NewMoon Tarot ArkLetter - http://www.tarotarkletters.com
By Christine Payne-Towler
ArkLetter 95, February 9, 2013
Now that we are a month into this New Year, it's getting a little easier to find our bearings. Notice how different our attitudes have become, now that none of the Outer Planets are crossing cusps anymore. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are finally sturdily attached to their new placements, as fellow astrologer Carl Boudreau has emphasized repeatedly over the last few months. (See: http://www.youtube.com/user/northwatuppa ) We can breathe a sigh of relief because the "ground of being" is going to stop mutating for a little while. This leaves us free to take our cues from what the awakening bulbs are busily doing outside -- expanding towards the incoming spring. The lengthening days, as well as the return to direct motion of Jupiter at the end of January, are giving us all an encouraging shove in the direction of the future.
I wanted to highlight the words Tarotlogy and Tarotsophy for a moment, just to relieve any cognitive dissonance I might have caused with the titling of last month's article. Tarot'Sophy' would refer particularly to the mystical and devotional aspects of the Tarot, where the word Tarot'Logy' is a signpost to the Logos of Tarot, the esoteric framework operative in the Mind of God. Sophia is the symbol of the Divine Imagination at work making the possible probable, whereas Logos holds the Creator's blueprint bristling with all of its arcane wisdom-traditions. It's a subtle discrimination, but Logos points to all the tools and techniques, the hard sciences of the Mysteries. Meanwhile, Sophia is the Divine Imagination herself, inventor of all the technical tricks employed along the path to realizing the vision in the Divine Mind. She is the artistic, visionary and intuitive aspect of the process, the source of all progress. Sophia is the interior guide of "how it works" which prompts us to pick up the tools of astrology, alchemy, kabala, sacred numerology, and finally Tarot, to complete our magician's kit. (Sophia is the High Priestess within the Tarot.)
If it weren't for a fluke of translation, these two words would never have parted meanings in this way. The difference is, Hebrew is a gendered language whereas Greek is not, so the functions of Sophia (whom the Greeks 'borrowed' from the Hebrews at the Alexandrian Synthesis) have been re-translated and thereby relegated to the masculine Logos (Christos) in the New Testament scriptures. In fact we are magically lucky to have this bifurcation in our linguistic history, in that by reflecting the Hebrew Sophia into the Greek Logos we receive a true Hermaphrodite to study -- both a tool-making Goddess and her material laboratory filled with the exquisite instruments of her Arts and Sciences. This is exactly what I see in our pack of mystical and occult symbols designed to stimulate both sides of the brain at once!
My professional practice is firmly anchored on the Logos (Arts and Sciences) side of the coin, if only because the Continental Tarots that comprise my area of expertise are all keyed to a Greek astrological adaptation within the Hebrew letters. But my mystic's heart can't help but sometimes bliss out in awe of She Who Lives Out God's Imagination! Yes, this topic is recondite, and confusing, and demanding a higher level of understanding from the reader to discriminate these fine points. This is why I have taken such pains to dig down into the historical esoteric tradition, so I could satisfy my Goddess-seeking mystic's brain without sacrificing the Logo-ic half of consciousness that delights in operating all the precise sciences and knowledge-tools under Sophia's tutelage.
In short, I am fully aware that there are European Tarotists making wonderful progress under the banner of "TarotSophia". I truly admire their work and have no ambition to steal their thunder! I will occasionally gush past the Tarotlogy boundary and fall into Tarotsophy as a matter of mystical enthusiasm. Please forgive me if I caused anybody confusion!
The Astro-Alchemical Hieroglyphic Monad of Dee and Boehme
In the intervening year since the Tarot of the Holy Light emerged, I have been learning how to teach about it. The ideas within the universe of these cards have taken my entire career to distill, largely because there has been no readily available common parlance in the Tarot world for the things I am finding. There are some modern terms under which some of these issues are talked about for Tarot purposes, for example the body of ideas now called the Doctrine of Essential Dignities. (see the Ladder of Lights and the Essential Dignities). But as is so often the case in the modern practice of Tarot 'history', our exposure to these things comes to us entangled in the twining vines of a kudzu-like overgrowth of historical understanding, which obscures the original Art in question and makes us overwork to gain mere crumbs of direct knowledge. Better to throw away the modern manifestations and just go back to the last direct practitioners, to see if a clearer understanding can be gained from studying more direct sources.
