Several years ago I started to read blog posts by Bob referring to an Unknown Friend, and revolving around this esoteric book known as Meditations of a Tarot. All in all, this book has nothing to do with tarot cards as thought of in New Age circles. If you read some of the Amazon reviews, you would see there was buyer's remorse for a couple random explorers who had to learn not to judge the book by its cover (again).
I for one went into the reading it knowing there was something special about this text based on Bob's reverence for it and his willingness to unpack its nuances over many blog posts. And as an avid reader of many spiritual classics, this book did not disappoint. In fact, it may be the most profound book I've ever read.
I only mention it now because it got some love in the recent book I read on Sophiology. Martin acknowledges the anonymous writer was later to be discovered to be Valentin Tomberg, a Russian expat living in Great Britain who eventually became a Catholic convert.
Tomberg came to his conversion through a religious, philosophical, and esoteric tradition know as Hermeticism, founded in ancient times by Hermes Trismegistus (also known as Thrice Great). For Tomberg, Hermeticism contributes to integrating a full range of experience, including mysticism, thought, and imagination, affirming a single true theology.
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| Pope John Paul II reading Meditations |
Martin also mentions that “Central to Tomberg’s conversion to Catholicism—and implicit to his sophiology—was a religious experience concerning the Virgin while he was in living in the Netherlands during World War II. He was investigating the appearances of the Virgin there as “de Vrouwe van alle Volkren” (“The Lady of All Nations”), and he reports in Meditations that he came to the conviction that both the seer (now known to be Ida Peerdeman) and that which she saw were authentic.”
This led Tomberg to poetically construct the Holy Trinity, along with the world soul revealing itself through the Divine Feminine (as shown in the symbol below).
Martin acknowledges “Tomberg’s paradigm, then, may or may not be “true” in a doctrinal sense, but there is truth in it: it discloses truth. Tomberg’s esoteric and contemplative engagement, then, welcomes us to a poetic meeting—which is, nevertheless, not metaphorical—with Christ and Sophia.”
I feel offering excerpts of Meditations could never do it justice as it is meant to be read as a whole. Nonetheless, there are highlights that stay with me, allowing for a rich contemplation and deep appreciation for these writings. Here I share a few...
St. John of the Cross shows that it is authentic faith which is revealed, acts, and increases in purification; that it is hope which is simultaneously both the agent and the fruit of illumination; and that, lastly, it is charity which achieves union of the soul with God.
Spiritual greatness, the calibre of a soul, is measured only through faith, hope and charity (love). Buddha certainly saw that the world is sick —and, considering it incurable, he taught the means to leave it. Christ, also, saw that the world is sick unto death, but he considered it curable and set to work the force for healing the world — that which manifests itself through the Resurrection. Here is the difference between the faith, hope and love of the Master of Nirvana and that of the Master of the Resurrection and the Life. The former said to the world. "You arc incurable; here is the means for putting an end to your suffering —to vour life." The latter said to the world, "You are curable: here is the remedy for saving your life." Two doctors with the same diagnosis — but a world of difference in the treatment!
For, as St. Anthony the Great said, "without temptation there is no spiritual progress". Temptation belongs as an integral part to the exercise of human free will, which is inviolable —both for an Angel and for a demon.
Now, vision augments experience; inspiration augments knowledge just as it does understanding; and intuition is the metamorphosis and growth no longer of what one experiences and understands, but rather of what one is. Through intuition one becomes another, through inspiration one apprehends new ways of thinking, feeling and acting, and through vision one's domain of experience is enlarged —one has a revelation of new facts inaccessible to the senses and to intellectual invention.
There are two answers to the question, "What is innate human evil?" The one given by the left wing of traditional Wisdom — is "ignorance"; the other - given by the right wing of traditional Wisdom —is the sin of illicit knowledge. The difference consists in that the oriental tradition puts the accent on the cognitive aspect of the fact of discord between human consciousness and cosmic reality, whilst the occidental tradition puts it on the moral aspect of this same fact.
The difference between the two traditions is that in the oriental tradition one aspires to divorce in the marriage of the "true Self and the "empirical self, whilst the occidental tradition regards this marriage as indissoluble. The "true Self, according to the occidental tradition, cannot or should not rid itself of the "empirical self by repudiating it. The two are bound by indissoluble links for all eternity and should together accomplish the work of re-establishing the "likeness of God". It is not the freedom of divorce but rather that of reunion which is the ideal of the occidental tradition.
