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  7 of Wands

  Once we have begun on our journey, we must learn to use a spiritual system or map to maintain equilibrium.

  6 of Wands

  In engaging with a system, exploring it fully and deeply, dynamic energy brings new victories of understanding, taking one forward into new situations and states of being. We must be careful here for “pride cometh before a fall”.

  5 of Wands

  At the next point, the inner work must be transformed into outer work. We exert great effort in a group to create and construct what is new and innovative. The way of the Five of Wands is “Just do it, go on get on with it NOW”. Alterations can be made later; this stage is a production in progress. It is characterized in our spiritual life by constant change, challenge and growth, constant success and disappointment, a rapid realignment of one’s values from moment to moment. It can lead to a new cohesive pattern or a complete breakdown.

  4 of Wands

  At last we achieve a form of stable inner Sanctuary, a place where you can consolidate your efforts so far, putting down tools for a while and rewarding yourself for your endeavors. This is also the stage in our quest termed by Robert Anton Wilson “chapel perilous”, a phrase that originally occurs in Sir Thomas Mallory’s De Morte De Arthur. It is the point in our spiritual journey where we have to decide whether we are being accompanied by a presence external to ourselves or choose to believe that it is all in our imagination. This card calls for an act to faith from which there is no return.

  Those that make the wrong choice here – for choice it is – through fear (an incomplete initiation of their previous stage, the 5 of Wands) become what Crowley refers to as “Black Brothers”. Whilst an admitted over-dramatization, this can be seen in anyone whose modus operandi is to cast doubt, confusion or dismay, to sow seeds of despair, to attract others to their cause. It is characterized by constant implicit calls for self-validation and ultimately (for its fault is to not be creative beyond its own delusion) implodes, taking those who have been attracted to its apparent delights with it.

  3 of Wands

  Having escaped the perils of the previous stages in our spiritual quest, the Three of Wands awaits. This is the stage where we have to think about where we are going next. We have turned our back on the past and look to the future, we cannot afford to be held back by restless yearning for old ties, and the new world is where the future of change lies. Do not find yourself left behind while others progress, avoid isolation. We have to pass on the baton. At its highest level this card signifies the trinity, generation, creation, progression/procession, all unified in one creative act.

  This is best put by Maria Prophetissa, a 3rd century alchemist; “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth”.

  2 of Wands

  The journey now nears its terminus with this Minor card combination of the upper level archetype cards of the World and the Magician. This signifies that the act of spiritual transformation is now out of our hands – whilst at the very same time we feel that all is within us. This is the “final ambush” that lies in wait for the journeyer in the spiritual realms. We have to discard all that might accumulate on this way, which is a via exhaustio, a “way of exhaustion”:

  Thence the human being rushes up through the cosmic framework, at the first zone surrendering the energy of increase and decrease; at the second evil machination, a device now inactive; at the third the illusion of longing, now inactive; at the fourth the ruler’s arrogance, now freed of excess; at the fifth unholy presumption and daring recklessness; at the sixth the evil impulses that come from wealth, now inactive; and the seventh zone the deceit that lies in ambush.

  Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 6. See also Salaman, van Oyen, Wharton & Mahé, The Way of Hermes (London: Duckworth, 1999) p. 23

  Ace of Wands

  At last we come to the aim of our spiritual journey in the Wands. The value system of our whole being is taken in the hand of the divine. Compare this to where we commenced, with those ten rods on our own back, and we perceive the total exchange carried out in the journey. We have done nothing more than returned to the singular truth of the matter. We were never ourselves to begin with.

  For more on the Initiatory Journey through the Tarot, you may wish to also read The Element Tarot Handbook: Initiation into the Key Elements of the Tarot by Naomi Ozaniec (Shaftesbury: Element, 1994).

  For more on the wounded healer, see the bibliography and Strong at the Broken Places, Linda T. Sandford, London: Virago Press Ltd, 1991. Also, The Wounded Healer: Countertransference from a Jungian perspective, David Sedgewick, Hove: Routledge, 1994.

  Illus. Mons Philosophourum from Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians from the 16th and 17th centuries

  The Tarot Heliakos: Living the Tarot Wisdom of the Sun

  Thus then, my son, stand in a place uncovered to the sky, facing the southern wind, about the sinking of the setting sun, and make thy worship; so in like manner too when he doth rise, with face to the east wind.

  The Hymnodia (from the Hermetica)

  In these four exercises, which are carried out over a full year – marking the Solstices and Equinoxes - you will learn how to apply Tarot to create subtle and profound change in your life. The connection of the Sun to the spiritual life is profound, and aligning ourselves to its course is a common spiritual practice. It can be found in as varied practices as the Yogic Salutation to the Sun, the Hermetic Hymnodia, and the observations of Liber Resh in western esotericism.

