The Spirit of the Tarot. Claudine Aegerter

illustrations and format and final editing. Inspiration was drawn from the Ancient Wisdom teachings, given out by the Lucis Trust and the writings of Madame Blavatsky. To Edmond Delcamp who wrote ‘Le Tarot Initia-tique, Symbolique et Esoterique’ from which the initial idea for the talks was developed. The owners of the Oswald Wirth Tarot cards who have given their permission to use the images of their cards in this book.

      Others involved were; Colin M. Baker, Margarita Coleman, Paul Elkerton, Jenny Myers, Christine Tonks and all the people who attended the talks on the Tarot. Also the many other members of the Association Internationale de Numerologues and the Connaissance School of Numerology, who gave their support.

      Finally thanks to Claudine Aegerter, who was of course the great inspirer, joint editor and re-writer. The project completed its full cycle by coming back into her hands, to make sure that the original clarity of purpose and expression were retained.

      I myself have been privileged to have worked on the project from the very beginning, and have all the way through, derived enor mous inspiration from being able to hold this work together and finally see the completed book; there to inspire and provide a practi cal way of working with the greater energies of Soul and Spirit.

      Berenice Benjelloun.

       The Connaissance School of Numerology

      The School was founded in 1993 with the aim of advancing the knowledge and practice of Numerology. Our approach with num bers is to let them be our teacher and to open our intuitive intel ligence for, as Pythagoras said, “Number is the ruler of form and ideas and is the cause of gods and demons”. We offer Foundation and Diploma courses in esoteric Numerology.

       Association Internationale de Numerologues (AIN)

      The Association Internationale de Numerologues has the following aims and objectives:

      a) To promote the practice of Numerology as a profession.

      b) To stimulate and encourage the development of Numerology

      c) To represent the interests of professional numerologists

      d) To serve the public good through the promotion and practice of Numerology

      e) To build a brotherhood amongst numerologists world wide

      The School and the Association are both based in Royston, Hertfordshire in the UK. We are located over the historic Royston Cave which is at a significant junction of the Michael and Mary ley lines.

      Find out more on our website www.numerology.org.uk, or email us at [email protected].

       NUMBER ONE

      The Magician, Le Bateleur

      In the beginning

       The Magician or holder of the baton, is bright and wilful, full of potential and enthusiasm, yet he comes into the world knowing about the illusions and glamour of the world, so he is not going to be taken in by them. He is here to look for the greater truth and can only find it by being completely part of this world. He has all the elements of the Earth to use and he sees the whole of humanity reflected in him; by this means he can recognise what is real or illusionary within him. This is the work and the journey has begun.

      The Magician is the beginning of the pack, The Fool is the end and in between these two, the work has to be done and the journey made. The Magician represents the first stage or the Number 1, so he holds all the keys and is the potential initiate. He is the start of the process of the Number 1 travelling through his inner landscape for transformation. He’s represented as a man because he is the active principle. The Major Arcana was originally meant only for initiates and not for the average person, so he is someone who knows he is on the path of expanding consciousness.

      He knows that the material world or the world of form is an illusion and that humanity is doomed to self-destruct if it stays in that illusion. We have to stay in physical incarnation long enough to learn to survive, so that eventually we can say “There must be more than this” and start to look beyond the material world. The Magi cian comes back knowing that he is not going to be taken in by the illusion of form, so he will rise above whatever he has to do in the world in order to find the higher view of the Soul, which he can then apply and work with in the world. He’s coming back to research and find the truth and light, in a world dominated by illusion and glamour, glamour being the illusion of the emotional.

      He has come to change the world, but he knows that it is his perception of the world that has to change. ‘Be the change you want in others’. This means he has to make the change in himself and so spark the understanding of the process in others. This process is shown in Fig. 1.

       Figure 1. The field of the work of the initiate.

      Actually The Magician is the wrong name for him, because the sort of person we would normally call a magician would be someone who would perform and demonstrate magic tricks by showing a ‘before’ and ‘after’. The Magician’s more appropriate description is the French name for the card, which is ‘Le Bateleur’, meaning somebody who handles a baton to represent the power of his passion. The true Bateleur, or Magician, has to work with situations as they are; he simply cannot do anything else. He can not escape the elements or the karmic laws and limits that bind humanity on the planet. We have people on the planet who do not respect the natural laws because they want to be seen as magicians, but the true Magician partakes in the situation and the laws down here on Earth, with the highest respect. In fact the way he’s going to work is to stimulate and initiate, so that the work is done from within. Otherwise, he knows that it doesn’t really happen – there might be an apparent change for five minutes and then things go back to where they were before.

      The whole of life is movement and that movement has shaped the web of life in such a way that it can hold all the possibilities or potential. The psychic space of the planet is more polluted at the moment than the physical body of the planet. The mental and emo tional levels are equally or more polluted, this is demonstrated in the way that we treat life and each other. This is what the Bateleur, or baton holder comes back into, so we may wonder why he’s got a big smile on his face! He is happy because he’s going for truth and love, for without those there is no way he would be able to escape the weight of the illusionary world. This world is not just heavy, it is very thick and sticky and also very appealing, like honey. So he’s coming back into all the ties and karmic webbing that humanity has surrounded itself with. The average person is bound and tied in their own glamour and illusion. The cutting of these ties is the work that the initiate has to achieve within himself, using the very same tools of the everyday life experience in the world of matter. He has to inspire himself before he can inspire others to do the same.

      The Magician sees himself as completely part of the world and therefore can use the world to recognise what is still true or untrue within him. He knows about ‘as above, so below’, therefore what is in front of him can have a strong reflection within him. He knows that for the unreal to be wiped out he needs to feel his human side intimately, so as not to go into the illusion that he is different. The elements are in him, humanity is in him and he has to recognise and accept that, if he wants the clarity and the purification of the mirror. He’s smiling because he hasn’t realised all of that yet!

      Each card in the Major Arcana represents part of a whole, so in order to understand the place our Magician holds, looking at some of the other cards is helpful.

      The first three cards, The Magician, The High Priestess and The Empress, represent the three major aspects of the unity of the God we live in, so in these three we see a depiction of the