by Marcus Katz
It gives us a portable tarot temple in which we might conduct ritual, evocation, dream-work, astral journeys, or other magical work.
We will now give several avenues for time travellers to explore this trans-dimensional object.
1. As Above/So Below
If we close our eyes, we can imagine that we are in a cubic temple with two great pillars to either side of us. The floor is decorated with the image of the High Priestess and the Ceiling is similarly decorated with an illustration of the Magician.
When we look down we imagine that we are reaching through the veil of the Priestess into the very deepest mysteries of the underworld. We see the pomegranate on the veil of the Waite-Smith tarot, giving us a symbol of the nature of the underworld.
When we look up to the ceiling, we imagine that we are reaching up to the very heavens and celestial realms through the nature of the Magician. We adopt the position of the Magician at the altar of the four elements and sense how this might connect what is above to what is also below.
This type of method is known as creative (or guided) visualisation.
2. With the Wheel at Our Back
On arising and standing up in the morning, we imagine that the Wheel is behind us as a turbine or spinning vortex. In front of us is the Empress, signifying nature in all its constant unfoldment. As we walk through our day, we sense the Wheel behind us and Nature opening in front of us. It is likely that not only will this exercise open awareness to the cycles of time, repetitions, and habits, it may also offer new insight into the manner of our accomplishments.
This type of method is known as a constant practice.
3. The View from the Sun Tower
For five minutes at the start and end of each day, we face East (or an open window) and visualise the Sun on our right side and the Tower on our left. We build up the presence of these two powerful images in our imagination by first concentrating on sizes, shapes, and then colours. Sense the sphere of the sun and its golden glow, and the strike of the lightning to your left with the sound of crashing masonry. Begin to feel yourself held between these two forces—the expansiveness of the sun and the constant churning change of the Tower. Hold this position for five minutes as you find a subtle point of equilibrium between the two energies. Repeat this exercise daily for a week and journal how it encourages new behaviour towards positive change in your life.
The tarot time traveller can now perform variations of these three exercises with different sets of cards on the cube of space, in effect using it as a tarot hologram overlaid on your life.
This type of method is known as a regular observation.
4. The Portal of Four
As you begin to fall asleep at night, visualise a square door or portal about which are four tarot cards; at the top of the portal is the Lovers card, to the right is the Hierophant, at the bottom is the Chariot, and to the left is the Emperor.
I used to imagine the cards were in medium-sized card holders around the door or more recently, on display screens like in a conference center to tell you what meeting is being held within a room. The bottom card would always be a design on the portal door itself, at the base of the door.
You can alternatively make these more simplified for easy recall by creating your dream portal with a small border, about which each of the four sides contains just one symbol or the color of the appropriate card. In this case, you could have the symbol of a pair of trees running along the top of the border (Lovers), crossed keys running down the right (Hierophant), a pair of sphinxes along the bottom border (Chariot) and an orb with a cross atop it repeated up the left border (Emperor).
Just before you fall asleep, you can imagine that you feel yourself being gently drawn into the portal (it might have a veil or mist within it), and get a sense that there is a landscape beyond it.
Record your dreams each morning and repeat this exercise every night with no expectation so that you are not impatient or frustrated. If you awake with just a feeling or fragments of a dream, write these down as they will promote further recall in following nights.
You might also experiment with turning the cube around so that whilst the four edges are the same cards, they are in different locations on the door. So if you rotated the cube once to the right, the Emperor would be at the top of the door, and the other three cards moved one position clockwise. This is sometimes like turning a combination lock that opens different vistas beyond the portal.
This type of method is known as dream work.
5. The Path of Initiation
Take time in your journal to contemplate and record chains of meaning between the cards as you trace any route around the space of the Cube. These will suggest stories, teachings and meanings regarding the path of initiation—or willed change in your life. The more that you are aware of these combinations, the more that you will begin to see them acted out at every level in your life and those around you. This will provide further depth for your readings, particularly if you switch to majors-only readings whilst you are following this method of study.
As an example, we might trace a route starting with the Magician above and then heading towards the Sun on another face of the cube. This will take us over the edge of the cube to which corresponds the Star card. We will then reach the Moon on the next edge and cross the next face of the cube where the High Priestess sits, eventually arriving on the opposite edge where we meet the Hermit.
So the Magician’s Journey in this particular route is one of awareness (the Sun). We aim to use magick to increase our awareness of the true nature of the World (which is at the centre of the cube). In doing so, we must discover our true will (the Star), the bright core that is our own inner Sun and the beacon of navigation that takes us into our engagement with the world. As we follow that Star, we come to the path of the Moon and face the illusion of the apparent world which is our own reflection of the light. When we seek the Sun, first we must meet the Moon. We then must go deep within ourselves to connect to our innermost and mysterious self, the High Priestess. It is she who is the veil through which “no man hath ever seen,” and she who connects us to the divine. When we acknowledge her secret, we pass it on and become our own Self, the Hermit, who holds the Star in his lantern and shines as a beacon of self-acceptance, self-knowledge, and self-sufficiency. We set off on the path of magick and have at last become magick ourselves.
