water and by fire:

… and by Air: a turning Mevlana Dervish

Enough said! Mercury and Rahu/the North Node that day, together TURNED Direct in Scorpio.

Finally – Master R’s Third Violin Sonata. A gem, this one! a thoughtful opening Adagio, with the answering Andante a bit later. The second of the two Allegros (pp 16/17) when played up to speed, seems to turn and turn – a joyous whirl of planets and galaxies around their polar axes, around the Dervish’s left foot on the ground …

the law of the Dance.

Link to Three Trees of Life

POST SCRIPT – I came across what I wrote in July 2003 when I first studied the Trinosofia:

In Section Three of the Trinosofia (I read it last night with little understanding but a sense of rest) the pilgrim comes to a white marble platform, and the star falls into the surging sea, and the pilgrim goes in after the star. In the surging sea, and struggling to swim and survive to the far dark shore, the pilgrim meets a king in a golden boat who says to come with him, the foremost in the world. But the pilgrim says he will trust in God alone, and the king sinks, and soon the pilgrim swims hard and reaches the land, a shore covered with green sand. Here the next instructions are displayed on a silver wall or “gate” which vanishes as soon as he’s read them. Two lions on a cloud guard a Crown. Around them is an iron circle. To each side, and below, are two arrows and a bow. Above and below the iron circle are inlaid scarlet panels, the one has greek inscriptions, the other, sacred letters. There are also apparently sacred letters on the flank of the lion.

To go into the surging sea in this path through the white pure door of the Adept, is Courage into the vibration, into noise-interference to which I am hypersensitive and judgemental. The Holy One is at the heart of All. Receive and rock with the impressions, unconditionally, tendering their timeless points, and smiling. The Lord of the World sinks: I am carried by the Waters, swimming by my effort. The green sand of the shore is in the sense that the sand is like the Spirit, blown in whorls by the wind, and has the same gematria as blood; and when you melt sand it turns to glass – the crystal of the Soul. Here it is green – the natural state. Green sand.

You only really see or are shown what you have already understood by travelling it. The lions are the sea, and they guard Kether, which sometimes masquerades as an earthly crowned sovereign.* The iron circle is mars-like, and the bow and arrows and the writings imply Guidance. The lions represent Fire, and in the illustration they are elegantly and gracefully drawn, snaking their tails on a sea of clouds. Fire, entering water, becomes air – the breath of JHVH. And even the Lions breathe each other in and out.

The two arrows remind me of the equilibrium of the Two of Swords. The bow along the bottom is aimed into the One Thing – the “absence of two” in the Crown.

*I must make my own path of discovery even when the Sovereign himself appears – or as some say, if you see the buddha on the path, kill him. Don’t be spoon fed.

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2013. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Mysteries of Master R – Part 7: Apprentice to Mystery & Science

Posted on October 18, 2013 by janeadamsart

16 October 2013

So called “Mysteries” are clear, scientific secrets. What is a science? The linguistic root is knowledge – self knowledge by experiment. What is a secret? Something which desires to be known – and known in the heart. What is the laboratory? A life-work in my soul and body, tried and tested and ongoing.

I do not relate much to projections upon Count Saint-Germain – Master R – as a glamorous, mysterious figure. The Mystery there is set upon an altar, and does not alter things for real. From him is purported to come much new age channeling. I read a little of it, some of it seems excellent, some of it is platitude, and as I have not studied those writings comprehensively, I am not in a position to comment. I got involved in a St Germain society about ten years ago, for a while. Some of it was good, but the medium became corrupt and demanded a large house and income. The lesson I drew from this, is never to rely on someone else’s version for verification. See into my own life as given. It is all there – hands to the plough: seabirds hover and swoop.

The Hermetic Table of Alchemy states: Visita Interiore Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem – “Journey into your own centre (earth) to put things right, and discover the hidden Precious Stone.”

The seven initials – one for each chakra – spell “vitriol” – an alchemical paradox. Vitriol is sulphuric acid, and it also means “a harsh criticism”. Alchemical vitriol is that same power to turn inward, “without hatred or envy“, and – from brewing the wisdom of the ages – to see outward and adjust our world according ! The art is performed with sulphur, salt and mercury … Hokhmah, Binah, Kether.

