by Marcus Katz
THE PALACE OF THE PHOENIX:
Gated Spread Book 4
Explore Alchemy & Tarot
By Tali Goodwin & Marcus Katz
Copyright © Tali Goodwin & Marcus Katz, 2013
Published by Forge Press, Keswick
All rights reserved.
WHAT OUR STUDENTS SAY …
I am extremely thankful for these exercises. I feel like I could spend years contemplating these results and still not get to the bottom of the insight I have gained.
C.C.
This exercise as well as the others have spoken volumes. Thank you for sharing this experience with us.
R. G.
Incredible knowledge so easily shared … This has been a journey in which I have learned a lot of new things and feel very satisfied.
L. J.
Very moving and effective. I cannot wait for the next gates!
Y.
I suddenly realized I have been dreaming like crazy since I started these exercises! Very intuitive stuff about my situation, and about my Tarot!
L.
We have used real-life examples and authentic feedback throughout this series, anonymously, from our students in Tarot-Town. We thank them for their engagement with these experiences over the years.
About the Authors
“It’s all about alchemy. Everything. It’s all alchemy! Even this!
Goodwin to Katz, Typical Conversation.
Tali Goodwin is the co-author of award-winning and #1 best-selling Tarot books, including Around the Tarot in 78 Days, Tarot Face to Face, and Learning Lenormand. She is also a leading Tarot researcher and is credited with the discovery of A. E. Waite’s second tarot deck, kept secret for a century, published as Abiding in the Sanctuary. She has also uncovered and published the Original Lenormand deck, and with co-author Derek Bain, the original Golden Dawn Tarot images in A New Dawn for Tarot. Her research into the life of Pamela Colman-Smith with new photographs will be published as The Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot by Llewellyn Worldwide in Spring 2014. She is co-Director of Tarosophy Tarot Associations (Worldwide) and organizes the international tarot conventions, TarotCon.
Marcus Katz is author of the ground-breaking Tarot book and teaching system, Tarosophy, and is the co-founder of Tarosophy Tarot Associations (Worldwide). In addition to Tarot books with Tali Goodwin, he is the author of The Magister, an 11-volume opus on the Western Esoteric Initiatory System, The Magician’s Kabbalah, and the forthcoming Path of the Seasons. He teaches students privately in the Crucible Club, available by application.
Contents
WHAT OUR STUDENTS SAY …
About the Authors
Contents
Preface
What is the Tarot?
What Are The Top 10 Wrong Ideas About Tarot?
The Tarot & Alchemy
Chapter 1: The Mystic Sister
Chapter 2: The Laboratory
Chapter 3: The Tree of Mercury
Chapter 4: The Palace
Conclusion
Bibliography
Websites & Resources
Kindle Tarot Books & Series
Preface
Our gold is not the common gold.
An old Alchemical Saying.
You are about to go on a journey and experience alchemy – the art of turning lead into gold – and maybe more.
Grab a Tarot deck, and we are good to go!
The purpose of Gated Spreads is to overturn the common use of Tarot cards as a means of “telling” the future, or providing a brief insight into our life and motivations – and hence our future possibilities. The teaching of Tarosophy encourages the use of Tarot as a divine language; one which connects us to the deeper world underneath the apparent one which we often take for granted. A gated spread requires you to take action in your life, from which change emerges naturally. This is not the empty promise of a feel-good self-help book, but a call to action – your action – to change your life through Tarot.
Our Gated Spread experiences have been offered for several years to the public, and now for the first time we provide them in handy self-study packages on Kindle. In each of these individual books, you can experience shamanism, relationship and romance insight, creativity, alchemy, and even delve into your ancestry, all using just a tarot deck.
We have also ensured that this is not a book of fictional examples that sound too good to be true. Our books are based only on real-life testing and the actual experience of real people like you, encountering magick often for the first time. We have taught these methods and ran workshops and gated spread weeks for many years, and have hundreds of experiences which have constantly shaped what you are about to experience for yourself.
This book is ideal for first time users of Tarot or the experienced reader who is looking to activate the tarot in their life. We have ensured that you are given the necessary instructions and clarifications (from our previous teaching and feedback given by students) to experience true magick in your time using this book.
Before you begin, you may wish to join our free Facebook group if you have any questions about Tarot, and also download our free keyword guide to tarot cards and standard spreads from our site:
www.mytarotcardmeanings.com
What is the Tarot?
The tarot as most commonly recognized is a family of card decks, most often 78 cards divided into four suits of 14 cards (10 numbered cards and 4 Court cards for each suit) and 22 Major cards. There are presently about 1,000 different decks in print or circulation, and many more out-of-print, rare and collectable decks.
Although it can be proven that the tarot was developed in the early 15th century, a lot of books still suggest that it was used by the “ancient ...” and then provide lists of the unproven, non-factual ideas which results in a conflation of tarot and those very ideas.
