The Spirit of the Tarot. Claudine Aegerter

      Dictionary (Petit Robert). Misericord is having a heart sensitive to others pain and unhappiness; pity through which forgiveness is given to a guilty person. Proverb – ‘To each sin, misericord’ – meaning every mistake is forgiven. Goodness, charity, commisera tion, compassion, pity are the sisters of misericord. Divine misericord is absolution.

      From ‘misereri’ – sadness with pity, and ‘chord’ – heart.

      Dictionary (Websters). Mercy or compassion. From ‘misereri’ – to feel pity.

      PERSONALITY

      The personality consists of the outer manifestation of the human individual. To begin with it is a vehicle through which the individ ual can express him or herself in the world. It is made up of the physical (5 senses), the emotional and mental (intellect) aspects of the self. Once the individual begins to see beyond the illusionary material world, the personality starts to change its nature and as a result undergoes what can be seen from the outer reality as a crisis or break down. Through this process the higher mind or Soul is able to come into the consciousness and take the individual to a more col lective understanding of the world. Eventually the Soul takes over, revealing the original true purpose of the personality, which is to be a vehicle for the Soul.

      SORCERER’S APPRENTICE

      The Sorcerer, through deep knowledge of the laws of nature, will aim to affect persons, things or events; this is seen as magic by the onlooker. The apprentice may try his spells before he is ready to con trol the whole of the experiment; this often results in disaster.

      SOUL

      Soul is the name given to the mediator between Spirit and matter. It is that invisible immortal aspect of the self which links man to the eternal in him. Within the Soul we carry the whole of our evolution or the sum total of the multitudinal experiences that we have gone through in all of our lives; it is only through linking to our Soul that we are able to take all the misunderstandings back to their source and so gain wisdom, clarity and compassion. Soul is a state of being beyond the personal little self and therefore takes us into the collec tive consciousness, which is united and connected to the wholeness of life on this planet. The voice of the Soul resonates through to us and is translated into noble qualities which we aspire to, such as intelligent goodness and enduring mindfulness. These give us inspi ration for a world of truth, love, peace, joy, equality, and justice. All these terms are intended to be representative of the highest levels of consciousness, so we speak of clear truth, unconditional love, peace for all and so on. These qualities are transpersonal; to attain them in their purest forms requires a great deal of work on the little self, as we move from the personal to the collective. This is the enormous task which humanity is just starting to engage with. A great part of this work is to see our fellow human beings as Souls and reflect that back to them, in order to uplift the goal of personality to expand beyond its limitations. In this way we bring the perception of the Soul kingdom into play, each individual working in the group, for the group. As the Soul or essence is strengthened, it begins to reveal its true purpose, which is to be a vehicle for Spirit through its intui tive intelligence.

      SPIRIT

      Spirit is so expansive that it is difficult to say much about it, except to say that it is everywhere and in everything; it flows through life at every single level. It is the dance of the great creator, whose intent is in the movement; it is the breath of God. The great work is to bring Spirit and matter together into a state of fusion. At the present time the energy of Soul is needed to act as a mediator or vehicle within which these two principles can be synthesized. In the book we use ‘Spirit’ as meaning universal truth and divine light.

      SUBCONSCIOUS

      The subconscious represents a state of unconsciousness solely occupied by the active and reactive aspect of man. In the subcon scious mind all mankind’s distortions of the pure instinct of the unconscious are found. They are brought about through the mis understandings of the newly-found emotional and mental body of man, as he rises into the human kingdom from the animal kingdom. Action which stems from the subconscious results in behaviour which is not reflective or self-conscious. The semi-conscious emo tional/mental aspects cause pain in the driven human being, as he strives to make sense of what drives him. This begins the work of releasing the subconscious misunderstandings in the Soul, through the bringing in of awareness and greater consciousness.

      TETRAKTYS

      This simple form holds the memory or blueprint of the divine intent and therefore the understanding behind all the different sys tems or tools used by different spiritual traditions, such as Astrol ogy, Tarot and the Kabala. As the energy of Spirit moves through time and space, the blueprint can transform the divine intent into manifestation, so that matter and form can mirror back to the God we live in, an appreciation of the unfolding of his intent.

      So the Spirit comes down, still holding the beautiful and pure ideas of the blueprint and the concept, enabling us as humans to see ourselves in a mirror. At the final state of higher consciousness, the God we live in is seeing itself in his own creation. The mirror cannot happen without the tool of self-consciousness that we take with us on the descent into our subconscious, which is what we call hell. If we are not aware of the subconscious we are just being driven by nature, which has innocent purity but also terrifying behaviour in the cause of survival! This means that we don’t know what we are doing, for we have no self-consciousness. The Soul instigates our descent into hell so that we can retrace all the steps which lead back to the original Trinity (father God/mother Earth – with us as witnesses to the end product) or source of life, this is how we find the mirror that shows us ‘as above, so below.’ The knowledge of intuitive perception accumulated over thousands of years, is called the Ancient Wisdom; this is held in the divine Tetraktys. We don’t need any books because the Tetraktys holds it all; we can ponder on it and let numbers teach the way to enlighten ment, for the idea of the swamp, the descent into hell, the purgatory stage and the redemption through the light of consciousness are all there. Through this knowledge comes the simple understanding that we have to start internalising the ‘How’ of our knowledge of the world to find the ‘Why’ – that’s when the journey really starts.

       Figure 1. The Divine Tetraktys.

       The Divine Tetraktys contains the whole of the Ancient Wisdom and if we ponder on it, all can be revealed.

      UNCONSCIOUS

      The absolute and primary principle of the Universe is uncon scious, or in a state unaccompanied by conscious or self-conscious experience. The unconscious describes the entire experience of nature from the beginning of time, as it adapted to prevailing cir cumstances in order to survive as viable life. Pure instinct has its being in the unconscious. It is from this original, unconscious Active Intelligence that the creation of all life is sourced.

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      This book was developed from a series of talks given by Claudine Aegerter to the Connaissance School of Numerology over a period of 2 years. The aim of the talks was to bring out the hidden light or Spirit behind the ancient system of symbols known as The Tarot – hence the name ‘The Spirit of the Tarot’.

      The idea of making the talks into a book was instigated by mem bers of the Association Internationale de Numerologues (AIN), of which the School is part. As a group, the School and the Association formed a receptive and willing body, whose thirst for spiritual waters invoked the precipitation needed to bring in these teachings.

      Thanks go to:-

      Lesley Smith, who faithfully transcribed the work from tapes