Vitriol transforms to Elixir. (see http://www.crcsite.org/printTabulatext.htm – Interpretation and Explanation of the /tabula smaragdina hermetis, in The Rosicrucean Archive). Alchemy is homeopathic, transmuting toxins and eliminating the rust. Upon sound psychological observation the Chariot of the Spirit is drawn. Psychology is the wheelbase of all occult and esoteric study. Self knowledge is the essence.

The second in a series of paintings (1986) where the trail opened inward, rather than upon outward portraits of life. In the centre are pilgrim and cloven footed gate keeper. To the right is a train with all my current acquaintances and friends as passengers. On the rocky cliff is a mythic Greek bull, myself naked, and a mother trying to protect her baby from the sea. The man creeping along the cliff is a conductor. The ship out to sea is the vessel. It was a mixture of dream images in the pot.

“Rocky” – The second in a series of paintings (1986) where the trail opened inward, rather than upon outward portraits of life. In the centre are pilgrim and cloven footed gate keeper. To the right is a train with all my current acquaintances and friends as passengers. On the rocky cliff is a mythic Greek bull, myself naked, and a mother trying to protect her baby from the sea. The man clinging along the cliff to save himself, is a conductor – the personal ego. The ship out to sea is the vessel. It was a mixture of dream images in the pot.

My relationship with Master R – who counsels civilizations rather than single students – is based on my working interest in Alchemy – a chosen, pragmatic focus. At such moments I become attuned to some of “his” way of seeing things, and my patterns of life then verify it with subtle rhymes that I recognise with my life pattern. It is a working relationship of the soul, rather like duet playing. It takes practice. Willingly keep practicing!

This Master is not an individual. He is a way of seeing things trans-personally. It is a way which subtly alters the environment from within. I have a whole article yet to write, about how I discovered a way to contact him and the other great teachers in his plane, by drawing, waiting tentatively – a kind of surrender to the unknown – and then having to do it myself.

A hallmark is that I am not told what to do. When in great difficulty, I try something, leave it open, and then the smallest nudge indicates: right or left. Open or close.

I am the left pair of hands, and all ear for my friend who is a much more competent pianist. It is autumnal and tumbling. This person had an attractive curiosity about life.

Piano duet 1999 – I am the left pair of hands, and all ear for my friend who is a much more competent pianist. It is autumnal and tumbling. He had an attractive curiosity about life.

This morning’s plan is to copy his first full painting in the Trinosofia, like I did the 12th. It prefaces Section Two in the Trinosofia, because Section One is introductory, and written from a prison – the human dungeon. Section One warns the reader against abuse, indiscretion and the Inquisition. Section Two is an inner liberation. It takes us into the interior, deep under Mount Vesuvius.

However, as soon as I sat down – after a long search for my sketching paper – words started to come. “He” wanted to say something about scientific attitudes. I have the gist of lifetimes in my bone and blood. I ploughed my talent into the secrets of the universe, and discovered it is one and the same. I only write down “his way of inspiring me”, by having toiled and verified the same for myself. I get annoyed with trendy young Professors on TV who declare “astrology is a load of rubbish” without the courtesy or discipline to study the basics for themselves. Theirs is NOT scientific thinking, it is belief, and belief takes ignorant short cuts.

The problem with scientism is when it fails to incorporate the observer who is “real science” by genuine trial and error. The problem is the practitioner’s failure or unwillingness to incorporate the Heisenberg principle – (that the observer’s consciousness influences the experiment; that a wave particle may be detected in position OR in motion, never both at once). The Heisenberg principle is the observer, inseparably. The problem is the false separation. As J.Krishnamurti knew and said, “The observer is the observed.” But what academic ambition could tolerate that?

The Table of Hermes also states, “Let all obscurity fly from thee.”

On a broader canvas, modern science – which in Quantum theory approaches the vision of the Vedas – is divorced from the medium which is Gaia – ourselves – our Earth and biosphere, weathers, oceans, creatures and volcanic interior. The whitecoat is divorced from the laboratory bench, because he seeks to manipulate a new toy, something commercially viable for the tiny humanosphere. Whereas, an Alchemist IS the bench, the laboratory, the elemental table, as handed down through thousands of years and the distillation of many civilizations.

