On Tarot

Let us advance further; Neophyte’s work with the Tarot is of exceptional value. It has a double meaning, and one Neophyte must establish both aspects in his work as deeply as possible. The first is the use of Tarot to travel in a vision; the second is its use for divination. Tarot is a remarkable portal for passing through a vision; the Aspirant must look on it as on an unfinished image of a great artist. What does a picture beyond the frame look like? Let the Neophyte expand that image, let him imagine that the Tarot card is just a small window behind which there is a much wider and larger world hiding. Let him dive into those depths and explore them, let him check what is there in the part of the map that is not visible? What does the rest of the drawing look like in all dimensions, up and down, and then from the side? The Aspirant can use the names already given quite clearly in “Liber 777”, although he can also construct and use others if he considers that they embody the nature of the image more closely. Sphere guides can be characters that are drawn, but they can also be some completely different elements that the Aspirant did not pay attention to. Maybe the Fool is a lower guide than Kinofekalus or even Monkey? Let him leave it to the vision to grant him a guide, not wanting any of the above – nor anything special, leaving it up to nature to decide what is best for him.

The story about Tarot is the story of an exhibition; sometimes, it is so absurd to see the whole exhibition, sometimes we go for days in a row without meeting a painter who may be timidly squatting in a corner waiting for someone to approach him. It is very likely that we could learn more about the pictures from that conversation than from all the pictures combined. Sometimes the whole exhibition is just a reflection of one single picture, or sometimes the whole exhibition is everything but a whole, but we remain under the impression of one picture, and because of it, we neglect all the others. Or even if we have looked at everything, after returning home, we have the impression that we haven’t actually seen anything. It is all such a futile job as such an author does not exist in the usual sense of the word. It is futile to meet him, partly because we are him, all this time. The author of Tarot is not the one who drew it but the one who holds it. This is an elementary paradox of this device, and all that can be said about it is – it works by the law we think it does. Thus, one opening can be completely useless in the hand of another Aspirant, and as long as they have a sense of what works in their case, it will work. Tarot, like Ji Jing, is a machinery of synchronicity, it is the currency of Samsara, and as long as that wheel rotates, it bears fruit. But it still requires some attention to detail.

As far as divination is concerned, people simply want to complicate things to such extremes that the question becomes meaningless. But most of us are surprised when someone asks us, “what do you need,” so simple, with a very short question that tears up our minds to such an extent that we really do not know what we want at that moment. It is the same with Tarot, one question – one random card. That is all about it. Still, there is another way that uses multiple cards for one question; it does not matter how those cards are stacked or drawn if the Neophyte really understands the mechanism by which synchronicity works here. And that has been, perhaps, the most important lesson so far. When you open more cards, synchronicity simply decreases. What is increasing instead, is what is perhaps more valuable in divination, and that is the unconscious spirit that has already got the answers to all the questions. The more cards have been used, the more successful is the way we form the story that connects those cards; it is completely irrelevant what those cards have brought. What matters is what they have caused in us, and since there are several of them, in its own way and beyond the reach of the conscious censor of reality, our intuition will connect the cards in causality and draw the logic which is actually what is required. In this way, you tell a story that you already know, the cards only serve to bring what you think is attached to them, like when we look at characters in the clouds; the ability where you can actually see whatever you want comes quite naturally which is the whole point of divination using multiple cards. It is completely irrelevant why you connect them the way you connect them. As long as you make that connection, you are at the same moment only copying destiny the way it has already been realized. It is the most sublime form of divination – which is not really a prediction but a recollection of the future that has actually already happened, instead of a future that is yet to come. So the real divination is to bring consciousness into a mode of remembering, not peeking into something outside of itself. It is a corridor of consciousness, by no means a corridor of time. If the Neophyte realizes this, he is indeed free to access more complicated openings, but all the while understanding the multitude of cards only as a provocation to ignite his spirit to construct a story that he cannot see with his rational killer of abstraction, while the cards serve here as a perfect system to extinguish that Ego sensor. Tarot is a machine more than anything, but we are interested in who the engineer is. Talk to him, and it will be more valuable to you than knowing the nuts and bolts of the machine that goes by itself after all. One card, one question. Multiple cards, on the other hand, bring consciousness to a much deeper plane, like when you answer a riddle. In one, you get an answer you do not know how to interpret; in the other, you are looking for justification and checking the answer you actually already know. It is very important to understand the difference between the two, even though both are aimed at the same thing – and that is getting a coordinated answer. A magician is always a witness to such a huge number of wrong questions – not wrong answers; the human being is simply made of special materials that so perfectly refuse to pose the right question, and it will do anything just not to ask what it has to. It is a greater skill to ask the right question than the skill of getting all the visions and clairvoyances together.

Divination is certainly the easiest of all our skills; the reasons for so many mistakes and obvious failures lie within our misunderstanding. Therefore, the condition for the development of desired talent does not lie in the increase of successful coincidences, but in the development of a specific type of consciousness that perceives the presence of the spirit in seemingly dead things. The method by which our enthusiasm would play is completely irrelevant; if we develop the right attitude toward methods, it will be such grand attainment that we would start to see a perfect result without investing any efforts. Talking about methods is surprisingly boring for our being; what we are talking about here is discovering our individual potential so that we can make perfect weapons ourselves. We think that the spirit is nothing but the manifestation of the wholeness and totality of all possibilities. Coming to that spirit is a projection of the spread of the Aspirant’s consciousness on higher planes. The ultimate success lies in the observation of patterns and mechanisms of repetition and similarity in the darkness of ignorance and illogicality. What we have referred here all the time is the thought about the magical link.

Tarot, Geomancy, and the Book of Changes are nothing but rotten projections of a magician. And we will be so rude to consider them all Black Magick. At the same time, they really all work perfectly, but for anyone who does not have an awakened Pure Will, these are types of the worst poison. If they are understood as predictors of events, it is spoiled food that will be secreted by the magician’s being with suffering, until the moment it reaches the ultimate experience itself. All together, they are nothing but proof of failure in the Great Work. We do not want the Aspirant to question or ask for anything; a magician demands unconditionality, possibilities do not exist. The Will has no aspects of its nature, but actions. Do not ask, but seek an answer; here lies the essence of divination, not to ask but to demand. You are allowed to ask for only one thing, and then divination cannot help you in any way, because what you are looking for is the Knowledge and Conversation, and all the scrying mirrors of the Universe are small surfaces to display this phenomenon.

Frater 273