Meditation on the
Thirteenth Major Arcanum of the Tarot
DEATH
LA MORT
Dear Unknown Friend,
Have you ever been struck by the contrary statements concerning death made
by God and the serpent in the narrative in Genesis on the Fall? Because God says
there, "You shall not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for on the
day when you eat from it you will die", and the serpent says, "You will not die".
Here God is categorical; the serpent is just as much so.
Did the serpent quite simply lie? Or is it a matter of a fundamental error on
the part of the serpent? Or again, did he state a truth from the range of truths
proper to the domain of the serpent which are untruths in the domain of truths
for God? In other words, are there two immortalities and two different deaths -
one from the point of view of God, the other from the point of view of the ser-
pent? Thus, is it simply that the serpent understands by "death" what God
understands by "life" and that he understands by "life" what God understands
by "death"?
Now, I invite you dear Unknown Friend to set to work with a view to finding
an answer to this question, whilst bringing to your attention fruits of the work
that I have made towards the same end. For the answer to this question is the Arcanum
of the thirteenth Card of the Tarot, "Death", which represents a skeleton
who reaps only what pushes up from the black soil and rises above it —hands,
heads, etc.
Our empirical experience of death is the disappearance from the physical plane
of living beings. Such is the fact of our experience from without, that we have
by means of our five senses. But the disappearance as such is not confined to the
domain of outward experience of the senses. It is experienced also in the domain
of inner experience, in that of consciousness. There the images and representations
disappear just as living beings do so for the experience of the senses. This
is what we call "forgetting". And this forgetting extends each night to the totality
of our memory, will and understanding —of a kind such that we forget ourselves
entirely. This is what we call "sleep".
For our whole experience (outer and inner) forgetting, sleep and death are three
manifestations of the same thing —namely the "thing" which effects disappearance.
It is said that sleep is the younger brother of death. It is necessary to add: forgetting
is the brother of sleep.
Forgetting, sleep and death are three manifestations —differing in degree —of
a sole principle or force which effects the disappearance of intellectual, psychic
and physical phenomena. Forgetting is to sleep as sleep is to death. Or again: forgetting
is to memory as sleep is to consciousness, and sleep is to consciousness as death
is to life.
One forgets, one goes to sleep, and one dies. One remembers, one awakes, and
one is born. Remembering is to forgetting as awakening is to falling asleep, and
awakening is to sleeping as birth is to death. One forgets oneself when one goes
to sleep, and one remembers oneself when one awakes. It is also the mechanism
of forgetting which is at work when one dies, and it is the mechanism of remembering
which works at birth. When Nature forgets us, then we die; when we forget
ourselves, then we fall asleep; and when we lose active interest in something, then
we forget it.
Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that the respective domains of forgetting,
sleep and death are more vast and more profound than intellectual forgetting,
organic sleep, and clinical death. Apart from intellectual forgetting there
is also forgetting in the domain of the soul (psychic forgetting) and a forgetting
in the domain of the will, just as there is memory in the domain of the soul and
memory in the domain of the will —beyond intellectual memory. Thus, for example,
one can retain a clear and precise intellectual memory of a friend from
the past but at the same time have completely forgotten him psychically. One
recalls, but without the living friendship of former times. Similarly, one can
remember a person intellectually and psychically, i.e. with vivid feeling, but at
the same time have forgotten him in the domain of the will. One remembers him
with tenderness perhaps, but one does nothing for him.
Beyond organic sleep, i.e when one is in bed and oblivious of everything including
oneself, there is psychic sleep and a sleep of the will. During the sixteen
or eighteen hours that we are in the waking state there are layers of our psychic
being which are asleep. During the waking state one is "asleep" to many things —
facts, people, ideas. God...
And if the Buddha is considered — and venerated — as "fully awake" to the facts
of human life such as sickness, old age and death, it is because those who are not
Buddhas know that they are asleep with regard to these facts —not intellectually,
but psychically and in their will. They "know" it and they do not know it at the
same time. For one knows truly when one understands what one knows, when
one feels what one has understood, and when one has put into practice what one
has understood and felt.
Similarly, beyond clinical death there is a psychic death and a moral death. During
our seventy or eighty years of life we bear within us layers of death in our psychic
being. There are things which are missing from our psychic and moral being. The
absence of faith, hope and love cannot be remedied either by arguments or by
exhortations or even by a living example. An act of divine magic —or grace —is
necessary to accomplish the infusion of life into that which is dead. And if Christ
is worshipped as the Risen One. it is because those who bear death within them
know that it is only divine magic which can raise what is dead within them and
that the risen Christ is the guarantor of this.