Trinosofia figure 2, photo of facsimile on computer screen

Trinosofia figure 2, photo of the facsimile on my computer screen.
De Givry said of this figure: “It represents a man gazing into a prophetic cup forming a magic mirror. The conjoined signs of the Sun and the Moon are seen against the pedestal of the table; at the top, a super-position of different coloured rectangles indicates the phases of the Work, and the double sign of the Lingam in a circle emblematically recalls the Hermetic male and female. An inscription in Greek letters and made-up characters gives a formula for the composition of Gold/the Sun King, by means of a mixture of gold and silver regenerated by vital mercury. Linked to the blue rectangle giving this formula, is a red rectangle inscribed with the rule for the furnace fire in Hebrew characters.
“The Hebrew letters in the red panel are translated: ‘On account of distress, they shall cling to the Bestower. The wise who are wearied with worldliness, shall turn to wisdom, the bestower of all good things.’ “
“The letters in the circle are Greek and translate to “the Light of revelation”. The inscription in the blue rectangle describes the quickening of the soul seed (Aries) and of the breath upon the waters. The number 62 appears, with an admonition to open the holy gate (clairvoyance) with the aid of the vessel or cup … adepts drink the water by which the soul remembers its own substance and origin …”

Alchemy, Freemasonry and the esoteric schools of Europe, were Master R’s hobby when he dressed as a diplomat among kings and nobles. When I feel him – or who? – drawing near, it is like a river flowing into my back from behind, and over my shoulders … playful, pleasurable and awesome: joy, truth and tearful. The connection with him is my natural Yes. My years of refining my tools and studies in his working channel are the current: apprenticeship. The Master goes away to attend to his stuff on the inner planes, and leaves the apprentice to work things out. The Master outside and embracing space and time, dips into it at will, condenses himself to a heavier medium of thought for a quick visit, dissolves back into light, presents a countenance through the sky colour changing clouds which his apprentices recognise. The light rejoices the fields.

The Master comes to the way of love, because love always meets its own, and “truth agrees with itself” as Paul Foster Case has said. “Love, and you shall know.”

Right now, we are carpenters, builders of furniture and carving at a bench, and both wear leather aprons. The Master is better known, however, as a jeweller. In this drawing, his profile and left eye looking down, is across the upper right corner, and when I drew it, those were planetary orbits coming near, and detailed chippings into the soul, releasing gems.

It was 1988: I did not know then, that Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were conjunct, entering Capricorn.

Jeweller 1988 – or gem maker from planet orbital planes

His eye has compound vision – multi dimensioned – yet is deeply attentive to one thing. The shared lens is “concentration”. Those may be cones of sight, or simply one-pointedness.

Having hinted at what a Science might be – the expression of a path of knowledge – let’s look at Mystery. Any so called Mystery which stands in front of the mystery of why am I here at all? Why aren’t I you? Why is the nose on my face like this? Why do the flowers grow that way, and how do the lambs dance out of their mothers? … is a camouflage. It conceals and congeals. Mystery is the “plain to see,” or as a friend once put it – “the Miss Trees”. Because life and the economy are hard, many of us prefer to go to the cinema or stare at a smart, smart phone, and be frightened of robbers. The Greater Mystery is nude.

The figure on the right was drawn when I was seven or eight. I guess this post is inspired by my classic dream last night of walking up Finchley Road and talking to people and then discovering I had no clothes on at all, which up till that moment, felt perfectly natural. There was nothing to cover myself with – my aging defects and blemishes – but a large book, which was inadequate. That tells reams !

The Mystery – a hidden treasure which loves to be known – resides perhaps at the heart of all the conventional interpretations of being stark naked in a dream. I feel the connection. In my dream as I woke up, I found some transparent nightwear in a small shop, to go home in, which did the job less effectively than Aphrodite’s hair! My dreams poke fun at me. I love it.

Revenons a nos moutons. It is time to tackle that new drawing.

