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One day the local god said to his jester, "Fool, I'm bored." The Fool replied, "What you need is a little variety, a little drama and suspense." "How? I know everything. I can't forget anything. I'm bored." said the local god.
The jester said, "Subdivide, and let the subdivisions subdivide. You lay low. Your children can go live in those animals down there (pointing to the future)." The local god looked at his divine fool and said, pityingly,
"You'll get trapped down there. You'll be caught in an endless round of birth and death, my son. You forget everything and lose all your powers."
"True," said the divine trickster, "but it'll be a new challenge at every turn, endless rounds of conflict, misery, chaotic destruction and painful, unpredictable reconstruction, and hopefully a slow spiral upwards. At least it will be unpredictable." Thus saith the wise, innocent fool. The local god shuddered and said, "I'm going to sleep."
So it was done (fig. 17). The Fool stepped off the precipice, in the purple light of dawn in the time of Scorpio. He took with him the wand of life and creativity and the wallet of race memory and karma. The Fool knew he was going to forget, but relied on his magic wallet to provide lessons, and symbols, and even memories. If that failed, he relied on the old man to wake up and give everything a good shaking. H also relied on the wand of creativity to get him out of all the unanticipated challenges. Just before he stepped off the precipice, he recalled a saying of a wise man of the fourth world to come: 'all roads lead nowhere. What is important is that the way have heart.' The Fool grinned. His number is zero.
He left behind the realms of pure spirit, governed by likes and dislikes, and entered the world of matter, governed by cold, abstract principles of mathematics. The dance of death began.
The first world was Tokpela. The Fool had become the Magician, the one, the active principle. Overlaying his white purity was the red robe of passion, sex, desire, anger. In Tokpela, things were perhaps too easy. People changed their forms and wandered around the seven planes. The talked to the animals and plants, and knew themselves. There were no challenges and life became static. The Great Way was forgotten. So the Magician used his magic wand and called up the local god, via the vibratory centers in the earth.
"Who is it? Who wants me?" said the local god, waking up from his nap. The Magician pointed below.
"Oh, I see. Time for a cataclysm." And he sent a rain of fire. And the second world, Tokpa, began in the red light of dawn with fewer 'advantages' than before. People could still communicate through the top of their heads, but no longer could freely transform shapes and wander in the seven planes. The magicians had the pranic polarity of yin and yang, and the red passions, and the cup of the subconscious, the sword of power and change, the pentacle of scientific-materialistic power, and the wand of renewal and change. Nevertheless, this society also eventually became petrified. It was destroyed by a toppling of poles. Mountains plunged into seas with a great splash, seas and lakes sloshed over the land and as the world spun through cold and lifeless space, it froze into solid ice, or so it seemed to the survivors. In the third world, Kuskurza, people progressed further up the road, struggling with the physical difficulties of the ice ages. And great and wonderful civilizations flourished at times during these two million years. Unfortunately, the same old pattern eventually repeated itself. The powers and knowledge were misused. People forgot the purpose. There was war and strife and materialism, and degradation and exhaustion. But the worst thing was that the pattern became set and rigid. Inertia and limitation are the only ultimate evils.
This world was destroyed by water. Continents sank and broke apart. Others rose from the sea. Mountains of water washed away everything. This time the local god was determined that his progeny would have to start from scratch, without any magical powers. This is Tuwaqachi, the full light of day, the fourth world, the one we live in, with three more to come.
The Fool had been the Magician for a long time. Time to move on. The next stage is the High Priestess (fig. 19), number two, the passive, the divided. For thousands of years she presided over fire festivals, corn festivals, annual dying and reviving gods and kings, sacred groves, ritual frenzy, and sacred sex. She was Ceres, and later, Diana, and Astarte. Now that the higher centers were no longer consciously accessible, she was priestess of the unconscious, of symbols, of mysterious emotions. She was attuned to the surging rhythms of life about her, for after the fall of Atlantis, man had to become completely part of nature, rising slowly and blindly, erratically reinventing agriculture and civilization...on a new basis.
The first flowering is the Empress. She is the Socratic axis, Athena, Isis, Mother Mary, Heavenly Yin the Aztec queen (originally Toltec). She is patroness of the rich early civilizations, the first fruits of the impregnation of the subconscious by the rational conscious mind: Chou, Athens, Persia, Vedic, Toltec, stirred to life by such as Socrates, Buddha and Confucius. The brilliant achievements of the Socratic axis civilizations were maintained and spread and organized by the Emperor civilizations which followed. The time of the Emperor was a time of universal states, the Romans in the West, the Han in China, the Maurya in India, Parthians in the middle East, Meroe in Africa, Maya in America.