The particular occult construct of Jacob Boehme has been chosen to organize the occultism of the THL for good and sufficient reasons. Boehme's era was a terrifically fertile one for the kind of pursuits that allow the Tarot to serve as an interdisciplinary occult computer. After the holidays I acquired a book called The Magic Circle of Rudolph II; Alchemy and Astrology in Renaissance Prague, by Peter Marshall (Walker & Company, NY. 2006). This slim volume makes an excellent condensation of the era embracing Boehme's life, which played out in substantially the same arena of Europe. I truly recommend it for putting a user of the Tarot of the Holy Light in contact with the magical universe that these powerful magical thinkers were packing around in their heads.
One of Boehme's contemporaries was Dr. John Dee, who was apparently corresponding with Boehme as they both transited around Rudolph the 2nd's magical court. This sent me to re-examine my copy of Dee’s famous Hieroglyphic Monad. I have the hardback Samuel Weiser edition printed in 1975, translated and commented upon by J. W. Hamilton-Jones (done in 1945-6), with a second-printing introduction by Diane de Prima. The Hieroglyphic Monad is a terrifically condensed and gnomic presentation that purports to distill down the entire glyphic potency of the alphabet plus the sigils of signs, planets and elements into a single transcendent all-consuming symbol. Beyond that, it proposes a key for translating alchemical terminology into functional astrological operations. It is rightfully thought of as a peak expression of the insider's view of astro-alchemy. The question is how do we make our way across the transparent boundary that separates "looking at" an object versus "participating in" the subject it is teaching, specifically in the case of the Hieroglyphic Monad?
Dee's Magical Egg
Let me point out a few very important
insights that shine out of Dee's little book with refreshing clarity. In
Theorem XVIII, the reader is offered the cross-section of an egg, upon which
Dee has traced the orbits of the planets stacking up from the Moon at the
bottom, followed by Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and finally Saturn at the
top. His comments run so: "We have
contemplated the heavenly and divine functions of this celestial Messenger [the
Monad], and we now apply this co-ordination to the figure of the egg. It is
well known that all astrologers teach that the form of the orbit traversed by a
planet is circular, and because the wise should understand by a hint, it is
thus we interpret it in the hieroglyph shown, which conforms in every detail
with all that has gone before. Here you will note that the miserable alchemists
must learn to recognize their numerous errors and to understand what is the
water of the white of egg, what is the oil of the yolk of the egg, and what we
mean by calcinated eggshells. These inexpert impostors must learn in their
despair to understand what are meant by these and many other similar
expressions."(p. 25-6).
Looking at this image, it is clear that Dee is repeating the doctrine of the Ladder of Lights, with the novel twist of superimposing it on a bird's egg, without including the usual circle of Zodiacal signs around the outside edge. Saturn and the Moon define the outermost edges of the egg, which must then be the "calcinated egg-shells" Dee refers to. The next layer inward hosts Jupiter and Mercury, which both float in the part of the egg that corresponds to the "water of the white". Finally, within the circle of the yolk are Mars, Venus and the Sun.
By interposing the terms "water" and "oil" in his descriptions, Dee indicates that these planetary pairs key back to the three primordial alchemical substances or states of being -- mercury (water), sulphur (oil) and salt (ash). This fits perfectly with the Paracelsian paradigm that tells us that Mercurius "the volatile" corresponds to the (water of) Spirit, sulphur "the fiery" corresponds to the astral world (or anima, the invisible life of vibrations), and salt "the tangible" corresponds to the body of substance in time.
These are not just abstractions. In the praxis of the early 1600's, these alchemical terms were being used to differentiate very specific times and energies, so people were very careful and canny with their vocabulary, despite the many circumlocutions. One of the better expositions on the juggling of alchemical terms is embedded in Evola's Hermetic Tradition; Symbols & Teachings of the Royal Art.
Followed out, the planetary relations between Saturn and The Lights would then directly impact the bodily sphere in the world of matter. This leaves the pair Jupiter/Mercury to affect and reflect the astral plane or world of vibrations, proliferating the information through the cosmic neural net that Mercury and Jupiter create together. Finally, the Mars/Venus pair responds to the living spark of the Holy Spirit, the Creative Word that takes its cues from the Sun. These three categories of energies are unique to the ancient Astro-Alchemy and can only be understood in context of the Ptolemaic Ladder of Lights inherited from Antiquity.
Dee Quotes Boehme
Later in the manuscript, on page 60 of the Hieroglyphic Monad, Dee actually inserted Boehme's chart of the 'Seven Forms of Spirits (as mentioned in Revelations)', a graph taken from William Laws presentation of 'The Key of Jacob Boehme'. http://www.tlchrist.info/keyjac.html In a quote from Theorem XII Dee says "In the table given in this place our author [Boehme] has used different portions of his Monadic figure as signs for the planets. These are quite easy to follow. It is interesting to compare the table contained in "The Clavis," by Jacob Boehme, for Jacob also uses this selfsame Monad."