Not knowing Greek, I had to guess at the letters and shapes in the blue rectangle; also the online reproduction of the facsimile blurs them. The coloured planes behind it are the elements. I gave it a grey background, to suggest the cave.

What fun I had with this!

For Master R’s writing of the inner journey, see my new Page in the title bar – Trinosofia Texts. I particularly love where he says, “Without reproach of the past, without fear of the future, I went on.“

FROM MY JOURNAL, 17 October – Yesterday was interesting after the naked dream. I began a new Master R post in Aquariel, tugged into writing about science, a hobby horse of “his” – and I began to realise the naked dream was coming up through it with an alchemical meaning of its own … and at last began the new Trinosofia drawing. It took a very long time, as the two figures in the original are clumsily drawn, and the anatomy is very difficult to copy. The original in colour is online, and though much better than the xerox in my book, the repro is low-resolution and the lines are fuzzy. The two figures are naked, but she wears a peculiar black skirt or shawl round her waist, and black boots. I made her skirt an indigo velvet colour (saturn).

He wears nothing but a pair of red strappy sandals with yellow soles, (mars-mercury colours) and is very muscular. He bends over the blue “table” on which stands a golden cup and a lance-head/sword. He gazes in his feminine mirror. With a turquoise wand – the scorpio force – she touches his third eye, making him an Initiate. In the painting she lays it across his left shoulder as if knighting him, but in the text it says clearly, his third eye, his forehead, so I decided to follow that. I also altered the position and shape of her legs.

They are an extremely dynamic couple. They ignite an alchemical Great Mystery – a fire self-combusts on the night-sky floor, near where the sun and moon conjoin, and it bends towards him. This is the secret fire, which quickens him. I worked on through the evening, with time off for my friend H’s visit (during which I wept, as we talked of painful stuff) and watching Grand Designs on TV and then I fell asleep on the floor for an hour and a half – final session midnight until about 2 am, I filled in most of the panel detail, background etc.

It is beautiful to copy and savour the precise Alchemical Colours, the reds, blues, yellows, green, violet, indigo, knowing what they signify. The Mystery throbs to life. It is right that he is muscular, for this is the tonicity of Mars. Her breasts and upper body are plump above her dark skirt, and she has an earnest expression. She is Isis, with long flowing brown hair, curly, and she looks like Morgan in Dion Fortune’s Moon Magic. With the robes on she would be regally dignified; with the absurd concealing skirt and boots, she isn’t, she is rather a comedy – just like I feel if caught undressed – but she presses on with the job. She represents the man’s encounter with Mother Nature, himself mother naked, from birth, as he will be, in the grave. Above them are beautiful plaques hanging, red and blue, with alchemical letters. I’ve done the red one/hebrew letters, and have just the blue one to do, this morning.

I love the way the colours so unexpectedly come to life and sing together. It is the good Prang crayons I use, and the long practice with the Tarot Keys. Alchemy releases the inner rainbow, and Master R’s art did the same, in his day. The “originals” in Trinosofia are actually copies of his work which disappeared. He said to the Cases in 1947, that they are good copies.

The cross depicts the deep room the neophyte came to. The doors leading from it are red (faith and universal medicine), sky-blue (purification/elixir of life), black (labour, making material gold) and white (philosophers’ Stone). On the north wall over the black door by which the neophyte entered, was hung the painting.

As well as Science, I touch on Mystery. I said the real Mystery is “existence” – more so than anything put on an altar. But I fib, because I am unable to bathe in the Mystery, with all my worries taking up the space. Nevertheless I know that an Initiate does bathe in it and is washed clean. With the drawing, something of the Greater Mystery is touched and unveiled: the keys which deeply nourish the soul and link with Eternity. The Greater Mysteries, as far as Master R is concerned, have an essential ceremonial in them – something is at first blindfold, then unveiled – viz the symbolism of me going naked up Finchley Road.

Always it is an exchange of man and woman – as demonstrated in colour in the drawing, for the blue plaque is above the man and the red plaque above the woman – hers is a right-pillar active role; he, like Gevurah on the Tree’s left pillar, receives. The man who is about to be initiated into the Greater Mysteries, strips and bows to Her.