Therefore, expressed in biological terms, "to exalt oneself amounts to specialisation, which gives temporary advantages, and "to humble oneself in order to be exalted" means, in terms of biology, general growth,i.e. a balanced evolution, of the physical and psychic faculties of beings. And what is true in the domain of biology is also true in all other domains.
Now, we occultists, magicians, esotericists and Hermeticists — all those who want to "do" instead of merely waiting, who want "to take their evolution in their own hands" and "to direct it towards an aim"—are confronted with this choice in a much more dramatic way, I should say, than is so for people who are not concerned with esotericism. Our principal danger (if not the only true danger) is that of preferring the role of "builders of the tower of Babel" (no matter whether personally or in a community) to watching over "as gardeners or vine-growers the garden or the vine of the Lord". Truth to tell, the only truly morally founded reason for keeping esotericism "esoteric", i.e. for not bringing it to the broad light of day and popularising it, is the danger of the great misunderstanding of confusing the tower with the tree, as a consequence of which "masons" will be recruited instead of "gardeners".
What is true here for astrology and magic is also true for alchemy, because everything which is specialised becomes a tower, i.e. it crystallises and therefore becomes deprived of the faculty of keeping step with spiritual evolution —it leads to an impasse. And it is then the "thunderbolt from above" which enters into play and removes the obstacle to further progress. The sixteenth Major Arcanum of the Tarot is therefore a warning addressed to all authors of "systems", where an important role is assigned to a mechanical ingredient — intellectual, practical, occult, political, social and other systems. It invites them to devote themselves to tasks of growth instead of those of construction — to tasks as "cultivators and guardians of the garden", instead of as builders of the tower of Babel.
Truly, from the fusion of opinions truth shines forth. Because it is not the collision of opinions to which this synthesis is due, but rather to their fusion as constituent elements of the "rainbow of peace".
Or again, take the parable of the lost sheep, where the Master says:
If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray,
does he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go in search
of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to
you. he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never
went astray. (Matthew xviii, 12-13)
Is the axiom that the whole is greater than the part still valid in the domain of moral values'! Or again, take the parables concerning the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great price, and the lesson of the poor widow's two copper coins: Is it not evident from them that for the world of values the axiom in question should be the part can be greater than the whole?
From mobility itself our intellect turns aside, because it has nothing to gain in dealing with it. If the intellect were meant for pure theorising, it would take its place within movement, for movement is reality itself, and immobility is always only apparent or relative. But the intellect is meant for something altogether different. Unless it does violence to itself, it takes the opposite course; it always starts from immobility, as if this were the ultimate reality. . . (Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution; trsl.A. Mitchell, London, 1964, p. 163)
Intelligence concentrates only on the harvest, i.e. on the product, and not on the production — which is, for it, only the means, a series of steps, for arriving at the product. It is always the result to which it aspires. It is always the "autumn" of things and events which it has in view. It is orientated towards facts —accomplished things — and not towards the process of creation, or that of becoming. The "springtime" and the "summer" of things and events either escape it or are taken into account only under the aspect of "autumn"— as its stages of preparation. Germination and growth are then considered only in relation to the harvest. Mobility coming into being— this is germination and growth; whilst the harvest is what is "become"—it is the product.
Here, therefore, is the practical task of the endeavour. It envisages rendering the instincts disinterested, i.e. the true aim of all asceticism, or that part of the way towards mystical union that tradition calls via purgativa — the way of purification of the spiritual disciple —or also purgatorium ("purgatory"), when it is a matter of the way of human destiny; then it envisages instinct becoming conscious of itself, i.e. what tradition calls via illuminativa — the way of illumination of the spiritual disciple —or also coelum ("heaven"), when it is a matter of the way of human destiny; and then, lastly, it envisages instinct becoming capable of reflecting upon its object and expanding indefinitely whilst being completely united to it through sympathy, i.e. what tradition calls via unitiva— the way of union. The fruits of the way of union are gnosis (where "instinct is capable of reflecting upon its object") and the mysticism of contemplation (where "instinct is capable of expanding indefinitely") —or also the visio beatifica ("beatific vision"), which human souls enjoy in heaven after purgatory and after their celestial school in which they learn not to be dazzled by the divine light, but rather to see through it, when it is a matter of the way of human destiny.