After the breakdown of empires, there was a 500 year period in which the central unity of societies was provided by the Hierophant, members of a universal church with philosophical or humanistic elements.
The synthesis is renewed in the time of the Lovers, key 6, in the Goth, T'ang and medieval Persian civilizations. Raphael, angel of the air, personifies the superconscious pouring down cosmic benediction on the lovers, standing nude and unashamed in friendly harmony. The woman is the subconscious, evolved through her, she looks at Gabriel. The half-forgotten path to the superconscious lies through the unconscious, and the Gothic cathedrals and Persian love stories devoted to the Virgin/Mother/Queen of heaven reflect this dim realization. There serpent of sensation climbs the tree of the fruit of the five senses. The 12 signs of the zodiac stand in the background. Man is still under the dominion of the stars.
The World-Machine of the 'modern' era is symbolized by the Chariot: victory for the triumphant king who conquers the planes of mind, science, and growth. The Chariot of the human personality (individuality, self) is pulled by two sphinxes, the two pillars of the Tree of Life of the material world. They may pull in different directions if the will of the charioteer does not control them. The canopy of celestial influences hang over him and affect his victory. If his powers of observation are faulty, superficial, or fearful, the resulting sequence of subconscious reactions is bound to be destructive (figs. 14, 15)(e.g. Napoleon, WW I, and Hitler). The Chariot is still moving forward, despite many losses. The scientific development of the World-Machine culminates in the spiritual sciences, value sciences, and mythic sciences, and the technology of the World-Machine will culminate in the world ecological automated economy (ecolomat). As a result of this, and as a result of the changing astrological influences, by 2150 society will be represented by the Strength symbol, key 8, and perhaps simultaneously, or a little later, by the Hermit. This stage may last a long time. As Cheiro says, the rule of gold will gradually be replaced by the golden rule.
Strength is a woman garlanded with flowers closing a lion's mouth. Above her head is the cosmic lemniscate of Eternal Life. Consciousness aware of the Eternal forces can control the passions, lower nature, and wild unconscious forces of man. Her simple white robe indicates purity. Around her waist there is a chain of roses, symbol of the union of desires which creates such strength that wild, destructive forces bow before it. The union of desires is the humanist synthesis, the activation of the now universal desire for peace, tranquillity, an end to willy-nilly change, an end to growth for growth's sake, an end to accidental destruction of the highest values of nature and society.
There will be an end to destructive divisions and to destructive competitions and to the dog-eat-dog philosophy of the World-Machine which gave such momentum and power to the Chariot. The wild forces (the lion) which propelled the conquistador and the pioneer and the captain of industry will be tamed by world unity, and harmony will be provided by scientific religion, aristarchian world government, and no-growth, automated ecological world economy, which will end poverty and material want once and for all. The people will be content in their villages with the rich and satisfying rituals and symbols of empirical religion, with the infinite variety of the learning center, with the unending round of craftsmanship. It may be a long period of pleasant stagnation, like the first phase of the Neolithic revolution.
The eventual heroes of the coming period will be symbolized by the Hermit. The Hermit stands isolated on a snowy mountain peak, holding up a lantern to guide those below. His lantern is the Lamp of Truth, contacting the six-pointed star of Solomon, symbol of the reunion of opposites in the initiate (fig. 10). The Hermit carries a patriarch's staff to use on the narrow path of initiation. His cloak is the mantle of discretion. He reveals his light only to those who truly cry for Light, and the masses will no doubt not be much interested in the stern trials, fantastic adventures and hidden dangers of the initiate's path. The Hermit remains on the heights throughout the long nights of spiritual darkness, and while the coming age is hardly a period of spiritual darkness, it may be a period of little or slow evolution.
The long golden age is eventually brought to an end and a new cycle or stage of evolution is begun by the Wheel of Fortune. All life is change, and change, no matter how slow, eventually produces something else. But the full meaning of the symbol and of the remainder of the major Arcana is presently hidden. Will the world civilization stagnate and become rigid and inflexible and exhausted? That's what usually happens to civilizations if they are fully successful against all the usual challenges. Or will the activity of the Hermits bring some new stage of existence or some new crisis? The likeliest possibility is that the Hermits will eventually progress in their spiritual exercises so far that they are able to initiate interstellar travel by apportation, thus once again beginning interaction, division, competition and strife, but this time of a galactic scale. Certain action and reaction is symbolized by the next symbol, key 11, Justice.