  The shifts of awareness in this practice will be created by using the correspondences of Tarot to large-scale events in the Cosmos itself, binding you into the largest cycles of life and nature. As you create these alignments for yourself, you will experience the “invisible knots” through which the world is created, both in time and out of time.

  This may lead to spiritual insight, significant events in your life or subtle shifts creating a more harmonious and integrated environment for yourself and those around you.

  In this first lesson, commencing at the Winter Solstice, we will introduce the idea of the Tarosophy Heliakos, and present our first exercise to prepare us for the Spring Equinox lesson which will follow on March 21st. If you would like to carry out this practice, you can join fellow TarotHelions in Tarot-Town.com.

  The Tarosophy Heliakos

  The word Heliakos is the Greek origin of the word helical, and means simply “of the sun”. In this Tarosophy working we work with the sun at four points of the earth’s real-world orbit. Using correspondences to the Tarot we create a mirror of these four stations in our own life, aligning ourselves to Nature in a profound manner, both spiritually and practically.

  The Tarot Precession

  When the earth’s orbit takes it closest and furtherest from the sun, we experience the shortest, longest, and two equal-length days and nights. These are the Solstices and Equinoxes. There is a Summer and Winter Solstice, and a Spring and Autumn/Fall Equinox.

  Due to the precession of the equinoxes – a technical issue which we won’t go into here, but do feel encouraged to research – the signs of the Zodiac in which the sun appears placed has changed over time. This means that the signs in which the sun appeared at the four stations of the Solstices and Equinoxes has also changed over time.

  So the traditional/prior positions of the Sun at these four times was:

  Spring Equinox March 21st Aries

  Summer Solstice June 21st Cancer

  Autumn Equinox September 21st Libra

  Winter Solstice December 21st Capricorn

  And for example, using the calendar for 2011:

  The dates on which an equinox and solstice falls are not always precisely on those dates, for 2011 the dates are as follows: March 20th (23:21 UTC), June 21st (11:28 UTC), September 23rd (03:09 UTC), December 21st (23:38 UTC).

  We can now take a look at our Tarot card correspondences for these positions of the sun,
using the Golden Dawn system of correspondences. We take the Major cards that correspond to those signs of the Zodiac, and discover that they are:

  Spring Equinox Aries EMPORER

  Summer Solstice Cancer CHARIOT

  Autumn Equinox Libra JUSTICE

  Winter Solstice Capricorn DEVIL

  You may also note that these four Major cards also now become useful timing cards in a reading. You can either read them as exact dates or corresponding to that stage of an expected time sequence.

  As an example, if you had the Devil as the Outcome card in a reading about a house sale, and the person had said they would have to take it off the market within a year if it didn’t sell, the Devil card may show that they will have to wait all the way until the end (winter solstice equivalent) of that year for their outcome, even if that was the spring, being a year away from the reading.

  However, the precession of the equinoxes has given us new signs, and hence new cards, for where these stations now fall.

  These new positions and their cards are:

  Spring Equinox Pisces MOON

  Summer Solstice Taurus HIEROPHANT

  Autumn Equinox Virgo HERMIT

  Winter Solstice Sagittarius TEMPERENCE

  You can see that these are very different cards indeed, and give us a novel Tarot Precession, where the cards, images, symbols and meanings that once applied for almost two thousand years to a time of year are now radically different.

  We will use this observation to now re-align ourselves to the new scheme! We take the magical perspective that by doing this in a ritualistic and small-scale fashion; we will bring about corresponding changes in our environment and personal perspective.

  WINTER SOLSTICE

  The Tarot Precession Layout

  So, to make this alignment to the new cosmology, and apply it in your life, take the old and new cards out of the Majors and lay them out as below.

  Creating your own Precession

  To create your own alignment we need to consider the paired cards for each seasonal event. We take what we know of their meanings and apply these to our own lives. We then make notes in the appropriate boxes above to ensure that we then engage changes in our lives according to what we have divined from the layout.

  Your Precession Cards

  We will look in the following lessons over the year how we apply these changes, but for now, at the Winter Solstice, we will already be engaging change by considering the cards. We will give some examples below, but you are also encouraged to come up with your own “precessions” based on your understanding of the cards.

  When we consider the paired cards, we look how the first card is an “outworn” or old pattern, being replaced by the second card as the “incoming current” or new way of behavior. Whilst this applies to the very grand scale of the stars, sun and earth, it also applies to our own lives. We then consider this change and list activities we can do to engage that change, even on the smallest scale, no matter what our resources. In doing so, we make an alignment with powerful effects on every level of existence. It is like a tuning fork, vibrating to a particular frequency which then makes everything around it vibrate to that same pattern.