Fotgetting. sleep and death — like remembering, waking and birth —have imaginary
and symbolic expressions proper to them. Thus black is the image of forgetting,
tufts of grass are the image of sleep, and a skeleton with a scythe is the image
of death. Black is the symbol both of involuntary and natural forgetting
and of that voluntary and supernatural forgetting of which St. John of the Cross
speaks — this threefold night of the senses, the understanding and the will, in which
the union of the soul with God is accomplished. Tufts of grass or leaves are the
symbol of sleep, because deep sleep is the state where we live a vegetative life.
Organic life — breathing, circulation, digestion and growth — continue during sleep
without "animality" and "humanity" being present. We are "plants" when we
are deep in sleep. And the skeleton is the symbol of death because it reduces the
phenomenon of the conscious, mobile, living and material man to that which
is mineral in him —the skeleton.
Natural forgetting reduces man to animality; natural sleep reduces him to
vegetality; and natural death reduces him to minerality. The whole problem of
death, comprising three degrees —forgetting, sleep and death proper, or the Arcanum
of death — must therefore be presented to us as the image of a black sphere,
beneath which there are tufts of grass and above which there is a skeleton.
And it is precisely the thirteenth Card of the Tarot which presents us this im-
age. The context of the Card is that of the threefold manifestation of the principle
oj subtraction by way of forgetting, sleep and death. We have here the black
soil, the blue and yellow tufts of grass, and also the skeleton mowing. The Card
contains still a fourth element, represented on the Card by the human heads and
hands, and one foot, to which we shall return later.
The thirteenth Arcanum of the Tarot is therefore that of the principle of subtraction
or death, and is the opposite of the principle of addition or life. It is
necessary to subtract the Self from the astral body, the etheric body and the physical
body in order to understand the mechanism of forgetting; it is necessary to subtract
the Self and the astral body, from the etheric body and the physical body
in order to obtain the state of sleep; and it is necessary to subtract the Self, the
astral body and the etheric body from the physical body in order to obtain the
corpse, i.e. the fact of death. These three degrees of subtraction in their totality
constitute the process of excarnation, just as the corresponding three degrees ot
addition constitute the totality of the process of incarnation. For incarnation is
the addition of an astral body to the Self, the addition of an etheric body to the
astral body and the Self, and lastly the addition of a physical body to the etheric
body, the astral body and the Self.
Now, the scythe which is held by the skeleton of the Card represents the work
of subtraction. It is this which symbolises the force of excarnation, i.e. that which
severs the ties between the Self and the astral body (forgetting), the ties between
the astral body and the etheric body (sleep), and the ties between the etheric body
and the physical body (death).
What are the ties between the soul and the body— rather, the soul and the
bodies— that the scythe of the threefold principle of subtraction severs? What is
it that unites the Self to the astral body, the astral body to the vital or etheric
body, and the vital body to to the physical body? In other words, how and why
do we remember the past, how and why do we wake in the morning, and how
and why do we live several decades?
In the first place, let us disregard the enormous literature where these questions
are dealt with and endeavour to undertake a meditative work, i.e. to think
directly about the subject which occupies us, without the intermediary of what
may be borrowed from sources other than our immediate experience and understanding.
To meditate is to think with a view to attaining certainty in the inner
forum of consciousness, renouncing all pretension of arriving at things of general
validity (i.e. things which may be a contribution to science). In meditation —and
these Letters are only meditations — it is a matter above all of the question, posed
in all honesty to our own conscience and answered in all honesty by our own conscience:
"What do I myself know?", and not the question: "What is generally
known?"
Let us abstract, for a moment, dear Unknown Friend, from what one knows, what one has said, what one has to say about the bond between the soul and the bodies, and let us try - for ourselves - to realize what we know and what we can know.
Let us first consider the field of forgetting and remembering: memory. Memory is in the field of subjective magic that evokes past things. He makes present things. Just like a sorcerer or necromancer, evoking the ghosts of the dead, urging them to appear, so does memory evoke past things and makes them visible to our inner spiritual vision. The current memory is
the result of a magical operation in the subjective domain, thanks to which I invoke a vivid image of the past from the black nothingness of oblivion. A vivid picture of the past ... A reflection? Symbol? Copies? Phantom?
All at once. This picture is a reflection of the measure that recreates the Remainder of the experience of the past; is a symbol when it serves: my | imagination as a representation of a reality that transcends its imagination representation; it is a copy to the extent that it only reproduces the original from the past; it is a phantom in that it emerges from the black abyss of oblivion and revives the past, making it present in my inner vision.
What strength works in the subjective magical reminding operation?
I know from experience four types of memory: automatic or mechanical memory, logical memory, moral memory and vertical or storage memory.