In our time Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has advanced an objective "dialectic of evolution" which is no longer simply intellectual, but which is rather a way of seeing chemical, biological, psychic, intellectual, moral and spiritual processes in evolution, which proceeds according to an objective dialectic" (i.e. everywhere ascertainable, through all means of experience)— namely, divergence, convergence and emergence.
Plato's idealism. Aristotle's realism, Descartes' rationalism, Leibnitz's monadism, Spinoza's monism. Schopenhauer's pessimistic voluntarism, Fichte's optimistic voluntarism, Hegel's dialectical absolutism, etc., are merely works of intellectual poetry whose differences depend only on the taste and talent of their authors.
Intuition combines two certainties: essential certainty (that of essence), and consistent certainty (that of consistency). The former is of a moral order; its force of conviction resides in the good and the beautiful. The latter is of a cognitive order; its force of conviction resides in consistency in the vision of the relationships of things. Intuitive certainty is therefore "faith at first hand" combined with "intelligence at first hand". Let us explain this. There is faith founded on extrinsic authority—a person, an institution, a book, etc.—and there is faith founded on intrinsic authority— the inner and intimate experience of the divine breath, and the direct impression of the divine realm. The latter is first hand. There is still a third kind of faith — the most heroic, perhaps — the "intermediary faith" between faith founded on extrinsic authority and that founded on the intrinsic authority of inner experience: this is postulative faith, where one believes without any support, either from without or from within. It is the faith of "the voice of one crying in the wilderness" (Matthew iii, 3) —the voice itself of the soul who cries, i.e. postulates in complete solitude ("in the wilderness") the things without which it could not live.
The believing thinker thus became a seeing mystic. And this transformation did not take place in spite of his work of scholastic thought, but rather thanks to it as its fruit and its crowning glory.
The transcendental Self is not God. It is in his image and after his likeness, according to the law of analogy or kinship, but it is not identical with God. There are still several degrees on the ladder of analogy which separate it from the summit of the ladder —from God.
"Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
This prayer means to say: I desire your kingdom more than mine, for it is my ideal; and your will is the heart of hearts of my will —which languishes after your will, which is the way that my will seeks, the truth to which my will aspires, and the life from which my will lives. This prayer is therefore not only an act of submission of the human will to divine will, but it is above all the expression of hunger and thirst for union with the divine will; it does not adhere to fatalism, but rather to love.
According to Hermeticism, the essence of the body is not the matter of which it is composed nor the energy which is produced in it, but rather the fundamental will underlying matter and energy.
The existential philosophy of our time thus differs from traditional speculative philosophy in that it is founded on despair, i.e. upon the doubt of the whole personality, whilst speculative philosophy is founded on doubt, i.e. on the despair of thought alone. Now all despair, all doubt of the personality, amounts to —and is summarised by —Hamlet's famous question: "To be or not to be?" For just as Kierkegaard, the Danish thinker, is the author of modern existentialism, so is Hamlet, the prince of Denmark— hero of Shakespeare's drama and of the legend recounted by Saxo Grammaticus — the very archetype of existentialism, the despair of the personality. He is the archetype of the isolation of completely autonomous consciousness, cut off both from Nature and the spiritual world —man at the zero point between two fields of gravitation: terrestrial and celestial.
For the intellect can be sacrificed in two different ways: it can be placed in the service of transcendental consciousness or it can be simply abandoned [dispense with it].
The fundamental thesis of scholasticism was that philosophy is the servant of theology (philosophia ancilla theologiae). Intelligence certainly cooperated, but it played only a subordinate role. Thus, scholasticism did not succeed in achieving the alchemical work of the fusion of spirituality and intellectuality— the work of the "marriage of the sun and moon"—the result of which is a third principle called the "philosopher's stone" in alchemy.