The earliest names for the tarot are Italian. Originally the cards were called carte da trionfi (cards of the triumphs), but around 1530 A.D. (about 100 years after the origin of the cards) the word tarocchi began to be used to distinguish the tarot cards from a new game of triumphs or trumps then being played with ordinary playing cards.
You are actually seeing in the cards some direct examples of the triumphs – the procession of floats common at festivals in Italy at the time – particularly in such cards as The Chariot and the Court cards. There is even a Christian tarot in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the cards were used to depict virtues, the liberal arts and sciences, and other aspirational notions from their earliest development. In fact, it could be said that the cards were originally educational or self-development tools, although that could also be debatable.
There is no evidence that the tarot were used by gypsies, originated in Egypt or were used for divination prior to the 1700s, despite popular occult lore that the cards have embodied ‘ancient teaching’ from time immemorial. It was not until a pseudo-connection between the Hebrew letters and the tarot was published in 1781 – by Comte de Mellet, in Antoine Court de Gebélin’s Le Monde Primitif – that esoteric interest began to appropriate the cards to embody occult teaching.
The earliest list of the 22 cards which have become known as the Major Arcana is given in a sermon against their use by a monk writing in Latin around 1450-1470 A.D. This sermon is sometimes called the Steele Sermon as it belongs to the collection of Robert Steele.
[Th
is above section which we think is so important to teach is repeated in each booklet in this series, and is an extract from Tarosophy, by Marcus Katz].
Which Tarot Deck is Best for This Gated Spread?
Our students have used a range of decks for this experience, and of course the standard Waite-Smith is a favorite. However, students have used this deck by Robert Place with particularly good results:
The Alchemical Tarot
This is also the deck which features in this gated spread, being based entirely on Alchemical images.
What Are The Top 10 Wrong Ideas About Tarot?
There are many wrong ideas about the tarot that seem to be popular. We would like to present quickly some common myths about tarot that you may have heard already, and change your view!
1. The tarot did not originate from Egypt, the gypsies, the Templars, Atlantis or a secret order.
2. You do not need to be gifted or given your first tarot deck – you can simply buy a deck for yourself.
3. You do not have to keep your tarot in a silk bag or bag of any particular color.
4. You can let other people touch your cards if you choose.
5. There are no real ‘rules’ in tarot, but some generally agreed good ideas.
6. The keywords for cards are not set in stone; they can be modified depending on the deck, the reading and the question. However, there are basic concepts specific to each card in the deck, which form a basic language.
7. The cards are not evil – no more than any art or printed material is “evil”.
8. You do not have to be intuitive or gifted in some special way – you can learn, and develop your tarot skills in any way.
9. The ‘ancient Celtic Cross’ spread has not been used for centuries, and it is not particularly ancient and it is not Celtic.
10. There is no single right way to read tarot – we encourage every reader to discover their own unique voice.
The Tarot & Alchemy
Whilst there are many alchemical symbols in Tarot cards, there is no consistent and definite connection between the two. However, many decks have featured alchemy as part of their design in the last two centuries during the “occultism” of Tarot from its original roots.
We have provided some reading material suggestions at the end of this experience for those wishing to discover more. We also have a 6-week course in Alchemy and Tarot as part of our Hekademia 2-year Tarot course.
We would like to begin this experience by sharing with you a section of a famous alchemical text, “the chemical wedding”. It provides us a symbolic invitation, to enter the journey of alchemy and approach what we have called “the palace of the phoenix”.
This version was edited, from the Foxcroft English edition of 1690, into modern English by Adam McLean and Deirdre Green, and formed the basis of the Magnum Opus Edition, published in 1984.
The Invitation to the Alchemical Journey
“On an evening before Easter Day, I sat at a table, and having (as my custom was) in my humble prayer sufficiently conversed with my Creator, and considered many great mysteries (whereof the Father of Lights his Majesty had shown me not a few) and being now ready to prepare in my heart, together with my dear Paschal Lamb, a small, unleavened, undefiled cake; all of a sudden arose so horrible a tempest, that I imagined no other but that through its mighty force, the hill on which my little house was founded would fly into pieces.
But inasmuch as this, and the like from the Devil (who had done me many a spite) was no new thing to me, I took courage, and persisted in my meditation, till somebody in an unusual manner touched me on the back; whereupon I was so hugely terrified, that I dared hardly look about me; yet I showed myself as cheerful as (in such occurrences) human frailty would permit.
Now the same thing still twitching me several times by the coat, I looked back, and behold it was a fair and glorious lady, whose garments were all sky-coloured, and curiously (like Heaven) bespangled with golden stars; in her right hand she bore a trumpet of beaten gold, on which a Name was engraved which I could well read but am as yet forbidden to reveal it. In her left hand she had a great bundle of letters of all languages, which she (as I afterwards understood) was to carry to all countries. She also had large and beautiful wings, full of eyes throughout, with which she could mount aloft, and fly swifter than any eagle.
