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For Review Only Plate 1. Stele in the field of the Burned, Montségur, commemorating the Cather perfecti who died on March 16, 1244 Photo by the author Plate 2. Coat of Arms of the House of Visconti, on the Archbishops’ palace in Piazza Duomo, in Milan Photo by G. Dall’Orto For Review Only Plate 3. A street in Cerveteri, Italy—the Etruscan City of the Dead Photo by the author, June 2007 Plate 4. Le Judgement dernier (The Last Judgment), circa 1650, Le Louvre, Paris For Review Only Plate 5. La Papesse by Jean-Claude Florno. An example of the many found throughout the village of Sainte-Suzanne, Mayenne, France. Photo by the author, September 2011 Plate 6. La Papesse by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. For Review Only Plate 7. Le Monde by de Guler & Aymerich, 1983 © Naipes Heraclitus Fournier S.A. Plate 8. A relief sculpture of a tetramorph in the Basilica of Saint-Sernin, Toulouse, France, circa twelfth century Photo by the author, October 2014 For Review Only Plate 9. Le Soleil / The Sun by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. For Review Only Plate 10. Mappa Mundi from Bede (1672/3–735 CE), De natura rerum, circa 1055 –1074 Plate 11. Saint Francis of Assisi, circa 1228. A religious fresco (not a portrait) found in the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco, Italy Plate 12. T-O map circa twelfth century. From Etymologies by Saint Isadore, Bishop of Seville For Review Only Plate 13. Severino Boezio, De consolation philosophiae, circa 1390–1395 For Review Only Plate 14. L’ermit by Jean Dodal circa 1701 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Plate 16. La Maison Dieu by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Plate 15. Il Tempo by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1450 © of images belonging to Lo Scarabeo. Plate 17. La Maison Dieu by de Guler & Aymerich, 1983 © Naipes Heraclitus Fournier S.A. For Review Only Plate 18. La Bateleur / The Magician by Jean Dodal, circa 1701 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Plate 19. Le Bateleur by de Guler & Aymerich, 1983 © Naipes Heraclitus Fournier S.A. Plate 20. The Magician by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1450 © of images belonging to Lo Scarabeo. Plate. 21. The Conjurer, circa 1502 by Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch (1450–1516). For Review Only Plate 22. The Court Jester by John Watson Nicol, 1985 Plate 23. Le Fou / The Fool by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. For Review Only Plate 24. The seven Prince-Electors electing Henry VII as Holy Roman emperor, circa 1341 Plate 25. The coronation of Henry VII as Holy Roman emperor by three Ghibelline cardinals (with the red galeros), circa 1341 For Review Only Plate 26. Le Diable / The Devil by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Plate 27. The Sacrifice of Isaac, by Domenichino, circa 1627, Museo del Prado, Spain. For Review Only Plate 28. Routa della Fortuna, circa fourteenth century. One of the 56 tiled scenes of the floor of the Siena Cathedral Plate 29. The Wheel of Fortune by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1450 © of images belonging to Lo Scarabeo. For Review Only Plate 30. The Cather Code Key, the cards by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. For Review Only For Review Only Plate 32. The Rose Window, Siena Cathedral, Italy Photo by the author, August 2007 Plate 31. Lions at the gate, Fonfroide Abbey, Narbonne, France Photo by the author, October 2014 For Review Only THE Spiritual rootS OF THE TAROT For Review Only For Review Only THE Spiritual rootS OF THE TAROT THE CATHAR CODE HIDDEN IN THE CARDS ruSSell a. SturgeSS Inner Traditions Rochester, Vermont For Review Only Inner Traditions One Park Street Rochester, Vermont 05767 www.InnerTraditions.com Copyright © 2020 by Russell Sturgess All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cataloging-in-Publication Data for this title is available from the Library of Congress ISBN XXX-X-XXXXX-XXX-X (print) ISBN XXX-X-XXXXX-XXX-X (ebook) Printed and bound in XXXXX 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Text design by Priscilla Baker and layout by Debbie Glogover This book was typeset in Garamond Premier Pro with Cyan, Futura Std and ITC Legacy Sans used as display typefaces To send correspondence to the author of this book, mail a first-class letter to the author c/o Inner Traditions • Bear & Company, One Park Street, Rochester, VT 05767, and we will forward the communication, or contact the author directly at russellsturgess.com.au. For Review Only Contents Preface 00 INTRODUCTION A Medieval Theology of Love 00 ONE Revealing a Hidden Key 00 TWO The Evolving States of Consciousness 00 THREE The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 00 FOUR A Fool Is Born 00 FIVE Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 00 SIX Justice, Time, and Chance 00 SEVEN Coming to the Crossroads 00 EIGHT Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 00 NINE The Gatekeepers of Heaven 00 TEN The Glory of the Stars, the Moon, and the Sun 00 ELEVEN Unlocking the Gate of Heaven 00 Notes 00 Bibliography 00 Index 00 For Review Only For Review Only vii Preface I have never given a tarot reading. Having been raised in a Christian religion, my programming clearly stated that tarot was something to be avoided. That was until my father passed away in 1987. He was fifty-nine and I was twenty-nine. Besides being my father he had also been the lay minister at the church in which I was raised. Immediately following his death, I had a short series of dreams where he visited with me and taught me about love. In what would be the last dream, he asked if I had any questions. You can imagine my mind jumping all over the place thinking of all the questions I could ask. Immediately I reflected on what he had taught me in these dreams, and how it was different from what he had taught me when he was alive. I asked him, “How do the teachings of the church in which I was raised fit into truth?” With that he replied, “It’s easier for me to show you.” He then raised his right arm and with an open forward-facing palm drew a large circle in the air. As he did so, a radiant white light appeared that had a brilliant core of about ten feet in diameter making everything in the room translucent. He then simply said, “That is truth.” Then, with his right index finger he drew a circle at head height about four inches in diameter. As his finger passed through the light it left a dark outline. He explained, “That’s the church. It is just a small part of a much bigger truth. My advice to you, go find the bigger truth.” With that, the vision disappeared, as did he. For Review Only viii Preface Just a few months after the dreams, for Christmas my mother gave me a copy of Teach Only Love written by Dr. Gerry Jampolsky. Everything that my father had explained about love in my dreams was described in Gerry’s book, and funnily enough, it’s a book my dad would never have read. My search for the bigger truth began. I was so absorbed by Gerry’s book, having read most of it on Christmas Day, I ventured out into the consumer craziness of the Boxing Day sales, which in Australia is the day after Christmas. My mission: to find and purchase any book written by Gerry Jampolsky. I found several. As providence would have it, Gerry visited Australia five months later. I was fortunate to get to spend two days with him, doing his training at the Brisbane Relaxation Center. I couldn’t get enough. In having a personal conversation with him during one of the breaks, the invitationwas extended to visit his Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, California, where I could do some of his in-house training. I was excited at the prospect, but I had a young family, a mortgage, and a business loan, and finding any spare cash to travel to the United States seemed to be an impossibility. A few months later an unexpected letter arrives in the mail. On opening it I read, “Congratulations! You have won an all-expenses paid trip to the USA.” My wife had entered a muffin competition and had won. In 1989 I studied with Gerry at his center in Tiburon and then went onto study with Susan Trout at the Washington Center for Attitudinal Studies in D.C. Inspired by my training with Susan, I began to study about dreams and their meaning and symbolism, and was particularly inspired by the writings of Jung, Johnson, and Sanford. John Sanford’s Dream’s: God’s Forgotten Language and Robert Johnson’s Inner Work held a particular interest for me regarding dreams and dream analysis. One day while scanning a bookshop for any other aligned material, I came across Sallie Nichols’s book Jung and Tarot. I was taken by the whole idea that a deeper theological and psychological understanding of the tarot existed in addition to its more popular eso- teric rationale. I was even more intrigued by its Christian context. In my world the tarot and Christianity were incompatible. For the framework For Review Only Preface ix of her approach, Nichols used a version of the tarot called the Marseille Tarot. By the time I had read it twice, there were dog-ears, highlights, and pencil notes in the border and several odd pieces of paper serving as bookmarks. Part of my work with Susan also led me to drawing mandalas. Mandalas were an important mechanism in the Jungian approach to understanding dreams. Certain characters depicted in the tarot cards were turning up in my mandalas and I became obsessed with the shape of the hats of the characters in Magician and Strength cards. Their hats were like a number eight on its side. I could spend hours drawing lem- niscate-shaped mandalas. This obsession, as I would find out a few years later, would be significant in unlocking sacred knowledge that had been hidden centuries earlier. As a result of going to the United States to study with Gerry and Susan, I took the opportunity to promote my own work as a health pro- fessional, and to make a long story short, ended up developing a lecture circuit that would commence in L.A., go on to several venues in Florida, then Washington, D.C., Washington State, and Hawaii. Between 1990 and 1996 I would do four, six-week circuits of the United States, teach- ing my version of an osteopathic massage technique that I called Fascial Kinetics. I was also invited to speak at several conferences and conven- tions of the American Massage Therapy Association during that time. It was on one such occasion that I purchased my first set of tarot cards. It was early December 1995, and I was presenting at a conference in Boston. Following the conference, I stayed an extra couple of days to do some Christmas shopping. I came across a game shop, which was the perfect place to find presents for my four children. As I was scanning the display counters, I came across a section containing an assortment of tarot cards. By this stage, I had left the church of my upbringing, I was reading Nichols’s book, and was very familiar with the Marseille Tarot. My attention was drawn to a set of reproduction cards of an eighteenth-century set of Marseille Tarot. Unexpectedly, I felt a strong impression to buy them. Owning a set of tarot cards went against my Christian upbringing, For Review Only x Preface even though I was reading about it. I immediately dismissed the thought and walked on. The impression to buy the cards would persist for the whole time I was in the store. It was like I was being told I had to buy the cards. I relented and reluctantly did so. I had just bought my first set of tarot cards.* My interest in all of this was sustained until 2002, when I divorced. All of my energy was now being channelled into being a single father, as my two youngest children wanted to live with me, one with William’s syndrome. I had been doing a lot of writing about the philosophy of healing for the courses I taught. The philosophy was inspired by my training with Gerry and Susan, and having spent several years reflecting on the deep message of the tarot, I began to see parallels. It is of note: the Marseille Tarot has a Christian theme in some of its illustrations. By 2005, I felt I had something constructive to say about these cards, given the understanding I had accumulated through my own life experience. My intimate knowledge of the Bible and Christian theol- ogy; the in-depth understanding that I gleaned about the tarot symbols; and my professional skills in change management around health meant that I saw things in these cards that others had not expressed. On the first of November 2006, I arrived in what would be my home for the next ten months. I was in Monte San Biagio in the Latina region of Italy with the explicit purpose of writing a book on the Marseille Tarot. I recall the moment I stepped off the plane having this overwhelming feeling that I had come home. It was completely unexpected. The Australian owners of my mountain village apartment told me about the nearby Abbey of Monte Cassino where Gregorian chanting was still part of the liturgy. They suggested that it was a regional must- do activity. To get around, I had bought a Honda 250 scooter within two weeks of my arrival. Being adventurers, my partner and I decide to do the forty-three-mile trip on the bike to immerse ourselves in this fifth-century experience. On a Sunday morning, we had made our way *As a sidenote, in 2016 I was an advisor to master card-maker Ciro Marchetti when he produced the Tarot Decoratif pack, a Marseille-themed set of cards with an art deco / steampunk stylization. For Review Only Preface xi through the dense morning fog of the valley, finally breaking through into brilliant sunlight just a few hundred yards from the mountain- top abbey. Passing through the impressive trio of cloisters, we finally entered the cathedral through its eleventh-century bronze doors. What we found on entering was awe inspiring. A true testament to Italian pas- sion and commitment is that after having been razed to the ground dur- ing WWII, this abbey was fully restored to its former glory. I recalled what happened next in detail in my first book Metanoia: Renovating the House of Your Spirit. As the mass was about to commence, I sought a position of van- tage in the congregation so I could take in all of the elements of the experience, both visual and auditory. My previous state of awe was abruptly disturbed on finding simple wooden chairs being provided for the parishioners. Surrounded by hand-crafted splendour these simple pews were in marked contrast. The paradox seemed to sym- bolise the lowly station of men contrasted to the piety of the church. I took comfort in the images of Jesus, knowing that the “king of kings” had been skilled in the craft of woodwork. The cathedral was hushed as the parishioners and visitors sat redundant, awaiting the commencement of the Mass. I was seated a few moments, listening to the first few stanzas of chanting, when a swell of feeling filled my heart. As it expanded through my chest, I became aware of tears blurring my vision, which immediately began to trickle down my cheeks. Within moments the sensation diffused through my whole body, culminating in awareness that I would sim- ply call joy. I recognised my tears as joyful tears and identified the feeling through my body as gratitude. In that moment I was touched by grace, something I had experienced on previous occasions and was delighted to be experiencing it again. In the past this experiencewas accompanied with an irrefutable knowing that I was loved by a presence that I will call God. It felt unconditional and brought with it a remarkable sense of well-being and peace. This time was no different. As with previous occurrences, For Review Only xii Preface I heard an inner voice that was more like a knowing than a hearing. I interpreted the feeling to mean, “Welcome back. You have cho- sen to return to complete a work you began but never finished, and you have been drawn to that place where it commenced. You were ready to share this knowledge and understanding at another time, but it was premature and your work was befittingly interrupted. It is appropriate that you return to this place [Italy] to recommence the work.” In 2010, one year after publishing my book, I found myself in a state of depression. It was as if all of my work had come to naught. Originally feeling that I had been guided to research and write the book, I couldn’t understand why more wasn’t happening. I recall one particular day “wrestling with God” in my mind, about the situation. That night I had another significant dream. In the dream I was told to focus on just four of the cards; the Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, and the Devil. I was also told that more would be revealed later. Within forty-eight hours, I received a phone call from a friend in New Zealand who was really struggling and needed help. I told him to fly over as I had something that I thought would be very beneficial. By the time he arrived, and following the advice of the dream, I created an awareness mentoring process based on those four cards. I had discovered the pur- pose and application of the deep mystery of my book. Like a genii that was locked up in a bottle for centuries, these long-forgotten mysteries were finally set free, and could once again be used to do what they were created to do—heal. By the end of 2010 I had developed a mentoring framework based on these revelations that others could be taught to use, making it pos- sible for this knowledge to reach many more people. The Enhances Awareness Program (EAP) began and medieval mysteries were trans- lated into modern vernacular, giving them a new lease on life. Since then, hundreds of lives have been blessed by this work, and in today’s language, it’s achieved through living mindfully. This book is all about the Western tradition of mindfulness. For Review Only 1 INTRODUCTION A Medieval Theology of Love M indfulness has become trendy. Almost all references to mindfulness in the West center around meditation. Transcendental medita- tion began in the ’50s in India and became popular in the West through the ’70s and has continued to have an active following. Thich Nhat Hahn’s book, The Miracle of Mindfulness came out in the mid-1970s, and Jon Kabat-Zinn’s program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction arrived later that decade. In almost all cases, mindfulness was taught from an Eastern perspective, typically Buddhist, and would generally include meditation. What is not fully appreciated is that a Western approach to mind- fulness emerged in medieval Europe, and in the same way Buddhism and other Eastern religions were the foundation to Eastern mindful- ness, Gnostic Christianity became the foundation to Western mindful- ness. If, as research suggests, the minds of people from the East and the West function differently, it could be justified that for those of us in the West, a different approach to being mindful is warranted. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus explains that if “at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their hearts . . . I will heal them” (Matthew 13:15). In today’s vernacular, this could read—at any time they can practice being For Review Only 2 Introduction aware physically, mentally, and emotionally . . . they will be healed. This idea of being aware took up almost all of chapter 13 in Matthew’s gos- pel. Awareness is the precursor to being mindful. In essence, Jesus was explaining that healing was a consciousness exercise. In the Jewish culture in which he was raised, the rituals of burnt offerings and sacrifice were deemed to be essential for salvation. Of this Jesus explains, “Think not that I am here to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not here to destroy them, but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). The origin of the word fulfill meant “to replace something.” He was saying that his consciousness of love approach to theology was here to replace the law of obedience. In the same way that Buddha taught both the blocks to liv- ing mindfully and the formula for living mindfully, so too did Jesus. Buddha didn’t hold back when he described the blocks as being three poisons. He was literally saying, if you block awareness and mindfulness you will induce sickness, thus the name—three poisons. Jesus wasn’t as pointed. But he did describe the same blocks, using the sowing of seeds as an analogy. These blocks could be labelled ignorance, avoidance, and attachment. Ignorance is when someone doesn’t know that they don’t know. In the majority of cases, this is someone living their lives purely based on the programming of their childhood, both familial and cultural. Since it is all that they know, they are not aware that there is another way of thinking, feeling, or behaving. So, they continue to live their lives doing what they have always done, getting the same results or outcomes that they have always got. That’s about living habitually, being on autopilot all of the time. Avoidance is when someone has been made more aware, but refuses to do anything with that expanded knowledge or understanding. These are the people who know smoking can cause cancer and continue to ignore the warnings and keep smoking. These are people who ignore the importance of work/life balance, knowing that burnout, stress, and at worst, suicide can result. Changing habits takes too much effort, it’s too difficult. Attachment is when someone has been made more aware and really For Review Only A Medieval Theology of Love 3 desires change, and resorts to using personal will and discipline to bring about the change, not mindfulness. In this case, they are able to cre- ate the desired change, but can’t sustain it. It is as if they are attached to their old state of consciousness and readily return to their habitual behaviors when things get tough. These are the people who go on diets for example, and lose weight, and for one reason or another “fall off the wagon” and put all of their weight back on, plus some! In his parable of the sower, Jesus uses the example of the different ways seeds are sown to illustrate these same blocks to living mindfully. To demonstrate ignorance, he talks about seeds that fall on sealed soil, in other words, a closed mind. Avoidance is where seeds get under the soil surface but rocks stop the roots from being established. The rocks are like strongly held habits and beliefs that are too difficult to remove. Attachment is where the seeds are successfully planted, but the weeds also grow and choke the plant. In every case, the failure to properly pre- pare the soil (of the mind) through enhanced awareness and mindful- ness sees a return to the unsustainable habits that were responsible for people’s suffering in the first place. Buddha taught his Eightfold Path to enlightenment and Jesus taught his Beatitudes as their respective methodologies for living mind- fully. The Cathar Code, based on the Beatitudes, is a detailed for- mula for adopting a mindful approach to living that makes it possible to find the kingdom of Heaven, the Christian equivalent to Buddha’s enlightenment. The Beatitudes were eight statements of cause and effect that describe the states of consciousness that would help people find the kingdom of Heaven. It was a detailed explanation of how to live mind- fully that, if sustained,would bring healing. When asked by the lawyer Simon, what was the greatest commandment, Jesus replied that it was to love God, and that the second was much the same, to love your neigh- bor as you do yourself. This can be interpreted to mean that you mani- fest the love of God when you love your neighbor as a natural extension of being more self-loving. It is this understanding of the importance of self-love that sits at the foundation of Western mindfulness. Being For Review Only 4 Introduction more self-loving means that you will act, think, and emote in ways that are supportive to your well-being, which is really about being kinder to yourself. What that means in terms of Western mindfulness is that in each moment you will remember there is a kinder option in contrast to your habitual responses. Having developed a consciousness that is more aligned with kind- ness, this becomes your new filter for how you see life. The adage “you see the world as you are and not as it is,” is as true for a loving con- sciousness as it is for a fearful one. In this kinder place, you begin to relate to the world with more love and kindness and, as revealed in the Beatitudes, that means you will be more aware of opportunities for social justice. You will be more merciful instead of being judgmental. Being charitable, your purity of heart extends to people’s spiritual wel- fare. You will naturally want people to have what you have and will be a “light to the world” as you live your life mindfully. Most of all, you will be a peacemaker. As peace becomes the thing you want most, you naturally find yourself making choices that sustain your inner peace. A Course in Miracles (a book written by Helen Schucman in 1976 that presents a curriculum for achieving spiritual transformation) explains that if peace is your