Now, the historical and evolutionary mission of Hermeticism is to advance the progress of the alchemical work engaged in developing the "philosopher's stone" or the union of spirituality and intellectuality. It is called to be the crest of the wave of contemporary human effort aspiring to the fusion of spirituality and intellectuality. This effort and aspiration is larger than the group of Hermeticists,properly said, who are dispersed in the world. There are probably more people who are not avowed Hermeticists and who are engaged in the endeavour aiming at the fusion of spirituality and intellectuality than there are Hermeticists, properly said. Neither Vladimir Soloviev, nor Nicolas Berdyaev nor Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, nor Carl Gustavjung. for example, were declared Hermeticists, but how much they have contributed to the progress of the work in question! Christian existentialism (Berdyaev), Christian gnosis (Soloviev), Christian evolutionism (Teilhard de Chardin), and depth psychology of revelation (Jung) are, in fact, as many inestimable contributions to the cause of the union of spirituality and intellectuality. Although they did not make Hermeticism their calling, they served its cause and were inspired from the same sources from which Hermeticism is inspired. Hermeticism has, therefore, more than a few allies and collaborators beyond the ranks of its adherents. The Spirit blows where it will, but the task of the Hermetic tradition is to maintain—without pretension to a monopoly, God forbid! — the ancient ideal of "the thelema of the whole world.. .which ascends from earth to heaven. . .descends to earth, and uniteth in itself the force from things superior and things inferior". Its task is that of guardian of the great spiritual work.
To be a guardian signifies two things: firstly, the study of and practical application of the heritage of the past, and secondly continuous creative effort aiming at the advancement of the work. The tradition lives only when it is deepened, elevated and increased in size. Conservation alone does not suffice at all. It is only a corpse which lends itself to conservation by means of mummification.
Therefore, if Avatars are descents of the divine, Buddhas are ascents of the human —they are culminating points of stages of humanism in the process of evolution. The difference between the "revelatory ones" (Avatars and Imams) and the "awakened ones" (Buddhas) is analogous to that berween "saints" and "righteous men" in the Judaeo-Christian world. Here "saints" correspond to Avatars in that they represent the revelation of divine grace through them and in them, and "righteous men" correspond to Buddhas in that they bring to evidence the fruits of human endeavour.
For just as there are two loves— love of God and love of neighbour—which are inseparable, so there are two faiths which are also inseparable —faith in God and faith in man. Saints and martyrs bear witness to God and righteous men bear witness to man, as being the image and likeness of God. The former restore and strengthen faith in God and the latter restore and strengthen faith in man. And it is faith in Jesus Christ, in the God-Man, which unites faith in God and that in man, just as love for Jesus Christ unites love of God and love of neighbour.
The Buddha's teaching is that of a human spirit who took account, in a state of complete lucidity, of the human condition in general and of the practical and moral consequences to be drawn from it. It is an analysis of the reality of human life, and an establishment of the unique consequences which result necessarily from this analysis, by a human spirit five centuries before Jesus Christ, who was placed beyond the Jewish and Iranian prophetic tradition. The Buddha's teaching is therefore humanism pure and simple, which has nothing to do with the revelation from above by prophets and Avatars.
The work of Jesus Christ differs from that of Avatars in that it signifies the expiatory sacrifice for completely fallen mankind. This means to say that mankind, who before Jesus Christ had only the choice between renunciation and affirmation of the world of birth and death, is put in the position, since the mystery of Calvary, of transforming it —the Christian ideal being "a new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation xxi, 1). The mission of an Avatar, however, is "the liberation of the good" in this fallen world, without even attempting to transform it. It is a matter in the work of Jesus Christ of universal salvation — the work of divine magic and divine alchemy, that of the transformation of the fallen world — and not only of the liberation of the good. The work of Jesus Christ is the divine magical operation of love aiming at universal salvation through the transformation of mankind and of Nature.
After Jesus Christ —the God-Man, who was the complete unity not only of spirituality and intellectuality, but also of divine will and human will, and even of divine essence and human essence —the work of the fusion of spirituality and intellectuality can be nothing other than the germination of the Christie seed in human nature and consciousness. In other words, it is a matter of the progress of the Christianisation of mankind, not only in the sense of a growing number of baptised people, but above all in the sense of a qualitative transformation of human nature and consciousness.
The mission of the Buddha-Avatar to come will therefore not be the foundation of a new religion, but rather that of bringing human beings to first hand experience of the source itself of all revelation ever received from above by mankind, as also of all essential truth ever conceived of by mankind. It will not be novelty to which he will aspire, but rather the conscious certainty of eternal truth.
The fire of prayer will unite with the limpid water of the peace of meditation.
Metaphysics as "direct knowledge of eternal and immutable principles" and as the realisation of "finally going beyond the world of forms to a degree of universality which is that of pure being" is only one of the applications of meditation, and is by no means the only one. There are still others.