In the past, the significance of seeing Dee directly quoting Jacob Boehme in his Hieroglyphic Monad simply washed over me and disappeared, since I had no mental "peg" to hang the data on. These days it's getting easier to recognize the hallmarks of Paracelsian and Boehm-ian alchemy. It has finally penetrated my materialistic Taurus-Moon skull that the planetary values being referred to by Dee and Boehme are not "things in space" but are instead arcs of time and motion associated with the Ladder of Lights and the Doctrine of Essential Dignities. This means, when Boehme or Dee say "Saturn", they would take this a shorthand reference to the two Zodiacal signs Saturn rules as well as the two great lines of force that wrap around the Zodiac to the Lights via the Saturn-ruled signs, first from Aquarius to Cancer, and then from Leo to Capricorn.
Similarly, when Dee points to either Jupiter or Mercury, he's referring to the entire Mutable Square, with all the interpenetrating dimensions of intelligence that result from Jupiter and Mercury being planets that complete and extinguish all four seasons, dissolving the past in preparation for the incoming future.
As well, the Mars/Venus pair demonstrates the very seminal transitional times available between Aries/Taurus and Libra/Scorpio, covering the spring and fall periods ruled by this primordial pair. These pregnant moments are best dedicated to the formation of the new Holy Word, analogous to Boehme's lovingly tended goal of the Tincture that converts Daat to Sophia's residence and home of the new Sacred Marriage.
Lasting Confusion Among the Historians
This peculiarity of the doctrine is still somewhat confused in the mind of Dee's translator and commentator, J. W. Hamilton-Jones, who was writing in 1945-6. Hamilton-Jones wrote a theorem-by-theorem Commentary, which fills the second half of this little book. His attempt to clarify the cognitive dissonance he finds between Boehme and Dee can be found on page 69. Hamilton-Jones finds himself tripping over the changes that entered into Boehme's designs from his earlier geocentric focus to his later heliocentric focus. This is a mutation that Dee managed to avoid having to address in print, though visually it is easy to see his heliocentric sympathies. I don't mean to make a complaint against Hamilton-Jones, mind you! The scholarly community as a whole failed to get a firm grip on Boehme's sources and thus the evolution of his vision until a half-century later, with the new incoming research from the Western Esotericists.
Another feature of this Boehme/Dee conversation that has waited a long time to be explicated regards the significance of what is called The Figure Of The Wheel Of Nature appearing in Dee's astro-alchemy. It shows a Zodiac of sorts, although the wheel has more than 360 degrees, a fact that stands out as being very peculiar. This image is spliced into the Commentary to the Theosophical Monad, on the page opposite p. 69, by way of offering further support for Hamilton-Jones' incomplete appraisal of the parallels between Boehme and Dee. In other words, Dee did not choose this illustration to accompany his text, but Hamilton-Jones thinks we should find significance here. I would like to know more about the thinking that offers this illustration, but unfortunately, the subject seems to drop just as it is engaged.
Luckily, magical curiosity has come to bear on these abstruse points in the latter decades of the last century, despite the fact that no new light was thrown into this subject until the a goodly portion of Jocelyn Godwin's survey of the historical Pythagoreans was largely completed. Only with this catalogue assembled and the relevant illustrations on hand can one make sense of Boehme's elaborately-presented cosmogonic diagrams, which often incorporate a closing-and-opening spiral that fuses all the Planetary energies in its coiling rotations. This key to alchemical praxis has lain dormant in the art and literature of the field all these years, waiting for its "Aha" moment.
Tarot collectors see essentially the same
spiral traced over the chakras of Trump #1, the Magus in the El Gran Tarot
Esoterico, which emerged from the Fournier presses in 1977. This unique
formula points directly back to Boehme's
immediate spiritual circle in the early 1600's. But in my searches, only Julius
Evola's book The Hermetic Tradition was addressing these issues directly
at the time (first published in Italy in 1971), and Evola's reading public
struggled to make sense of his insights.
After that, twenty years had to pass before Phanes Press and Adam McLean collaborated to publish a new edition of William Law's The 'Key' of Jacob Boehme,. It still needed the whole next decade for the scholar Arthur Versluis to unfold the catalogue of resources he has been unearthing on the teachings of Boehme and his Angelic Brethren. And over that whole span of time, not one well-known Tarot historian became properly interested in this fascinating pre-echo made by El Gran Tarot Esoterico of the magisterial research on the Sefer Yetzira, which Aryeh Kaplan finally finished and released in 1990! Sadly, our Tarot scholars of the time were entirely uncurious, being mostly lost in the brier patch, caught up in the furtive charms of modern "magik".
