Hello Brothers and Sisters of The Light!
At this juncture I think it would be important to mention at the close of this Key the 20th Arcanum titled Judgement, a word or two about the method used to travel in our little essays. As you may see the figures arising out of their sepulchers are colored gray. This color is not death, it is the balancing of the energies from the two sides of nature, but to understand the actual way we are working with the cards a bit of instruction is now necessary.
The organization in the late 1800’s early 1900’s called the Golden Dawn was an extension of a Rosicrucian organization called Socitas Rosicruciana in Anglia or Society Rosicrucians in England. The Dr. Wynn Westcott , Magus of this organization and a high ranking Mason in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, was the discoverer of some rare Cipher Documents. These documents were the rituals and knowledge lectures of this group of Theurgical magicians called the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn heavily relied upon Jewish Kabbalah as their structure in the “Grades” of the Order.
In the later grades of Adeptship the members were given a document that was titled M and it had the attributions of the Tarot and descriptions of the Keys. As the organization got larger A.E. Waite was admitted , progressed to Adeptship and was the progenitor of the Rider Waite Tarot , He and artist Pamela Coleman Smith were the formative influences of this popularized version of an earlier deck called the Marseilles.
In the Golden Dawn each Tarot Card corresponded to many attributes and was a system of categorization , however the most important were the Hebrew letter attributed, A number , the Magical Sign and the Name of the card. The colors aren’t arbitrary either they are in what was known as the “Color Scale” of the Kabbalah. Each card has an attribution in the Kabbalistic “Tree of Life” and therefore is called a “Path”. This is known. Each “path” is the connecting channel of two Sefirot which are ten circles in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
Here is where we will start. The way we’ve been following as you probably noticed is not in sequential order by numeration but in the fashion of pathwork upon this diagram. We are first going from a Sefirot to another by means of the Tarot card. By using our imagination and actively engaging our minds in the crystallized form we are becoming acquainted with the “Roots” of this system. First we go from the Sefirot we are at, which for all of us starting is Malkuth , then we go from the middle to the left and right, only in the path of the moon is it appropriate to start out right before left. Once balanced we can proceed to the next sefirot. We are now at the end of the essays on the 20th Key and are moving to the Sphere of Yesod , We will then follow this same schematic.
In accordance with balance and equilibrium we are going to proceed but first about the color grey, it is a mixture of the color black and white or two opposing colors called flashing colors. The attributions of color are important because they are the scales that tell us the attributions of the card and the particular elements in later study. Each thing is a Kabbalistic idea, and each idea manifests in the model of the Tree of Life. Here we have 3 humans that are balanced by the Cosmic Fire and have attained the Wisdom of the Sefirot Chokmah . Since Keter is White and Binah Black the wisdom of the body these images depict is the attainment of the Chokmah element.
For now this is were we will end, but as we progress more and more, the tarot will take on a different meaning other than the common one of Divination, it will be our map on the road to Spiritual Destiny.
In Light and Love.