priority then forgiveness is your only function. So, if peace is your priority, then what you will value and what you will put your effort into is being forgiving of yourself and of others, forgiveness being the ultimate kindness. Love was the foundation to Jesus’s teachings. Historically, cups were a symbol for love. In some of the stories told of the Holy Grail by the medieval troubadours, it was said that the Grail was a sacred chalice, which is a large cup or goblet. The conclusion can be drawn that the Holy Grail, being a chalice, was symbolic of adopting a love-centered life. Western mindfulness is all about adopting a love-centered life. The Beatitudes is an eight-step formula for living a love-centered life. The Cathar Code describes in detail what it takes to make the transition from a fear-based reality to one of love. When you find how to live your life being mindful of love, and you commit to living life with loving kindness, then you will find the Holy Grail that is gateway to the king- For Review Only A Medieval Theology of Love 5 dom of Heaven. It’s this commitment to kindness that saw the Cathar being described, even by their enemies, as good and holy people. They were typically referred to as the Good Men and Good Women, bons omes and bonas femnas. Many people talk and write about the deep mysteries of the Holy Grail, and much of the focus is on discovering both the “real” Grail and justifying the “true” Grail mysteries. This book boldly proposes that the Trumps of the Marseille Tarot were encoded with the mysteries of the Grail. It even goes so far as to suggest that from the time of the Cathars, the thirteenth-century custodians of the Grail mysteries, to the seventeenth-century Parisian stewards of the Marseille Tarot, the deep mystery of the Grail was preserved and given greater clarity. This assertion can be confidently made because these medieval Grail mysteries found in the Cathar Code have been successfully for- mulated into a pragmatic, contemporary program that is healing the lives of those who have engaged the process. Having had several hun- dred people participate in this program, the evidence of the impact of the Grail knowledge in this form has been clearly demonstrated. One of the more profound effects is the dissolving of the barriers in estranged relationships. In many instances, these estrangements have lasted for years, some over twenty years. Miraculously, all it took was for one person to make the shift to being more mindful, which like magic brought changes to others who had done nothing to shift their consciousness. Another commonly observed change is in people’s health and well-being. Becoming more naturally committed to being kinder, the result of being more mindful, they make better serving choices that support improved health and well-being. However, none of these choices required willpower or self-discipline. All that was required was the understanding and commitment to living mindfully. Remember, mindfulness from the Western perspective is maintaining the awareness of a more self-loving and kinder choice in any moment. It has saved marriages. It has given people the freedom to move on. It has brought more meaning to people’s lives. It has revealed clarity of purpose. It’s a preventative of lifestyle disease and has helped people For Review Only 6 Introduction find the “gold” in their depression. It has brought peace, joy, and inner stillness as the norm for how people experience life. Besides self-esteem, it has increased awareness of social justice, including being kinder to the environment, the planet, and its critters. It does everything that it was claimed the Grail could do. More to the point, this Cathar Code has been repeatedly applied in a modern context for a decade, with sustain- able success. The transformation in the lives of those people who adopt this approach to living with mindfulness could well justify these people being called the Good Men and Women! This is what gives this revelation of the Holy Grail plausibility. It’s not just conjecture, it’s been applied and it works. This knowledge that was secreted out of a besieged castle in the south of France in 1244 has resurfaced in the twenty-first century and has proven to be the cure for many of today’s ills. It has proven to be as relevant for today as it was 800 years ago. Having been recently discovered, the mysteries were translated into modern Western vernacular and has been formulated in a way that totally aligns with the latest research in neuroscience. The already established success of the program goes a long way to validating the hypothesis of this book—that the Trumps of the Marseille Tarot were encoded with spiritual teachings that included the Grail myster- ies. This is the tradition that is the foundation of Western mindfulness. Whether it was pure good fortune, or a lineage of dedicated custodians that both protected and refined the mysteries, anyone in the twenty- first century can be a beneficiary of such a blessing. It’s one thing to have this profound knowledge revealed, it’s another thing to really see and hear it, and take it on board. In explaining the challenges people face in taking this understanding on board, Jesus quotes an ancient Middle Eastern prophet called Esaias (Isaiah) who made this observation: “By hearing you will hear, but won’t understand; and seeing you will see, but won’t perceive: People like this have hard- ened hearts, ears that are dull of hearing, and they have closed eyes; but anytime they should actually see with awareness, hear with awareness and understand with their hearts [that also means with awareness], and as a result be converted [from habitual consciousness to being mindful], For Review Only A Medieval Theology of Love 7 they will be healed” (Matthew 13:14–15^).* Jesus then goes on to make his own observation: “Blessed are your eyes, for you are aware: and your ears for they are too. Let me tell you, prophets and righteous men have desired to be that aware of what you see and hear, and they were not able to be that aware”(Matthew 13:16–17^). The Cathar Code is a detailed description of the journey to make the transition from ignorance to awareness and on to being mindful, which results in enlightenment or as the Cathar described it, finding the kingdom of Heaven. That journey includes encountering the Dark Night of the Soul and its test of the flaming sword. It also includes the necessary instructions for adopting Christ consciousness, along with a whole new set of values, which leads to the test of the Cherubim. Finally you encounter the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage that brings you to your encounter with the Holy Grail. Only then can you finally enter the kingdom of Heaven. Each step of the way is clearly marked, and the Cathar Code hidden in the Marseille Tarot is a clearly signposted template for making your way along this pilgrimage. The pilgrimage begins! *The author has taken the liberty of rewording many of the scriptures into modern ver- nacular, so as to make it easier to understand the meaning of the scripture. In those scrip- tures that have been adapted you will find the symbol ^ at the end of the reference. For Review Only 8 ONE Revealing a Hidden Key T he twenty-year genocide of the heretical Cathar throughout the Languedoc region of southern France was followed by an addi- tional 130 years of inquisitional weeding out of what remained of these heretics, which meant that their elimination was inevitable. With the exception of a few remote communities scattered throughout the Pyrenees, the last significant stronghold of the Cathar in France was Montségur. Its capture would mean that Catharism in the south of France would fundamentally cease to exist. Besieged for ten months, the Cathar resisted repeated assaults, but by March 1244 they surrendered. It is believed that the Cathar sought a two-week truce, where hostilities would cease, allowing them time to consider the terms of surrender. It was granted. For some time, Montségur had become a refuge for Cathar leaders and priests who were escaping persecution by the Catholic Church. These leaders and priests were referred to as parfait or perfecti, meaning “the perfect.” They lived exemplary lives and, when compared to the clergy of the Catholic Church, their piety was one of the main reasons for the Cathar having such a large following. Two weeks after the surrender, it is said that just over 200 perfecti chose martyrdom over a conversion to Catholicism (one of the demands of the treaty) and according to popular local myth, they were corralled into a wood-filled stockade at the base of the mountain and without For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 9 resistance were incinerated. Today, at the base of the mountain is a mod- ern stele located in an area called Prat dels Cremats (Occitan for “Field of the Burned”). On it is inscribed in Occitan, Als catars, als martirs del pur amor crestian. 16 de març 1244 (“The Cathars, martyrs of pure Christian love. 16 March 1244”). Another 200 occupants in the fortress were either released or imprisoned. Rumors abound about Cathar trea- sures that were retrieved from a nearby forest by four of the perfecti who, on the last night of the truce, escaped from the fortress. Fig. 1.1. Stele in the Field of the Burned, Montségur, commemorating the Cathar perfecti who died on March 16, 1244 Photo taken by the author, October 2014 For Review Only 10 Revealing a Hidden Key Given that their core religious belief ultimately saw wealth as an abomination, it can be concluded that their treasure had nothing to do with material wealth. According to Richard Rubenstein in his book Aristotle’s Children, later medieval paintings that included the Cathar frequently showed them carrying books,1 which implied that knowledge was of primary importance. It would be prudent to assume that their treasure may have been manuscripts or secret teachings. Legends linking the Cathar and the Holy Grail have led to the notion that the retrieved Cathar treasure of Montségur may have actually been the Holy Grail. The Visconti of Milan The surviving Cathar from the south of France became itinerant refu- gees. Besides hiding out in remote regions of the Pyrenees, others traveled east to Lombardy in Italy, finding some degree of sanctuary in regions controlled by the Visconti who had a long association with the Italian community of Cathar. If the instigator of the demise of the Cathar, Pope Innocent III, had as much support in Italy as he had in France, the her- etics of Milan would have suffered the same fate as the French Cathar. For the Cathar, Lombardy was an obvious choice. Regarding the heretical state of Milan, Heer in The Medieval World wrote, A French cleric writing in 1215 named Milan as the main heretical stronghold. Pope Innocent III threatened the city with the same fate as the befallen Albigensian. This pious wish could not be fulfilled, since in Italy itself the Papacy was weak. The effects of interdict and excommunication, the Pope’s sharpest weapons in their struggles with the towns and city-states, were soon blunted: for if, as hap- pened during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, great cities like Milan and Florence were left for years to languish under the Church’s ban, with the complete suspension of the sacraments and all Church services that this entailed, ‘heretics’ became all the more active in filling the vacuum. It was even possible for a declared her- etic, Otto Visconti to hold for a time the Archbishopric of Milan.2 For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 11 The Visconti coat of arms depicts a serpent with a human figure from the torso up protruding from its mouth. Christian art found in the catacombs of Rome dating from around the third century show a strikingly similar device of the serpent and a man, which for these people represented Jonah. Of the many Old Testament stories depicted in the catacombs, the story of Jonah was one of the more common. To them, Jonah was symbolic of Jesus and his resurrection after three days. It’s of note that there were no images depicting Jesus crucified or resurrected. The story of Abraham and Isaac was regularly depicted, symbolizing the sacrifice of the son of God. It was the way the early Christians related to and depicted these key events in the life of Jesus. If the Visconti crest is familiar to you it may be because the right side of the Alfa Romeo badge bears the same crest (see fig. 1.3, p. 12). Fig. 1.2. Coat of arms of the House of Visconti, on the Archbishop’s palace in Piazza Duomo, in Milan Photo by G. Dall’Orto For Review Only 12 Revealing a Hidden Key Old Testament stories belonged to many pre-Christian religions, including Judaism and Islam, which meant that artist impressions of those stories were tolerated more than the emerging Christian art in a city that in third-century Rome was still pagan. It can be concluded that this Old Testament art was a way that early Christians could mini- mize persecution from the pagans. Of course, in the first three centuries the Gnostic and Manichean influence on Christianity was very evi- dent and looked nothing like the Catholic Christianity that Emperor Theodosius I in 380 CE declared in his Edict of Thessalonica would be the only accepted religion and form of Christianity. It’s possible that the motive for the Visconti to take on this primi- tive Christian symbol was a very public declaration that they weren’t aligned with the church in Rome. In fact, they were so at odds with the church, they aligned with the Ghibellines, a political faction throughout northern Italy that supported the Holy Roman emperor. The other faction who was aligned with the pope and his supporters were the Guelphs. By 1287, Matteo Visconti was appointed Captain of the People in Milan and a year later made imperial vicar, essentially a prince looking after a part of the Holy Roman Empire, which tradi- tionally had been ruledby Germanic kings. Following the death of his uncle, Matteo also became Lord of Milan. As will be revealed later, the context for many of the images used in the Marseille Tarot are closely Fig. 1.3. Alpha Romeo insignia For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 13 aligned with various events that were occurring in the Lombardy region during the rule of the Visconti. This extended from the time of Matteo Visconti in 1287 to Bianca Maria Visconti, the Duchess of Milan from 1450 to 1468 and the last lineal heir of Matteo. This alignment with primitive Christianity was also shared by the Cathar, but for a totally different reason. In his book The Age of Faith, Will Durant observed, “The doctrines and practices of the Cathari were in part a return to primitive Christian beliefs and ways, partly a vague memory of the Arian heresy . . . partly a product of Manichean and other Oriental ideas.”3 Heer remarked, “These twelfth-century ‘here- tics’ were convinced that their teaching was faithful to the teaching and spirit of the Gospels, while the Church, as it seemed to them, was in a state of apostasy, having denied God, Christ, the Holy Spirit and love itself; they were the true Christians.”4 Durant gives more detail, “They made the Sermon on the Mount the essence of their ethics. They were taught to love their enemies, to care for the sick and the poor, never to swear, always to keep the peace; force was never moral, even against infidels; capital punishment was a capital crime; one should quietly Fig. 1.4. Matteo Visconti (1255–1322) For Review Only 14 Revealing a Hidden Key trust that in the end God would triumph over evil without using evil means.”5 Gnosticism and Manichaeism are examples of two religions in the second century that saw beliefs including dualism and reincarnation being taught by Christian fathers like Origen,* who was posthumously sainted and then three centuries later excommunicated for having Gnostic teach- ings in his writings. Some of the theology of these second-century Gnostic religions was adopted one thousand years later by the Cathar. The Visconti and the region of northern Italy that was under their control were still excommunicated from the church at the end of the thirteenth century, primarily because of their alignment with the anti-pope Ghibellines. As a consequence, as explained above by Heer, this led to the heretics becoming all the more active in filling the (religious) vacuum. The reported acceptance of the Cathar by the Visconti strongly suggests that there was a synergy that mutually ben- efited both parties. That said, the Visconti “church” in Milan, the Basilica of Sant’ Eustorgio, named after a fourth-century bishop of Milan, Eustorgius I, was the headquarters for the Dominican order from the thirteenth century. They were charged with the duty of overseeing the Inquisition in the region of Milan. It seems that the Visconti walked a delicate line between their support of the church and the Dominicans, and their link with the Cathar. Of course, the blanket excommunication meant that there was a legitimate distance between the church and the Visconti. It can be deduced that the Cathar offered both pastoral and spiri- tual care to the populace of Lombardy, replacing the estranged church, and that Lombardy replaced Languedoc by becoming the Cathar asy- lum. Evidence of this mutual exchange can be seen in the following account of Peter and William Autier, Cathar from southern France who survived the Inquisition. *Origen (born 184 CE, died circa 253) was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and theologian who was born and spent the first half of his career in Alexandria. For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 15 By ca. 1290 Catharism itself was virtually extinct in Languedoc. However, a remarkable thing happened. Just as its last f licker was about to be snuffed out by the passage of time and exhaustion, two brothers from the country of Foix, Peter and William Autier, decided to receive training as perfecti in Lombardy and were con- soled there. They returned to their homeland in 1298 and reintro- duced dualist belief and practice to a limited extent, most famously at the village of Montaillou. . . . As a coherent faith, southern-French Catharism ended with the death of Peter Autier in 1311.6 The imprisonment of the last Cathar bishop in Lombardy in 1321 occurred while Matteo Visconti was still alive. The last known Cathar in Florence faced the Inquisition in 1342, a decade after Matteo’s death. Matteo himself was declared a heretic and excommunicated by the church in 1331, a year before his passing. The ongoing efforts of the Inquisition meant that Catharism in Italy was slowly fading away. Given the events in the south of France and the persistent impact of the Inquisition, both in France and Italy, the Cathar must have been aware of their demise by the latter part of the thirteenth century. The Cathar Treasure So, what was to become of the “treasure” that was retrieved from the forests surrounding Montségur in 1244 now that the perfecti, the cus- todians of the mysteries, were slowly but surely becoming extinct? If this treasure was indeed the mysteries of the Holy Grail, understanding the purpose it served might shed light on what became of it. Although not a lot is known about the Cathar theology, transcripts from the Inquisition and their Manichaeism/Gnostic links do give more edu- cated insight into their beliefs. Dualism, the core doctrine of the Cathar’s theology, was a belief shared by Manichaeans, Paulicians, and Bogomils. It was also funda- mental to Gnosticism. Simply put, dualism is the belief in two oppos- ing forces of good and evil. The Cathar believed that the world was For Review Only 16 Revealing a Hidden Key not created by a good God, but was the handiwork of an evil God. Anything to do with perpetuating the material world was therefore deemed to be evil. That meant human consciousness was a creation of the evil God. Freedom from human consciousness meant freedom from this world and according to the Cathar, that freedom is where the good God would be found. Explaining the Cathar beliefs, Stephen O’Shea in The Perfect Heresy wrote, It was up to the individual (man or woman) to decide whether he or she was willing to renounce the material for a life of self-denial. If not, one would keep returning to this world—that is, be reincar- nated—until ready to embrace a life sufficiently spotless to allow accession, at death, to the same blissful state one had experienced as an angel prior to having been tempted out of heaven at the begin- ning of time. To be saved, then, meant becoming a saint. To be damned was to live, again and again, on this corrupt Earth. Hell was here, not in some horrific afterlife dreamed up by Rome to scare people out of their wits.7 Given their model of salvation, a conclusion could be made that the Cathar treasure was a template of knowledge that revealed how it was possible to “become a saint” and bring a halt to being reincarnated to this “corrupt earth.” This was a template for finding that way back to the good God. If the legend that the Cathar were the keepers of the Grail is true, then it’s possible that the Grail mysteries of which the Cathar were custodians was this sacred knowledge. The Cathar Church There were essentially three groups of people who were connected to the Cathar church. As already discussed, the perfecti or parfait were essentially the clergy. The believers were followers who made a commit- ment to adhering to the tenets of the church without the austere level of commitment made by the perfecti. The third group were called listen- For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 17 ers, people who were loosely aligned and interested in the Cathar tenets but didn’t “join” the church. The Listeners were people who chose not to commit to the faith wholeheartedly; they might hear the occasionalsermon, but no more. . . . If they chose to become a Believer, they would be asked to participate in a ceremony known as the convenanza, which formally bound them to the Cathar church. Believers formed the majority of the movement. They were ordinary men and women who had ordi- nary jobs and who lived in towns or villages. They were not cut off in monastic seclusion, did not have to abstain from meat, wine, or sex, but were very much involved in the world of matter. They were taught to be in the world but not of it, to follow the basic teachings of the Gospels, to love one another, to live a life of faith, and to seek god. They were generally not exposed to the dualist doctrine, which was always reserved for the ears of the Perfect alone. The Perfect were the austere, top-level Cathars who were effectively the move- ment’s priesthood. Both Cathars and Bogomils held the Perfect in the highest regard: they were seen as embodying the Holy Spirit, being the living church itself. They were seen as nothing less than living icons.8 The social demographic of the Cathar ranged from peasants to nobles, illiterate to academics, men and women, artisans to laborers and farmers. Women in the majority of cases were regarded as the equal of men and could be perfecti and attend to the church’s key sacrament the consolamentum, which was essentially their baptism. This inclusion of women became a magnet, inspiring many to join the church. It is also worth noting that the Visconti subscribed to the seventh-century Lombard law, which ensured the rights of women. Those rights were not a part of the Roman law that governed other parts of Italy at the time. Lombardy, like southern France, held women in higher regard than was the norm for the majority of Europe. There was an intelligentsia amongst the Cathar that actively For Review Only 18 Revealing a Hidden Key participated in local “disputations,” in essence, public debates that took place in town squares, at cathedrals, or at any place that was open to the public. Rubenstein in Aristotles Children wrote, “Quite often the disputants argued before a jury composed half of Catholics and half of Cathar, with the aim of seeing which side could convert one or more hostile members of the jury, and so be awarded the palm.”9 (The palm was an ancient Roman symbol for victory that appears today at the Cannes Film Festival where winners are awarded the Palma D’or, “the Golden Palm.”) One of the other names given to the Cathar was derived from a term for weaving. “Weaving was one of the professions forbidden to the clergy, being associated with heresy and magic, but the Cathar, while professing hatred for the world, realised the need to earn a living while in it and often worked as weavers.”10 The introduction of papermaking toward the latter part of the thirteenth century was said to have also been fostered by the likes of the Cathar. In his expansive dictionary of medieval watermarks, Harold Bayley in The Lost Language of Symbolism claimed, “these heresies, though nominally stamped out by the Papacy, existed secretly for several cen- turies subsequent to their disappearance from the sight of history.”11 Bayley argues that the use of watermarks in paper became one of the tools used by the heretics to preserve and communicate their mystic tenets. Since books and manuscripts were mainly found in churches, universities, and libraries of the nobility up until the late thirteenth century, and few people could read, the church being accessible to the general populace became the center for learning. Stained-glass windows were the modern-day equivalent to comic books. It was an easy way to communicate information to illiterate people. Biblical stories from both the Old and New Testament were depicted so as to teach Christian beliefs. Tapestries, paintings, and mosaics also achieved the same end. That said, those with an academic inclination had many fine universi- ties throughout Europe in which they could study. So, what do you do when you don’t meet in churches, and more to the point because of persecution, you are itinerant? Additionally, what if For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 19 the knowledge you are trying to deliver is sacred, and in fact, is radically opposed to the commonly accepted teachings? What if you were also wanting to “hide” your knowledge to reduce the chances of persecution and punishment? And what if you wanted to preserve knowledge, given the prospect of it disappearing? These were the challenges the Cathar in the south of France faced at the beginning of the thirteenth century, as their settled lives were about to be drastically upturned. Weavers and Papermakers Having a tradition of being weavers, tapestries may well have been cre- ated as portable stained-glass windows. Evidence of deeper meanings being “woven” into tapestries can be seen in the exquisite fifteenth- century tapestries titled The Lady and the Unicorn, housed at Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris. Even if the Cathar had tapestries that were only a quarter of their size, they would still be cumbersome. When times were more settled and the Cathar met in homes, it may have been practical that small tapestries were used as teaching tools. None have been found as evidence of that, but this is also true of any evidence that may have revealed the teachings of the Cathar. Almost nothing has been found; the crusade and the Inquisition made sure of that. The introduction of paper and papermaking at the end of the thir- teenth century meant that the use of pictures as teaching aids was no longer restricted to the windows, walls, f loors, and ceiling of churches or for that matter, expensive manuscripts. Light, portable paintings could be created using paper, and quite readily replicated. Of course, the risk of drawing the attention of the Inquisitors would have lim- ited the extent to which painted images would have been used to portray the deep mysteries. The invention of watermarks meant that mysteries could be embedded in the paper with the use of a symbolic pictorial language. One of the more common watermarks was called the Cap and Bells or the Fool’s Cap, which later became the name attributed to For Review Only 20 Revealing a Hidden Key a certain size of writing paper—foolscap.