The Spirit of the Tarot. Claudine Aegerter

of imagination and dreams that can receive the message of the divine. It is in contact with the vision, but is not in a dreamy state so is in active control. Survival, protection, playing games and selling ourselves should all be seen for what they are, put in per spective and understood as the great attributes of nature’s abundant gifts. If this level of comprehension of our work is not achieved, there can be no progress towards our source, or the end of our journey.

      The mind of man has infinite possibilities; only a tiny little aspect of those will be realised and expressed in one life. None of the expe riences we have had in virtuality really matter, because what we are actually doing is looking for ourselves, looking for our name, or our allocated job. We are reflective grains of dust that grow into bigger stars, so the shine starts to show. As each one grows bigger and big ger, the thread which guides us back home to the source becomes more and more apparent.

      Active Intelligence is absolutely everywhere to be seen and it has to become self-aware. The Empress is Queen of the kingdom that doesn’t know of its divinity. It is only through mankind that Active Intelligence becomes Queen, for we are truly the mediators. Our role is to realise that we are Souls, for the Soul is the mediator and bridges the Spirit/matter gap. It is so important now to train the human family to understand that that is what we are. We are not animal man, we are Active Intelligence in motion and our true nature is Soul, which knows itself as sound. Eventually in contem plation, Active Intelligence will hear the harmonious silence of the wisdom within.

      The Empress will freely dispense her knowledge and the treasure of her science. She doesn’t need to keep any doors shut and it is out for all to see. She gives hope to those who want to reach the point of light, sounding “I’m the way”; this is the Soul of mind. There are no tricks and no severity, but many will not use, receive, or even see the fullness of what she offers, because they will still be using it for their own security and pleasure. She’s a teacher walking alongside the initiate, but she never imposes anything on him, it is up to him to go and ask her for help. He has to use his Active Intelligent mind to go and fathom the puzzle.

      Active Intelligence is an intelligent faculty bringing clarity into everything, dispersing darkness and giving strength where there is doubt and hesitation. It is the crystallisation of the esoteric mind and so brings uplifting. So far in man’s evolution we have used Active Intelligence as though we owned it, for self-aggrandisement and power, calling it our own truth but now we need to serve the truth, which is quite an up-turn. Truth cannot be domesticated to make us comfortable. Though there is a desire to contemplate the truth with no protection, its simplicity can be devastating when our heart is free of all vanity and self-centredness.

      Our tragedy lies in the fact that we do not love the greater life, but rather want the greater life to love us. However, this can change overnight if we make that decision. So we need to look at our affir-mations to make sure that we are not using them to reinforce our lit tle selves thereby our self-centredness and so reinforcing the drama, because that can be addictive and is a wasteful use of the light. Nature had to be self absorbed until she found the moment when she gave birth to consciousness in the human species; we have to rise above survival to give nature back her divinity.

      In the story of Theseus and Ariadne, Theseus goes into the laby rinth to confront the Minotaur, a ferocious creature who is half man and half bull. The Minotaur requires a Cretan youth as a sacrifice every year, so the people of Crete need a hero to go and kill the Minotaur. This creature represents the past and the old God from a previous culture, so it is no good giving youth to him because it only goes to feed the black dog of illusion. In all the stories and legends a hero is needed to go into the past or the dark night, so as to kill the illusion and the attachment to the past; he can only go when he knows that he has eternity in him and therefore is no longer afraid of death. It is only the initiate who can do that type of work. If we know we are going to die for something much greater than what is going on at the time, there is not the problem of being afraid of death. All that is experienced is the virtual death of the personality as it goes down and re-lives the past, but this is not real. Princess Ariadne gives a golden thread to Theseus, as a guide to help him come out of the labyrinth safely, the thread being a symbol for the Soul, linking him to the eternal life.

      Mass consciousness is driven by the subconscious experiences held in the Soul of nature and therefore is the basic human being. When we reincarnate we take our biological suit from the karmic pool of human DNA. Our lighted mind reflects on our reactions to life and our thoughts go back up the stream to the source of those reactions, revealing the films of locked in emotions. We have projected so many situations to be recognised, named and seen as nature’s survival tricks. Nature is then redeemed by the greatness of her intelligence.

      The idea of confession in Roman Catholicism, is to help people say “Yes, I’ve done that” as we make the confession to the priest who wears black. Black represents the black work, which is the first stage of the alchemic process and symbolises the deepest understanding of the ordinary life that is driven by the subconscious. We need to confess our sins, or our subconscious reactions, but in reality we just need to recognise what has been done in the past with the true light of the new perception, which brings no blame. In reality these past actions are not sins, because they are seen for what they are. This is the work we have to do to be at ease with our humanity and follow the guiding thread of The Empress, for she links the initiate to the divine. In this way he can make sense of the process and render it sacred, by using the perception that comes from a pure heart and a loving mind.

      She has a blue cloak because she’s focussed on the infinity that will only be reached with The Fool at the end of the journey. The Fool renounces all attachments to beauty, vanity and desires. All the things that we imagine are there for us and that we think we need, such as fame, pleasure and security, are given up. We take continuously, but the objects themselves that we receive don’t offer what we want. Their virtuality is there to make us see what is in us; such is the incredible quality of mind. When we are centred on self-aggrandisement and power we plunder the world to have more and to protect what we have, when actually what we seek is the eternity of peace of mind, which does not reside in the world of dusty possessions. When we feed the world with the love that comes through our hearts and eyes, we give it back its beauty and sacredness and feed the connection we have with the divine. However, we are so used to taking from it, like the baby taking from its mother, that we’ve become very spoilt children.

      The Empress has her cloak over her knees and arm; this signifies that she’s available to everyone, unlike The High Priestess who has her cloak over her shoulders to tell us that she is only available to the initiate. The Empress’ cloak is blue, lined with green; blue being the colour of clarity, the higher mind and higher intelligence, whereas green is the colour of the beauty and wisdom of manifested life. So we are here to bring the blue sky of infinity into the green world of life and that is the way we inspire and uplift it. But before man can fly he has to assimilate everything that is human in him, so that he can become the universal man. The blue also tells us that she is not a mystery like The High Priestess, for she is there to be seen by all men of goodwill. She asks us to listen to the goodwill message of the life which is in front of us.

      She holds a sceptre with a cross on it, which means she has authority over the Earth, because she is the flower and procreator of it. This is a true spiritual authority, so she is flooded with light. She obeys the divine justice that stems out of love, which will help people align to her ways and cooperate with each other in her intelligence. All manifestation is held in the process of death and re-birth until the system, through mankind, realises that it is made of energy moving into space and organises its manifestation for precognitive awareness only. We will be locked in time and space on the wheel of life until this happens. This mani festation is reflected in the element water, which is able to hold the memory of biological life on the planet. We cannot possess some one else’s form, or hold anyone else’s water; divine justice naturally doesn’t allow this, it would go against the beauty of the plan, for Active Intelligence obeys the great laws of the non interference of the divine mind. True beauty is an inner process of revelation, which harmonises the petals of beingness, as we