22. The Book Of Hermesg

Other Tarots substitute a spinner unwinding destinies, and yet others a naked child mounted on a white horse and displaying a scarlet standard. רVegetative principle, generative virtue of the earth, eternal life. Hieroglyph, THE JUDGEMENT. A genius sounds his trumphet and the dead rise from their tombs. These persons, who are living and were dead, are a man, woman and child the triad of human life. שThe sensitive principle, the flesh, eternal life. Hieroglyph, the FOOL. A man in the garb of a fool, wandering without aim, burdened with a wallet, which is doubtless full of his follies and vices; his disordered clothes discover his shame; he is being bitten by a tiger and does not know how to escape or defend himself. תThe microcosm, the sum of all in all. Hieroglyph, KETHER, or the Kabalistic Crown, between four mysterious animals. In the middle of the Crown is Truth holding a rod in each hand. Such are the twenty-two Keys of the Tarot, which explain all its numbers. Thus, the Juggler, or Key of the unities, explains the four aces with their quadruple progressive signification in the three worlds and in the first principle. So also the ace of deniers or of the circle is the soul of the world; the ace of swords is militant intelligence; the ace of cups is loving intelligence; the ace of clubs is creative intelligence; they are further the principles of motion, progress, fecundity and power. Each number, multiplied by a Key, gives another number, which explained in turn by the Keys, completes the philosophical and religious revelation contained in each sign. Now, each of the fifty-six cards can be multiplied in turn by the twenty-two Keys; a series of combinations thus results, giving all the most astonishing conclusions of revelation and of light. It is a truly philosophical machine, which keeps the mind from wandering, while leaving its initiative and liberty; it is mathematics applied to the Absolute, the alliance of the positive and the ideal, a lottery of thoughts as exact as numbers, perhaps the simplest and grandest conception of human genius. The mode of reading the hieroglyphs of the Tarot is to arrange them in a square or triangle, placing equal numbers in antagonism and conciliating them by the unequal. Four signs express invariably the absolute in a given order and are explained by a fifth. Hence the solution of all magical questions is the Pentagram, and all antinomies are explained by harmonious unity. So arranged, the Tarot is a veritable oracle and replies to all possible questions with more precision and infallibility than the Android of Albertus Magnus. An imprisoned person with no other book than the Tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequalled learning and inexhaustible eloquence. In fact, this wheel is the real key to the ORATORICAL Art and the Grand Art of Raymund Lully; it is the true secret of the transmutation of shadows into light; it is the first and most important of all the arcana of the Great Work. By means of this universal key of symbolism, all allegories of India, Egypt and Judea are illuminated; the Apocalypse of St. John is a kabalistic book the sense of which is indicated rigorously by the figures and numbers of the URIM, THUMMIM, TERAPHIM and EPHOD, all resumed and completed by the Tarot. The old sanctuaries contain no further Mysteries, and the significance of the objects of the Hebrew cultus is comprehensible for the first time.