* It symbolized the idea of being a fool for the sake of Christ, akin to the declaration of Francis of Assisi, “We are Troubadours of God.” There were claims that the heretical doctrines of the Cathar were disseminated by the traveling entertainers: the sots, who were “professional fools” and the trouba- dours. In many ways the liberty of social and political commentary that was afforded these itinerant entertainers heightened the grow- ing irritation against the pope and his church. The use of the Fool’s Cap in watermarks would have been a declaration of one’s association with Catharism. It is no coincidence that one of the key cards in the Marseille Tarot depicts a fool! As previously suggested, the purpose of these mysteries being por- trayed in picture form was to convey the formula for escaping the world of the evil God and the journey that one had to undertake to return to the kingdom of the good God. This was pure dualism theology, which was the domain of the perfecti. Whether they remained hidden in watermarks or were depicted in forms that were more like portable stained-glass windows, like manuscripts, it can be assumed that a for- mula for finding the world of the good God was already prescribed, and may have been for hundreds of years. It is also highly probable that this formula included the Holy Grail and was the sacred template for salva- tion of which the Cathar were the custodians. Given what is known of the Cathar theology, the template depicted in these portable stained-glass windows would have to fit certain param- eters. First and foremost, it would have to depict the world of theevil God and how it was possible for a person to return to the world of the good God. Because the good God was not associated with the earth and its material world, there is a good chance that the good God wouldn’t even be depicted. It would have to be aligned with the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, as those scriptures were fundamental to their religion. This focus on the Sermon on the Mount was emphasized in *Foolscap paper predated A4 as the most popular paper size in countries that were a part of the British Commonwealth. For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 21 the consolamentum, their most sacred sacrament, with the Lord’s Prayer being one of its key components. A sequence of scriptures in the Sermon on the Mount were called the Beatitudes, being given that label in the late fourth century. As will be explained later, being intrinsic to the teachings of the primitive church, these would also play a prominent part of the perfecti prescrip- tion for developing a love-centered consciousness, which was neces- sary to qualify in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Given their importance it would be expected that the Beatitudes be included in the template. Since reincarnation was an important part of the Cathar the- ology, there would also have to be some sort of depiction of reincarna- tion. The importance of Sophia as the divine feminine would also be symbolically depicted. One would expect that the context of the symbolism used in the images reflected the cultural and sociopolitical currency of the time. Since a picture paints a thousand words, using significant “current” events that the majority of people would be familiar with would make it easier to depict more complex messages. The context of the events adds a richness to the image’s ability to deliver the right message. One could also assume that themes depicted in popular mediums of art and used in churches at the time might be recycled where appropriate, since they would convey a message already understood by the general populace. Given that these were the sacred Grail mysteries, you would also expect that there would have to be a hidden key for gaining access to that knowledge. Thought Fossils The Trumps of the Marseille Tarot tick all of the boxes. It is plausible that these “thought fossils” are the preserved mystery teachings of the Cathar—what they went to so much trouble to preserve at Montségur. What was thought to have vanished as a result of the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition, may have actually managed to survive. There are holes in the trail of conclusive evidence to show how these mystery teachings relocated from the south of France to Lombardy in For Review Only 22 Revealing a Hidden Key the thirteenth century and then to Paris in the fifteenth century. From there, they reemerge in the seventeenth century as a standard canon, leaving a gap of 150 years with no clear explanation for how this canon of the Marseille Tarot was finally agreed upon. Although as Bayley sug- gests, they may have gone underground. The lack of historical evidence, although a handicap in one regard, is compensated for in another. The evidence which justifies the authenticity of its heritage is in the real-life application of the formula. Since the key for unlocking the deep mys- teries of the Cathar Code was discovered in 2007, hundreds of lives have been beneficially impacted through the application of what had previously been hidden knowledge. These obscure images that became known as the Marseille Tarot have finally given up their long held mys- tery, and through the successful application of the formula contained therein, it can be argued that they are in fact the preserved deep mys- teries of the Cathar perfecti. The Grail mysteries that were embedded into this code that were thought only to be a myth did exist, and were cleverly hidden in plain sight! That said, it’s highly unlikely that the Cathar produced any form of tarot cards. Cards in general weren’t introduced into Italy and France until later in the fourteenth century. This is after the death of the last known perfecti in Italy. It’s worth noting that the popularity of playing cards was meteoric. It was only a matter of a year, at most, and the church was universally condemning their use. Dice had long been used for games of chance and gambling, and the introduction of cards fitted in perfectly. Besides being used for games, they were also treated like miniature paint- ings, where they were easily carried and could be used to inspire times of quiet reflection. Of course, it didn’t take too long for bawdy images to be put on the cards, adding to their already perceived “evil” purposes. Dice, besides being used for gambling, had found another more acceptable application though. In the tenth century the bishop of Cambria, Wibold, invented a dice game that was later called Ludus Regularis Sue Clericalis, which roughly translated means, “a game for monks or priests.” The idea was that when three dice were thrown, they could result in fifty-six combinations, which were attributed a virtue (see For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 23 fig. 1.5). This turned a game of vice into one of inspiration and contem- plation. If cards, on their arrival in Europe, were so quickly applied to gaming, there is every reason to believe that they may have had a more virtuous application as early as the fifteenth century. This could well be the precursor to the cards being given an esoteric meaning. The idea of fortune-telling was first documented in a book written by Italian author Sigisimundo Fanti, Triumpho di Fortuna in the early sixteenth century. Fig. 1.5. A medieval dice game. Medieval manuscript on display in the Templar Castle in Ponferrada, Spain Photo taken by the author, October 2011 For Review Only 24 Revealing a Hidden Key The Visconti Tarot The first evidence of playing cards being called carte de triumphi (Latin), or trionfi (Italian) meaning “triumphs,” turns up in Lombardy at the behest of Francesco Sforza around the middle of the fifteenth century. A letter dated December 11, 1450, from Francesco’s chief secretary, Cichus, places an order for two packs of carte de triumphi on Francesco’s behalf.12 Stuart Kaplan, in his extensive two-volume The Encyclopedia of Tarot points out that the word tarrochi was not used until the sixteenth century, and that there was a distinction between carte de triumphi, which included the Trumps, and carte de giocare, which was referring only to the suited cards. This idea of triumphi was most likely inspired by the esteemed writings of Petrarch and Boccaccio who were familiar to the Visconti and lived during the fourteenth century. Petrarch in particular was famous for his book titled Trionfi, which was an allegorical text about how different aspects of human endeavor both related to and triumphed over each other. By the middle of the fifteenth century many illuminated manuscripts of Petrarch’s work turned up in Florence, Milan, and Venice. The twenty-two trump cards were not unlike Petrarch’s idea of human endeavor being trumped by something with more “value.” In Petrarch’s model Love is trumped by Chastity, which is trumped by Death, which in turn is trumped by Fame, then Time, and finally Eternity. In a card game, whatever suit has been declared trumps ulti- mately overrides any other suit. In the trionfi version of the game, the twenty-two trumps literally were the trump cards. As the deep mys- teries of the Cathar Code, the trumps depicted a series of triumphant states of consciousness that saw justice, time, and chance triumph over power, wealth, love, and fame. They were ultimately demonstrating how awareness triumphs over ignorance and Christ consciousness triumphs over human consciousness. It’s uncertain that Francesco and his wife, Bianca Maria Visconti understood the deep mysteries being portrayed in thesecards, since the playing of cards was by then a popular activity, but Francesco spe- For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 25 cifically ordering two packs of the carte de triumphi meant that it was a version of the card games with which they were familiar. It is thought that Bianca’s father, Filippo Maria Visconti had commissioned a set of trump-styled cards based on characters from Roman mythol- ogy, with four sets of triumphs that included virtue, riches, virginity, and pleasure. This would have had to have been before 1445 when notable fifteenth-century painter and illuminator Michelino Molinari da Besozzo, employed by the Visconti from 1400, died. These trium- phi styled on Roman mythology are thought to be the oldest surviv- ing set of trumps. Michelino was also employed to create illuminated Fig. 1.6. Portrait of Francesco Sforza by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1460 For Review Only 26 Revealing a Hidden Key manuscripts and miniatures for the Visconti, which saw him well quali- fied to create a personalized set of “Visconti” carte de triumphi. Between 1455 and up until his death in 1483, Bonifacio Bembo was an artist who became a favorite of the Sforza dukes, where com- missions for his painting included tarocchi cards, miniatures, frescos, and paintings. His contribution to the Sforza family was officially recognized in 1474 by Galeazzo Maria, who conferred the rights of Milanese citizenship on Bembo and his descendants. As Kaplan goes on to explain in The Encyclopedia of Tarot, “Bonifacio Bembo probably painted some of the taroochi cards, but it is obvious that not all of the Fig. 1.7. Portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1460 For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 27 extant 271 Visconti and Visconti-Sforza cards can be rightfully credited to his hand or workshop. However, many of the atrrochi cards resemble in style works believed to have been executed by Bonifacio”.13 In con- trast to Michelino’s trumps, many of the scenes depicted in Bonifacio’s work closely aligned to the illustrations and sequence that would later be called the Marseille Tarot. Extant sets of trumps that survived from the late fifteenth century are reminiscent of Bonifacio’s theme and less so of Michelino’s. Preserving the Cathar Mysteries Other than the clear parallel of the unique Gnostic/Christian beliefs of the Cathar to the messages housed in the images portrayed in the popular designs and sequence of the seventeenth-century Marseille Tarot, there is no detailed extant evidence proving their link. However, it appears that Bonifacio must have become privy to the perfecti mysteries that can jus- tifiably be called the Cathar Code. His role either as a custodian of the knowledge or just the artist meant that the knowledge would both sur- vive the extinction of the perfecti yet be cloistered in plain sight in a card game that in the sixteenth century became known as tarrochi. The custodians of this sacred knowledge had found the perfect way to preserve the Grail mysteries. Cards were primarily entertainment. This being the case, its deeper mysteries held no interest to those seek- ing the distractions from their arduous lives. Being seen as entertain- ment meant that the sequence and even the depictions would inevitably change. That said, what remains of the 1557 Catelin Geofroy pack is aligned with the popular sequence of the current Marseille Tarot. Kaplan, in volume 2 of The Encyclopedia of Tarot, claims that the oldest list of standard trumps was contained in a sermon condemning the use of dice and cards that was uncovered in a late fifteenth-century manu- script. The author specifically lists twenty-two cards similar in name and quality to those of the Marseille Tarot.14 By the middle of the sev- enteenth century a Marseille canon had emerged that became the stan- dard style for the Marseille Tarot from then on. For Review Only 28 Revealing a Hidden Key In the same way contemporary sociopolitical events were significant in the development of the original symbols and sequence, various packs of cards from the sixteenth century onward tended to also reflect con- temporary sixteenth-century sociopolitical events. For example, during the French Revolution, the Empress and the Emperor were changed to Grandmother and Grandfather respectively. If there were a definite sequence to the trump cards as many scholars believe, it would seem that the fifteenth-century tarocchi cards would have been numbered to facilitate play. It is possible, but unlikely, that players of the game triumphi or tarrochi were expected to memo- rize which trump card was valued above another; for example, The Emperor over The Empress, or The Pope over The Popess. However, the situation might vary depending upon changing political circum- stances. In fifteenth-century Italy, The Pope might have taken The Emperor, or The Emperor, The Pope, depending on the alliance of a patron of a deck or the prevailing papal or secular supremacy.15 When France invaded northern Italy at the end of the fifteenth cen- tury, in what became known as the Italian Wars, one prized booty was the Pavia library of the Visconti-Sforza. Pavia is about twenty-five miles south of Milan and was the second capital of the duke’s dominion. Being linked with the university, the library housed one of Italy’s larg- est collections of manuscripts. Given the universal interest in cards in Europe, it is a real possibility that one or more of the Visconti-Sforza sets of playing cards, with their gold and silver gilt backgrounds, also drew the attention of the invaders. It’s of note that many of the frescos and painting that adored the walls of the castle and churches in Pavia had been painted by Bonifacio Bembo. It is not exactly clear if this is how the cards got from Milan to Paris, but what is known is that the majority of the Visconti-Sforza library ended up in Paris.16 Since the library of the Visconti ended up in Paris after the Italian Wars, it could be assumed that the cards, or even the original medium (like a manuscript) that the Cathar used as their portable stained-glass For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 29 windows, did also. Many of the extant sixteenth-century cards or ref- erences to the cards still emerged from Italy; Geofroy of Lyon’s cards being an exception. By the mid-seventeenth century a set formula or canon of the Marseille Tarot appears in Paris, evidenced in the packs created by Jean Noblet, Francois Chosson, and Jacques Viévil. With the sequence appearing to be set, and methods of manufacturing making it possible to produce packs of cards en masse, this becomes a popular standard for sets of trionfi playing cards. The name Tarot de Marseille is understood to have been coined toward the end of the nineteenth century, because Marseille at the time was one of the main centers for the mass production of playing cards. The Companionships (Compagnonnage) One thing was certain: the cards were here to stay. How Bonifacio came up with the images that transposed the secrets of the Grail mysteries onto the cards remains a puzzle. There are three obvious explanations for the themes depicted on the cards. Bonifacio came up with the con- cepts for the cards himself and that they have no mystery other than what later became their esoteric meaning. Bonifacio had access to a manuscript or illuminations that had been in the possession of the Cathar and he copied them, or was at least inspired by them, but was unaware of what he actually possessed. Or finally, he was commissioned by someone who was a custodian of the Grail mysteries and the Cathar Code to create the miniatures as a new medium for preserving the mys- tery teachings. Evidence that the Grail formula was being maintained was seen in various poetry, texts, and cards that surfaced throughout the six- teenth century. The papermakers of France and Italy were not unlike the masons,artisans, and journeymen who belonged to guilds and cor- porations that in some cases also functioned as secret societies called compagnonnage. One line of thought is that the society of papermakers became the custodian of the Grail mysteries. The renaissance papermak- ers, whom it appears were committed to preserving the deep mysteries, For Review Only 30 Revealing a Hidden Key used both watermarks and these playing cards as mediums to preserve their knowledge. This became an extension of whatever method the Cathar used to preserve the sacred mysteries of the Holy Grail during the medieval period. Being cloistered for two centuries under the custodianship of one of these compagnonnage meant that real clarity could be brought to the understanding and therefore the detail of the cards. This clarification of the refined canon of the Marseille Tarot was the trionfi that surfaced in Paris around 1650. These custodians took seriously the stewardship of what the cards truly represented and they were confident that the mys- teries were safely locked away, hidden in a game. With the emergence of the cards being used esoterically during the mid-eighteenth century (more commonly called fortune-telling), their real mystery would have even less chance of being discovered. In 2011, Jean-Claude Flornoy, a twenty-first-century master card- maker passed away. His passion for the Marseille Tarot saw him create traditional hand-colored stencil editions of the twenty-two Trump cards from the Marseille Tarot of Jean Noblet (Paris, 1650) and Jean Dodal (Lyon, 1701). His passion for the cards can be seen throughout his home village, Sainte-Suzanne in the Mayenne Loire Valley, between Laval and Le Mans, France. Large steel-cut and exquisitely painted caricatures from the Marseille Tarot are scattered throughout the village as a testament to, and celebrating the work of, Jean-Claude Flornoy. His insightful writings into the mysteries of the Marseille Tarot commenced being translated into English just prior to his passing. Seeing the World was published in 2018. A special note at the front of the book gives an important insight into what he understood was the original intention of the Marseille Tarot. He (Jean-Claude) was adamant, as the sum total of his book makes clear, that the “journey of the soul” is more a psychological one than a spiritual one, that within the context of this journey, each indi- vidual soul, like the compagnon who is the key to Flornoy’s Tarot interpretation paradigm, makes it rounds, travels the circuit, from For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 31 “building site to building site” by which it (the soul) is properly “constructed.”17 On the website celebrating his works and writings (letarot.com) there is a wonderful insight that he gives that best describes the nature Fig. 1.8. La Papesse by Jean-Claude Flornoy. One of many found throughout the village of Sainte-Suzanne, Mayenne, France Photo taken by the author, September 2011 For Review Only 32 Revealing a Hidden Key and purpose of the deep mysteries found in these cards. First, regarding the origins of the cards, Flornoy says that they “appeared seemingly out of nowhere” in 1375 in the Lombardy region of northern Italy. On the purpose of the tarot he wrote, “one of the essential aims of compagnon- nage and of all medieval spirituality: to cross during one’s lifetime into the other world of reality. Once the 16th century came to an end, it seems that the teachings and paths leading to this experience were lost and that only the tarot retain (sic) their memory.”18 Pilgrimage of the Soul Flornoy referred to this journey as a pèlerinage de l’ âme, or pilgrim- age of the soul. The Fool (Le Fou or Le Mat, see fig. 1.9) as one of the twenty-two cards of the Marseille Trumps, represents a pilgrim. His journey is depicted in the other twenty-one cards of the Trumps. These twenty-one cards are numbered sequentially and can be seen to be types of markers on a map that the Fool, without a number, will follow. Of course, this is a map of consciousness and the Fool is symbolic of the vehicle that carries the billions of expressions of consciousness on its journey. In the tarot world, the Trumps became known as the Major Arcana, the word arcana meaning secret or mystery. As further evidence of this idea of a pilgrimage, in Greek and Roman mythology one of the gods was assigned the role of guide to the traveller—Hermes to the Greeks and Mercury to the Romans. It’s an important detail, at this juncture, to note that part of the accusation that justified the Visconti being declared heretics by the pope was their strong interest in Greek and Roman mythology. In his book Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts, Christopher De Hamel, in