Clearly, the pace of history is slow even when focused on immovable objects! Luckily we are currently on the receiving end of all this careful reassembly, and the essentials are beginning to come clearer. The lineaments of this traditional method are starting to show themselves again after lying all these years nearly dormant.
NewMoon at 22º Aquarius, February 9-10 2013
So then, with these planetary groupings
in mind, what patterns truly stand out in our NewMoon chart for Feb 8-9, 2013?
At the heart of the meaning of NewMoon in Aquarius, we see the forces of Sol and Luna converging in the sign that begins the great sweep down through the Planetary Rungs of the Ladder of Lights, heading for the Summerland of Cancer/Leo. (Do not be fooled because the NewMoon appears to be at the bottom of this month's chart I'm showing! That's an artifact of my unique location on the globe, so it isn't relevant outside of the Pacific Time Zone of North America.) In terms of the Sun's current station in the course of the seasons, humanity is poised to take on a new purpose, fresh inspiration, and higher ideals than ever before. This upcoming path from Winter to Summer has been called since ancient time the Wet Way, marking a period of manifestation that demands engagement, passion, identification and self-determinism to fully activate one's potentials by July of the incoming coming year. Now is the time to cement your resolutions, people!
I write about this pregnant moment every NewMoon in Aquarius, but it becomes more poignant every year for me due to the passage of time. I used to grieve for lost potentials, sorrow over the path not taken, and generally spend too much time looking backwards with longing and regret through the sign of Aquarius. Now I am more attuned to the accelerating Light that stirs Nature at this time, saying, "Here comes another year with more opportunities to try again". I gratefully rest in Time as it spreads out like an orderly and beautiful carpet, carrying us all along with grace and dignity. The only thing we have to do to earn our right to participate is conceive a worthy goal, one that Saturn and Nature can agree on. From a cosmic perspective, having the proper orientation makes us worthy and deserving of support. At this time of year the "womb of the mind" is open to receive that fresh spark from Heaven, with which to light our torches and banish the darkness. As we become inspired with the fresh visions offered by the Aquarius NewMoon, let us not forget to volunteer ourselves as tools for the Higher Forces, to be used in the collective project of reweaving the world.
The Bones of the Issues
Remember what I said above: Due to their relationship on the Ladder of Lights, the NewMoon of each Saturn sign will have a very strong completing (Capricorn) or commencing (Aquarius) bias. The Saturn-ruled signs form the crowning step of the yearly cycle, binding the spring and fall halves of the Zodiac together at their furthest distance from the Sun/Moon pair at High Summer. As the Sun transits the two saturnine signs, we become conscious of the most firm, solid and enduring parts of our immortal nature, the oldest and most permanent parts of our recognizable Self. This time of year puts us in touch with the bone structure that the rest of our personality, and the rest of the year, depends upon.
Another way to view the quality of this time is to realize that, while transiting Aquarius, the Sun pitches his intentions over the heads of all the Winter and Spring signs, aiming to connect with the Moon in Cancer. And on the flip side of the year, while transiting Leo, the Sun sends another ball of intentionality foreword across the summer and fall signs to Capricorn. This is the pulse that distributes solar vitality through the whole Solar System, like the ceaseless lub-dub pulse of the heart. According to the ancient teachings, the monthly fluctuations of progress and regress that we experience through our personal birth charts hangs upon this celestial handoff.
Bringing it Home to Your Chart and Your
Cards
This month, we also see the NewMoon forming a very close t-square with the North and South nodes of the Moon. This feature will fall into every person's chart differently, and it is worth investigating whether it touches or aspects anything that you have in the fixed signs. Be sure to think about all three corners of this drawn bow, (Aquarius, Scorpio and Taurus), and don't forget to scan the reciprocal untenanted point at 22º Leo. (For example, my Pluto is at 23º Leo with my South Node, so the NewMoon figure increases my natal fixed t-square and powerfully stimulates my own Nodes in the process.) Look for planets and sensitive points between 20 - 25 degrees of any sign, and then see how this NewMoon figure emphasizes or even changes the inherent patterns that dominate your natal chart.
