Written by Luckky*
Is it any wonder that generations would be mesmerized by the fantasy and mystery of the tarot? As we look again at the biblical subtext we will dare do what the Kabbalists of old shunned. We will apply the Hebraic elements found in the icons to the modern world and the New Testament figure often called the Christ. Many believe that the collective consciousness is what allows the tarot to apply to every man, woman, and child in time and space, but let's apply this visual experience to the Christ child and the Christ Consciousness. The early followers of the concept of Christ regarded him as the “second Adam”. As the nature of the soul is enduring this is a highly likely reincarnation. Thus all past and future point to the singularity of his life, year zero aka the Zero Point.
It’s no wonder that Christian dogma is leery of such tools for prophecy and divination. Though this is more than storytelling for the sage. The mystic recognizes that the tarot can be used for inner revelation and to enhance their connection to spirit, as well as divination. Like Jesus drawing lines in the sand while deciding the life or death of a sexually promiscuous woman, I suspect this was a form of divination. In the gospels, his direct followers were seen casting lots to divine a replacement apostle for Judas. Even the most faithful of the old world recognized that chance and fate could be foretold such as with the Urim and the Thummim hidden behind the jeweled breastplate of the Levitical priests. For just as Saint John of the Cross described a “cloud of unknowing” perhaps too there is a cloud of knowing or “cloud of gnosis” that is both ambient and available to all who know how to tap into the omnipresent perennial truth.
The twelfth arcana is symbolic of condemnation. “Cursed is a man who clings to a tree” is messaged in the bible spanning from Deuteronomy to Galatians. Not unlike the aspirants today, it’s understood that in the tale of Christ he was condemned for demonic fraternization. This is true as told during his 40 days and nights in the wilderness with only Satan to offer him relief. Yet what good came of this, a great lot I can tell you. Healing the sick, allowing the blind to see and the lame to walk are far beyond the power of any magician known today. Casting out mental and spiritual sickness was a key feature of the Christ character and eventually led to his capture, incarceration's torture and execution. However, if you remember Part ! of this essay The Hangman has an insight into the aethers of the underworld. This card shows a great deal more than a man under punishment from the Justice trump that precedes, for it shows the foolishness of human judgment and our limited understanding. Self sacrifice is needed to see beyond the veil of death and into the very realm of Hell.
In the Death card, the sun rises from the gates of Sodom. A distraught woman and curious child are refugees of a failed city. A weak king has fallen and an angel drops the drag of mortality like the false garment of a spectral knight. Touching down only one foot on sand and the other in treat, the spook is not fully formed and with unknown allegiance. Death is an apocalyptic horseman telling us that each individual suffers the End-Times in their own private way. A personal confrontation that only the bold will face head on. The woman is the wife of Lot, looking backward to the past to become frozen as a statue of salt. The priest is not Lot but his cousin Abraham offering humble prayers for the mere chance of mercy. But not even Death is immortal and only the host of a short soiree ushering souls to a more sublime scenario.
It is the very door of Death that brings fear even to gods. Looking back to The Lovers the tarot explains the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge both deserve equal place in paradise and that death interlocks them both at the root. Looking at how the desire for knowledge led to the first instance of fear of God, and the beginning of wisdom, and also to the curse of mortality and eventual death. The loss clearly felt by a vehement deity, disappointed by the lack of self control. The chaos wrought by indulgent disobedience is but an echo, a rung on the sign wave of a supernal drama that we in the modern world still lay victim slain. The tarot and the gospels teach that death is not to be feared. As every card reader assures and querent when this trump is pulled, it means transformation, the ending and beginning of the old self to the new suggested by images of the butterfly in many versions of this image.
The styling of Pixie Colman Smith, as needed by the Christian Cabala foundations A.E. Waite, we see the same two pillars of The Moon in memory as an omen of Lilith, the first consort of Adam according to Jewish legend. With the tendency for Genesis to speak in twos intact, one thing is usually separated from another in the stories of creation, things always in binary such as history and prophecy. The “sun” rising from the earth between the pillars this time, like Adam (from the Hebrew “adamah” meaning “earth”) is pulled from the sandy womb of the land, personified by Lilith. This mother and wife, as many goddesses are, she writhes and wrestles with Adam in a sexually violent tumult. Why must she be below and not created equal? Must she submit her will and identity to the fruit of her being?
The Devil is often regarded as a dastard, if not a bastard, in the heavens. Once born, men often neglect the womb save for the narcissistic lusts of libido. Such is Lilith and her earthy loins longing for respect and recognition. Silenced like The High Priestess and unseen like the dark side of The Moon, Lilith escapes the scene never to partake of either Tree. Science tells that the literal moon did in fact rise from the soils of earth to shine its own ominous luminesce. Could it have been Lilith turned lizard in lesbian seduction who lay trap in the Tree? Unavoidably cursed to crawl on the belly. Womb to the earth, forbidden from the fruits of life and death. Never to have children of blood like her replacement, Eve, with eternal enmity between them.