explaining the preface of a medieval manuscript Semideus, presented to Filippo Maria Visconti circa 1438, writes, At one moment, they are utterly committed Christians, discussing the need to recover the Holy Land for Christendom, based on bibli- cal texts and under the assured protection of the Virgin Mary. At the For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 33 same time, Filippo Maria [Visconti] was named after a warrior king of Macedon as well as the virgin. Nearly every sentence of the pref- ace is buttressed by classical references and allusions, Greek as well as Roman, and the duke is equated with Jupiter and is documented here as a quite literal descendant of the ancient deities, a half-god himself, like his semi-divine ancestor Aeneas, son of Venus. It is as if Christianity was never there . . . the Visconti princes are presented in the first frontispiece as being in an unbroken line of descent from ancient pagan Rome with hardly a nod to any intervening lapse into another faith.19 Hamel explains that Filippo was among the first generation of great Italian Renaissance book collectors. The 1426 inventory of the Visconti Fig. 1.9. Le Fou / The Fool by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 34 Revealing a Hidden Key library in Pavia included nearly 1,000 manuscripts. Latin classics were splendidly represented, often in multiple copies.20 As previously dis- cussed, a set of trionfi made for Filippo were all represented by charac- ters from Roman mythology. That there are references in the Marseille canon of Greek and Roman origin also makes sense given the obvious interest held by the Visconti. Back to Mercury. The understanding of the attributes of the gods came from the myths. Mercury was known as the god of magic, com- munication, healing, occult wisdom, and was also a guide to the traveler. Card I is called Le Bateleur (see fig. 1.11), meaning a street performer, and more commonly, a juggler. In medieval times in the ranking of entertainers, jugglers were thought to be the most unsavory of them. Musicians and dancers were at the top. Jugglers were deemed to have few morals, particularly those who made a living wandering and per- forming through villages and at fairs. It was thought that they did their tricks through magic, which was possibly why this card later became known as The Magician (Bagatino). Fig. 1.10. Engraving of Filippo Visconti, circa 1852 For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 35 Fig. 1.11. Le Bateleur / The Magician by Jean Dodal, circa 1701 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 36 Revealing a Hidden Key At the Crossroads If this Le Bateleur is an illusionist and trickster, then he could be associ- ated with Mercury, which encompasses all of the other qualities attrib- uted to this god. Given that the Fool is on a pilgrimage, a journey of sorts, then having the “guide of the traveler” come to the fore would be seen as fortuitous. Hermes, the Greek version of Mercury, was responsi- ble for the name given to unusual signposts found at four-wayintersec- tions. They were called herms. In their earliest crude form, herms were just piles of stone but were eventually replaced with large phalli carved out of stone (see fig. 1.12). Hermes was also one of the gods of sexual- ity. In Greek mythology, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite was named Hermaphroditus, from which arises the word hermaphrodite, referring to an androgyny, which means to possess both masculine and feminine characteristics. In early Greek and Roman periods, travelers would come to an intersection in the country and there would be a six-foot-tall stone penis, with a girth of a couple of feet and the names of the next des- tination in each of the four directions carved into the stone. In later periods the phallic signpost was replaced with a rectangular pillar with the bust of Hermes on the top and carved testicles and a penis on the front. With the advent of the Christian era, herms were replaced with crosses. Both as the guide to the traveler and magician, Le Bateuler card is essentially a herm, and must therefore be a signpost at an inter- section. The problem is that there doesn’t appear to be an intersection or a crossroad. A closer look at the shape of the Magician’s hat (see fig. 1.11) hints at the idea of an intersection. This was a popular style of hat at the time and is still worn in medieval reenactments in northern Italy to this day. Taking on the appearance of a stylized lemniscate, which is the infinity symbol, would suggest a crossroad, a meeting of four ways. Closer inspection of the Trumps shows another figure wearing a similar shaped hat. This is on card XI, called Strength (La Force, see fig. 1.13, p. 38). Here is a woman depicting strength, evidenced by For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 37 her ability to hold open the mouth of a lion. She too wears a similarly stylized hat in the shape of a lemniscate. This would imply that there should be a female god in Greek mythology who also had an impor- tant role at crossroads. Hecate Trevia literally meant “Hecate of the Three-Ways.” She was one of the older goddesses in Greek mythology. Images of Hecate guarded three-ways for centuries. It was as if she stood at the place that was a parting of the ways, a place where you get to decide which of two paths you will follow. The path well-worn or the dark wood as Dante describes it in the Divine Comedy, “wherein the straight road no longer lay, how hard it is to tell, make understood what a wild place it was, so dense, adverse, that fear returns in thinking of that wood.” Fig. 1.12. Stone phallus, displayed in Castel Nuovo, Naples Photo taken by the author, June 2007 For Review Only 38 Revealing a Hidden Key Fig. 1.13. La Force / Strength by de Guler & Aymerich, 1983 © Naipes Heraclitus Fournier S.A. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 39 *Vesica piscis means the “bladder of the fish.” Both the shape of the bladder and the per- ceived “fishy smell” of the vagina qualified female genitalia to be colloquially referred to as the vesica piscis. †Mandorla is Italian, and literally means “almond or almond shaped.” Its shape was symbolic of the Sacred Yoni (Sanskrit for the vagina or vulva). These two cards symbolize the idea that a crossroad should exist. It’s of note that the cards with the similar shaped hats are numbered I and XI, both with nine other cards following. Since Catharism was dualistic and these cards represent their beliefs, it would be expected that there would be two worlds depicted in the cards, the world of the evil God and the world of the good God. This dualistic belief was fundamental to their whole theology. The lemniscate shape of the hats depicts two ovals, alluding to this idea of two worlds. It would appear that the hats were a key! Literally, the shape of the hats became the key for unlocking how the cards were to be laid out. Without this key the deeper meaning of the cards would remain hidden. Where Two Worlds Meet When two circles meet, they have a touch point like in the number 8. But when they overlap, they create a Vesica piscis* shape, also known as a mandorla.† The overlapping ovals of the hats suggest that with the layout of the cards, there are two intersecting circles with a mandorla shaped intersection, leading to the idea that there are two worlds. With such a concept, you would expect that an intersection of that style would be found in the cards. Card XXI called Le Monde, or The World, is the last in the sequence of the twenty-one cards and central to its design is the mandorla (see fig. 1.14, p. 40). It appears that this is the intersection, the convergence of four paths that was anticipated. This would mean that Card I (the Magician) and Card XI (Strength) being stylized guides typically found at intersec- tions, would be situated close to The World card. Given the shape of the hats and the dual world model, it could be assumed that they both start a circular sequence in order to create the shape of two worlds. Using the For Review Only 40 Revealing a Hidden Key Fig. 1.14. Le Monde / The World by de Guler & Aymerich, 1983 © Naipes Heraclitus Fournier S.A. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Revealing a Hidden Key 41 mandorla as the starting point, both circles would start from opposing corners of The World card, with the other nine cards in their sequence completing the circle. But from which corner do the cards start? The Magician, being Card I, goes first. In many of the depictions on the Marseille Tarot, The World card has an almost naked androgynous figure dancing inside the mandorla. In nearly every case the figure is looking to their right, and in the majority of the cards is looking down to the right in the direction of the Bull. The dancer is giving a clue about where you commence your pilgrimage. The Bull in turn is also looking down to his right. Following this hint, The Magician as Card I, is placed near the bottom left-hand corner of The World card beside the Bull. This would mean that Cards II through V completed an inverted semicircle, with Cards VI through X forming the balance of the circle, going back to the right and ending at the Angel in the top left corner of The World card. If you continue to use the concept of following the direction of where the figures are looking, in the majority of Marseille depictions the Angel is looking to their left, more particularly to the bottom left of the card, toward the Lion. It can be assumed that this is where you will find Hecate Trevia (the Strength card) as the second guide. Remember she specializes in helping people at three-ways. Path One: This is the route you have just come down, finishing at Card X (The Wheel of Fortune). If you were to choose this way, you tend to stay put and not go anywhere. This is a common choice, but eventually takes you to the second path. Path Two: Choosing to go in a clockwise direction you will begin with Card I again. Path Three: You can go counter-clockwise in the direction of Hecate and take the less popular path that requires strength and courage. As was the case with the left side of the “hat template,” you will now construct the right side. Card XI (Strength) will be at the cross- road next to the Lion on The World card. Cards XII through to XV will make an inverted semicircle to the right, followed by Cards XVI through to XX completing the circle going back to the left, ending at the Eagle in the top right-hand corner of The World card. The layout For Review Only 42 Revealing a Hidden Key of the cards as revealed by the hats completely changes the context and relationships of the cards. The hat template is now complete. Laying the cards out in this pattern brings an expanded meaning and understand- ing to the cards, and is why the hat template is the key that was needed for unlocking the Grail mysteries preserved by the Cathar. If you were tofollow the direction of the gaze of the Lion (see fig. 1.14, p. xx),[x-ref] it appears to be looking straight ahead. The Lion is looking into your soul, which infers an internal journey, looking into your eyes, the windows of your soul. This going “within to find the kingdom of God” was fundamental to the Cathar teachings in just the same way that it was to Jesus: “The kingdom of God doesn’t come by observation: They won’t be able to say, Here it is or there it is! So take note, the kingdom of God is with you” (Luke 17:20–21 )̂. In the late fourteenth century or early fifteenth century, the Grail mysteries and profound teachings of the perfecti were encoded into play- ing cards long after their demise. There they have remained hidden on and off for almost 650 years. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century they have been revealed once more. This is knowledge that is as relevant for mankind today as it was in times past. “Again, the kingdom of heaven [the world of the good God] is not unlike a merchant, seeking good quality pearls: Who, when he found that one perfect pearl, went and cashed in all of his assets, and bought it” (Matthew 13:45–46^). In the Marseille Tarot can be found the prefect hidden pearl, this pearl of great price. For Review Only 43 TWO The Evolving States of Consciousness T he people who inhabited the northern regions of Italy prior to the Romans were the Etruscans. Current knowledge of their culture comes from an unusual source, their necropolises, as the name suggests necro (dead) and poli (city). They built whole towns with streets and homes for their dead, in just the same way as they did for the living. Fig. 2.1. A street in Cerveteri, Italy—the Etruscan City of the Dead Photo taken by the author, June 2007 For Review Only 44 The Evolving States of Consciousness The main difference was that the homes of the living were typically made of timber. Necropolises were often made from a soft volcanic stone called tufa that could be formed into the perfect home-styled tomb. The furnishings and design of the homes in these cities of the dead mirrored the wooden cities of the living that, unlike the tombs, disappeared over time. As you walk along the streets of the necropolis, you see entrances to the homes where typically you walk down stairs into rooms or cham- bers that would have originally housed the deceased, most often their ashes being stored in house-shaped urns. Around the walls of the cham- bers were chairs and beds carved from the tufa. Artificial windows were either carved or painted. The ceiling was carved with the appearance of beams and tiles. Carved walls separated various spaces, and sculp- tured columns gave the appearance of having a structural function. In some cases, not all, at the rear of the chamber was found an oval-shaped Fig. 2.2. A mandorla passage sculptured from tufa in underground hypogea at Cerveteri, Italy Photo taken by the author, June 2007 Fig. 2.3. A mandorla passage made from carved block in underground hypogea at Cerveteri, Italy Photo taken by the author, June 2007 For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 45 passage six feet high and no more than three feet wide, which could be eight to fifteen feet in length. It was the only entrance to a rear chamber. This oval-shaped passage was in stark contrast to the linear theme throughout the rest of the interior. On the outside, the homes almost universally had a dome form that also belied its internal design. It is quite possible that these “engineered” rear passageways were sym- bolic of a Sacred Yoni, an Etruscan construct symbolizing the Queen of Heaven. The Etruscans predated Christianity by several centuries. Like many pre-Christian religions they would have subscribed to the notion that the only way to return to Heaven was through the mother, who as Sophia in the Gnostic tradition, symbolized divine wisdom. That they went to so much trouble to either carve out of the tufa or shape blocks into an elongated mandorla meant that it was important. The Sacred Yoni In The World card, a symbol of the Sacred Yoni is being depicted in the form of the wreath surrounding the dancer (see fig. 1.14, p. 40). In some of the seventeenth-century versions of the Marseille Tarot, this wreath was more circular but could also be mandorla shaped. During the medi- eval period, Jesus and Mary were often depicted in religious art seated in the center of a mandorla. One particular piece of sixteenth-century iconic Russian art called Le Jugement dernier (The Last Judgment), on display in Le Louvre in Paris, shows Jesus sitting on a throne in the middle of a circle with a bull, a lion, an eagle, and an angel superimposed on the circle. In an over-lapping scene, just superior, Jesus is standing in a man- dorla-shaped, red colored frame with what appears to be a hymen skirting the internal parameter of the frame. This mandorla/yoni is symbolic of the passage between the world of the evil God and the world of the good God. To the right of the mandorla are two additional, almost identical circles to which Jesus is facing: the first showing God the Father seated in his heavenly throne with an empty seat to his right; and a second one where Jesus is seated to the right of the Father, symbolic of his having become one with God the Father (see fig. 2.4, p. 46). For Review Only 46 The Evolving States of Consciousness Given the Cathar belief in duality and that the kingdom of the good God had no material substance, it could be assumed that they would not have attempted, unlike this Russian artist, to depict the kingdom of Heaven in their images. That being the case, the kingdom of Heaven Fig. 2.4. Le Jugement dernier (The Last Judgment), circa 1650, Le Louvre, Paris For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 47 is assumed to be on the other side of the wreath and the dancing fig- ure that are depicted in The World card. The Gospel of John, together with the Sermon on the Mount were the Cathar’s main scriptural go-to. John’s description of Heaven being about a state of “oneness with God” would ultimately be their definition of Heaven. It was more a state of being; as Luke explained, “the kingdom of God is within you.” Undifferentiated Consciousness In Reflections on the Art of Living, Diane Osbon quotes Joseph Campbell who equates this state of oneness with the last chakra called sahasrar (meaning “thousand petalled”), the chakra at the top of the head. Campbell said, “At this chakra, there is no person to be conscious of God. There is only undifferentiated consciousness: the silence. When you hit Chakra VII, you are inert. It is a catatonic knockout, you might say, and you are reduced simply to a thing.”1 This is another way to explain Jesus’s intercessory prayer recorded in the Gospel of John, “That they may be one; as you Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may also be one in us” (John 17:21). When Campbell describes this place as undifferentiated conscious- ness, he is alluding to the idea that there is no consciousness, meaning no person to be conscious of God. This is what it means to be one with God. Campbell further expands on his concept of undifferentiated con- sciousness: “It is so sweet that one is reluctant to yield, but the ultimate yielding is the yielding of your own being. If you are going to hang onto your soul, you cannot become one with God. You can’t even become one with your spouse. This is what has to be given up. I hear Om. I know God is ubiquitous. Divine energy is all around me. It is here. It is here. It is here. It is here.”2 In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “Blessed are they who find the One within their own being.” So, God in this context could be called undifferentiated con- sciousness. This means there is nothing that is aware of anything that is not God. The minute there is an awareness of something that is not God, thenyou have differentiated consciousness. Imagine the state For Review Only 48 The Evolving States of Consciousness of undifferentiated consciousness is the color white and through a bizarre course of events some of the white changes color and becomes red. In that moment the red becomes self-conscious, aware of itself, because it looks different from white. That is the beginning of dif- ferentiated consciousness. Differentiated consciousness is the idea, the belief that there is something that is not God. The minute that belief exists then, according to the Cathar, the world of the evil God comes into existence. This is the creation of the dual world that the Cathar taught was evil. Differentiated Consciousness The Cathar embedded symbols into The World card to define the nature of consciousness that made differentiation possible. The Bull, the Angel, the Lion, and the Eagle are each symbolic of an aspect of consciousness, or awareness if you will, that helps you to define yourself as being separate from God (see fig. 1.14, p. xx). [x-ref] The specific combination of these four first appeared in the visions of a 600 BCE Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel. “As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle” (Ezekiel 1:10). In a later vision he refers to these four as the Cherubim who “stood at the door of the east gate of the Lord’s house.” This idea of the Cherubim being a gatekeeper first appeared in the garden of Eden story. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden for hav- ing eaten the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a f laming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:24). In this context the Cherubim as keepers of the eastern gate (along with the f laming sword) were ultimately tests Adam and Eve had to pass to return to the House of God. In the Gnostic scripture called the Pistis Sophia, it is made clear that it was possible for Adam and Eve to return to the For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 49 Garden. “The time will come when the sword will be removed for Adam and he may reach forth his hand and partake of the fruit of the Tree of Life.”3 Once again, if this was essential knowledge for anyone desiring to return to the world of the good God, the Cathar would have embed- ded it into the knowledge that was later translated into these porta- ble stained-glass windows. It is worth noting that Card XVI is called The House of God, which is the place where the presence of God can be experienced here on earth. The flaming sword and the Cherubim would of necessity be depicted somewhere close to this card. It comes as no surprise that the flaming sword is depicted in the previous card being held in the hand of The Devil, Card XV.