A further step takes you to the THL Icon, where you can see the Trumps, Royals and Pips that represent your own astrological attributes that might be within range of this NewMoon. The Trumps for the Moon and Sun are the #2, Priestess and the #0, Fool, while the Trump for the sign Aquarius is #18, The Moon. At minimum, take the time to study these highlighted cards and pay special attention if they or any of the fixed-sign Royals (the Kings) come up in your spreads. Studying the energies of the 4, 5, and 6 of Swords might also offer hints about how to integrate and de-fang this Aquarius-centered T-square as it presses in and seeks manifestation. (This is especially true of the 5 of Swords, which covers the last 10 degrees of Aquarius where the NewMoon is actually happening.) The older you are, the deeper are your stacks of experience from which you can extract insights during unfolding current events. The goal is to be able to take advantage of the obvious "destiny energy" that pours down through the Nodes, without necessarily upsetting your stable points of reference in the socio-economic and personal world (Aquarius, and by extension Leo)
Of the other two Planetary Pairs, the most notable is the square between Mercury in Pisces and Jupiter in Gemini. These two currently share the condition of being in mutual reception, which means they are transiting through each other's natural signs. These two poles form a traditional dyad yet their current positions put them in detriment to each other. We might be tempted to call this an ambivalent signal, but you can't really call it negative because it is inherent to the system for the Jupiter/Mercury to express through square or opposition aspects; this is their natural mode due to their location within the structure of the Zodiac. Therefore I might call their current condition "stimulating", which can either lead to an upgrade in their relations, or else it will cause a breakdown (or maybe some of each).
The Tarot cards that would be called upon to illustrate this conversation are the Emperor (Jupiter) in the Lovers' realm (Gemini) and The Star (Mercury) in the realm of The Sun (Pisces). I'm guessing there's a subtle but very important transfer of power being enacted between Jupiter the Teacher and Mercury the Student, which is currently under negotiation between the signs of Pisces and Gemini. Mercury in Pisces is being tasked to view the world through the eyes of his Teacher, while Jupiter in Gemini has to endure and abide the chaotic flux and unfinished business of Gemini. The direction of these energy-transfers is always "sunwise", in this case stretching from Mercury in Pisces to Jupiter in Gemini across the spring equinox.
Divine Causality, Astral Transmission, Material Results
Remembering from the above that the Jupiter/Mercury pair represents the quicksilver astral fluid (the 'water of the egg' according to Dee) that leaps into resonance from any signal emitting from the "yolk" , we can now define the chain of causality within this internal cosmos thusly:
- A signal emerges from the Yolk, which is of origin in the Sun. This of course is the NewMoon in Aquarius. The whole spring side of the Ladder of Lights is illuminated.
- The Jupiter/Mercury pair instantly responds with a detrimental square in mutual reception from Pisces to Gemini, signaling the need for new working premises going forward.
- The least-activated planetary pair is Venus and Mars, who are currently storing up energy towards a conjunction in early April, across the 19th to 22nd degrees of Aries. This looks like a powerful "trigger" for a peak moment of creative release that will come after the Spring Equinox. Note that both planets still have to cross Uranus to arrive at their conjunction, and Venus still has to cross Neptune as well. Each one will be highly energized and ready to share their pent-up energies by the time they meet and merge in Aries.
If we are thinking like Alchemists, then we will be marking our calendars and following the directions Nature is pointing, not only right now, but also inevitably as time rolls forward. If we imagine the Sun rolling down the left side of Dee's Egg, each month that brings us closer to the Summer will activate another planetary engine and intensify our involvement along the Wet Way.
It is clear that the current NewMoon impulse will have to undergo a short-run reframing of our Jupiter/Mercury goals and motivations, followed by a longer-term explosion of fertile "fiery" energies when Mars and Venus celebrate their nuptials in Aries. One can analogize these ramifying energies to a ripple pattern spreading from the top of the alchemical egg to the bottom, as the Sun makes its six-month transit from Aquarius to Cancer. In the process, it will descend each rung of the Ladder of Lights and set off every harmonic the system holds in potential.
I have mentioned the most obvious forces being unleashed at the beginning stages of the project, but as the season unfolds and the Planets keep moving, we will see other alignments take their places. The main point is realize how these various times are meant to be used as they present themselves to your personal birth chart, and play out among your Tarot cards. We are to take these opportunities as invitations to evolve, and trust in the support of the unfolding heavenly influences to carry us through.
Oh yes! I nearly forgot to mention that my trip to Seattle was a success, and there are plans in the hopper for an all-day introduction to the Tarot of the Holy Light to be presented for Masons and non-Masons alike in early April. The details are just getting settled, so you’ll hear about it as the parts fill in. Things are looking up for 2013!
Blessings, all! We'll meet again in the tender month of Pisces.
ArkLetter 95, February 9, 2013
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