The Speaker stands in an erupting landscape. Mountains are exploding and waters spouting up out of the ground behind and beside him. His eyes are terrible and his neck is corded with the terrific effort. His hair is golden and falls to his shoulders. He is nude except for desert boots, rising to his ankles. He holds a black arm ring in his right hand, and a golden key in his left hand. A shimmering heart is seen on his breast. Buds of new life spring up before him. The Speaker has learned the hard way of that which he speaks, through purifying suffering. Thus, the golden heart. "Recovery of the lost treasure is made easier when the heart is golden. The course is through the golden heart in all instances." He holds up the iron armband of the slave, telling us of our own slavery to forces we did not know existed. The Speaker has removed his. His desert boots insulate him from the 'ground' of ordinary belief and existing culture. The Speaker must be independent of what is, for he speaks of what may be. His long hair is also a flag of independence, or it certainly was in the sixties. In order to be qualified to speak, one must have found a key to the keylock mankind carries in the present age (see the Book of the Victorious One). Once found, this golden knowledge of purifying suffering over many lifetimes now results in the disruption of the old, solid ground of society. Yet the effort is severe. The very same forces which keep most in slavery also make it very difficult for the Speaker to gain access to the machinery of mass communication. A wide variety of symbolic ideas is conveyed by birds of one species or another in the new tarot. There is the government eagle, the seeming-independent bluebird, and the Horus Hawk of night spreading spark- stars throughout mankind. The cormorant and 'goony bird' play a role in the minor arcana. The bolt is the shock of lightning and thunder, a necessary and delightful feature of the renewal of nature by rain, and by association, the renewal of mankind as well. Thus, the Speaker is not all 'sweetness and light'. He is no nambypamby parson. His words are thunder and lightning. And the seemingly solid ground of conventional thought and action erupt violently in response to his crashing revelations. Like the Changer, this book is a promise of success, a promise that our words will not fall on deaf ears, and will initiate great changes. The effort is extreme. The difficulties for the Speaker are enormous. But he will succeed. And buds of new life spring up before him. |
"Speak out needful sayings! Hold not back... or the word, unuttered, that ups shall sink, tearing holes in the dark shaft. The Speaker is with you. He stands with open mouth. He speaks. Birds and bolts issue forth. With love it is done."