Justice is seated between the pillars of positive and negative forces, first seen in key 2, the High Priestess. Justice is also a woman, the Great Mother, who may represent the creativity and the unconscious urges of cosmic psychic centers, uniting our fates with other spirits inhabiting other species, spirits long separated from our own. Justice is the beginning of a new cycle of evolution on a higher level of development.
The next key is the most mysterious symbol of the Major Arcana, the Hanged Man, probably a reference to Tiphareth. A youth is suspended by one foot from a T-cross of living wood. His arms, folded behind his back, together with his head, form a downward pointing triangle. His legs are crossed as they are in the World symbol, but the world is right side up. There is a halo around the head of the Hanged Man, who does not seem to be in any discomfort. The exoteric meaning is that the initiate must now take responsibility for the world's redemption. The guardians of the thresholds have now been surpassed, and individual spirits must then take responsibility for their own fate. Karma of the ordinary sort is now left behind. And in order to progress further there must be...Death.
A skeleton in armor rides a white horse that tramples over a fallen king and draws near to a child and a woman, who turn from him in dread. A bishop appears to be welcoming Death. A river in the background flows through two towers. Between them is the rising sun. The skeleton carries a banner of a five-petaled rose, symbol of Mars and the life-force. Like all the arcana symbols this one has many levels of meaning. In one level, it applies to the present ending of the Piscean age and the beginning of the Aquarian age. But on the cosmic level, in that distant future, it may mean leaving individual ego behind and some sort of merging into a larger whole.
Keys 13 through 16, Death, Temperance, the Devil, and the Tower perhaps refer to our assumption of god-like powers and our misuse of them until our follies are destroyed by some sort of higher power. Death of some aspect of our selves is necessary to acquire the powers which consist (Temperance) in the ability to mold the cosmic pool of mind into conscious shapes or pour mind back again into the subconscious pool. The archangel Michael in key 14 and the Devil in key 15 probably represent us in that unimaginably far distant time.
Having learned to create mind, manipulate the laws of Karma, and control the vibes of the universe, we act as gods and create beings below us, but do not let them evolve properly. The Devil sits on the half-cube of half-knowledge, giving the sign of black magic and the symbol of Saturn (planet of limitation and inertia) is upon his palm. Chained to his half-cube are his creations, a man and a woman with horns and tails, figures similar to those of key 6, the Lovers. Here there is the wrong use of the zodiac, and wrong use of the wine of life, and the obstinacy and stubbornness of materialism. This evolutionary dead end is finally destroyed by the Tower.
This is the tower of ambition built on false premises. Streaks of divine lightning issue from the sun; the crown of materialistic thought falls from the Tower. Two figures, having seen a brief glimpse of the truth from the top, fall from the Tower. Yods of life-force fall from the heavens to seed the next phase of evolution, represented by the beautiful Star symbol. The Star is similar to the Temperance key, except that she (a beautiful maiden) now pours the waters of life directly into the cosmic pool as well as onto the land rather than pouring them only from the golden cup of the subconscious as Michael is doing in Temperance. The sky is filled with seven small and one large star, all eight pointed for dominion. The seven small stars refer to the seven chakras used in meditation , and the Star is a symbol of meditation and inspiration, that will stir to life the entire pool of cosmic mind stuff.
The stages of the major arcana that remain refer to cosmic spiritual evolution, to the return of spirit to cosmic mind, towards the end of this cycle of the physical universe, preparatory to the new beginnings of the next phase. In 60 billion years or so, the galaxies will have ceased their present outward expansion, and will come colliding together again in a singularity. The psychic side of the preparation for that event is symbolized by the World symbol. The Moon key is the first (though there are hints of it all the way back to the Hanged Man) and trickiest stage of cosmic reintegration, the Sun key is the successful and happy integration of selves into the solar spirit, the Judgment key (which may be in the wrong place) is the last call for reintegration when the end is near, and the World key (sometimes called the Universe) is the end...and the beginning.
"Not bad, Fool," said the local god, "How do you know it will work out that way?"
"During bad periods, we'll hide the plan. Who would suspect a cosmic plan was hidden in a pack of Gypsy fortune-telling cards, for instance?" replied the Fool.
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