  So taking the Spring Precession first, we have:

  Using keywords, or a system like we describe in Tarot Twist, we come up with meanings for the two cards as: Emperor = Nurture/Power, and Moon = Reflection/Identity. So we consider that the precession is from old patterns of taking control, to new ways of being ourselves. We might write in the box for this pair, “How can I be myself without controlling others?” and list several new ways – almost like new year’s resolutions, but reflecting a cosmological shift in the very stars themselves!

  We can do this for all four events and start working on them now, as the next lesson will be a different experience building on what we have just done here. The more you make the changes and engage in actions according to this layout, the more impact it will have as we work through the three other stations.

  We will quickly look at the other three pairs as below, and you can also discuss this in the Heliakos group on Tarot Town.

  In Tarot Flip, we analyzed many experienced Tarot card readers unconscious meanings of cards, and discovered that most attribute Momentum to the Chariot and Teaching to the Hierophant. If we use those unconscious keywords for these cards, we see the precession as from activity and movement to transmission, of teaching, passing on wisdom. So the question for our activity for this precession could be “What can I teach (and how) from what has carried me to this point?” An answer might be to carry out some volunteer mentoring work, or write a Blog about something that gave you momentum in your life.

  Our next pair is Justice to the Hermit, the Autumn Equinox precession. So if Justice has been replaced with the Hermit, what might this mean to us in our own lives? It might suggest that external law and legality is being replaced by a more personal and self-reflective ethical code. So our activity for this precession in our life might be “How can I do what is right for me whilst supporting the rights of others?” Perhaps join or make a small contribution to a campaign in which you believe or have personal experience.

  You will see that be enacting and engaging all four stations, all four precessions, you will come to make significant changes in your life, and they will have a culminating effect that will add up to more than the sum of the individual parts. This is the true magick of Tarot to picture powerful patterns of which we can take advantage in our lives. It is a method of spiritualizing our lives.

  Our final station is the Devil to Temperance. This shows a powerful precession from temptation and excessive self-indulgence to moderation and self-control.

  We might ask of this pair, in our own lives, “Where can I begin to harness my enthusiasm and attraction to certain things in my life into a more creative, productive and powerful agent?” You might consider looking at this precession pair in the Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris.

  In fact, all of these four pairs may benefit from being examined in different decks to give you a full range of interpretations for your precessions.

  The concept of Tarot precessions is one unique to Tarosophy and we hope that you find it a powerful experience to engage the model of Tarot in your spiritual life, producing a wealth of positive change.

  As the year continues, you can follow the three further lessons each quarter to take this concept to new areas of your life and make transformations based on the most cosmic patterns in the universe, depicted in our little deck of cards.

  SPRING EQUUINOX

  The Tarot of the Invisible Temple

  At this second station we celebrate and sanctify the Spring Equinox. You will have worked upon the precessions of the year since the Winter Solstice, and perhaps made some observations and adjustments in your outlook and behavior as a result. Once aligned to the cosmic scale of precession, we can take our part in the current as it flows invisibly in life.

  The Tarosophy Temple

  The Golden Dawn occult order celebrated the Equinox as a transition of the light. They saw this embodied in their Hierophant (literally, “revealer of mysteries”), who was re-installed at each Equinox with a new “password”. The officers of each station were also re-consecrated to their respective tasks in the temple. As our temple is real life, and our hierophant is our Tarot deck, we have the Tarosophy Temple in our hands.

  In this working, having passed through the precessions, we will create a new “word” for our journey between Equinox and Solstice, which embodies our own personal current of life. This will allow us to make easy progress in the tasks and projects we set ourselves, and may even produce strong synchronicities that take you even further than you thought.

  We will then re-consecrate our Tarot in a ritual fashion to provide us guidance over this time of working in a real-life living temple of Tarot.

  The Hierophant Takes Position

  Take the Hierophant card out of a deck and place it someone
where it can remain undisturbed. The Hierophant is an interface or communicator of the divine mysteries.

  Take your deck and split it into the four suits and the majors.

  Place the suits into four piles about the Hierophant, with each suit saying as appropriate:

  I lay down the Suit of Pentacles, my attachments.

  I lay down the Suit of Wands, my spiritual goals.

  I lay down the Suit of Cups, my emotions.

  I lay down the Suit of Swords, my thoughts.

  Say LIGHT IS IN THE DARKNESS.

  You may wish to light a candle at that point.

  Shuffle the Major Cards and select four whilst contemplating the Hierophant.

  Lay these out from right to left in front of the Hierophant card.

  Use the key below to construct your “magical word” from the corresponding Hebrew letters for the time until the Summer Solstice.

  Aleph FOOL A

  Beth MAGICIAN B

  Gimel PRIESTESS G