* If there is a flaming sword, then the Cherubim must be close at hand as well. The conclu- sion can be drawn that any card prior to The House of God card is representative of differentiated consciousness, all of which belongs to the world of the evil God. The Garden of Eden This idea of the emergence of a consciousness that was separate from God was intrinsic to the garden of Eden story. Eve is tempted by the serpent to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, fruit that makes one wise, thus becoming as God explains “one of us, to know good and evil” (Genesis 3:22). It would seem that wisdom (to know good and evil) wasn’t the problem, since the gods (one of us) possessed that knowledge. The problem was possessing this knowledge and believing that they were different or separate from God. Being self- conscious, the “eyes of them both were opened, and they knew they were naked . . . and made themselves aprons” (Genesis 3:7). And for the first time fear makes its entrance. “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked: and I hid myself ” (Genesis 3:10). *In the seventeenth-century Marseille Tarot, the Devil is depicted holding a sword and often the flames are disguised, blending into the pattern of his left wing. For Review Only 50 The Evolving States of Consciousness Adam and Eve now possess differentiated consciousness, no longer feeling they are one with God. Since they are no longer at-one-with God, they couldn’t stay in the garden, the place of undifferentiated consciousness. This was the point where they were expelled from the garden. The quest of the Fool (Adam and Eve) in having gained that knowledge of good and evil, was to then find a way to regain their one- ness with God while still possessing this knowledge. If they could do that, it meant Adam and Eve would also become “one of us,” being a part of the undifferentiated consciousness that was said to be “us/God.” You would know you could become one with God if you could pass the test of the Cherubim and the flaming sword. Having passed the gatekeepers, you would be permitted to reenter the Garden, which was symbolized anciently by a sacred space called the Holy of Holies, found in the Hebrew temple. In Solomon’s temple, the curtains that sepa- rated the inner sanctuary, the place of the presence of God (the Holy of Holies), from the rest of the temple was embossed with Cherubim. This meant that the Fool prepared for the test of the Cherubim that allowed one to enter into the presence of God, in the Holy Place that was a part of the tabernacle. The test of the flaming sword was made up of the rituals carried out closer to the eastern entrance of the temple, in the Court of the Congregation. What the Fool required was the knowledge needed to pass the test of the Cherubim and the f laming sword. This knowledge was found in the mysteries and sacred teachings of the ancient temple that with the advent of Catholicism would have been lost to the Christians, but because of these medieval heretics it was preserved as the Grail mys- teries and then embedded in their Cathar Code. This is the knowl- edge that was encoded into the Trumps of the Marseille Tarot. This was why preserving this knowledge was so important to these medi- eval heretics. It was the treasure salvaged at Montségur in 1244. The church had lost its mandate to possess the knowledge and it was up to the Cathar to preserve it. What the Cathar possessed was the detailed template for returning to the world of the good God, the kingdom of Heaven. For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 51 The Four The development of differentiated consciousness as symbolized by the Bull, Lion, Eagle, and Angel was symbolic of the states of consciousness that brought about the belief that Adam and Eve were different from God. Called a tetramorph (tetra meaning “four” and morph meaning “shape”), the reintegration of these four aspects of consciousness would bring salvation (see fig. 2.5, p. 52). The importance of transforming these four was highlighted by frequent references to them throughout the twenty-two images of the Trumps. The Bull, the Angel, the Lion, and the Eagle are collectively symbolized in the position of the legs of various characters throughout the cards. For example, the legs of The Emperor depicted in Card IIII, are crossed in the shape of a 4. In Jean Dodal’s Marseille Tarot, the number 4 is actually written on the card (see fig. 2.6, p. 53). In the card titled The Hanged Man, Card XII, the legs of the man are formed as an upside-down 4 (fig. 2.7, p. 53). In Card XVI, The House of God, one of the people falling out of the tower has their legs in the shape of the 4, but coming apart (fig. 2.8, p. 54). And finally, in various edi- tions of the Marseille canon, the dancer in the center of the mandorla of The World card is depicted with their legs in the shape of the 4 (see fig. 2.9,p. 54). With the exception of The World card, the other three cards are the first in a sequence of four cards that collectively symbolize the different states of consciousness: human consciousness, transforming consciousness, and Christ consciousness. The dancer is linked to undifferentiated consciousness, that place where “the four” are now one. The four evangelists of the New Testament were also linked to these four symbols. This association first came to light during the sec- ond century, inspired by Irenaeus (130–202 CE). The most common alignment was the one proposed by Jerome (347–420 CE) in the fourth century. Throughout history, the associations have varied but following the most commonly accepted, Matthew with the man/angel, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, and John the eagle. For Review Only Fig. 2.5. A relief sculpture of a tetramorph in the Basilica of Saint-Sernin, Toulouse, France, circa twelfth century Photo taken by the author, October 2014 For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 53 Fig. 2.6. L’Empereur / The Emperor by Jean Dodal, circa 1701 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner Fig. 2.7. Le Pendu / The Hanged Man by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 54 The Evolving States of Consciousness Fig. 2.9. Le Monde / The World by de Guler & Aymerich, 1983 © Naipes Heraclitus Fournier S.A. Used by permission of the owner Fig. 2.8. La Maison Dieu / The House of God by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 55 The Bull was originally seen to be a “symbol of the earth, of the mother.”4 According to Barbara Walker, “Latin Mater (Mother) became English ‘matter,’ of which Plutarch said, ‘Matter hath the function of mother and nurse . . . and containeth the elements from which every- thing is produced.”5 As one of the fixed signs of the zodiac, Taurus (the bull) is aligned with the earth element. It can be concluded that the Bull represents matter, which in terms of consciousness relates to the physi- cal. This is one of the aspects of consciousness that created the illu- sion of differentiated consciousness. Adam and Eve perceived they were naked, which differentiated them from God. Differentiated conscious- ness is but a halfway house to the ultimate separation from God, which according to the Cathar was human consciousness, or gross matter. Physical consciousness as one of the aspects of human consciousness is expressed through the five senses: touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell. The Angel represents the element of air. The etymology of the word angel means “messenger,” which alludes to the idea that angels convey God’s truth or knowledge to mankind. As the symbol for the air ele- ment, the Angel in its role as messenger between God and mankind is symbolic of mental consciousness. Being at-one-with God, the need for an Angel would be redundant. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they immedi- ately expanded their intellect. Possessing knowledge without awareness resulted in the “them and us” observation by God, which concreted the idea that there was now a separation of consciousness. The Angel was linked to Aquarius as its fixed sign, whose element was air. The mind, being the second aspect of differentiated consciousness, is expressed in human consciousness as thought. As the symbol of fire, the Lion represents spiritual consciousness. The fixed sign of Leo was attributed the element of fire. The word spirit originally meant “breath.” In the book of Genesis, God created man from “the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). This fire element is what animates, it is the thing that brings momentum. In terms of the spirit being the third aspect of differentiated consciousness, it is For Review Only 56 The Evolving States of Consciousness expressed in human consciousness as desire. What you value is informed by your desires, which in turn determines how you function physically, mentally, and emotionally. Differentiated consciousness manifested when Eve and Adam made the decision to eat the forbidden fruit. What they desired in that moment was at variance with God. In having made their choice, oneness with God ceased to exist. When contemplating spiritual consciousness, think “team spirit” or being “mean-spirited.” It’s the thing that motivates your actions, for good or bad. The Eagle is the symbol of water. Both eagles and scorpions were associated with Scorpio, the fourth fixed sign of the zodiac, whose ele- ment is water. The eagle is the symbol for emotional consciousness. As the fourth aspect of differentiated consciousness, emotions are expressed in human consciousness as feelings. In the garden of Eden story, when Adam and Eve hid from God, it was because they were afraid. Fear as emotion differentiated (separated) them from God. The nature of God observes emotion—whereas with Adam and Eve emotion was a product of perception. In the New Testament it was clearly stated that God was love. Love is inclusive and allows oneness to be a reality; fear is exclu- sive, which results in separation. The States of Consciousness It would seem that the decision to eat the forbidden fruit was the catalyst for the emergence of differentiated consciousness, which in Christian theology was called the Fall. It meant that the seat to the right of God, as depicted in Le Jugement dernier (see fig. 2.4, p. xx),[x- ref] would be empty, since it could only be occupied by someone who was at-one-with God. In Christianity, this was called the atonement, which literally means “being at-one-with.” From the Catholic perspec- tive, the only one capable of reconciling God and mankind was Jesus. From a Cathar perspective, being one with God was achieved through the Christ, more specifically Christ consciousness, which was an inter- nal savior not an external Jesus. Now there are four states of consciousness. Undifferentiated con- For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 57 sciousness, which the Cathar called the good God. Differentiated consciousness, which could be best described as the spirits in the heaven-world, that place that sits between heaven and earth. It’s the world described by people who have had near-death experiences. Then there is human consciousness, which according to Gnostic and Cathar teachings, is when your spirit takes on human form in one of your many earthly incarnations. And then there is Christ consciousness, which is the recalibration of both human and differentiated conscious that is the precursor for becoming one with the good God, returning to the state of undifferentiated consciousness. The whole purpose of the Cathar Code and the Holy Grail was to bring about an atonement (read, at-one-with) through mindfully trans- forming consciousness as represented by the four: the Bull, the Lion, the Eagle, and the Angel. The Western tradition of mindfulness as a tool for change was detailed in the four phases of enhanced awareness that were encoded in the Marseille Trumps. The first element of awareness was based on the notion that you can’t change what you can’t see, and is what makes it possible to overcome ignorance, the first block to living mindfully. The first set of four begins with Card IV, The Emperor (fig. 2.5). This means that The Emperor, The Pope, The Lovers, and The Chariot cards, collectively and individually are providing important insights into the development of human consciousness. This is the programming the child receives from both family and society that molds a life, generally centered around unsustainable values of power, wealth, love, and fame. The second set offour begin with Card XII, The Hanged Man (fig. 2.6). This means that The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, and The Devil cards also represent the four, but in a different way. As will be discussed later, this is the Dark Night of the Soul, the pro- cess of developing awareness that is typically the result of suffering. It’s the dimension of awareness that makes it possible to be free of avoidance, Buddha’s second poison. This is the second principle of Western mindfulness, which says that when something is authenti- cally observed, it changes. Intrinsic to this set of four is the f laming For Review Only 58 The Evolving States of Consciousness sword held in the left hand of the Devil. This is the test that Adam and Eve, as the Fool, must pass before entering the House of God. The card following The Devil is The House of God, which intro- duces the third set of four. As previously discussed, the Fool is now at the eastern gate, which is the entrance to God’s realm. Having com- pleted the test of the flaming sword, the Fool moves on to the test of the Cherubim. This next set of four is the Cherubim, which includes The Star, The Moon, The Sun, and Judgment cards. That each of these four depict various aspects of light gives rise to the notion that they are about enlightenment, which originally meant “to remove the dimness or blindness,” figuratively speaking, from one’s eyes or heart. This is what Jesus was explaining when he said, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is [seen] in the eye: if you are singularly focused [on returning to the world of the good God], then your whole body will be full of light [enlightenment]. But if your focus is on evil [the things of the world of the evil God], then your whole body will be full of darkness (Matthew 6:21–23^). Simply put, what you desire most is reflected in what you value. In the language of the Cathar, if you value the world of the good God, then you will be full of light. If you value the evil God, you will be full of darkness. It’s recognizing that you have a choice. In fact, the defini- tion of Western mindfulness is remembering in each instant that you can choose a more loving alternative. Each of the cards in this last set of four gives a deeper understanding of what the loving alternatives look like. As John explained, “every one that loves is born of God, and knows God” (1 John 4:7). Loving kindness becomes the new focus of consciousness, and it is maintaining the awareness of loving kindness that makes it possible for the Fool to rise above human and differentiated consciousness sustain- ably. It’s this love consciousness that overcomes Buddha’s third poison, attachment. Attachment is the idea that change isn’t sustainable. In the context of Western mindfulness, this third principle reveals that resort- ing to will and discipline mostly results in unsustainable change, and that sustainable change can only be achieved by being mindful of the For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 59 choice of loving kindness. It is only through Christ consciousness (being mindful of the more loving alternative) that the Fool can be reunited with the good God, which is undifferentiated consciousness. There is one final card depicting the four states of consciousness. This one stands alone, with no sequence of four. More to the point, it’s the one aspect of The World card that represents the enlightened four, which is the figure framed by the mandorla. This figure symbolizes the unification of the four, and the integration of the masculine and feminine. Being at the entrance to the womb of the Divine Mother also means that the seven spheres* of human consciousness have been com- pleted. As such, the Fool can put a stop to re-fleshing, the cyclic rebirth after each death called reincarnation, a fundamental Cathar belief. That which was separated has become one and now represents the state of consciousness that is essential to enter the kingdom of the good God. This is the evidence that the Fool has passed the test of the Cherubim. Having become the Christ, the Fool can pass through the Sacred Yoni to be seated on the right hand of God. The Beatitudes A significant tool for understanding both Christ consciousness and the Dark Night of the Soul, were the eight Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, one of the foundational scriptures of the Cathar. The first four Beatitudes are directly linked to the four cards of the Dark Night of the Soul. The next four Beatitudes give important insights into the development of Christ consciousness. The eighth Beatitude belongs to The Judgment card, which would have been significant for the Cathar as it spoke of the blessings that came with persecution. This was some- thing with which they were intimately familiar and may have been why they could demonstrate nonresistance in the face of the ghastly *Gnosticism and the Mysteries of Mithra, a Roman religion that was superseded by Christianity, were among many pre-Christian religions that believed in seven layers in the sky that were the seven heavens. The number seven relates to the seven classical plan- ets known in antiquity: Mercury, Venus, the moon, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. For Review Only 60 The Evolving States of Consciousness ways many of them died. They knew they would be rewarded with the kingdom of Heaven, thus finally being free of the world of the evil God. Taking into account the coding of the Beatitudes, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, and Judgment cards explain how to be more con- sciously aligned with pure love or Christlike love that Jesus expounded upon during his ministry. When asked what the greatest commandment was in the law, Jesus replied, “To love God . . . and the second was like unto it, you will love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36–39^). Essentially, these cards cover spiritual values that emerge from the desire to be reunited with the good God. These love-centered values included social justice, mercy and forgiveness, charity, the pure love of Christ, and being a peacemaker. These are the qualities of consciousness that mani- fest as Christ consciousness and are essential if one is to be reunited with God, who the apostle John said was love. Having gone from being a Fool for Christ to becoming the Fool as Christ, The Judgment card is the last of the aspects of Christ consciousness. Michael the Archangel is blowing the trumpet of the res- urrection of the dead. Hanging from his trumpet is a flag that depicts a cross. Here you see a template of perfection symbolizing Christ con- sciousness. This is the standard against which all will be measured to see if they are worthy to return to sit at the right hand of God the Father, this is the actual test of the Cherubim. Based on the Cathar belief in reincarnation, if you fail to measure up to the standard of Christ con- sciousness, then you get to do it all again. Sophia, the Queen of Heaven In Gnostic teachings, the feminine face of God (the Queen of Heaven) as well as the feminine counterpart of Christ consciousness were both called Sophia. Sophia as the Queen of Heaven is identified in The World card by her role as the Divine Mother. This is seen in the wreath that is symbolic of her Sacred Yoni, which leads to the Divine womb. Remember, this is what separates the world of the good God from the evil God. It’s the passage between undifferentiated consciousness and For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 61 differentiated consciousness. According to Gnostic myth, Sophia gives birth to a daughter, “the image of herself, who lost contact with her heavenly origin, and in her distress and sorrow brought the earth into being, and became entangled and lost in the chaotic realm of darkness that lay beneath the realm of light.”6 Her daughter’s name is also Sophia. The myth goes on to explain how Sophia, the Mother,sends her son Christ, the embodiment of her light and wisdom, to rescue her daughter Sophia. This is reminiscent of Hermes being asked by Demeter to rescue her daughter Persephone from the dark underworld of Hades. There is no concrete evidence that the Cathar subscribed to this myth, but both their acknowledgement of the equality of women and the feminine symbols depicted throughout the Marseille Tarot would suggest that the Sophias were an intrinsic part of their theology. This argument is made stronger by their inclusion in the cards of a Popess, along with the Pope. Anne Baring and Jules Cashford in The Myth of the Goddess explain the “rescue mission” in this way: The quest in Gnostic myth takes a dual form: the soul’s longing for the light she desires to reach and the longing of the divine parents to rescue their daughter, sending their son, Christ, as Divine Saviour to accomplish this mission. The underlying unity of soul and spirit is expressed in the image of a marriage. At the interface between inner and outer worlds, the spirit, as the bridegroom, emissary of the Divine Mother–Father, comes to meet the “enlightened” soul, his bride, and the two become one. Gnostic ritual celebrated this “sacred marriage” of soul and spirit.7 Sophia the daughter is the “soul’s longing for the light.” This long- ing for the light inspires Sophia to raise her state of consciousness through being aligned with Christ consciousness, thus making her an “enlightened” soul, meaning she is qualified to be a bride. In the cards, the sacred union of Sophia and Christ has taken place, symbolized by the androgynous figure in the grave in The Judgment card and the figure in the mandorla of The World card. For Review Only 62 The Evolving States of Consciousness The Sacred Marriage This sacred marriage is depicted in the last three cards of the Trumps. The Sun card depicts two children being reconciled, representing Sophia and Christ as the children of the Divine Mother-Father. Then in The Judgment card, the idea that the “two have become one” is seen in the form of one androgynous personage rising from the grave, hav- ing what appear to be the physical characteristics of both genders. Of course, that was symbolic of this reintegrated state of consciousness. Finally, in The World card itself, the dancer in the center of the wreath is about to enter the passage that returns the androgynous child to the parents. In some of the Marseille versions, this character is unmistak- ably depicted as being androgynous. This is clearly showing that the only way to return to the kingdom of Heaven, the realm of the Divine Mother-Father, is as this blended consciousness of Sophia and Christ. Some, but not all of the early versions of the Marseille cards depict this figure as dancing, where once again the legs take on the shape of the number 4. It could be perceived that instead of the 4 being stationary as with the Emperor, hanging upside down like the Hanged Man, or unfolding as with the person falling from the tower, it is now rotating, just like a pirouette in a dance. Now the four become one, as if mov- ing in unison. This oneness is the perfect union of feminine conscious- ness, as depicted by the Bull and the Eagle, and masculine consciousness reflected in the Lion and the Angel. The Gnostic myth was the first to express this four-fold understand- ing of divinity, Mother, Father, Daughter, and Son. Together they rep- resent the oneness, the “us” that is undifferentiated consciousness. This is the highest expression of the four and as previously discussed, would not attract any symbology from the Cathar as that state of conscious- ness belonged to the world of the good God, the kingdom of Heaven. There would be nothing from this world that could come close to sym- bolizing the kingdom of Heaven, with the exception of the Tree of Life. It is the commitment to transforming consciousness that qualifies these teachings as the Western tradition of mindfulness. Baring and For Review Only The Evolving States of Consciousness 63 Cashford explain how this approach to religion was about becoming mindful. The first priority of their teaching was to awaken the soul to knowl- edge of its predicament. The salvation of both the individual and the cosmic soul was not dependent upon a saviour’s sacrifice to redeem human beings but on their “bringing forth” or “giving birth” to the saviour in the depths of their own consciousness, sacrificing their ignorance and awaking from their sleep.8 This was the rationale of the Cathar Code. It was the formula for resolving human and differentiated consciousness. The code held specific details that made it possible for the Fool to “bring forth” the savior, in other words Christ consciousness, from the depths of their own consciousness. This is why the Eucharist held no importance to the Cathar. They saw Jesus’s role more as a “shower of the way” and not a savior. And as much as they collectively identified with how Jesus was persecuted, they saw no importance in his crucifixion other than his demonstration of nonresistance. Their beliefs that replaced hellfire and damnation with reincarnation, that saw women as being equally important as men, and that had kindness be more important than obe- dience, were in stark contrast to the church. It’s obvious why it became so popular, and why it was feared so much by the church. Compared to the teachings of the Catholic Church it was a heresy that had to be eradicated at all cost. The church may have been successful in destroy- ing the religion, but their doctrine of kindness survived. Hidden for over 600 years, it has finally come out of hiding. At a time when the “stocks” in Christianity are at an all-time low, these simple teachings of the Cathar might be the Second Coming of the Christ, the Christ within Everyman. For Review Only Fig. 3.1. Le Bateleur / The Magician by de Guler & Aymerich, 1983 © Naipes Heraclitus Fournier S.A. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 65 THREE The Magician’s Bag of Tricks Whether he’s a street entertainer or magician, both were skilled in the art of deception. Magic tricks are fundamentally an illusion. Being both a herm and a trickster, the conclusion that Card I represents Hermes is plausible. As a guide to the pilgrim, who in the case of the Trumps is depicted by The Fool card, the symbology just in this card alone gives significant clues to understanding the nature of the impending journey of human consciousness, this place that the Cathar called the world of the evil God. The Fool, as Adam and Eve, has left the world of the good God (the garden of Eden) and via the yoni of the Divine Mother takes on form as a spiritual entity. In this spiritual state, the Fool learns about the nature of human consciousness and the sort of experiences that will be encountered throughout the imminent sojourn. The Fool hasn’t taken on human consciousness yet because his earthly mother, depicted by the Empress, doesn’t appear until Card III. The Magician’s table holds some very important clues for under- standing how the four aspects of differentiated consciousness (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) are going to be expressed as human consciousness. The Magician holds a baton in his left hand and what appears to be a coin in his right. On his table can be found cups and daggers. These four objects could just be the tools of an entertainer, For Review Only 66 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks but are more likely to be linked to the four suits of the original playing cards that arrived in Spain and Italy toward the end of the fourteenth century. The four suits were called cups, batons, swords, and coins. Although there were variations to both what the Magician was holding and what appeared on his table, the four suits, dice, cups, a small bag (called a gibeciere), and two or three other small spherical objectswere consistently depicted in The Magician card from the mid-seventeenth century on. The Cup and Balls Dutch artist Hieronymous Bosch (1450–1516) painted a scene depicting a mountebank (confidence trickster) appearing to fleece honest citizens (see fig. 3.2). A Flemish proverb (some of which inspired other paintings by Bosch) that was popular around the end of the fifteenth century said, “No one is so much a fool as a wilful fool.”1 Notice the guy on the left picking the pocket of the man fully engaged in the trick. You’ll also see a small dog at the magician’s feet, alluding to the idea of either controlling reason and bestial impulses, as in the constrained magician’s dog, or suc- cumbing to them as depicted in the dog jumping up at the genitals of the Fool in The Fool card (see fig. 1.9, p. 33). Given the unfolding journey of the Fool in the Cather Code, this seems fitting. Closer inspection of Bosch’s painting reveals a street entertainer with cups and balls, as well as a wand. What emerged from the Magician’s bag of tricks in the Marseille Tarot is what one would expect of a medieval magician / street entertainer. For over two thou- sand years, the “cups and balls” was the definitive act of a magician. In a 1937 magic-trick manual titled Cups and Balls Magic by Tom Osborne, magician John Mulholland wrote, “Houdini once told me that he con- sidered no man to be a magician until he was able skillfully to perform the Cups and Balls.” In the introduction to the manual, Henry Ridgely Evans explained the game’s antiquity. He writes that Athenaeus, a circa second-century CE Greek writer, in his Deipnosophistae described a cup-and-ball conjurer he saw in the theater as follows: For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 67 One thing I remember, and gape with astonishment at it now, and am almost struck dumb. A certain man stepped into the midst, and placed on a three-legged table three small cups, under which he concealed some little white round pebbles such as are found on the banks of rivers; these he placed one by one under the cups, and then, I don’t know how, made them appear under another cup and finally showed them in his mouth. That man is a most mysterious performer, and could beat Eurybates of Oechalia, of whom we have heard.2 Dice were also used for gambling games, where early versions of Liar’s Dice and Passé-dix would have seen unsuspecting players deceived by the magician’s sleight of hand. Fig. 3.2. The Conjurer, circa 1502 by Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch (1450–1516) For Review Only 68 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks The Wand A wand or baton as a tool for performing magic had a long tradition. In their revealing research published in an article titled Christ the Magician, William Storage and Laura Maish, who specialized in studying third- century Christian sarcophagi in Rome, made the discovery that out of the 414 scenes that they studied, 68 of them depicted Jesus or Peter using wands to perform their miracles. In many of these images, the wand looks more like a baton. “Of the scenes listed above, 196, or just under 50%, include Jesus. Seventy-three (17%) depict Peter, who always uses a wand to perform his miracles. Of Jesus’s miracles, about 45% include wand usage, and 1/3 involve healing by direct contact.”3 Jesus was depicted using a wand to perform four of his better-known miracles or acts of magic: raising Lazarus, the miracle at Cana, the loaves and fishes, and the widow’s son. The wand was a tool used to change mate- rial reality. In the case of Jesus, the source of his power was God. In the case of a street magician, the power of the wand was in the ability of the magician to manipulate the subjective conscious experience of those watching his performance. It was always sleight of hand, an illusion. The Dagger The unsheathed dagger may have had a more practical and less magi- cal function. Given that the medieval magician was fleecing people of their hard-earned money, the dagger may have been on the table as a deterrent for anyone who thought they might forcefully retrieve their losses. As previously stated, in the ranking of medieval street entertain- ers, these guys were at the bottom since they took more than they gave. Dancers and musicians often earned their livelihood giving more than they got. Of course, getting material gain by trickery was the name of the game, and the Magician holding what appears to be a coin in his left hand would be very apt. Flornoy makes the assertion that the Magician is holding an acorn and not a coin, which if it was the case, would have been part of the cups and ball trick. For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 69 The Minor Arcana The Cathar would not have placed any mystery significance on the symbols of the four suits of the playing cards, since playing cards only arrived in Europe after the demise of the Cathar. The Visconti versions of the cards show the Magician primarily as a mountebank or swin- dler. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, the French cus- todians of the Cathar Code embellished the Magician’s tools to more clearly symbolize the four suits of the playing cards, thus expanding the Magician’s kit. The Age of Enlightenment (eighteenth century) saw occultists take this expanded role of the Magician and as if by magic, transform what were playing cards into fifty-six minuets of human Fig. 3.3. The Magician card by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1450 © Lo Scarabeo (images). Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 70 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks experience, in the same way the fifty-six combinations formed by roll- ing three dice were used as symbols of virtue instead of gambling. At the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment (eighteenth century), this one change in emphasis in The Magician card saw the suits of the card game morph into what was later called the Minor Arcana. This meant that the Marseille Tarot, in addition to its roles as a card game and portable stained-glass windows of the deep mysteries, was also now a tool of divination. Its esoteric role expanded its job description. Jean- Baptiste Alliette (1738–1792), also known as Etteilla, was a French author and occultist who has been identified as the first person to popularize tarot divination with the publication of his book, How to Entertain Yourself with a Pack of Cards Called Tarot (1785). Etteilla had long before pioneered the art of reading playing cards, which became known as cartomancy. It is claimed that he was the first to assign divi- natory meanings to the cards. In the nineteenth century, French author Jean-Baptiste Pitois (1811–1877) coined the terms Major and Minor Arcana. The word arcana meaning “secrets or mysteries.” Also known as Paul Christian, Pitois saw the necessity of separating the deep mys- teries of the Trumps from the more recently developed lesser secrets of the four suits. This new addition to the role of the Magician further expanded his association to the Greek god Hermes, who was linked to the occult. Remember, his primary role shared with Strength was keeper of the key that unlocked the deeper mysteries of the Cathar Code, as well as the traveler’s guide, emphasizing the illusory nature of the human experience. The Cathar theology did however hold an understanding of all of the elements that quite possibly supported the framework of the esoteric interpretation of the suits. The four suits correspond to the four states of human consciousness—power, wealth, love, and fame, which were lesser manifestations of the four aspects of differentiated conscious- ness depicted in The World card. The Bull being symbolic of matter, is linked to the coin, or what later became known as the pentacle. The Lion as the symbol of power related to the baton (wands), and the Eagle being the water symbol for emotions, is appropriately linked to the cups. For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 71 Thatleft the swords (a dagger in this context), which couples with the Angel representing the mental aspect of consciousness. Wands were said to represent power, where the fourteen cards of the suit were a continuum between being powerful and powerless. Pentacles were symbolic of wealth, where the suit reflected all that existed between being rich and poor. Cups symbolized relationship and the spectrum between acceptance and rejection. Swords were about ambition, which saw at one end of its expression the drive needed to be successful and famous, and at the other, inertia. In just the same way the introduc- tion of the cards into European culture was meteoric, so too was its esoteric role. This was because they appeared to accurately reflect what people experienced in their “outer” life, whereas the Trumps (the Major Arcana) reflected the “inner” experience. Typically, people were more interested in what was going on in their “outer” world in the context of power, wealth, love, and fame. To this day, the majority of tarot read- ings are oriented toward answering questions around these four later additions to the Magician’s table. Seven Heavens The illusory nature of the world was understood by the Cathar and in their theology was given a greater depth of understanding with their Gnostic teachings about the seven spheres and their gatekeep- ers called Archons. They believed that there was an evolution of how one expressed human consciousness that necessitated a progression through a series of reincarnations. They linked the spheres with the known planets and the moon and the sun (see fig. 3.4, p. 72). The spheres from the inside out were titled Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sol, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Note that the center sphere has a popular eleventh-century schematic map of the earth (called the T-O map), which is described in more detail in the section on the Empress. The four horned angels are blowing trumpets, much like Michael the Archangel in The Judgment card. They could be symbolic of the four aspects of differentiated consciousness that are the gatekeepers (the For Review Only 72 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks Fig. 3.4. Mappa Mundi from Bede (672/3–735 CE), in De natura rerum, circa 1055–1074 For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 73 Archons) of the seven realms, and given their judgment status could discern how good or evil someone is in respect to that realm. On making one’s passage through the seven spheres, secret signs and tokens were presented to the Archons in order to enter the next level. On entering the seventh sphere, the most “enlightened” state of human consciousness, one could then move on to the final eighth realm, which was the realm of the good God. Within each of these seven realms, the four states of human consciousness could be expressed as being either good, which means it is more serving, or evil, which is less serving. The seven realms with their respective emphasis on human experience, com- pounded by the focus of each of the four suits in the possession of the Magician, results in twenty-eight combinations. Expand that within a context of what is more or less serving, and the combinations double to fifty-six. There are fifty-six cards that make up the Minor Arcana—this matched the rolling of three dice, which also produced one of fifty-six combinations. It would be prudent to say that it was thought that the scope of human consciousness was contained within the framework of these fifty-six cards or combinations. Parallel Realities Typically, progression is thought to be a linear experience. In the case of the seven heavens, you begin with level one, which is the Luna sphere. Then you pass the gatekeeper and move on to level two, then three, four, and so on until you reach level seven, which is Saturn. Reincarnation supports this notion. You have this life and then you’ll be reincarnated into your next life, and putting it simply, pick up where you left off depending on your state of awareness. But what if instead of the experi- ence being sequential, it was concurrent? What if you were to see the diagram of the planetary spheres not as a two-dimensional model but more of a three-dimensional model? Substitute the idea that you, as a fixed state of consciousness, can only exist at any one time on just one of the spheres, with the idea that you exist in all spheres, all at the same time, and are having all of your experiences now! For Review Only 74 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks This requires the understanding that you are more than your body, your thoughts, your emotions, and your desires and more than how they are expressed in your current state of awareness. You, the real you, are that which is aware, not just of the body, mind, emotions, and desires that you think define who you are here and now. This part of yourself that is the aware you may be something with which you are unfamiliar. There is that familiar part of yourself that experiences life through the senses, for example. You may have also experienced moments when you became aware of another part of your consciousness that was observing your sensory experience. You might recall eating a piece of fruit, maybe a mango, and totally relishing the experience. Then there is a moment where you almost have an out-of-body experience where you observe yourself relishing the mango. On one hand you identify with eating the mango, and on the other hand you identify with observing yourself eating the mango. It is not uncommon for women to transform emotionally with PMS and both observe and, sometimes, express that they can see a shift in emotions building that they are unable to control. So, a part of them is fully embroiled in the emotion and yet another part is witnessing the change that is taking place. How often have you experienced mental frustration about something or someone, and something in you can see the thoughts of frustration building or diffusing? It seems that there are two aspects to human consciousness. The more obvious is how your emotions, body, and mind actually experience life. The less obvious aspect is that part of you that almost steps back from the experience and watches what you are experiencing. Another principle of Western mindfulness states that when some- thing is observed, it transforms. This is differentiating the habit of seeing verses a conscious act of seeing. This was the basis of Jesus’s obser- vation when he proposed that if you could see, hear, and understand with awareness, he would heal you. When you only identify with your filter of whatever you are experiencing physically, mentally, and emo- tionally, nothing changes. As the adage goes, “if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got.” For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 75 Any time you enhance your state of awareness, thus being more mindful of your life experience, you immediately begin to resonate with a “you” that exists independent of what you are currently experiencing. The challenging part of this idea is that the world around you seems to morph into a new reality along with your shift. In most cases the same people are in your life (unless they aren’t), but instead of them turning up as they were in your lesser state of awareness, they now relate to you dif- ferently, mostly reflecting who you’ve become in your expanded aware- ness. This is a real-life experience of a woman who became more aware: Debbie is in her mid-fifties and has been estranged from her family, in particular her ageing parents, for almost a decade. In the course of participating in the Enhances Awareness Program, she became aware that she had a long-held belief that she didn’t fit into her family. She felt like the odd one out, and even wondered if she had been adopted. Of course, when you have a filter like this, it becomes your reality. Not long after she became awareof her filter and how it was impacting on her life, she found herself in a situation that resulted in her experiencing this phenomenon of parallel realities. Deb was at a party celebrating the engagement of one of her cousins. Being primarily a family affair, she expected her parents to attend. There had been many occasions over the years where the three of them had been in this same situation. Typically, they would avoid each other as much as possible. On this occasion, Deb was sitting at a table talking to extended family and friends when her parents walked through the door. In previous encounters, on seeing her, they would have made their way to another part of the venue. But this time, something very odd occurred. When they saw her, they immediately made their way over to the table where she was sitting, greeted her, sat down, and proceeded to communicate in a way that would suggest that there had been no estrangement in their relationship over the past decade. Deb couldn’t believe what she was experiencing. She was engaged in a friendly open dialogue with her parents. As she was to find out later, they hadn’t been to any personal development For Review Only 76 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks program, and as far as she knew, they had no idea she was doing any personal development. Yet, here they were, turning up completely different. From that moment on they were reconnected and as it turned out, in dealing later on with an unexpected diagnosis of cancer, Deb’s mother became her key person of support.* In the parallel-reality model, her parents already existed in this more connected parallel reality where a close relationship with Deb had been maintained. In this reality they were never estranged. This reality sat alongside the reality where they were estranged, that Deb as a result of her narrative had identified with. Both realities co-existed. The catalyst for shifting between realities was Deb’s change in aware- ness, the extent with which she could actually “see with her eyes, hear with her ears and understand with her heart.” The Cathar model of seven spheres would suggest that in this illusory world of the evil God there exist seven parallel realities. The illusion is that you perceive what you are experiencing is real and can only be changed by manipulating what is essentially the screen (people and situations) onto which you are projecting your current state of consciousness. The Western approach to mindfulness changes your experience by developing new patterns of thought based on an awareness of loving kindness. A foundation prin- ciple to mindfulness is that you see the world as you are, not as it is. Change the filter through maintaining the awareness of a kinder reality and the world will mirror back to you that new, more loving reality. Of course, the eighth sphere outside of the planetary spheres was the kingdom of Heaven. A Parallel Reality Metaphor Imagine that white light is symbolic of the kingdom of Heaven or undifferentiated consciousness. In that place, there is nothing else, just pure white light. Then imagine that along comes Adam and Eve, and *This is a case study of a client who was mentored by Russell Sturgess in his Enhances Awareness Program (EAP). For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 77 they are a prism where the white light, on passing through the prism, refracts into a spectrum of color, much like a rainbow that is made up of seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. This could be called differentiated consciousness. They all exist in paral- lel and give the illusion that there is differentiation (remove the prism and there is only white light). Let’s assume that like the chakras, each of these colors represent seven different expressions of “love-energy,” a spectrum where some have less love-energy and some much more. This is all an illusion of separation, since each of the parallel reali- ties is actually a part of a whole reality—the white light. This means that each part of human consciousness (as an expression of differenti- ated consciousness) actually can be found in all seven realities at the same time, just being expressed as love-energy in different ways. So, at any one time as an observer, you could pop your head into the red chakra and see yourself acting in a way that has minimal love-energy. Then you might pop your head into the green chakra, and see yourself being much more loving, which is happening at the same time as you are being less loving in the red one. Then you might pop your head into the violet chakra and see yourself with Christlike love, which is occur- ring at the same time as the red and green chakras. Even though all of these expressions of love-energy are happening at the same time your state of awareness determines what experience you identify with. The exciting part of this metaphor is that all of us are experiencing all of these dimensions at the same time. What this means is that as you raise your consciousness through being more aware and find yourself connecting to that expression of you that is in the blue, indigo, or violet chakras, everyone else in their raised state of awareness is in those chakras too. It is all happening now! If you want your partner to turn up differently, then all you have to do is raise your conscious- ness and awareness to one of the higher chakras and you will find them there in that same state of awareness. Christ consciousness is another prism that sees all seven of the colors of the spectrum being refracted back into pure white light again. Everything that was experienced in the chakras was just an illusion; it was the trick of the magician. For Review Only 78 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks Reincarnation This concept of parallel realities would mean that reincarnation was not defined by death, but more so by shifts in consciousness. That said, it is possible that you could be reincarnated more than once in a lifetime. The word incarnate means “to make flesh” and to “make flesh again” is rein- carnation. Reincarnation implies multiple lives with many literal deaths and births. The parallel-reality model sees people who have sustainably enhanced their awareness literally morph physically. It is like they have re-fleshed while in their current incarnation. Given that at a cellular level the body is renewed every seven years or so, it makes sense that if the body is a symbol of consciousness, a shift in consciousness means a cel- lular change in the body. This was Jesus’s intention when he explained that when you can expand your awareness—authentically see, hear, and understand—and be aligned with that new awareness, then he would heal you. It is worth noting that the healing is a natural consequence of being mindful of your new awareness, thousands of people who have adopted mindfulness in this way attest to it, Christian or otherwise. Sustainability Of course, another issue here is sustainability. There are many peo- ple who have done lots of personal growth work who get to taste the parallel reality, but it’s more like a vacation and before too long, they find themselves back in their old reality. It’s like they can look through the “sliding door” to the new reality and almost taste it, but this new reality is like a mirage in that the closer they get, the more elusive it becomes. The result being that the suffering of the old life re-emerges. It is like the Magician is up to his old tricks again. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives deeper insights into maintaining sustainable change while experiencing human conscious- ness. In the context of modern vernacular, Jesus said that what was required was a shift in values by having the kingdom of Heaven be your priority. That values sit at the foundation of sustainable change For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 79 was intrinsic to the teachings in Jesus’s sermon.He clearly explained that you can’t serve two masters, in other words, you can’t hold to two sets of opposing values. As he said, “You can’t serve God and mam- mon” (Matthew 6:24). Values The Magician is giving his own sermon on values. As a guide, he is telling the Fool that the four primary things that they will value in the world of illusion are power, wealth, love, and fame. This is made evident by the four cards that are symbolic of the Fool’s earthly sojourn: The Emperor, The Pope, The Lovers, and The Chariot. Reinforcing their unsustainable qualities, this domain of the Magician also includes three more cards; Justice, Time (The Hermit), and The Wheel of Fortune. All three are the cause of the Fool’s suffering, as they forcibly remind the Fool that nothing about the values of human consciousness can be sustained. Consequently, a lot of effort goes into avoiding the suffering caused by Justice, Time, and Chance. People pervert the course of Justice, they do everything they can to prevent ageing, and spend lots of money and time “insuring” against misfor- tune. A lot of energy is expended in both maintaining and preventing the loss of these values. This is why the best way to work out what you value is to review how you spend your time, money, and talent, and why you spend them the way that you do. You might have declared or idealized values, but you may be surprised to find out what you really value when you do this exercise. This whole concept of values was highlighted in a conversation that Jesus had with a young man who wanted to know how he could have eternal life. So, a young guy came to Jesus and asks, “Good Master, what do I have to do to have eternal life?” Jesus replied, “Why call me good? There is only one that could be called good and that is God.” [The Cathar would totally agree.] “But, if you really want to have that For Review Only 80 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks type of life, keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” asks the young man. Jesus replies, “Don’t commit murder, or adultery. Don’t steal or tell lies. Be honoring of your parents and extend the love that you have for yourself to also include those around you.” The young man replies, “I have done this my whole life, so what more do I need to do?” [Jesus now gives it to him straight,] “If you are really serious about this, go and sell all that you have, and give it to the poor. Then you will have the heavenly treasure of eternal life. Then to sustain it, follow me.” When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, because he had many possessions to which he was attached. (Matthew 19:16–22^) The young man had been taught to do the right things, but what he treasured or valued was his wealth. Jesus constantly observed how the Pharisees and Sadducees lived their lives to the letter of the Jewish law, but that their hearts were focused on the earthly treasures of wealth, power, and fame. The Magician with his tricks and tools fulfills his man- date to inform the Fool of what can be expected on the pilgrimage of the soul. The addition of the four suits found in The Magician card from the seventeenth century on was insightful for the Fool, and their inclusion was quite possibly inspired by the Gnostic influence of the Cathar. This expanded focus on the Minor Arcana became a strategic diver- sion from the deeper mysteries of the cards. Although, imagine if there was as much interest in the deep mysteries found in the Major Arcana as there was in the insights of the Minor Arcana regarding people’s for- tunes around power, wealth, love, and fame. What would be happening throughout the world if there were as many people using the cards to be guided through the Dark Night of the Soul and to be aligned with Christ consciousness as were having tarot readings? The Table This pilgrimage of the soul sees the Fool returning to the world of the evil God and repeating that part of the journey until such time as they For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 81 were ready to make their way through the Dark Night of the Soul. To go down this dark path takes courage and is an essential preparation for meeting the gatekeepers (the Cherubim and the flaming sword) beyond the world of illusion. What was depicted in the Trumps was what one would have to do to finally leave the world of illusion governed by the Magician. Nearly all versions of the Trumps of the Marseille tradition depict the Magician with a table that only has three legs exposed (see fig. 3.1, p. 64). This is an important symbol, as it highlights the extent to which the Magician can have an impact on the Fool and his pilgrim- age. The three legs of the table represent three of the legs of the jour- ney. One leg of the journey, which relates to the Bull, is represented by Cards I through V. The leg associated with the Angel covers Cards VI to X, and the third leg, which links to the Lion, covers Cards XI to XV. Halfway through this third leg, the Fool encounters Temperance who by the seventeenth century has been given wings. As will be explained in detail later, this is the part of the Fool’s journey where the Magician has little, if any influence. The symbolism of the legs of the table indicates that the first part of the journey through the Dark Night of the Soul is still closely linked to the illusory world of the Magician. Fortunately, Hermes has many responsibilities in addition to being the Magician. As the guide of travelers, he has a mandate to inform pilgrims of the things they may encounter along the way. This guidance can be found on another of what would have been common objects found on a street entertainer’s table, dice. The Dice The dice on the Magician’s table suggests that a significant part of the journey will present as a result of luck or chance, suggesting that the Fool has limited control over what happens. This is in contrast to the expe- rience of life as depicted by Hecate (Card XI, see fig. 1.13, p. 38), the other guide of the pilgrim. She is depicted as a refined woman holding open the mouth of a lion. The luck and chance that justifies the illusory For Review Only 82 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks nature of the Magician’s world is replaced with choice and self-determi- nation as depicted in the Strength card. This notion of chance and luck plays out in life every day. Within the first three months of 2020 catastrophic weather events in Australia turned what appeared to be stable physical environments into uncontrollable raging fires that destroyed hundreds of homes, burned thousands of acres of land, saw the loss of many lives, and the uncountable loss of wildlife. Then within two months, the global pandemic of corona virus brought commerce and industry to its knees as millions of people globally lost their livelihood. Whole nations shut down, tens of thousands of people died, with hundreds of thousands of people getting sick. On a personal level, lives that seem physically, mentally, and emotionally stable are turned upside down when unex- pected events like disease, death, divorce, and accidents present. On the other hand, people win lotteries, find true love, and get lucky breaks resulting in unprecedented success in businesses or fame. All symbolized by the roll of the dice. That these symbols of luck appear on the Magician’s table infers that even luck is part of the illusion. The illusory nature of luck was perfectly illustrated in a Chinese proverb about a poorly farmer. An old Chinese farmer had worked his crops for many years. One day his only horse broke through the fence and ran away. When his neighbors learned of it, they came to the farmer and said, “What bad luck this is. You don’t have a horse during planting season.” The farmer listened and then replied, “Good luck, bad luck. Who knows?” A few days later, the horse returned with two other horses. When the neighbors learned of it, they visited the farmer.“You are now a rich man. What good luck this is.” The farmer listened and again replied, “Good luck, bad luck. Who knows?” Later that day, while breaking-in the new horses, the farmer’s only son was thrown from one of the stallions and broke his leg. When the neighbors heard about it, they came to the farmer. “It is planting season and now there is no one to help you, this is truly bad luck.” For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 83 The farmer listened, and once more he said, “Good luck, bad luck. Who knows?” The very next day, the emperor’s army rode into the town and conscripted the eldest son in every family. Only the farmer’s son with his broken leg remained behind. Soon the neighbors arrived. Tearfully, they said, “Yours is the only son who was not taken from his family and sent to war. What good luck this is,” to which the farmer replied, “Good luck, bad luck. Who knows?” How many lives have been devastated because of “good” luck? It is a statistical fact that the lives of a high percentage of lottery winners are ruined following their “lucky break.” For many of them, their cur- rent reality is strongly influenced by scarcity. As explained previously, it is consciousness that informs reality, not the other way around. It can only be a matter of time and in spite of the great abundance, as the saying goes, “a fool and his money are soon parted.” While locked into a scarcity consciousness, scarcity can be the only reality, and as if by magic, all the money disappears. It was all an illusion; the Magician has waved his wand! Good luck, bad luck, who knows? The Magician’s Bag The bag on the table, called a gibeciere, was a large satchel typically used by street magicians to hold large items like fruit, various sized balls, and even small birds and animals. According to John Mulholland, “The usual finish for the Cup and Balls trick is to make the small balls, used during the beginning of the trick, become large balls which filled the cups. In Ancient times it was customary to change balls into various small vegetables and fruit.”4 The satchel literally is the Magician’s bag of tricks. It would typically be worn at the front of the body, just below the waistline. It is significant that The Magician is the first card after The World card, where the Fool appears as differentiated consciousness having left the world of the good God. In the context of the Cathar Code, the Fool For Review Only 84 The Magician’s Bag of Tricks is being made aware of what was going on in this gap between undiffer- entiated consciousness and human consciousness. This was important information since the “veil of forgetfulness” seen in The Popess card has caused the Fool to forget any existence prior to his birth. Through the cards, the Fool is being made aware of an important piece of infor- mation about the bigger context of the pilgrimage. The combination of The World, The Magician, and The Popess cards highlight the idea of a form of consciousness existing in the place between heaven (undifferentiated consciousness) and earth (human consciousness). The Heaven-World The Cathar would have subscribed to this idea of a heaven-world that sat between heaven and earth. This was the paradise or purgatory that spirits experienced as they prepared to enter their new incarnation. Since human consciousness doesn’t commence again until Card III, and the Fool, as Adam and Eve, are no longer a part of undifferentiated consciousness (heaven), then there must be something in between. This is the place of differentiated consciousness, what the Gnostics called heaven-world. That such a “place” of consciousness even exists is made more plausible with the commonly reported phenomenon referred to as near-death experiences (NDEs). A near-death experience is when a person shows the signs of being clinically dead for a time, meaning that the vital signs of the heart and brain register no activity. Despite this, the deceased on being resusci- tated and regaining consciousness report that they had continued to be conscious of things going on around them, mostly being separated from their body after their “death.” This implies a state of consciousness that exists independent of human consciousness that typically requires a body with a functioning brain. The advancements of modern medical technology make this phenomenon more common than in times past, because of the capacity to resuscitate people. That said, NDEs have occurred without medical intervention. This is a strong argument for the existence of another form of For Review Only The Magician’s Bag of Tricks 85 consciousness that is different from human consciousness. According to Steve Taylor, Ph.D., in his book Spiritual Science, it is consistently reported that significant changes in consciousness take place in people who have had these NDEs. He explained that their values and attitude to life are totally transformed. He observed that people are less mate- rialistic, more altruistic, less egocentric, and more compassionate. They return with a clearer sense of purpose and approach relationships with more authenticity and intimacy. Being heightened in their awareness, he noted that they were more sensitive to beauty along with being very grateful for quite ordinary things. Many reported that they were no longer afraid of death. What is of significance is that these changes were typically lifelong shifts in consciousness. These changes in conscious- ness are also typical of someone who has sought to be aligned with Christ consciousness. Many people who experience NDEs often report traveling through a tunnel into a transcendent realm where they converse with spirit guides, deceased family members, and deceased religious entities like Jesus and Buddha for example. The Gnostics believed Christ and Sophia would be there to assist. The reported evidence would suggest that in this afterlife experience there is still a differentiation of consciousness. There is this sense that there is someone or something that is not them that they can interact with. It’s possible that this is the place of differentiated consciousness, a place experienced both before and after the Fool’s many incarnations. In the context of the Marseille Tarot this spiritual realm is illustrated in three of the cards. The World card with the exception of the man- dorla symbolizes this heaven-world. Both the Magician and the Popess also belong to this in-between heaven-world. As will be discussed in the next chapter, a veil of forgetfulness is drawn between the Popess and the Empress, who is the Fool’s earthly mother. It’s the boundary that separates differentiated consciousness from human conscious that distinguishes the heaven-world from earth. For Review Only 86 FOUR A Fool Is Born T he Cathar traditionally saw women as being equal to men. Women could be perfecti with all of the same “priesthood” rights as the men. With their belief in reincarnation, the Cathar believed that one’s gender could be different from one incarnation to the next, so all the more reason to be honoring of both men and women. Given that women were unequally yoked by the church, it would come as no surprise that women were drawn to Catharism. This was a striking difference between the Cathar and the church. The importance of this equality to the Cathar is reflected in them co-assigning a female character in the form of the Popess who, alongside of the Magician, serves as a guide in the heaven-world. The Magician was the guide informing the Fool what would be experienced while in the world of the evil God. The Popess held the knowledge (the book in her lap) of who the Fool really is (the immature Christ) and where the Fool is located in the cycles of incarna- tion. The inclusion of a Popess card in the Trumps appeared right from the first sets of tarot cards. The Popess card depicted here came from the Visconti-SforzaTarot that was created (ca. 1450) by Bembo Bonifacio for Francesco Sforza and his wife Bianca Maria Visconti. This card was thought to belong to the Pierpont-Morgan Bergamo deck, which is said to be the second-oldest deck in existence. Given that so many of the Trump cards were either linked to Greco- Roman mythology, which was relevant to the Visconti, or significant For Review Only A Fool is Born 87 Fig. 4.1. The Popess card, by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1450 © Lo Scarabeo (images). Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 88 A Fool is Born sociopolitical events in and around Milan, it would seem to be out of character that an image would be included that didn’t fit either context. The obvious question is whether there was something that happened in the world of the Visconti that could also serve as the right metaphor for the Cathar teachings and would inspire the creation of a Popess card. Inspiring Women of the Middle Ages Visionary women who rose to prominence throughout Europe during the medieval period and Renaissance were not uncommon. Joan of Arc is one that immediately comes to mind. Hildegard of Bingen, a German Benedictine abbess was very prominent throughout the twelfth century. Describing her presence, Thomas Cahill in Mysteries of the Middle Ages reveals, “Her advice and her prayers were sought by the kings and queens of her day—the list of her correspondents in the last decade of her life reads like a roll of the royal houses of Europe—and to all she gave what succour she could, as well as frank counsel.”1 Eleanor of Aquitaine, influential queen of the twelfth century championed trou- badours and courtly love. Catherine of Sienna had an unprecedented influence, for a “lowly nun,” on the papacy during the fourteenth cen- tury. It was her influence that saw the return of the pope from Avignon to Rome. She, along with Teresa Avila and the English mystic Julian of Norwich, contributed significantly to the development of theological ideas during the late Middle Ages. If the Cathar were only about promoting the spiritual importance of women, they had many well-known examples to draw from, but refrained. It would appear that they were seeking someone who repre- sented a particular quality of female spirituality. Their encoded message needed to accurately capture the deeper mystery and message that they were preserving. The Cathar would have shared the Gnostic understand- ing of Sophia as the female twin of the Christ (being the Bride of Christ) as well as being the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. This divine nobility was described in the Wisdom of Solomon. “In that she [Wisdom] is conver- sant with God, she magnifieth her nobility; yea, the Lord of all things For Review Only A Fool is Born 89 himself loved her. For she is privy to the mysteries of the Knowledge [gnosis] of God, and a lover of his works.”* Written around the first cen- tury, Sophia is revealed as the companion of the Lord. In Gnostic Philosophy, Tobias Churton further expands this idea: The love between the Lord and the Sophia expressed in the Wisdom of Solomon is paralleled in Gnostic writings such as the Gospel of Mary (Berlin Codex) in the love of Jesus for Mary Magdalene. A great deal is made of the despising of Mary’s testimony by the all- male disciples: She is treated much as Sophia is treated by those “of the world.” But Gnostics were taught to venerate her message. Indeed, in the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Philip, the identification of Mary Magdalene with Wisdom is explicit: “As for the Wisdom who is called ‘the barren,’ she is the mother [of the] angels. And the companion of the [Savior] is Mary Magdelene. [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her [mouth].”2 The repudiation of the role of the feminine in Christian theology was made clear by Pope Innocent III in his December 11, 1210, Epistle: “No matter whether the most blessed Virgin Mary stands higher, and is also more illustrious, than all the apostles together, it was still not to her, but to them, that the Lord entrusted the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.” The veneration of the divine feminine was one of the key differences between medieval Christianity and the Cathar. The Popess and Sophia Just on this account alone it would have been sufficient for the Cathar to have included a popess in the code—to reinstate the position of the *The Wisdom of Solomon is a first-century BCE Jewish text, written in Greek. It had been considered to be part of the Old Testament at various times, but was never canon- ized, although it was labeled ecclesiastical and was recommended reading. This quote is from chapter 8: 3–4. For Review Only 90 A Fool is Born feminine in religion and to bring attention back to the role of Sophia. The pope was seen as God’s elected representative here on earth, and the Cathar, by including a popess, were sending a clear message that this role wasn’t gender specific. Imagine, at a time when misogyny was rife, a card game that meteorically became popular including an image as controversial as a female pope. That it was allowed to stay is even more intriguing. The inclusion of a card symbolizing a feminine emissary of God was intrinsic to the Cathar Code. The divine feminine, as previously explained, is depicted in part by the mandorla of The World card. The mandorla symbolizes the passage (the sacred yoni) that passes between the world of the good God and the world of the evil God. It’s the only time we get to see something that could be considered to be a part of the kingdom of Heaven. The Popess served as a reminder that there was a feminine face of God, that the good God was not limited to just only masculine gender. In highlighting the divine feminine, the Popess possesses the knowledge of the Bridal Chamber, the Sacred Yoni, and the Holy Grail. She is the reminder of the Queen of Heaven and of the ancient mysteries that revered the Mother Goddess. If this controver- sial image was to be included in the code, the context of the symbolic image would be as important as the image, as it would give more depth of understanding to the message of the card. The context, as with many of the cards, had to do with what was going on in the world of the Visconti. The Beguines Besides the nuns and queens who left indelible imprints through these Middle Ages, there were laywomen who were also influencing the turn of events more locally. The designated “first Beguine” and founder of the Beguines was Marie d’Oignies (1177–1213). Beguines were Christian lay religious orders (primarily for women) that were active throughout Europe between the thirteenth and sixteenth centu- ries. Hundreds of these lay communities for women emerged, at first For Review Only A Fool is Born 91 in the Low Countries of Northern Europe, but eventually spreading throughout France, Italy, and Spain. By 1233 they were formed in Northern France and by the middle of the fourteenth century could be found throughout all of France. By 1284 there were approximately 700 Béguinages throughout the Low Countries. Douceline of Digne (ca. 1215–1274) was typical of these lay women who, in addition to establishing several Béguinages (in her case Hyeres and Marseille) that were centered around caring for the poor and the sick, was also deemed to be a mystic. One common theme with these lay mystics was their ardent devotion to the Holy Spirit. Mystical phenomena that was inspired by the Spirit of Wisdom, as Marie d’Oignies called the Holy Spirit, became more common in the regions linked with these Béguinages. “The beguine mystics Hadewijch and Mechthild of Magdeburg, among others, followed Marie’s example of expressing key aspects of the spiritual journey as well as deeply valued spiritual gifts through sensuous images.”3 This phenomenon also emerged in Italy, where there was this same commitment to serving God and the poor,while maintaining inde- pendent lives. In Italy they were referred to as penitentia, bizzocha, or pinzochera. The inspirational lay religious women who created these local communities typically never became nuns, they wore lay attire and were free to move throughout their communities to perform their ministry. The only time their favor was lost with the church was on theological grounds and those times when their ministry included help- ing heretics. Documented history shows that their service was so ben- eficial to the well-being of a city or town that when the church tried to sanction or place severe restrictions on these communities, the local authorities would go to great lengths to protect them. Many of the com- munities had the patronage of the wives of the nobility, who in many cases would also be actively engaged in the “compassionate” work of the Beguine community. Medieval Italian chronicles give witness to an abundance of peni- tentia, many of whom were identified by their contemporaries as For Review Only 92 A Fool is Born mystics, including Chiara of Montefalco (1268–1308) and Catherine of Siena (1347–1380). Umilta of Faenza (1226–1310), Margaret of Cortona (1247–1297), and Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) were some of the famous Italian spiritual women who preached and called on their audiences to reform their lives. Some of their writings have survived over the centuries.4 Guglielma of Milan One such mystic penitentia was Guglielma of Milan who like her Northern European contemporaries shared a particular fervor for the Spirit of Wisdom, the Holy Spirit. She too was a visionary, but her teachings took this passion for the Holy Spirit one step further. Arriving in Milan in 1260, Guglielma adopted the life of a pinzoch- era although it was rumored that she was the daughter of the king of Bohemia. By the time of her death on August 24, 1281, she was the cen- ter of a devoted religious famiglia. Buried in the Cistercian abbey of Chiaravalle, she immediately became the object of a saint cult, with all of the usual trappings. But canonisation was not to be Guglielma’s destiny, for the ambitions of her inner circle extended far beyond that. Inspired by a man she called her “firstborn son,” the layman Andrea Saramita, and a nun of the Umiliate order, Sister Maifreda da Pirovano, more than three dozen mostly upper- class citizens of Milan had come to believe that Guglielma was no less than the Holy Spirit herself, incarnated in the form of a woman.5 The writings of the highly regarded twelfth-century Cistercian monk, Joachim de Fiora (1135–1202) helped to fuel this attention to the importance of the Holy Spirit through the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries. He extended the concept of the Trinity to represent three ages of spiritual evolution. The first was the Age of the Father, For Review Only A Fool is Born 93 which represented the Old Testament, a time where devotion to God was made manifest through obedience to the law of God. The second age was the Age of the Son, which aligned to the New Testament and according to Joachim would finish in 1260 (almost fifty years after his death). The focus here was on adopting the gospel of love taught by Jesus. The third age was called the Age of the Holy Spirit, which would see the advent of spiritual freedom, where