With feminine breasts she now sits atop the beast Baphomet as if the Whore of Babylon. The infamous 15 perched in a stranglehold of strange figures. Desperate doppelgangers of the sky clad power couple she contends with. But “is it true?” says the serpent, shall she be belly barren? She bore no bone but with a consort of her kind, a fallen Luciferian man god, The Devil. From ancient times many today still use sigil talismans over cribs to ward away this wayward demiurge as she has been associated with sudden infant mortality syndrome (SIDS), stealing the breath of life for her own offspring. Archons in orbit, scintillating and oversexed, these nymphs hope only to violate the flesh of succulent virgins to have their own incarnations. Nocturnal phantoms inseminate in nightmares to live and die on earth as Nephilim.
The Hermit is the parallel of prudence. Being both Enoch and Noah, The Hermit senses disaster hanging low from the starry seeds of astrology. Apocryphal Enochian texts speak extensively of a terrible race, giants of renown, with angelic agents deployed to destroy them and their teaching of occult sciences, war and the dark arts. Unholy hybrids with technological advances leading mankind closer to an apocalyptic crack in the sky. Skyscrapers topple in The Tower. Kings and queens dumbfounded and blathering being scattered to the corners of the earth, the cosmos is unrelenting in intelligence which information artificial can never contend. Confounded are the teachings of haughty men who have the Satanic arrogance to assume a dignity undeserved. Who think they can outsmart the All with their own lofty peaks of learning. Star linked sires of star crossed kids to be stoned to death by peels of thunder.
Temperance, not forgot, means alchemy is afoot. Determined to heal bitter waters, Raphael or Michael serenely pours a divine flowing brew. Honestly, this is a wine of fury into a cup of wrath. A cup of wrath into a grail of peace. The flood of Gilgamesh - to fill and cleanse the land from Nod to a distant Ararat. Damnation by climate change or by the globalism seen in The Tower are omens of the future while the promise of Zion crowned the inheritance of the royal blood of he who was first formed by the Yod He Vav He, the archetypal “child of God”.
Lilith is but an echo of the feminine who would dare, defiant of her spouse. Her story is that of her own mother, a triple goddess. The supernatural soap opera is told with Mother God Shekinah interfering with the natural consequence as described in Genesis, death for disobeying the Father. Now, what was once a battle of the sexes is a battle of brothers. Like a melody that hates the lyrics, Lucifer desired the throne on Adams’ head, as the jealous sibling of a favored son, Logos. Formerly the Angel of Glory, he and his guerilla armies were allowed to live on earth yet exiled in a hell dimension instead of extinction. As the invisible emanation of the sephira, Da’ath, knowledge, he has fallen but is not forgotten and precedes the solar Tiphareth as the first born.
Protecting Satan as only a mother would the Holy Spirit has ensured the life of her offspring until the end of the world. As a consequence, she too suffers the same exile not unlike a beautiful woman concealed in a burka, the invisible half of the rainbow. This is also in the story of Cain who slew a younger Abel. Earth cried as the blood of life touched her lips for the first time but Cain was the first “saved” from punishment with a mark as an unusual act of compassionate intervention, as no mom would be willing to lose another son. This thirst for blood sacrifice would become the hallmark of the gods, as a vampiric ambrosia for the Elohim, to be spilled on soil as propitiation for sin. Such was the deception of Jacob at the behest of Rebecca and as with Solomon and his brother Sheba, blessings usurped from the first born yet intended only for one.
In distant time the angelic work of Temperance is resumed in The Star. The Great Bible Tarot published by Pyroskin depicts the 17th trump as the star of Bethlehem. Christ, himself full fledged Nephilim has arrived to buck the system. Haloed and hallowed The Star is the living channel, Logos made real. An intermediary between the God and Goddess, and even emissary between life and death. This anointed individual speaks for the heavens on earth as both Love and Gnosis, both trees - binary - incarnated one. The Star is The Christ in you made possible by death of Christ. A tactic to enter the cycle of reincarnation rapturing the heart and the mind to become like a secret agent, a spy, or a person possessed and empowered by a poltergeist. The highest potential not only of the individual but of the entire species of man.
Followed by The Moon and The Sun we see eclipsing energies. The Moon being a stone rolled briefly in front of a tomb but only for a short time until the resurrection. In the creation story of Genesis the sun and moon were created to govern the day and night with light. The masculine sun so potent and the passive feminine moon reflecting on its energy sends subtle messages to the deep. Outer space is analogous to the sea splashing tsunamis of gravitational waves. Special lunar positions raise what was hidden in oceanic mysteries to the surface. The orbs were intended to create signs of the times and in their clockwork fashion pull the minds of the observant to astrological and alchemical discoveries. The Moon levitates between the same two pillars as seen in Death to illuminate the winding narrow path of ascension between hounds of loyalty and lunacy. It’s from the primordial silt and swamp in the bitter waters where she realized she was an accidental byproduct. Never fallen nor sinned, pure and necessary evil, Lilith is an illegitimate demigoddess who wants an Eden of her own. As tenacious as a lobster, Lilith is the dark promethean light that is the impetus of human evolution, the need for life to survive even on other worlds to come.
