The Spirit of the Tarot. Claudine Aegerter

see that a big crisis is just a bruise. There can be a bruise on our body, or on the body of the planet which could manifest as a catastrophe, such as an earthquake or a famine. A bruise is just a lot of damaged cells and when we visit our own personal life crises, the crystallised scars can be seen for what they are, the past, experienced, named and depersonalised by the light of the Soul and the love of service.

      We have to face the guardian on the seat, The High Priestess. She is holding two keys in her left hand, which is resting on the head of the sphinx. In her right hand she holds the book of life, which symbolises truth, so she’s putting us in front of the psychic trial of getting real. She tells us that we don’t get real through intellectual knowledge or emotional visualisation workshops, for anything that has to do with the personality’s experience is not real. We can only get real through using the psychic realm, or the realm of the Soul; this is the only way our work can be done. The realm of the Soul is one with the higher mind and the Soul of nature, the work is aligning the mind of man with the higher mind of the Soul and the love/wisdom of the Soul of nature. This is truly going to happen on the psychic level through the Soul, so is the beginning of the true death of the illusion of the personality; this is why there is a feeling of dread. We are talking about the Soul wanting to be active and really having to fish out all these pains and problems, so that once and for all we don’t take matter, intellect or the big emotional body, as the Queen of the heavens, which they are not. The personality is only a puppet, a vehi cle for the mind to follow, to find more fuel to transmute into light.

      The work of the Soul starts in a psychic trial. If we start it too soon, mental disorder comes in, which always happens to a few and is a necessity in every group. For the normal Soul group it is natural to have a few individuals going beyond reason, to allow the whole group to align to psychic understanding and the use of true, non-intellectual intelligence. The warning is, be careful, don’t undergo the trial too soon out of personal aggrandisement, because that can destabilise the fragile instrument and so necessitate a lot of heal ing work. If we use too many physical ways to reach God, such as overuse of exoteric or mechanical rituals, or chemical substances, we can be derailed. The way through is a natural process that must be witnessed, so the true spiritual path is humble and has nothing to do with pride, or wanting to save the world. Looking back at our childhoods, we may have been already somewhere in front of the veil but didn’t recognise it until somebody described the landscape; that is the natural way.

      When we see that the testing ground is everyday life and that nobody is holding our hand, true initiation can happen. Then if we can have the courage to dive in where our emotional/mental reac tion takes us, the Soul perception can disperse the shadows. Though we are all important in the scheme of things, as individuals we do not matter, so we must remove our personal selves from the vision. As we remove the personality from a happening, whether bad or good, we can be grateful that we can mine from it more coal to burn.

      We are talking about alchemy, hidden knowledge, or transmuta tion. The Magician is master of the secrets and this has allowed him to come in front of The High Priestess with her keys, which hold the unlocking of the secrets. He is wary, for if the veil is lifted just in one corner, he will have the realisation that it is all energy and that we really are of no consequence. Then even if the veil is quickly put back he cannot draw back, for he’s had a glimpse of the world as an energetic entity. If we have seen that and yet still live strongly in the sensory, intellectual way, we will be deeply troubled by our ways and will perceive them as weakness and failures, until we accept being used by a greater power. We tend to forget the whole picture as we get taken in by everyday life, maybe because the monkey in us is a bit too proud, or maybe because we haven’t fully recognised its tricks yet.

      The humble character of the Soul will love those people who help to cut the emotional ties. It is important to remember that it is those ties that hold us back, not the people. When we see behind the veil, we can look at our environment with a new appreciation of where we are and we are able to recognise all the personal emo tional ties that are holding us back. The love aspect becomes purer and stronger if we dissolve the ties of need. We may go through several groups of friends or loved ones in a life-time; they help us to do that energetic work of severing our links to the lower emotional. We have to bring our immediate emotional response back to pure instinct, to recognise our natural survival needs rather than emo tional attachment.

      With groups and couples we have interaction rather than lead ers, for there is no above or below and no one is more evolved than another. It is the power of the love of the work that is important, for it measures evolution and without that there is no group. The same applies in ‘use and being used’ and ‘abuse and being abused’; the abuser is also the abused. If the victim can look at the fact that he is also the perpetrator, because he or she had to experience the abuse, then eventually we see that they both undertook the experience and both have to stop playing the game. There is nothing to abuse, there is only spiritual energy floating through a space bringing up shapes and forms, so that it can recognise its evolution at the time. Once that level of understanding is reached, we won’t put ourselves into those situations as abused or abuser. The initiate won’t engage in it mentally or emotionally, because matter is of no importance. The body is only a manifestation at the time, a tool being used by energies and the world is an energetic world. We cannot take seri ously what happens to our personalities in that sense, but Soul can inform them so that the instrument can translate what needs to be understood through it. Being able to gather the emotion from that type of experience is more than important and worthy, though the experience itself is not important. The emotions have to be named and purified by the higher mind, so that we understand which feel ings are personal. The feelings are there because the personality thinks it is important and doesn’t understand its link to divinity. The way through to this understanding is through the Soul work, when we start activating the star of Bethlehem. The three-fold personality has to give up all its needs to be the instrument of the Soul, which in turn has to give all its love to be at the service of the karmic spiritual energy that moulds the Universe - so who is using who?

       Figure 4. The final alignment of the personality/Soul/Spirit connection.

       The unveiling has to be realised all the way down, so the star has to drop down into the great sea of the subconscious, restoring wisdom to everyday life.

      The work is done only through taking the conscious mind into the unconscious, which is the Soul of nature and was there before us. Nature had to find a unit in herself that could be a little star, a torch, or a light and so she gave birth to awareness in the human kingdom. We go in and feel everything, eventually realising it is not ours! We should not personalise what we feel; we are only lit tle light-bearers going into the experience to feel and name it. The initiate has understood that the content of his subconscious is part of the previous experience in the unconscious of nature, that is why he can walk up and down with his torch and nothing bothers him. The feelings of ‘It is unfair’ and ‘I am being used’ are not there; he is not afraid of anything he finds there, because he is cleansing and bringing in more and more light. Once the big star is at the bot tom in the full light, we have redemption or re-creation and every thing is seen for what it is. The Star comes down increasingly, for the Soul knows it has come back for service and is full of enthusiasm. The amnesia that the Soul had when it first comes back can only be dissipated through the one that experiences (Soul), when the experi ment and experience make one. We go in and dig deep and look at everything from that very deeply felt, emotional hurt that the world carries. As we become more and more aware, we vaguely remember having been there before, so the work that needs doing becomes clearer and clearer. We have the star and the light, so we need not be overwhelmed by emotions, because we realise they are not per sonal. We are in a big sea of emotion and have to ride it to see where it takes us. The waves take us to a point of rest at the top, when we think we are the saviour. Then when we are at the bottom, we drop the self-pity and feel the black velvety rest of the overshadowing of the wisdom of the world. Suddenly peace is there and the Soul brings comfort in the subconscious amongst the monsters, except there are no monsters! So we keep on doing the work, deeper and quicker.