Passion does not fulfil the heart. Life softens and ripens the fruit of love.

“When the heart is deeply moved, it likes a little ceremony.”

Up came my Nakedness in Public. I have been struggling with my worry about A … I have tried to keep cool and okay and not think about it. But I decided to talk to H, who is always inviting me not to bottle things up but have it out with him. And alas alack – the emotional pressure, my thick voice, my tears in eyes – all the work I have done on myself seems useless. And how foolish I feel then about my esoteric studies – to non-esotericks like H, they must seem to be my escape route. On and on I go with this traumatic pressure inside unchanging.

None of us, he said, live our lives without making significant mistakes. They make us grow. He began to outline a few of his own. We live with them for the rest of our life, but it is not negative, because of what we do subsequently. It is our responsibility.

I live with my feeing of having done wrong … Address this, because otherwise my expectation that bad things might happen, materialises. I am wise when silent and writing of it, and I am a mad merrygoround when trying to drive the chariot with someone else; when trying to speak of it. It is so frustrating.

A healing colour combination, the other day. The blue is meant to be indigo, but my camera saw it differently. Indigo is Saturn, Orange is Sun and Red is Mars. Tarot Keys the Lovers and the Sun are both in the solar orange frequency: the tone is D-natural.

A healing colour combination, the other day. The blue is meant to be indigo, but my camera saw it differently. Indigo is Saturn, root chakra, Orange is Sun, the heart, and Red is Mars, navel chakra. Tarot Keys the Lovers and the Sun are both in the solar orange frequency: the tone is D-natural.

The core problem is Worries. The habit of worrying about anything I depend on, like my bike making funny noises, or my laptop behaving oddly. if it seems not to work properly, guilt slams in, and a sick tension inside, I did something wrong. This must be seen to, because it is a chronic condition, and it may get worse as I get older. It says I have let someone down. I neglected. I didn’t look after her. I had a fantasy, a playground, and it wasn’t true. I let down even the Great Work.

So that is also the inappropriate naked feeling in the street – suddenly uncomfortable where I was insouciant. The guilt feeling is so backed up, that when I speak of it to anyone, it makes it worse, the sound of it, the stuck wheel.

Enter Art Therapy! My dreaming re-booted, because of this plan: I shall go to an art therapist to explore this thing in clay and collage, hands on, rather than struggle with speech. It feels somewhere refreshing and discharged, to have dreamed busily again last night. I dreamt of a wacky commune by the sea. They had a huge communal bath-tub outside the house, and the rooms inside were like Mick Jagger’s in the “Performance” movie. I had long conversations with wild hairy drop-outs and old acid-heads, and am amazed at their colourful personalities and their faces – how did my mind invent them in such detail, and their life-stories? Then I dreamed of a complex citadel or town of many levels, and suddenly I saw through a window, the rocky summit of Mont St Michel, just outside. My way forward would traverse the peak.

I felt relieved, after what my friend H said – about what we do with our mistakes – but the turbulence takes time to settle, and I made supper – brown rice and lentils, tin of spiced sardines, some beetroot, tomatoes, coriander and cress and a bit of curry powder, golly how delicious – and went straight back to my drawing. The rice and lentils boiled dry and burned on the bottom.

The turbulent location takes relief in its stride, it is a circuit of tension and relief, it is self-important and doesn’t move. This is the substance to address.

The Inner School isn’t concerned with time. It doesn’t make immediate changes, it chimes up the process which then takes time to clear – many years, as I now know – or lifetimes – being human. Facing grief – turning to face the wind.

Therapy with the Inner School opens spectacular insight, and the feeling of great seismic shifts and clarity and progress – and then a bewildered disappointment on discovery that the situation in the surface has not eased. The emotional upset – the trauma deep down – is as intractable as ever.

Remember: the seismic shift is REAL. Deliverance is certain. But the Karmic stuff remaining – the slow fuel – takes time to consume and release. Many years of Capricorn.

This is also the meaning of the fire under the Initiate, which blows towards him. His legs and body glow. He is being speeded up, confronting the fire directly, even as he drinks the water of life and is touched by Isis. Life isn’t easy.

