The Spirit of the Tarot. Claudine Aegerter

politeness has to be taught, but the more we recog nise and perceive things from the point of view of energy, the more naturally polite we are, because we don’t want to interfere either with another’s individual space, or the collective environment.

      The Empress holds a Coat of Arms in her right hand, on which there is a silver eagle on a red background, with its wings outstretched. The eagle is a bird that can stare at the sun without blinking, so it symbolises the highest possible aspiration of the human mind, which is to soar towards the mind of God and stare at God’s light without blinking. This is the desire to contemplate truth in all its splendour, with no protection.

      A coat of arms is a symbol that is there for us to recognise a par ticular family, school or group. It is a symbolic representation of the genealogy behind the person or group. It is a very potent symbol which fixes a goal and states an aim. The message is clear for man kind; “Become the truth, the love and the wisdom through your intelligent nature!”

      The Circle of Stars round her head consists of nine visible stars and three that can’t be seen, so there are twelve altogether. These symbolise the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the twelve apostles and the totality of all the experiences of creation. The three stars that are not visible are those that are working at the transfiguration of the alchemic year in the dark. The crown of stars is Mercurial. With The Empress we are looking at the universal mind, so she has to be very pure of intent. Universal intelligence wants to fuse with universal love, so she has to fly high to surpass and go beyond herself.

      If we are looking at the zodiac then Saturn is the highest star right on top, for it has to reach the peak of all intellectual research, which is wisdom devoid of illusion and vanity; this is the mind which will dominate this world. The transfiguration of this world is the ideal, the free and the true. The whole of creation is moved towards spiritualization by transubstantiation, this is the great work of alchemy. So in terms of the zodiac archetype of Saturn, we have Capricorn at the top, being the symbol of the concrete world, for man is nothing if he hasn’t got his head in the stars. This enables the great work to be exteriorised through the higher thoughts and mind of man. It is impossible to separate man from the cosmos and if he can understand the truth, he can co-create, meet and fuse with the divine through his work.

      Once self-awareness is born and reasoning happens, light and understanding can come in. Eventually, when our mind has learned to reach the Active Intelligence within the Soul, we look at an object or being and we can see clearly what is behind the form; we perceive its Soul rather than its form. Thus the higher intelligence is devel oped and that thought process feeds itself. Imagination and dreams are important, so as long as there’s a bit of the Saturn element there to keep it real and viable, for the mind fertilises itself from one sim ple understanding. The reality is that it is the perception we put on life’s manifestation that is truly important, rather than the object we are looking at. The thing in front of us is only there to help our mind retrace its steps.

      Eventually, when we have removed the consideration of the per sonality, we see things for what they are. If we want to get rid of an addiction and see it for what it is, we should stand in front of the object of our addiction and try to see that part inside us that is saying “I want it”. The object of desire that we thought was real actually isn’t; it is virtual. The trigger to the addiction is the wanting to experience a specific set of feelings, not the object. If we realise that the need to play a game is feeding us, we own it and are at the beginning of transforming our coal into hot fire of sublimation: this is alchemy. The aim is not to separate ourselves, but to absorb the addiction so that we can own our inner drama and dissipate our shadows.

      In this world we are addicted to form. It keeps our mind in the virtual world and stops our internalising, so our intelligence is blinded and overshadowed by pictures, there to give ourselves what we want to think. Our lives become driven by phantom forms, which come out of our needs and we let the unscrupulous merchant of false gold dictate our every move and thought! We are poor little stars, lost in a false paradise; let’s reclaim our minds, smile, rise and shine! We only react to the world through what is inside us. We are at the beginning of the great rise in consciousness of mankind. This is a great wakeup call from the Earth to its peo ple. We need to cleanse all the layers of accumulated shadows from the densest matter, to the rarefied mental thoughts of the clever est human being. The light is reaching deep into our history so far and bringing out all the monsters. So as long as we see it from the greater perspective of humanity and the Earth being one body, we can help the process by not interfering through blame, criticism or judgment.

      Jesus, the Soul, said that we have to hate the world in order to reach the divine mind; this does work if we can see hate not as a feel ing, but as a tool which enables us to cut away from the drama of the past and embrace the work with a more compassionate mind.

      We all have to be self-centred and selfish on the way to finding our centre and losing ourselves. When we are very pre-occupied with self we detach ourselves and make ourselves into the deep spiral that precipitates us into the depth of our existence, our Soul. Adam and Eve represent the moment in time when mankind was part of nature and became self-centred, so allowing the fall or the individualisation of the mind in mankind to happen. We had to fall to enable us to look at all the things we had been playing with; this is the work. There is no shame or judgment in this, for it was the work that was needed and required, so that freedom of choice could come in; we can make a conscious decision to do the work, or let our needs live our lives for us! We can’t have self-awareness without being self-centred and we can’t precipitate into hell with out having a choice. The first idea was to precipitate self-awareness into the darkness without a choice, and then the great Luciferian angel took pity on us and precipitated itself to give us the gift of discrimination. So the first real sacrifice was that of Lucifer coming down; without that influence we wouldn’t have had the choice. The word Lucifer means ‘bringer of light’, so this energy is truly a messenger of Spirit, coming down into matter. The consequent disturbance that is thus stimulated in the crystallised mindsets has caused Lucifer to be associated with evil; this is a great misunder standing and distortion.

      The energy of Lucifer makes us do the work faster than was expected, enables us to suffer with awareness of mind and puts pain in its context as being a by-product of the work. Consequently the pain is more intense but the process is quickened; it would have been a long, slow process without Luciferian awareness of mind and we might still not have succeeded in understanding that this is a virtual world. When a light comes in, it has to find another light in the darkness, so as to have a point of recognition. The first light is the one that came by choice; the whole story of Adam and Eve is always about choice. When we are given dominion we are going to use it for ourselves to begin with.

      When the mind has understanding through love in the heart, it can transcend any mindset which presents itself, especially the one of freedom. This is what is meant by; “The more I love the more I understand, the more I understand, the more I love”. The only thing love wants is to forget itself and fuse with the light. If we truly tran scend the self, then we go back home to meet our star and freedom is useless, for what is the use of freedom when we are in love? Free dom is only a notion, a mental mind-set and virtuality. It is auton omy, dominion, possession and power; love is the opposite. Love holds, builds; freedom separates and destroys.

      Light has got to have a mirror to excite itself. Through falling in love with God, who represents the loving self, we become love. If we don’t love self, we can’t love God. If we do not love God we deny the purest part of ourselves. Pride is the reason that the mind will not consider some entity more intelligent than self!

      The white lily by the left arm of The Empress is a symbol of purity of mind. She is pure of personal intent and so holds the idea of virginity and innocence of action. She is Mary, the universal mother, carrying the intelligence that humans can achieve. She is Number 3, the true hermaphrodite, who re-births and fecunds itself. As the mind is purified, she becomes Mary the Cosmic mother, the flower of purified matter and