Greetings to all who labor in the Great White Brotherhood.
We are now going to traverse a path that is depicted in the 16th Arcanum of The Tower. At first we are looking at a very grim picture. The tower card represents a destruction, or de structuring of fixed elements. We are shown kings and stone structures being crumbled by lightning and the vision of a fall into the abyss. This key represents a final initiation-like vision or what may be called in hermetic thinking the beginning of the process leading to the goal of the “Visio Beatifica”. This vision is a revelation of the divine self to the personality resulting in actual experiences of what may be called “That which exists” or “ta onta” the things which are.
As beautiful as it sounds to be awakened to the higher realities of existence, this process requires a sort of death internally, what the mystics call a “metanoia” or second birth. This is just like the way a baby is initially born into the world. It goes through a time of eating up the mother’s food, of being saturated in the womb by life sustaining energies and fed to be raised, to a stable and sustainable form. Once this form is acquired the actual structure, that built the fetus go crumbling down and the baby is birthed. This process is extremely painful for a child and though it represents the beginning of mortal life, it is in fact the end of a previous existence that was by nature, way less painful. Therefore , each period of growth and evolutionary motion , by its inherent capacity to change , by nature requires a orderly destruction, to experience higher forms of existence. This is the beauty of the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence which states that there cannot be any created thing that isn’t subject to destruction or cessation of its temporary form. This is also the second law of thermodynamics.
Though very subtle , the gnostic doctors were aware of this law of impermanence. That is why they regarded the world as dualistic in some Valentinian schools. This though isn’t exactly true as an absolute, because an absolute by its nature cannot have a contradiction. The Gnostics of th 2nd century till current have maintained that there is a seeming duality in our experience , but that at the core of all existence there is a unfathomable , incomprehensible, and undefinable source of all things that was called by the name of Father, by the Master ,Mar Yeshua, and Unknown Principle by the Gnostics.
They (the Gnostic Doctors) maintained that there was a One , which was all in the midst of the many. This one is the earth shattering lightning bolt of our key. Once this force is set in motion the individual is powerless against its power of purification and resulting illumination. It is the goal of the Western Mystery Tradition to develop and inculcate a method whereby this power may be realized. This was titled the “upward path” by the hermeticists and the “path of return” by the Kabbalists.
In light and love
Frater Lucis, Cor Meum Lucidum.
