Friday, April 04, 2008

Meditations on the Tarot: Knowing the Emperor
the simultaneous vision of the temporal and the eternal

Authority is the magic of spiritual profundity filled with wisdom. Or, in other words, it is the result of magic based on gnosis due to mystical experience.

For this reason it is more correct to say that authority is the completely-manifested divine name. The completely-manifested divine name signifies at the same time a post, the post of the Emperor, or the state of consciousness of the complete synthesis of mysticism, gnosis and sacred magic.

And it is this state of consciousness of complete synthesis which is initiation. . initiation understood not in the sense of ritual nor in the sense of the possession of information held to be secret, but rather in the sense of the state of consciousness where eternity and the present moment are one. It is the simultaneous vision of the temporal and the eternal, of that which is below and that which is above.
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Hermetic philosophy does not teach what one ought to believe concerning God, man and Nature, but it teaches rather how to ask, seek and knock in order to arrive at mystical experience, gnostic illumination and the magical effect of that which one seeks to know about God, man and Nature.

And it is after having asked, sought and knocked —and after one has received, found and gained access — that one knows. This kind of knowing — the certainty of the synthetic comprehension of mystical experience, gnostic revelation and magical effect—is the Emperor, this is the practical teaching of the fourth Card of the Tarot.

from The Emperor


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