But the good from which the beautiful is lost from sight hardens into principles and laws —it becomes pure duty; the beautiful which is detached from the good and loses it from sight becomes softened to pure enjoyment —stripped of obligation and responsiblity. The hardening of the good into a moral code and the softening of the beautiful to pure pleasure is the result of the separation of the good and the beautiful—be it morally, in religion, or in art. It is thus that a legalistic moralism and a pure aestheticism of little depth has come into existence.
And just as there are ecstasies and illuminations from the Holy Spirit, so there are intoxications from the spirit of mirage —which is named the "false Holy Spirit" in Christian Hermeticism. Here is a criterion for distinguishing them: if you seek for the joy of artistic creation, spiritual illumination and mystical experience, you will inevitably more and more approach the sphere of the spirit of mirage and become more and more accessible to it; if you seek for truth through artistic creation, spiritual illumination and mystical experience, you will then approach the sphere of the Holy Spirit, and you will open yourself more and more tc the Holy Spirit. The revelations of truth issuing from the Holy Spirit bring with them joy and consolation (consolatory spirit = Paraclete), but are only followed'by the joy which results from the revealed truth (spirit of truth— —spiritus veritatis; cf. John xvi, 13). whilst the revelations that we have called "mirages" follow the joy —they are born from the joy. (A mirage is not the same thing as a pure and simple illusion —a mirage being a "floating" reflection of a reality—but it is "floating", i.e. outside of the context of objective reality with its moral, causal, temporal and spatial dimensions).
All despair presupposes a virtual hope. Thus, all suicide presupposes the passionate affirmation of some value in life: love, glory, honour, health, happiness. . .
Even if Schopenhauer was right that the quantity of suffering here exceeds that of joy, the quality of joy, although it is rarer and although it may be less long-lasting than suffering, is of a nature to make its memory be cherished, to keep it in memory, to make it awaken hope, in a word, to make it move the world.
The Marxist intellectual mirage paints a scene of the world and human history where the spirit is only a kind of "exhalation"—in the guise of ideologies, religions and moral codes —issuing forth from material things and interests. The spirit is only an epiphenomenal superstructure upon biological and economic factors, produced and fashioned by them.
One cannot dispense with the experience of others, i.e. with authority, if one wants to avoid the traps set along the way of spiritual experience.
This is why the mystics of eastern Christianity do nor tire of warning beginners of the danger that they call "seductive illumination" (prelestnoye prosveshtcheniye in Russian) and insist upon the nakedness of spiritual experience, i.e. on experience of the spiritual world stripped of all form, all colour, all sound and all intellectuality. The intuition alone of divine love with its effect on moral consciousness is —they teach —the sole experience to which one should aspire.
What renders such an intellectual mirage all the more dangerous is that it is not, as a general rule, purely and simply a delusion or illusion. It is a mixture of truth and illusion, mixed in an inextricable way. The true serves to prop up the false and the false seems to lend the true a new splendour. It is therefore a mirage and not pure illusion, which would be easier to perceive.
Mirages are above all frequent in the case of relationships between persons of the opposite sex who feel drawn to one another. It then often happens that the qualities, and even the identity, of one soul are projected upon another.
The conclusion which asserts itself from all that we have said above concerning the sphere of mirages is that practical esotericism demands at least the same prudence as exact science, but the prudence that it demands is of a nature that is not only intellectual but also, and above all, moral. In fact, it encompasses the whole human being with his faculties of reasoning, imagination and will. It is therefore a matter of being prudent.
For an illusion stemming from the sphere of mirages can bowl you over, whilst a true revelation from above can take place in the guise of a scarcely perceptible inner whispering.
For the sphere of mirages, also, is real — but reality is one thing and truth is another thing. A mirage is certainly real, but it is not true; it is deceiving.
What one acquires through observation, study, reasoning and discipline constitutes the degree of preparation, or the world of coins. This "world" exposed to the action of the breath of the Real, constitutes the degree of purification, or the world of swords. That which remains after this trial becomes the virtue or faculty of the soul to receive illumination from above. This is the degree of illumination, or the world of cups. And, lastly, to the extent that the soul raises itself from receptivity to active cooperation with the Divine, it is admitted to the degree of perfection, or to the world of sceptres or wands. These are the things which can serve as a key to the Minor Arcana of the Tarot, for your work word, dear Unknown Friend, on these.
