Saturday, April 05, 2008

Meditations on the Tarot: Pope of the Pentagram
the operation of a limited number of magical formulae and signs

The senses —given that they are sound and functioning normally—are wounds through which the objective world, without regard to our will, imposes itself on us. But the senses are organs of perception, not of action.

It is still necessary to specify the five wounds corresponding to the five dark currents of the will — the desire for personal greatness, to take, to keep, to advance and to hold on to at the expense of others —which correspond, in their turn, to the five limbs (including the head as a limb).

How does one acquire the five wounds?

Every esotericist, every mystic, every idealist, every spiritual-seeker and, lastly, every man of good will makes use of it, in Europe as in Asia, today as twenty centuries ago. This universal method of all ages and all cultures is nothing other than the practice of the three traditional vows, namely obedience, poverty and chastity.

Now, it is a matter in the magic of the sacred pentagram of five wounds of accomplishing the living presence of the good alongside the consciousness of the subject of the operation. For good does not fight evil; it does not struggle against it. The good is only present, or it is not. Its victory consists in that it results in being present, its defeat in that it is forced to be absent.

The history of mankind —seen from its "nocturnal" side— is at root the operation of a limited number of magical formulae and signs.

The cross, the pentagram and the hexagram are signs and formulae which operate in the history of mankind. The cross is the vow and virtue of obedience, i.e. the sign and formula of faith, as horizontal human respiration and vertical divine respiration united together. The pentagram is initiative; it is effort and work, i.e. the vow and virtue of poverty—or the sign and formula of hope as the effect of the presence of divine light here below. The hexagram is the vow and virtue of chastity, i.e. the sign and formula of love.

Now, the post of Pope in the spiritual history of mankind is that of guardian of the sacred pentagram of the five wounds, i.e. he guards the one legitimate way of passing from the cross to the pentagram and from the pentagram to the hexagram. The mission of the post of Pope is to take care that spiritual obedience, poverty and chastity—free and holy —do not disappear from the world and that there are always people in the world who embrace them and represent them. For these three practical vows constitute the preliminary condition for living faith, luminous hope and ardent love, i.e. for the spiritual respiration of humanity.

excerpted and edited from chapter, The Pope



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