That’s just one example of how we might chain the meanings of the cards together to elucidate or evoke both mysteries and practical matters. You can also use keywords from this time traveller manual and place them instead on the faces, edges, and dimensions of the cube to discover many hidden combinations and patterns. In doing so, you will rapidly increase your card-reading abilities.
This type of method is known as permutation.
You can now repeat any of these five methods for any side, orientation, or faces of the cube of space giving you a realm of possible combinations and approaches to explore this model of the universe. You might also choose to explore one pattern or combination of cards through all five methods.
You may be surprised that although here illustrated by tarot correspondences and not by Hebrew letters, these methods and the structure of the cube would not be unfamiliar to the earliest Kabbalists or their contemporary counterparts. There are eddies and swirls in the time-stream; it is not a straight line. In fact, we will take a brief side-trip now in time.
Moreton, 15 January, 1936
A reporter for the Gloucestershire Echo is stood in front of a large colourful mural decorating the wall of the out-patient’s ward of the newly refurbished Moreton-in-Marsh cottage hospital. The mural is painted on beaver-board and is 6½' by 5½'. We can see he is looking for the right words to describe the art, and we sympathise with his predicament in part. He will later that day write up his notes and the Echo will publish that the artwork is:
… a masterly
piece of work an ultra-modern representation of health. [It] contains two figures—a man and a woman—bathing at a well. The completed effort is symbolic of the waters of health, sunshine, the health and strength of outdoor life. 164
He does not realise that Miss Colquhoun of Chelsea, the local painter commissioned for this piece and two other further works for the hospital is not only a surrealist painter but a member of many esoteric groups for which she has a lifetime fascination. The art he is looking at is none other than a huge depiction of the Temperance card and the Star card, pouring forth their energies into the hospital ward.
Here is a hand-drawn version of the cube of space by Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988) who worked with the cube and further developed her ideas in drawings of a four-dimensional cube called a tesseract.
32. Cube of Space, Ithell Colquhoun
(1906–1988), undated, (private collection).
She also painted a surrealist version of the tarot, creating a full deck based on the Golden Dawn and Thoth cards more than the Waite-Smith designs. She wrote that she aimed to “render the essence of each card by the non-figurative means of pure colour, applied automatically, in the manner of the psycho morphological movement in surrealism.” 165
The deck was first exhibited in 1977 and published in a limited edition by Adam McLean. 166
33. III. The Lord of Sorrow Tarot Card, Ithell
Colquhoun, published 1977 (private collection).
A Meditation Method
Following her initial meeting with Paul Foster Case, Anne Davies went on to become Prolocutor General of the Builders of the Adytum following Case’s death in 1954. It was a role she maintained until her own death in 1975. She was to write much more upon the tarot, including Inspirational Thoughts on the Tarot which includes her poetry.
On 25 March, 1962, she gave one of her regular Sunday services and spoke on the real meaning of meditation, which concludes with a method of meditation of interest to the tarot traveller.
She said that “when you work with the Tarot Keys at home, remember that each of them is stimulating your ability to care more.” When we care, she suggested, and when we are interested, we reach for an answer, we enquire; we meditate. So, this is the secret of meditation—to cast a question we care about to the world. In effect, it is also a living divination.
Davies encouraged us to cast our question at a tree, a bird, a person, making our day “an emotional quest.” To do this with tarot we can ask a question of the tarot and draw a single card. We then make enquiry of that card to everything we see during the day until our question is fully answered. We ask the traffic queue, “What are you telling me about my card?” We ask the way water spills out of a knocked cup, “What are you telling me about my card?” We ask until the world has divined the depth of our enquiry.
Davies leaves us with this promise: “Cast it to everything you see. You will eventually find that meditation is a part of you every moment of life and you will attain something more staggering than you could ever have imagined.” 167
Later in the time-stream we will see this form of living divination arise in the practices of Tarosophy.
Following now is another major arcana layout for spiritual contemplation.
Jewels of the Wise
“One gem from many facets blazes fire,
One Light paints sacred scenes of stained-glass hue;
To just One Truth do many faiths aspire—
There is One Way, but many paths thereto”
—Jewels of the Wise, 1974
The practice of laying out cards into layouts or patterns for study is found throughout the esoteric era of tarot and is often dismissed by practical card readers as unnecessary complication or abstract philosophy. However, such layouts can train the reader to perceive important threads, themes, connections, and storylines through the cards (usually the major arcana) and then apply that depth to everyday readings. It is like seeing a multi-layered jigsaw that can make a different and complete picture in each separate layout; one picture is of “how change works,” another is “how a person’s life is a heroic journey,” yet another is “how men and women relate together,” and so on.