A strange image! It heads this section II of Trinosofia. The reproduction I copied it from is itself blurred, so I don’t know what the figures are at the “tunnel” entrance. Or is this a convex shape? I left my perspective deliberately a bit awry. A portal of some kind … to an underworld or interior realm – it doesn’t anywhere say “abandon hope”.
I had a dream of bricks looking watery, like an Irish or Highland stream with its .autumnal glints – the flow of “snake water stone”. I may work on this a bit more, sometime.

And I have an aim. I want to be and live like an Initiate, discreetly camouflaged to the social terrain of today, because this is the real way. It is like “toning” the colour in a painting, to a plant or stone in the hedgerow. I want to work with persons.

It seems to take decades to weather the raw Stone. I must NOT appear as a wild occult loon, or have sticky opinions about it – and that is tricky, because the juice of the inner School ignites the personal ego to burn-off. Dignity and discretion! What layers and layers of training there are – and how far off this ideal still seems, even if – like my glimpse of the rock and lichens of Mont St Michel last night – i can almost reach and touch it.

This morning I read and reblogged Lissa’s wonderful article about Trauma. Her insight and her “damascan discovery” reach right in to my Trauma zone, and illumine the subconscious strata from which my habitual worries sprout: for give.

We give to each other the Fruit of Life.

Orpheus. Note the strata of the soul, behind him. He rises like trees, from the core of the Earth and ancient history.

Orpheus. Note the strata of the soul, behind him. He rises like trees, from the core of the Earth and ancient hieroglyphic history.

Peace, peace. The opening phrase of this Sonata by Master R, is beautiful and gentle. And the finger-friendly pair of Minuets at the end!

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

Begin an Inner Journey – My House of the Psyche

Posted on October 8, 2013 by janeadamsart

A meditation from the beginning of September – I had highlighted it then, for a post; so here it is. It is followed by another Saint-Germain violin sonata, and something my mother wrote a long time ago, about the sea.

Master Key

The house before me has an oak arched door … a room of the soul directly.

The door is reddish brown, heavy and strong, with tongue-in-groove planks perhaps, hung in a masonry ogive like a church. An iron key from Tiruvannamalai market opens it. Breathe down into the belly and go in.

Tiru key, pyramid, devon pebble and jug

It is fresh inside as if scented with spring hedgerow blossom, discreet; adjust to the low light. Interior space. A black cat perhaps is curled on the floor. The floor varies. It might be a green carpet, or it might be old wood floorboards, like my upstairs at home. My hallway or entrance here is more spacious than at home, a square room with books shelved around it on the walls, and not much else. The books are more for wallpaper than for study. Like lifetimes, I have read them, and now they rest inside their motley covers and spines, like “My War”.

Let’s have just one chair here: sometimes two – for a reader. It is like my white armchairs, but of natural wood. My entrance hall is a library, but in the far left hand corner there is a door: go through that – there are stairways in a well, one going up, one going down. Can walk straight through into a violet tinged room or space which is Yesod.

Tree of Life detail – Malkuth, Yesod

My Sefiroth and paths are not cluttered or furnished much: they are colours. The entrance library has all the data. So here, I can just reach for a book which attracts me on the shelves. At the moment I see Stephen Szegedy Szuts’ “My War” (1932) and in it the story is told in crisp brush drawings; each has a title which is listed in the contents page. The first drawing is of waking up on a beautiful morning. The facial expressions and the swift Magyar touch, are vivid in my inner eye.

Two drawings – Awakening and Flowers are Speaking, by Szegedy Szuts

The message of the book is the dawn of consciousness through the monstrous world-war which the lemmings run to : wake up to “Stop the Killing!” – but the objector was shot. I also see through this, the atmosphere of Stephen’s house and studio above the Cornish sea. It seemed to be overhung with flowers, and Gwynedd dragging her hip around the rooms, and a small crowded kitchen sink where Stephen washed up; and upstairs in the studio where we children slept, Stephen’s strange abstract paintings watch us all night long: they are eyes and swords and hollow ways: personalities – like this one I painted with a knife, many years later: it took just 20 minutes.

Ikon 1987

My house of the Psyche is simply what happens when I sit down with my coffee each morning, and “reach for a book”.

