Tableau 3

For this week’s study lay out Keys 2 through 10 as follows:

| --- | --- | --- | | 5 | 6 | 7 | | 8 | 9 | 10 |

RULE: When a Tarot Key is the mean term between two others it is: (1) a link between them; (2) the point of equilibrium between their complementary forces; (3) the channel through which these forces act and react upon each other.

For example, Key 3 joins Key 2 to Key 4. It equilibrates the forces of those two Keys. It is also the channel through which those forces act and react upon each other.

Those forces are your forces. Keep this always in mind. The calm steadiness of the HIGH PRIESTESS is yours, if you will but let it find expression. Yours are the fecund potencies of imagination symbolized by the rich fertility of the EMPRESS’ garden. Your conscious mind, as the composer and regulator of your personal world, has all the authority and royalty of the EMPEROR. THE HIEROPHANT stands for the real presence in your life of a Wisdom which can guide you aright in every detail of your daily self-expression. The LOVERS portray the true relationship existing even now between your conscious and subconscious minds, overshadowed by the protecting presence of super-consciousness—the fact that your personality is a vehicle for the One Power which masters and regulates all the mysterious forces of nature. The 8^th Key,

STRENGTH, illustrates the control exerted by your subconscious mind over all the animal, vegetable, and mineral aspects of your personal make-up. The silent watchfulness of the HERMIT is a true likeness of the overshadowing presence of the One Identity, always aware of your upward progress toward union with Itself, always holding up a guiding beacon to light your way. The WHEEL OF FORTUNE is a symbol of the truth that every phase of your personal activity is a manifestation of the perfectly coordinated progress of the cycles of the cosmos.

The Tarot, you have been told, speaks by evoking thought. It does more, for it is the record of the knowledge possessed by great adepts concerning what man really is. To look at the Tarot Keys is to impress that knowledge upon your subconscious mind, through the medium of the natural language of sub-consciousness, pictorial symbolism. Tarot thus speaks to your subconscious mind in its native tongue. It does not merely tell your brain-mind what you really are. It shows your subconscious mind the truth about yourself. Sub-consciousness then builds the pattern presented by the Keys into actual physical structure, gradually altering your psychical and physical composition so as to correspond to the Tarot specifications. Even though your brain-mind may not grasp the significance of many details of the pattern, your subconscious mind will inevitably respond to it.

Study of these lessons will also develop your conscious knowledge of the various elements of your personality. The numeral and other correlations of the Tarot Keys, being in accordance with the actual fundamental laws of thought, practically force the conscious mind to perceive how the various aspects of personality act and react upon one another.

Thus Tarot works upon both the conscious and the subconscious levels. On the former it builds up, stage by stage, an orderly and accurate realization of the nature, powers, and possibilities of human personality. On the latter it operates to bring into manifestation the perfected expression of all your powers, by means of the bodybuilding functions of the sub-consciousness. In short, when you use Tarot properly, it shows you what you can be, and aids you to achieve actual realization of what it teaches you about yourself.

Hence it is important to follow these lessons with the Keys actually laid out before you. When you read about a Key, look at it. The words of the lesson will help you to understand some part of the truth about yourself. Light-rays reflected from the pictures into your brain, after stimulating your sight-center, will stir your subconscious mind to change your very flesh and blood in response to the Tarot patterns. Thus, you see, this is indeed an 'Operation of the Sun,' or a practical work belonging to the 'Magic of Light,' because the light which enables you to see the Keys either comes straight from the day-star itself, or is a transformation of the sun's energy into some other kind of illumination.

The groups of three Keys which are dealt in this lesson are: 2, 6, 10; 3, 6, 9; 4, 6, 8; 5, 6, 7; 2, 3, 4; and 8, 9, 10. The student may, if he likes, work out also the meanings of 2, 5, 8 and 4, 7, 10. The general meanings of the six groups are as follows.