When we then perform a reading, and one or more major arcana appear, we see these as fragments of one or more of these big pictures; as we should, as they are images of archetypal or universal patterns. We can then weave these as powerful stories as they play out in the querent’s life, or our own life, knowing them to be part of many bigger pictures.
In the late sixties is an example of these layouts from the Holy Order of Mans: Mysterion (mystery), Agape (divine love), Nous (knowledge), and Sophia (wisdom).
This group, founded in the San Francisco Bay area in 1968 by ex-engineer Earl Wilbur Blighton (1904–1974) mingled Christian teaching with New Age thought and would have a turbulent history ahead of itself.
This history involves a fire-bombing, negative publicity, and personal politics following Blighton’s death in 1974. There are still splinter groups and versions of the Order surviving today.
The original Holy Order of Mans taught esoteric principles (inspired by AMORC) alongside its version of “Christian Yoga” teaching and in 1974 published Jewels of the Wise, a book on tarot which features Christ on the cover in front of a pyramid and between two pillars.
Whilst the main body of the book deals with an interpretation of the major arcana, we instead turn to the back of the text and reveal an interesting card layout. The Order taught that tarot was not for divination but for self-discovery and meditation, and it represented a path of initiation, and depicts the workings of mind and soul on the Way of Enlightenment.
The cards used for illustration in Jewels was a redrawn black-and-white version of the Waite-Smith by way of AMORC with several curious or innovative design features such as the musical notes on the veil behind the High Priestess. They also touched briefly on the Cube of Space model, simplified from the original taught within AMORC previously seen in this chapter.
This layout was also referred to as a tarot tableau; recall the word “tableau” also used by Lenormand readers for the layout of thirty-six Lenormand cards.
34. Holy Order of Mans Layout.
Llewellyn’s Classic Tarot by Moore and Smith, 2014.
The Fool or Spirit is setting off on his journey from right to left, ultimately manifesting in the World, providing a descent narrative of the Soul. The return path or ascent narrative is also given in the journey of the World back to the Fool, left to right across the layout.
The use of correspondences can also deepen our appreciation of hidden patterns and structures within the relationships of the cards. We can see that the Hebrew letter aleph corresponding to the Fool means “Ox” and that the Lamed or “Ox-Goad” corresponds to Justice. The element of Air (associated with the pure spirit) corresponds to the Fool and to Gemini, which corresponds to the Lovers. The Hebrew letter zayin which corresponds to the Lovers means “Sword,” which is shown on the Justice card. So, the Fool is goaded on his inevitable journey whilst the Sword falls and closes the gate of the heavenly Garden of Eden behind him. It is this weaving of correspondences and layers that allows us to tell a story merging Christian teaching and New Age teaching or initiatory myths played out in religious parable.
We will now look at the separate columns as showing separate elements of the same theme.
Vertical Column One
The first column of the Magician, Lovers, Justice, and the Tower shows aspects of thought and how we speak our truth. It illustrates the progression of an original thought to its effect upon the world, whether that word is the original logos that created the universe or a simple thought that something in one’s own life needs to change.
Magician
This figure conjures up ideas (corresponding to Mercury) and presents options on the table; as the Charlatan or Trickster whose first illustra
tion was with gambling cups on the table. He is the master of Will and choice from the first principle of thought.
The Lovers
Under the corresponding sign of Gemini, this illustration brings thoughts together, shows their comparison and assimilation to the first act of free will. It is the realization of choice and to some extent, the intuition as the thought becomes more conscious in awareness. The Holy Order of Mans taught very insistently that we have two selves, the unconscious and the conscious.
The practice of these layouts will soon make your inner belief systems and stories more explicit and obvious. This is a useful initiatory practice as it will help consolidate your beliefs and values into a whole; increasingly creating a more congruent, comprehensive, and consistent sense of self.
Justice
The next card clearly presides over the whole process of making decisions, the enactment and application of the values we hold and our beliefs. It is our own law, our own constraints, balances and checks, and our own boundaries. It is through this filter that our thought must be processed; it is our own self-checking and internal control system. This may or may not accord with the social structure of our own time or place, leading to an imbalance.
The Tower
The final card in this sequence is the result of the application of our thought; it is the making of change in the world of matter and manifestation. There is no going back once the word has been spoken or the thought turned into action. A new reality is created and it always breaks down whatever was in place before—it is the true secret of time travel in that change is time in motion.
We could potentially see these four cards in each column as the four worlds of kabbalah, from the highest principle of Atziluth (emanation), through Briah (creation) and Yetzirah (formation) to Assiah (action). If we can see such subtle interconnections as the Tower being the lowest arc of the Magician, or the Lovers and Justice as a pair in this sequence and all the other permutations, we begin to make our readings more profoundly connected to the bigger patterns of the universe, played out in everyday life. In effect, this is the Kabbalistic practice of “permutation,” usually done with the Hebrew letters, but here done with their corresponding illustrations in the tarot deck.