I might perhaps have been able to take further notice of her, but because she stayed so little time with me, and terror and amazement still possessed me, I had to be content. For as soon as I turned about, she turned her letters over and over, and at length drew out a small one, which with great reverence she laid down upon the table, and without giving one word, departed from me. But in her mounting upward, she gave so mighty a blast on her gallant trumpet, that the whole hill echoed from it, and for a full quarter of an hour after, I could hardly hear my own words.
In so unlooked for an adventure I was at a loss, how either to advise or to assist my poor self, and therefore fell upon my knees and besought my Creator to permit nothing contrary to my eternal happiness to befall me. Whereupon with fear and trembling, I went to the letter, which was now so heavy, that had it been mere gold it could hardly have been so weighty. Now as I was diligently viewing it, I found a little seal, on which a curious cross with this inscription, IN HOC SIGNO VINCES, was engraved.
Now as soon as I espied this sign I was the more comforted, as not being ignorant that such a seal was little acceptable, and much less useful, to the Devil. Whereupon I tenderly opened the letter, and within it, in an azure field, in golden letters, found the following verses written.
This day, today
Is the Royal Wedding day.
For this thou wast born
And chosen of God for joy
Thou mayest go to the mountain
Whereon three temples stand,
And see there this affair.
Keep watch
Inspect thyself
And shouldst thou not bathe thoroughly
The Wedding may work thy bane.
Bane comes to him who faileth here
Let him beware who is too light.
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As soon as I had read this letter, I was presently like to have fainted away, all my hair stood on end, and a cold sweat tricked down my whole body. For although I well perceived that this was the appointed wedding, of which seven years before I was acquainted in a bodily vision, and which now for so long a time I had with great earnestness awaited, and which lastly, by the account and calculation of the planets, I had most diligently observed, I found so to be, yet could I never foresee that it must happen under such grievous perilous conditions. For whereas I before imagined, that to be a welcome and acceptable guest, I needed only to be ready to appear at the wedding, I was now directed to Divine Providence, of which until this time I was never certain.
I also found by myself, the more I examined myself, that in my head there was nothing but gross misunderstanding, and blindness in mysterious things, so that I was not able to comprehend even those things which lay under my feet, and which I daily conversed with, much less that I should be born to the searching out and understanding of the secrets of Nature, since in my opinion Nature might everywhere find a more virtuous disciple, to whom to entrust her precious, though temporary and changeable, treasures.
I found also that my bodily behavior, and outward good conversation, and brotherly love towards my neighbor, was not duly purged and cleansed. Moreover the tickling of the flesh manifested itself, whose affection was bent only to pomp and bravery, and worldly pride, and not to the good of mankind: and I was always contriving how by this art I might in a short time abundantly increase my profit and advantage, rear up stately palaces, make myself an everlasting name in the world, and other similar carnal designs. But the obscure words concerning the three temples particularly afflicted me, which I was not able to make out by any after-speculation, and perhaps should not have done so yet, had they not
been wonderfully revealed to me.
Thus stuck between hope and fear, examining myself again and again, and finding only my own frailty and impotence, not being in any way able to succor myself, and exceedingly amazed at the aforementioned threatening, at length I betook myself to my usual and most secure course - after I had finished my earnest and most fervent prayer, I laid myself down in my bed, so that perchance my good angel by the Divine permission might appear, and (as it had sometimes formerly happened) instruct me in this doubtful affair. Which to the praise of God, my own good, and my neighbours' faithful and hearty warning and amendment, did now likewise come about.
For I was yet scarcely fallen asleep, when I thought that I, together with an innumerable multitude of men, lay fettered with great chains in a dark dungeon, in which, without the least glimpse of light, we swarmed like bees one over another, and thus rendered each other's affliction more grievous. But although neither I nor any of the rest could see one jot, yet I continually heard one heaving himself above the other, when his chains and fetters had become ever so slightly lighter, though none of us had much reason to shove up above the other, since we were all captive wretches.
Now when I with the rest had continued a good while in this affliction, and each was still reproaching the other with his blindness and captivity, at length we heard many trumpets sounding together and kettle drums beating in such a masterly fashion, that it even revived us in our calamity and made us rejoice. During this noise the cover of the dungeon was lifted up from above, and a little light let down to us. Then first might truly have been discerned the bustle we kept, for all went pell-mell, and he who perchance had heaved himself up too much, was forced down again under the others' feet. In brief, each one strove to be uppermost. Neither did I myself linger, but with my weighty fetters slipped up from under the rest, and then heaved myself upon a stone, which I laid hold of; howbeit, I was caught at several times by others, from whom yet as well as I might, I still guarded myself with hands and feet. For we imagined no other but that we should all be set at liberty, which yet fell out quite otherwise.