Memory is the basis of our grasp of our relation to the cycles of cosmic activity, but until the relation between the conscious and subconscious minds and their combined relation to super-consciousness is understood, the memory record will be faulty, and our grasp of the law of cycles will be incomplete. First of all, it must be understood that memory (Key 2) is more than the record of personal experience. The scroll of the HIGH PRIESTESS has written upon it, so to say, a synopsis of the process whereby we came into existence, and this part of the subconscious memory record is kept in the cells of the solar plexus (Key 10). Furthermore, sub-consciousness must be in right relation to super-consciousness before this record can become available. The self-conscious mind must know that through right suggestion, the sub-consciousness can be opened to an influx of wisdom from super-conscious levels, and the suggestion must be given. This is done best by the simple act of listening to the Inner Voice, to be considered later in this lesson. We must recognize the truth that within us is a point of contact with the Universal Mind, which already knows all there is to know about the law of cycles pictured by Key 10. This Universal Mind, typified by the angel of Key 6, communicates its knowledge to us through the agency of sub-consciousness, and whatever part of that knowledge we may so receive then becomes an indelible portion of the personal memory record. (Keys 2, 6, 10)

The limited experience of the senses is not adequate to serve as a basis for the creative imagination represented by the EMPRESS. Sub-consciousness cannot set our personal house in order at its level unless, through its reflective power, we have established contact with superconsciousness, and that contact can be established in no other way than through the intervention of the selfconscious mind. The latter must grasp intellectually the law that sub-consciousness is always amenable to suggestion. It must formulate the suggestions which set sub-consciousness free from sense-domination, and open it to receive instruction from super-consciousness. When this is done, we become aware of the light symbolized by the star in the HERMIT'S lantern, and set out consciously toward the goal of union with the One Identity. We must know that this union is actually the result of physiological changes whose roots are in the process of assimilation. We deliberately take up the work of building a new house of life, a new body, a new personality. Our conscious minds cannot do the building. Their part is to see that the building is begun, that the specifications are laid down, that materials are assembled for the work. Then the task of actual construction is handed over to sub-consciousness, which begins by submitting plans, or mental images, in the form of desires which embody the essential ideas we wish to manifest. (Keys 3, 6, 9)

These mental images are then subjected to the tests of reason (Key 4). At our present level of development, not every image presented to us by sub-consciousness is one that we really desire to realize. Our fertility of invention sometimes exceeds our real requirements. The plans, in short, must be tested and approved. This is distinctly the work of self-conscious reasoning, pictured by the EMPEROR. Again, it is necessary that we should have keen discrimination as to the respective functions of the two modes of personal consciousness. It is not the part of sub-consciousness to criticize. It is her part to produce, and weeds sometimes grow in the mental garden, for the seeds of error, such as faulty observation, old habits of thought, and so on, sprout just as quickly in that fertile soil as the good seed of wisdom. This is the point of the parable in St. Matthew concerning the wheat and the tares:

“So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? From whence then hath it tares?

“He said unto them, ‘An enemy hath done this’. The servants said unto him, ‘Wilt though then that we go and gather them up?’

“But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn.” (Matt. 13: 27-30)

This is the principle of revision, well understood by all creative thinkers. In writing one of these lessons, for example, my first care is to set working the creative power of my sub-consciousness. Then the lesson grows in my mind, and as the first draft is set down on paper, I let it come with little or no attempt at control. Then I read it, to eliminate what is faulty as well as I can. But it is fatal to give too much attention to detail while the first draft is being done.

