Chapter XVII (part 1)

CHAPTER XVII. THE INITIATIVE TAROT. Ch. Barlet's Essay on this Subject--Involution and Evolution--The Hours of Apollonius of Tyana--The Phases of Initiation represented by the Tarot. THE INITIATIVE TAROT. APPLICATION` OF THE TAROT TO THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL DOCTRINES OF INITIATION. OUR friend F. Ch. Barlet has written a very interesting article upon this subject, which we will quote in extenso. Our readers will then see the exactitude with which his conclusions harmonize with our own. INITIATION. Amongst the ancients the scientific men were also the sages, such as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle; in modern times, on the contrary, science and wisdom are unsuccessfully seeking for each other, or struggling in mortal conflict over the religious question. That such a separation is against nature is easily seen by the study of those Positivist philosophers whose extensive learning and admirable efforts to build up a synthesis of scientific wisdom merit high rank in the modern intellectual world. Whilst their fundamental aphorism is that nothing is attainable by man beyond the world of phenomena, their works display an increasing though unintentional tendency to cross the limits which they seek to impose upon themselves, for they axe led by that nature which they love, and which in its final manifestations they know better than any one else. We may compare them to insects imprisoned behind a window; in despair they beat themselves against the glass, clearly seeing the sunbeam which should lead them to the source of all light, yet unable to follow it beyond the invisible wall of their prison. On the other hand, the Spiritualists are outside, free, and as it were lost in the luminous ocean, wandering without a compass, unable to find the guiding sunbeam which is the despair of the Positivists. However, one school exists which promises to guide the one, to free the other, and to direct each student towards the centre of Truth so ardently desired; an unknown school, little frequented, like every transcendent degree, although its masters have always given proofs of considerable learning--the school of Theosophy , a positive spiritualism preserved for ages in the ancient mysteries, transmitted with more or less purity by the Kabbalists, Mystics, Templars, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons, often degenerate, like every other doctrine prematurely divulged, yet hidden at the root of every religion, and carefully perpetuated in a few unknown sanctuaries, chiefly situated in India. The secret of Theosophy, in the, reconciliation between science and metaphysics, lies in a certain practical development of those human faculties which are best fitted to extend the limits of reliable knowledge. Let us first try to understand this possibility. An attentive examination of any scientific method, however positive it may be, proves that there is no evidence or certainty save in axioms, and that the fragile and changeable scaffolding of our sciences, built upon this immovable basis, is entirely due to intuition , of which observation and experience are only instruments. But the field of direct perception in which intuition exerts itself is capable of extension; this fact is now demonstrated by the phenomena of hypnotism and magnetism, the torments of our modern sciences; for by them the limits of opaque matter, of space and time, are suppressed in variable but incontestable degrees. But still, in this realm of transcendental faculties the perception is not always so reliable as the unvarying certainty which characterizes an axiom; for amongst the hypnotizable or magnetizable subjects, the material lucidity presents a number of gradations which are reproduced in the intellectual order, and which vary between the fancies of a disordered imagination and the sublime revelations of healthily inspired genius.