I have to let earlier forms fade away. Why? Because my inner ruler doesn’t work with them, and they are in the way. So leave go all the rules about garden cave library, or hallway, butler and housekeeper: be still.

His daughter, mistress of the geese – by Szegedy Szuts

There is a garden, where I am just now. It is a rose garden, and I am seated on a stone-cut tier around the central fountain.

It is the rose garden which is seen from above in my Black Swans picture – I painted it while listening over and over to the cyclic splendour of the Credo in Bach’s B Minor Mass. Black Swans was inspired by a visit to a stately home near Staines, with a Henry James atmosphere. It has a mass of simultaneous perspectives. The swans were tragic princes.

Black Swans 1986

Rest here: hear the water, breathe the scent of the roses … remember also Liszt’s St Elisabeth Roses tune. It came naturally with the roses and their scent. There is a drowse of honey bees. The garden is quite unlike any ground I have to tackle in life. It needs no maintenance. It is a rest-place, and the fountain is the well of my soul. The fountain is also Hebrew-letter AYIN, embleming the Capricorn Devil Arcanum; behind that spectral Shadow, is the Guardian Angel’s light. When you look down on a fountain, it is an eye: a fountaining point with a circle around it.

And there are stones: polished pebbles – hold one in hand and polish it further. Jewels are stones – flower-stones – which have been polished so much by being touched and held, that they shine. Jewels are Himalayas brushed by an eagle’s feather once every hundred millennia or so. And so a jewel may transfigure everything it touches. DNA. The equations of the serpent of the stars are sacred.

Zodiac with Ophiocus the Serpent-bearer constellation

My house of the Soul goes no further for the moment. Establish the garden and the entrance library. Put my old ideas about it in the fountain and let them wash away. The air is stripped naked. Keep attentive to my actual map, its unfolding. I am going through the door, like Alice past the oak tree; but the door is in my Self: all things in the deep cohere, and combine and are One.

Obviously my house begins with books and shelves; because every genuine inner journey starts with writing. Sitting down with the writing is my door and Tiru key. The Tiru key is Ramana and Self enquiry. It is with me for ever.

In my entrance library, there IS a colour painting of the Tree of Life, just like in here. It is on the wall among the bookshelves; or propped or on a stand. This I can look at first, before journeying to any Sefira or Temple.

I have a feeling in the Master R Aquariel series, to travel the Trinosofia in it.

I see and hear combine harvesters, the smell of cut grain – the harvest time of Virgo. The shrine of the soul: and sweeping my shrine which is a cave. I see my Zodiac Hermetic temple – the dinnerplate drawing.

Tao Tree of Life, with the moving polarities Mars/Gevurah and Venus/Netzach (through Sun, Tifareth)

Sketch of another version, with the polarities or “eyes” at Gevurah Hesed, balancing the Soul triad

A sketch of the Great Triad Netzach, Hod, Malkuth, touching Daat

An older sketch, one of many insertions of the Tree’s 10 Sefiroth into the Seal of Solomon

… and another one

Notes etc … but the design is interesting

There was much experimentation, every which way

A contemplation for the technically minded: most of these sketches (except for the second one) were done when I was first studying Kabbalah, and I worked with a different path system from the one I use now. A good way to get to know the Tree and bring it to life, is to play with it in all kinds of ways: the period of Hod, Sefira of learning.

Regarding the Tao Tree above, top left, whose “eyes” are at Gevurah and Netzach: I had a comment-conversation with someone in blogland yesterday (i.e.30 August), about putting the Tao-symbol’s “eyes” at Gevurah and Hesed instead, so it makes a spirit level. This centres the Tao on where the paths of the Priestess and of Strength intersect, just above Tifareth. The circumference passes through Kether and Yesod: Malkuth is outside it as the root.

(I like this idea, but for me the Tao is always coming into balance, to earth; and so the first version illustrates it better.)

If the Tree glyph is “folded” along the line of the Tower path (Hod-Nezach) with Malkuth resting on DAAT (the known-world in the unknown), the base becomes Yesod, the Foundation of the Tree: the personality. The meaning of this is that “the Real world” is so much more than we think we see or believe.