We all seek the great utopian frontier, it is in our nature. The garden of Eden is within each of us as our spirit is the flower coming forth from the flesh. We see this in The Sun arcana and the gated garden of souls awaiting a victorious harvest with the grave is simply a storehouse for the seeds of our many lives. As the apple of an all seeing eye, our incarnations expand in a great lattice throughout history. Childlike smiling faces on a family tree more grand than any before shows that one man is every man and that one family in one generation is the whole of the race. To quote Christ, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”, here and now, and we must capture this moment in the radiance of pure love, carpe agape. The sun completes the tale of time and one day will acquiesce to mythic memory. The multitudes of lives, magnified, wash ashore the Pearly Gates of the Milky Way as an undeniable force of nature, like a deluge in heaven - Shema!
Now let’s step outside of time.. To the Day of Judgment. Gabriel descends again as herald to the coming of a messiah taking the duty as understudy to Satan in his original role. This time not to Adam or Mary, but to the dead in Sheol. The idea is that after the crucifixion of the body the spirit of Yeshua dropped down to Hel as all souls do. The mechanism of death institutes a deep sleep for the life-weary from the first to the last. It is only after the execution of Yeshua that he is able to cheat the system and invite all the worthy deceased to come to the resurrection, that Death has been overcome and paid for in the essential blood sacrifice of a killed god. This is a bit paradoxical because he also takes the opportunity to insert his soul into the wheel of reincarnation so disperse his being into selected saints. This may be one interpretation of the foretold “Second Coming”.
However, the Kemetic (Egyptian) roots behind the idea of Judgement Day cannot be ignored. In the beginning, it was Osiris who was betrayed by his brother Seth and dismembered. Only for his sister-wife to collect and reconstitute him, saving his phallus to inject sperm toward her womb. This non-sexual act qualified her offspring, Horus, for a virgin birth. Among many things, Osirus is the king of the underworld and is promised to use the scales of Ma’at to judge the deeds of the dead against their intentions at the end of time. One side of the scales holding the actions of their lifetime shown as a feather, ultimately insignificant. While the other side of the scale held the heavy heart and your immortal fate.
The similarities between the so-called sun gods Jesus and Horus are many. And looking at some key names such as Seth we see the name of both the brother of Osiris but also the brother of Cain and Abel. The highest in the pantheon was Ra, another sun god was also of virgin birth and would later be called Amen-Ra. The word Amen is used in both ancient Hebrew and Christian versions of the bible meaning “so be it” and usually closes prayers not unlike the Pagan use of “so mote it be” to close a spell. The Gospels use this term also, however, Yeshua uniquely uses this to begin his most powerful words and prophecies with the alternate definition meaning “truly” and would conversely open his statements this way, “Truly, truly I say unto you..”
Not only is the Egyptian connection historic in that Israel was overseen by Egyptian authorities as far back as the 13th century BC. But again, we must recall the enduring cultural impact upon the characters of Joseph, Moses, and Yeshua after they each migrated to the desert kingdom. All three were sure to possess an elite education from that region and undoubtedly were well versed in the 42 laws of Ma’at that prescribe good character for persons hoping to survive post-mortem judgement. This bygone faith returned again and again as an example of perennial knowledge unto the generations of Kemitian, Jews, Muslims and Gentiles. With the foundational 10 Commandments cherry picked from hieroglyphic sources Ma’at, the Black goddess of truth, justice, harmony and the law can never be denied as the seat of wisdom for ethics and morality throughout the nations still today. I digress to highlight the potency of this material.
Returning to the tarot in this larger context we close with The World. Having the four figures of the merkaba, or chariot of God, Raphael in Temperance, Michael in The Lovers (I argue this is Michael with open hands, swordless before the fall), Uriel in The Devil and Gabriel in Judgment enshrining a wheel within. The archangels fit the fixed signs of Aquarius, Leo, Taurus and Scorpio respectively. Inside the wreath is the perpetual Syzygy. Behind a fashionable sash the male member is neatly tucked as only appreciated by intersex individuals. Woman and man once again original. The alchemical romance is the point of the whole story. Holy sex and synergy is the transcendent promise implied. New Jerusalem, the orgasm of Heaven and Earth wedded and worthy of both the fruits of flesh and flame, Love and Gnosis one and the same. Mixed and married inseparable, the resurrected Adam Kadmon naked no longer.