Yet it must also be understood that much practice of this kind produces a certain amount of waste. When the two aspects of consciousness are balanced in their operation, as shown in Key 6, the original specifications for a piece of work are usually so definite that the subconscious response to them is similarly accurate. For in time, every level is brought into harmonious activity, because the reasoned definitions of the conscious mind are correct. Thus the suggestions given to the personal subconsciousness are what they ought to be, and all confusion and disharmony are eliminated from the deeper strata of the subconscious mind. (Keys 4, 6, 8)

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is to make a regular practice of turning over all one's problems to the Inner Teacher represented by the Hierophant. No problem is too small, none is too great. The simple act of sitting still and listening for the counsel of the Inner Voice is the most potent suggestion for effecting the balance of the two modes of personality shown in Key 6. And the result of this practice, which rapidly develops true discrimination, is to make one very definitely aware of the real presence of that One Self which the ancient Scripture describes as 'The rider in the chariot of the body.' In brief, all these good results accrue from the regular daily practice of the counsel: 'Be still, and know that I am God.' (Keys 5, 6, 7)

Key 6, then, is seen to be really a picture of the true relation between what is elsewhere pictured in this same Tarot by Keys 3 and 4. Just as the man in Key 6 looks toward the woman, so does the EMPEROR look toward the EMPRESS. She is the bringer-forth. He is the inciter of her activity. Mere memory, like the HIGH PRIESTESS, is virgin, and therefore sterile. But when memory is elaborated in creative imagination, in active composition and development of imagery, in response to reasonable and accurate interpretations of experience, then subconsciousness brings forth a rich store of food for mind and body. Then, too, the memory record is made the richer by the results of the imaging process, and the richer, too, by the orderly classifications of reason. (Keys 2, 3, 4)

Similarly, the HERMIT, corresponding to the angel of Key 6, has STRENGTH, a symbol of subconscious activities, and the WHEEL OF FORTUNE, a type of the conscious grasp of the operation of cosmic cycles, on either side of him. It is really always the light of the Universal Wisdom (the HERMIT'S lantern) which brings about the control of natural forces shown in Key 8. And it is through the supervision of the Universal Mind (Key 9), that we are gradually brought to the state where we are consciously aware of the relation between our personal activities and great sequences of energy-transformation pictured by Key 10. (Keys 8, 9, 10)

Meditations

FIRST DAY: 2, 6, 10. My subconscious mind receives the influx of wisdom from super-conscious levels. It is continually alert for impressions from that highest source. Its office is to make me clearly aware of my true place in the universal order. UNITED TO THE ONE LIFE, MY THOUGHTS, WORDS, AND DEEDS THIS DAY ARE HARMONIOUS EXPRESSIONS OF THE PERFECT ORDER OF THE UNIVERSAL LIFE.

SECOND DAY: 3, 6, 9. Abundance in all things is mine. The rich gifts of the Spirit come freely to me through sub-conscious channels. I am overshadowed by the protecting presence of the One Identity. WISDOM, RIGHT DISCRIMINATION, AND SECURITY ARE MINE THIS DAY.

THIRD DAY: 4, 6, 8. I establish order in my affairs. I release my sub-consciousness from all domination by selfish personal motives. I am strong in mind and body through the establishment of inner harmony. ORDER, BEAUTY, AND POWER FIND EXPRESSION IN MY LIFE THIS DAY.

FOURTH DAY: 5, 6, 7. Wisdom itself is my TEACHER. I am freed by it from the delusions of false appearance. My personality is the responsive instrument of the One Reality. THE INSTRUCTION OF THE INNER VOICE HARMONIZES ALL MY STATES OF PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS, AND VICTORY IS MINE TODAY OVER EVERY APPEARANCE OF ADVERSITY.

FIFTH DAY: 2, 3, 4. Strife is at an end. False appearances have no power over me. I am directed in all my ways by the Supreme Reason. I AM AT PEACE, FOR WISDOM GUIDES ME, AND DIVINE ORDER FINDS FREE EXPRESSION IN MY THOUGHTS, AND WORDS, AND DEEDS.

SIXTH DAY: 8, 9, 10. A tide of power flows through me. I draw ever nearer to the perfect realization of the One Identity. My life is one with the Life of All. STRENGTH, GUIDANCE, AND MASTERY ARE MINE THIS DAY.

Use these meditations as described in previous lessons. Be sure to keep a record, however, brief, in your occult diary. Presently I shall ask you submit your diary for examination.