Malkuth is a gateway to a Mandala – to the inner Temple of the Tree, embracing it as a whole. This is how it is, with an inner journey. Malkuth has all the data.

Number Ten: the (1) is part of a discarded didgeridoo made by my nephew

I stay with the entrance library and the rose garden for the time being, moving freely from one to the other. They are aspects of my Malkuth – the root or base of the Tree of Life: its manifestation in my physical world. Malkuth is my alchemical vessel or craft.

The bluish-violet glow towards Yesod is in the dark beyond the stair-well. It corresponds to the path of GVPh Key 22, between Malkuth and Yesod, which in Kabbalah is called the path of Administration: our body as the temple. The stem of the Tree. Then Yesod (local ego) is the personal expression of the transpersonal, and I shall visit it another time.

It seems to me that the paths and Sefiroth into the Tree of Life are scattered with little jewel stones here and there – like the glow worms who light the way – the stars.

For me, the arcana of the Tree of Life and Tarot keys, are – for that period of focus – a way of hearing or writing music. It awakens me inside: happiness is concentration, a keen third eye. What counts on an interior journey, is not events and images – we all experience these individually – so much as the kind of focus, and travelling with it. Then there is a lens, and the Companions of the Light know where to shine through it, into the ground, and offer their counsel. Wisdom is the still small voice. It seeks an accurate tonal perception – a clear window – to speak through.

Through Beauty is my Way! In the sacred geometries I enjoy great beauty … it is within all the weathers.

To withdraw from the contemplation, just be in the library and “come down the Tree”.

Then I am outside the door, looking back at my plain grey house-of-the-psyche – (it has trees growing up it, to each side) – with the key in my hand. I am in open country which is the situation of my life. And on with the day.

The Adagio in this Violin Sonata by Le Comte, has great charm, and some tender key changes, rather improvisatory.

Violin Sonata 5 by Master R (St-Germain) - 1

Violin Sonata 5 by Master R (St-Germain) - 2

Violin Sonata 5 by Master R (St-Germain) - 3

Violin Sonata 5 by Master R (St-Germain) - 4

Violin Sonata 5 by Master R (St-Germain) - 5

Here is part of a letter my mother wrote in 1960, to her father, Jim Ede – I discovered it the other day, on a visit.

“No I don’t think it’s really true that there is a special need for the sea. I do know just what you mean and when with the sea, a certain need is often deeply fed and satisfied. But what there is for us in the sea is there also in the trees and sky and clouds and grass, if it is there in our hearts to respond. If we have to seek it out by road, rail or air specifically at chosen spots, it hasn’t really any significance, it’s just another kind of telly. I do think we all need sometimes to be alone and quiet and in communication with things which are not man made – but if we feel that the sea has this focus which the sky has not, then I think we need to sit down quietly and empty ourselves of chatter so that we can be more receptive.

“Mind you, I have a fearful feeling for the sea myself, and often a powerful yearning – but I think this yearning is very physical – so much so that it goes right back to the beginning of life in the earliest oceans.

“Inasmuch as there is no separation of the physical and spiritual, I suppose you might call this a spiritual need – but I don’t really think it’s a need at all. I think all we need is here, where we are.

“Today I was crippled/bad back – but even if this was to go on for the rest of my life, I don’t want NOT TO BE any more, just because I can’t run on the hills and swim in the sea. These are just ways of being myself by becoming for a moment the moors or the sea. But if I am in direct communication with everything about me, then there is no ‘ME’ as an entity apart from all else, and so I no longer need to lose myself in the sea or the telly or social welfare or anything.

“I think it is up to each of us to make our lives quiet and simple so that we can understand these things. I am very very privileged, because I have been allowed to grow in comparative freedom. But I am no more privileged than any other human being ought to be. We have stunted ourselves so terribly – so obliterated our natural abilities and perceptions, that most of us after we are two years old, can see nothing as it really is, but only in a warped and twisted light.

“… …Loving is true living, and we all fall short of that.”

A painting I did in ’86 – a London meadow behind the houses across the road, with a twilight stroll and the street upside-down through it; a pair of hedgehogs play among the cow-parsley

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.