Automatic or mechanical memory does not perform a reminder. A reminder appears. It follows the law of the automatism of associations, that is, similarities, affinities, contrasts, etc. The memory comes and I can only remain an observer. This kind of memory gives me a choice along with every impression I receive, a lot of images from the past. When I see a pipe, I can choose between images from the past, which come to my mind: "an old sea wolf, whom I saw in B. in 19 ...", a book about redskins, where was the theme of a pipe of peace ", ,, my friend S., from whom everyone escaped when he lit a pipe filled with tobacco of his own production during the last war ", etc., etc.
Logical memory requires effort * Here I have to think to remember something. For example, if I want to remind myself of the Hindu trinity, which I do not remember, I ask myself the question: if there is a creator and destructor, Brahma and Shiva, what third rule should be between them? I concentrate and make an effort to fill the empty space between them in a logical way. Ah, I tell myself, the principle of preservation, of course, is Vishnu!
There is less automatism in the logical memory and more conscious effort.
There is no automatism in the moral memory. Here the reminder is no longer the thing that arises, but just a real magic act, although subjective. In the moral memory, when it comes to remembering past things, love works. Here, the fact that past things are unforgettable, that is, invariable at any moment, are worship, respect, friendship, gratitude, affection, etc. The more we love, the more we use moral memory. As a general rule young people possess a very strong mechanical memory. It
becomes feebler with age and it is logical or intellectual memory which comes
to its assistance. This demands an effort to think, an intellectual effort. People
who have failed to develop a taste for thinking and intellectual effort will have
difficulties with their memory in mature age. Mechanical memory will fail them
more and more, and logical memory, called to supplement it, will also be lacking.
With respect to moral memory, it is above all in old age that it replaces more
and more not only mechanical memory but also logical and intellectual memory.
It is the heart then which supplies the energy which nourishes and maintains
memory and which supplements the growing lapse of mechanical memory and
intellectual memory. Senile lapse of memory is due to the fact that the person
who suffers from it failed to replace in time the functions of intellectual memory
without mentioning mechanical memory— by those of moral memory. People who
are able to and who know how to give everything a moral worth and to see a moral
sense in everything will not forget anything: they will have a normal, if not excellent,
memory to a very advanced age.
Moral memory —which can comprehend everything without exception —is all
the more effective the less one is morally indifferent. Indifference, a lack of moral
interest, is the fundamental cause of the lapse of memory which often takes place
in old age. The less one is indifferent, the more one remembers of the past and
the more one is capable of learning new things.
Beyond the three types of memory—mechanical, logical and moral —of which
it is a matter here, there is still the kind of memory that we have designated as
"vertical or revelatory memory". It is not a memory of the past in the sense of the
horizontal line: today, yesterday, the day before, etc.. but rather in the sense of
the vertical line: here, higher, still higher, etc. It is a "memory" which does not
link the present to the past on the plane of physical, psychic and intellectual life.
but which links the plane of ordinary consciousness to planes or states of consciousness
higher than that of ordinary consciousness. It is the faculty of the "lower
self to reproduce the experience and knowledge of the "higher Self or, if you
like, the faculty of the "higher Self to imprint its experience and knowledge upon
the consciousness of the "lower self. It is the link between the "higher eye" and
the "lower eye", which renders us authentically religious and wise, and immune
to the assaults of scepticism, materialism and determinism. It is this also which
is the source of certainty not only of God and the spiritual world with its hierarchical
entities but also of the immortality of our being and reincarnation, wherever
it is a matter of reincarnation. "Dawn is the friend of the muses" and similar
popular proverbs —such as Die Morgenslunde hat Goldiim Munde ("the morning
hour has gold in its mouth"), or Utro vechera mudreye ("morning is wiser
than the evening"), or even De morgenstond heeft goudin den mond (the Dutch
version of Die Morgenstunde bat Go/dim Munde) — relate to the benefits of vertical
memory from which one benefits in the morning, after the return of consciousness
from the plane of "natural ecstasy" or sleep.
Vertical memory is the more effective to the extent that the three sacred vows —
obedience, poverty and chastity—render the lower man capable of listening to,
perceiving and receiving things from above without distortion. Vertical memory
is fundamentally only moral memory carried in its development to a still higher
degree. This is why it is only moral purification, which the practice of the three
sacred vows entails, that counts in the case of vertical memory. Intellectual interests,
as such, do not count here.
This is an outlined inventory of the domain of memory. Let us now return to
the question: What is the force at work in the subjective magical operation of recall?
It is necessary, firstly, to take account of the fact that in the scale that we have
established: "mechanical memory"—"intellectual memory"—"moral memory"—
"vertical memory" it is a matter of degrees of remoteness and proximity, concerning
an immediate and lucid understanding of the evidence as to "how" and "why"
memory functions through consciousness. In fact, the more something is mechanical,
the more it is removed from immedia...
dhruva