love would even transcend the “letter” of the Gospel of Christ. This would be a time where the deep meaning of Christ’s teachings would be fully grasped, resulting in a natural outpouring of Christlike love and service, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Fig. 4.2. Joachim de Fiore, circa 1573, fresco in the Santa Severina Cathedral, Calabria, Italy For Review Only 94 A Fool is Born The Joachemites Arising from the strict Spirituals, a faction of the Franciscan order, a group calling themselves Joachemites supported this notion of a uto- pian society where there would no longer be the need for a church. Even though Joachim’s teachings would be deemed to be heretical after his death, he personally was never slated with the label of heretic. It’s of note that the woman depicted in Bonifacio’s Popess card is wearing the iconic Franciscan knotted cord, seen in this early thirteenth-century fresco depicting Saint Francis (see fig. 4.3). The rope symbolized being “girded with Christ.” Typically it had three knots that signified the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Although normally orthodox, there were some of the Beguines who chose to be aligned with either the Cathar, the Free Spirits, or the Spiritual Franciscans.6 The focus on the Holy Spirit was almost overshadowing the importance of Jesus. Other Beguines would lay claim to being the incarnated Holy Spirit, most of whom drew the attention of the Inquisition and would typically be burnt at the stake. The context Fig 4.3. Saint Francis of Assisi, circa 1228, religious fresco (not a portrait) found in the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco, Italy For Review Only A Fool is Born 95 for The Popess card was rich and incorporating it in the code meant that students of these portable stained-glass windows knew exactly the intention of their message. The most obvious, yet most obscure part of the symbolism of the card was the character of a popess. There has never been a popess in recorded history and the idea of it is noth- ing less than sacrilege in terms of the church. If a historical popess can be found, one would expect that it would have something to do with the Visconti, since Bonifacio was using their “world” as a point of reference for his imagery. A New Church Following Guglielma’s death, her adherents decided to create a “new” church, with all of the trappings of what you would expect of a medi- eval church, even a new pope, but this time it would be a woman. Calling themselves “the children of the Holy Spirit,” they had their own personal cultic roles: Saramita was Guglielma’s “only- begotten” or “firstborn son,” Maifreda her earthly vicar, Mirano da Garbagnate their “special secretary,” and Taria Pontario a car- dinal-elect. Like the apostles after the death of Jesus, Guglielma’s faithful received spiritual guidance through visions, and it was to these posthumous encounters with her that they ascribed the authority of their teaching. The movement’s theology took a typo- logical form inspired by Joachite ideas: just as the New Testament had superseded the Old, devotees set about composing their own epistles, gospels, and prophecies that would eventually supersede the New. Their considerable literary production also included a vita, hymns, litanies, and vernacular canzoni addressed to the Holy Spirit. But Guglielma herself was not so much a successor to Christ as his exact feminine counterpart: like Christ she was expected to rise from the dead, ascend into heaven, send the Spirit upon her disciples, and found a new church through the agency of the papessa. It followed that the present, corrupt Church had no For Review Only 96 A Fool is Born spiritual authority, nor did its pope, who at the time of the trial was the widely detested Boniface VIII.7 Sister Maifreda da Pirovano, the anointed papessa, was a first cousin to Matteo Visconti. Records show that Matteo went to a lot of trou- ble to protect adherents to Guglielma’s cult including Maifreda, from the office of the Inquisition that was housed in the Visconti chapel in Milan. Even Matteo’s son, Galeazzo, was rumored to be an initiate in Guglielma’s sect. Documents show that during the time of his lordship, Matteo appointed as counselors men who had been “signed with the cross”* for heresy, who were contemporaries of Maifreda and belonged to Guglielma’s sect. The Popess who is officially linked to the Visconti has been revealed. But all of this occurred in the thirteenth century and the Trumps weren’t crafted until 150 years later. How relevant would the events that took place a century and a halfbefore be in terms of clearly communicating the code of the Cathar? The Visconti Connection Bianca Maria Visconti (see fig. 1.7, p. xx), [x-ref] for whom these cards were originally made, was Matteo Visconti’s last lineal heir. She had an active role in “resurrecting” Guglielma, which meant that generations of women would be able to venerate their saint. Brunate was a small, poor struggling nunnery until a young nun, Maddelena Albrizzia decided to enter it around 1420. It wasn’t long before she was elected ministra (the nun’s term for abbess), and according to Barbara Newman, “her charismatic fervour and reformist zeal attracted enough recruits to give the convent a fresh lease of life.” History shows that Maddelena and Bianca Maria became good friends, and through Bianca’s patronage and political connections she was able to help Maddelena fulfill her ambi- tious plans, which included the veneration of Guglielma. *Repentant heretics had to wear two yellow crosses on all of their clothing, two lengths of the palm of their hand deep and a half palm wide and the cross itself, three digits wide. For Review Only A Fool is Born 97 A fifteenth-century fresco, said to be depicting Guglielma bestowing the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands on Sister Maifreda, the incum- bent popess, flanked by Andrea Saramita, was said to have been com- missioned by Maddelena with the patronage of Bianca Maria. (There is also a line of thought that the fresco could be depicting Maddelena with her cousin, being blessed by an apparition of Guglielma.) Originally it adorned the walls of the San Andrea church in Brunate, first as a part of a series of frescos, and then during eighteenth-century renovations it was salvaged from demolition and framed in marble. It is still in the church to this day. The memory and adoration of Guglielma and her teachings was very much alive when Bonifacio produced these beauti- fully crafted playing cards for Bianca Maria Visconti, almost 150 years after the event. The Popess card, in terms of historic relevancy, ticks all the right boxes. The Cathar message that women were equal to men was perfectly depicted. That there was a feminine face of God was clearly communicated through the clear link that Maifreda, as the popess, was the “earthly vicar” for the incarnated Holy Spirit, Guglielma. That the Holy Spirit was also called the Spirit of Wisdom perfectly aligned with the Cathar reverence for Sophia (Wisdom). The morphing of Bonifacio’s original Popess to the image that two hundred years later became the standard Popess of the Marseille Tarot, saw a consolidation of her message. In the unlocking of the secret for how the Trumps were to be laid out, The Popess card pre- cedes The Empress. This sequence gives more meaning to the role of the Popess than if the cards were placed left to right. As with the Magician, the Popess is in this heaven-world of differentiated con- sciousness. As previously explained, she is not on the earth plane as that doesn’t commence until the next card, with the Empress as the mother. And she is not in the kingdom of Heaven as that is on the other side of the mandorla in The World card. Since the Cathar sub- scribed to the idea of reincarnation, this role of the Popess is signifi- cant in the cycles of life and death. Like the Magician, she is looking to her right and appears to be For Review Only 98 A Fool is Born looking through a drape of honor. Both the drape and the raised plat- form were typical of depictions of Mary in the Annunciation. The fourteenth-century frieze by Italian sculpture Giovanni di Balduccio (ca. 1290–after 1339) depicts Mary with a drape of honor and read- ing a book (fig. 4.4). It is of note that Balduccio also helped to sculpt the arc of Saint Peter Martyr now housed in the Portinari Chapel in the Basilica of Sant’Eustorgio in Milan. Part of the arc includes statues of the four virtues that depict Temperance pouring water between two vessels, reminiscent of The Temperance card in the Marseille Trumps. Fig. 4.4. The Annunciation by Giovanni di Balduccio, circa 1334, from the marble pulpit of Chiesa Santa Maria del Prato, San Casciano Val di Pesa For Review Only A Fool is Born 99 The Popess Card The Annunciation is described in the Gospel of Luke. Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel and is told that she will give birth to the Son of God. As proof that an “immaculate conception” was possible, he tells Mary that her barren cousin Elizabeth was six-months pregnant by God’s grace. If you recall, the designer of the Trumps was using iconic images that people would have immediately recognized in order to get across some, if not all, of the message they wanted to convey. The depic- tion of Mary reading or holding a book was an invention of the new millennium and it didn’t really take hold until the twelfth century. Prior to that Mary was depicted spinning wool. As much as the spin- ning was said to represent Mary crafting the human fabric of the soon to be born Son of God, or in the case of the book, the Word becoming flesh, there was a more social abstract in a book replacing the spindle. This ref lected the emerging recognition of the intelligence of women. One of the crafts associated with the Beguines was bookmak- ing. Even in Bonifacio’s Popess card, she is depicted holding a book. Books, as previously explained, were important to the Cathar. Bianca Maria’s father had a passion for knowledge as evidenced by his library and university in Pavia. The symbols of the book as Christ (reason) and the Papesse as Sophia (wisdom) may have been Bonifacio’s acknowl- edgement of the values that were significant in the life of Bianca Maria Visconti. Equally, the card’s designers from the Modern Age may have been cleverly depicting the deeper mysteries, the doctrine of the Cathar perfecti. In just the same way that Gabriel announced what was about to unfold on the earth from a Christian perspective, The Popess card is announcing what was about to unfold in this next incarnation of human consciousness for the Fool. Books symbolized “the Word’ as the Christ becoming incarnate through Jesus. In the context of the Cathar doctrine, Mary, symbolic of the mother Sophia, will give birth to the Christ (reasoning) so that he can rescue Sophia, her daughter (the Fool), and through the sacred union of hieros gamos be reunited with God. Using this metaphor of the Annunciation was important since For Review Only 100 A Fool is Born Fig. 4.5. La Papesse / The Popess by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only A Fool is Born 101 another message that the Cathar wanted to portray was the separation between the place of differentiated consciousness and human conscious- ness. This is symbolized by the drape of honor depicted behind the Popess. In medieval art, Mary was typically situated under a baldac- chino. A baldacchino was a canopy that distinguished the royal nature of whoever the canopy covered, typically emperors, kings, and popes. Through these Middle Ages it was not uncommon for the baldacchino to be replaced with the drape of honor that harks back to Imperial Rome where two figures would hold up a veil or drape behind the emperor to emphasize his authority. Besides being a symbol of status, in this context it serves as a veil, like the one in the Temple of Solomon that separated the outer sanctuary from the Holy of Holies. Early illu- minations and manuscripts about the Annunciation (tenth century and earlier) often depicted Mary sewing with purple thread, which was said to represent her making the veil for the temple. The Veil With reincarnation being an intrinsic part of the Cathar beliefs, this re-f leshing via this in-between heaven-world required one key component—forgetting. If anything does exist before birth or after death, most of us are not aware of it. Thatsaid, there are many instances of people claiming to have experienced a reality that appears to exist beyond mortality—ranging from NDEs to little children talking about being able to recall being in another place before being born. William Wordsworth in his ode Intimations of Immortality (1802) describes it like this, “Heaven lies about us in our infancy.” If it’s assumed that another reality does exist, almost everyone has no memory of it. He then describes this forgetting in the conclusion of his ode when he explains, “The homely Nurse [mortality] doth all she can / To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man, / Forget the glories he hath known, / And that imperial palace whence he came.” The Gnostic scripture in the Pistis Sophia explains at chapter 147 how this happens. In referring to those who are going to be reincarnated For Review Only 102 A Fool is Born it explained, “Thereafter . . . the Adamas, who giveth the cup of forget- fulness unto the souls, and he bringeth the water of forgetfulness and handeth it to the soul; [and it drinketh it] and forgetteth all things, and all regions to which it had gone.” In describing the forgetting at birth, Wordsworth wrote, “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; / The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, / Hath had elsewhere its setting, / And cometh from afar.” This forgetting is what distinguishes human consciousness. The drape between the Popess and the Empress is a veil of forgetfulness, which continues to exist each time the Fool takes on a new incarna- tion. Once the Fool is more aligned with Christ consciousness, the veil disappears and they can drink from the cup of wisdom. As explained in the Pistis Sophia at chapter 147, “Thereafter there cometh a receiver of the little Sabaōth, the Good, him of the Midst. He himself bringeth a cup filled with thoughts and wisdom, and soberness is in it; [and] he handeth it to the soul.” This idea of forgetfulness and memory has roots in a much earlier religious tradition. In the afterlife traditions of the cult of Orpheus from around 300 BCE, ritual texts alluded to the idea that there were three types of souls and after death they could drink from the Waters of Forgetting or the Lake of Memory. To be able to drink from the Lake of Memory, the deceased had to answer questions pre- sented by guards who possessed “astute wisdom.” On answering the questions correctly, they would be permitted to drink from the lake. Only then were they allowed to continue along the sacred road to join the gods. Drinking from the Waters of Forgetfulness, they would be reincarnated. In Plato’s explanation of this concept, those being reincarnated all get to drink from the Spring of Forgetfulness, being of great thirst given that they have just crossed the Plain of Oblivion. The unini- tiated are defined by their lack of knowledge and moderation. On reaching the spring they drink deeply. The more they drink the more they forget. Those who possess knowledge and moderation (wisdom) know to drink sparingly, which sees this initiate ending up in the For Review Only A Fool is Born 103 realm of the gods.8 Building on this idea Jesus said, “whoever drinks of the water that I give him, will never thirst; the water I give him will be within him a well of water springing up to give everlasting life” (John 4:14^). Being in this heaven-world of differentiated consciousness, the Fool has been instructed about the nature of the journey through human consciousness by the Magician, and has now been informed about how to be freed from their human state through the integration of the soul (Sophia) and the spirit (Christ). They pass through the veil and with conception find themselves taking on human form (again) in the womb of their earthly mother. The memory of their pre-mortal exis- tence quickly fades. Differentiated consciousness is now morphing into human consciousness. Our Earthly Mother The Emperor and Empress illustrated as Cards III and IIII, are Henry VII of Germany and his wife, Margaret of Brabant. Henry was crowned king of Italy in Milan (1311), and due to a falling out with the Guelphs, he reappointed Matteo Visconti as the imperial vicar of the whole of Lombardy. Henry and Margaret went on to be elected as the monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire. By 1313, both had died in Italy, only having arrived from Germany in 1311. So once again, contemporary political issues that uniquely arose during the time of Matteo Visconti are being used to communicate the message of the code. Being on the earthly side of the veil, it can be assumed that they both symbolize the parents of the newly re-f leshed Fool. It should go without saying that the first human the Fool encounters is his mother, the Empress. The Marseille canon of the Trumps consistently has The Empress with the same three devices: a scepter joined to an orb, a shield with the eagle insignia of the Holy Roman Empire, and a cockscomb (see fig. 4.6, p. 104). Each of these devices can be interpreted in a way that justifies the maternal role of the Empress. For Review Only 104 A Fool is Born Fig. 4.6. L’Emperatrise / The Empress by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only A Fool is Born 105 The Orb and Scepter The depiction of an empress holding an orb and scepter is not too unusual. They were symbols that established the authority of the person holding them. That the orb and the scepter are joined is very unique to the portrayal of both the Emperor and Empress in their respective cards. This style of orb was called the globus cruciger, being the Latin for “cross-bearing orb.” The cross represents Christ’s dominion over the world, symbolized by the orb. The orb is also adorned with a red T, typical of the medieval orbis terrarum (orb or circle of the lands). This was a medieval map that divided the world into three land masses— the largest being Asia and the two smaller sections being Africa and Europe (fig. 4.7). This twelfth-century image of what was sometimes called the Beatine map includes the red T and the cross of Christ that are depicted on the orb of the Empress. The orb and scepter are reminiscent of the wand and pentacle held by the Magician, the wand being symbolic of the masculine principle and power, and the coin symbolizing the feminine principle and the material. In the case of The Empress, they are shown as being joined. Fig. 4.7. T-O map, circa twelfth century, from Etymologies by Saint Isidore, Bishop of Seville For Review Only 106 A Fool is Born This is a Cathar invention, symbolizing the hieros gamos, the sacred union of the masculine and the feminine that was made possible by the role of Christ here on earth. In the world of the evil God, this combi- nation of power and wealth resulted in the ongoing conflicts between the papacy and the emperors, and the Guelphs and Ghibellines. In the world of the Cathar and that of the good God, when governed by Christ consciousness this was symbolic of the sacred marriage resulting in the androgyny of Sophia and Christ. The message of this symbol was that in spite of the Fool being exposed to a world of illusion, the ultimate objective of an incarnation is the bridal chamber. Where the Empress positions the scepter and orb is markedly differ- ent from the Emperor. The Emperor holds his orb and scepter up and away from his body, where the Empress holds it close to her body with the base of the scepter resting against her abdomen. When you shift your focus to a more whole perspective of The Empress card, the way the card has been created draws your attention to the abdomen. The abdomen is the center of attention. Her open-legged seated position is in contrast to the crossed positioning of the legs of the Emperor. It’s as if the Cather were highlighting her role as the bearer of children, the mother. But this wasn’tjust any mother, this was the mother of the Son of God, the Christ who God the Father/Mother sent to rescue their daughter Sophia. Since the Cathar believed that the Christ was a state of con- sciousness potentially found in each human being, represented in the Trumps by the Fool, then this scene is about the impending birth of the Fool, the Christ incarnate. This combination of the The Popess and The Empress cards is the Cathar version of the Annunciation. At the beginning of the chapter, the cards have intentionally been placed in the sequence of how they are laid out using the Magician’s key. With Dodal’s Marseille Tarot, the Popess is depicted looking to her right, toward the Empress. This became more of the norm in the Marseille canon from that time forward. Noblet’s 1650 version has her looking straight ahead. In the Dodal sequence, if The Popess and Empress cards had been placed sequentially left to right, they would be looking away from each other, but in this layout, they are looking squarely into For Review Only A Fool is Born 107 each other’s eyes, through the veil. There is almost an intimacy being depicted between these two female archetypes. One would expect that the Empress would be sitting on a throne like the Emperor, but her throne takes on the appearance of being a drape of honor, giving a veiling effect that appears denser than the veil of the Popess. If the veil represents “the forgetting” then it can be concluded that everything that has to do with the role of the Empress is shrouded in complete forgetfulness given the density of the veil from the shoulders down. It should also be noted that there is no veil behind her head, which means that only the thin veil in Card II separates the Empress from the Popess. It’s possible that the Empress, while not having a cognitive aware- ness of her role, by virtue of the thin veil possesses an intuitive sense of her role. It’s as if being depicted in looking back toward the Popess, she understands at some level the sacred nature of her role. The importance of that intuition is reflected in the way she holds the shield, as if she knows that the shield is symbolic of the Fool as the immature Christ. The Zigzag of Effulgence One of the more unusual symbols depicted in the seventeenth-century version of The Empress card is a set of zigzags found beside her left buttock. Harold Bayley described similar depictions as a “feathered or rayed figure seated upon a five-pointed cockscomb” as well as referring to it later as the “five-rayed zigzag, crest or cockscomb.”9 He also refers to these five rays as the zigzag of effulgence, that which shines brightly (see fig. 4.8, p. 108). These zigzags of effulgence were typically depicted on crowns that “symbolized the Supreme.” In Anu Korhonen’s paper titled “How to Read a Renaissance Fool,” Anu writes, “The word cockscomb could be used as a synonym for the word fool, so the head-dress very much characterised the entire figure.”10 The etymology of the word explains that coxcomb, a deriva- tive from cockscomb, referred to a “hat worn by a professional fool.” This is beautifully depicted in a nineteenth-century painting called The Court Jester (1895) by John Watson Nicol (fig. 4.9, p. 109). It’s easy For Review Only 108 A Fool is Born to see how the cockscomb, the Fool’s cap, and the zigzag of effulgence could all be symbolic of the same thing—the Fool. Its placement in The Empress card alludes to the idea that she is giving birth to the Fool, symbolizing the Cathar belief that differentiated consciousness became human consciousness. According to the Cathar, every birth of the Fool also represents the coming forth of a brilliant light (the zigzag of efful- gence), which is the birth of the Christ. The Fool holds the potentiality of being the Christ. The Empress symbolizes the earthly mother, where the Fool from the heaven-world incarnates most likely for its umpteenth time into another form of human consciousness. Fig. 4.8. The Zigzag of Effulgence, illustrated in Harold Bayley’s book The Lost Language of Symbolism, vol. 1 For Review Only A Fool is Born 109 The Shield In 1356, the grandson of Henry VII, Charles IV was also chosen to be the Holy Roman emperor and drafted what was called the Golden Bull. This was a set of rules that stood for over 400 years and estab- lished the finer details for how an emperor would be selected. The seal, shown in figure 4.10, was attached to the Bull. Closer inspection of the seal shows an emperor holding the orb and scepter with a shield on his right depicting his role as the Holy Roman emperor (similar to the shields seen in The Emperor and Empress cards). The shield on his left is symbolic of his appointment as the king of Bohemia, thus his asso- ciation with the House of Luxembourg, portrayed by the lion. Shields with their emblems identified the role of the king or emperor/empress, whereas the scepter and orb established their authority. The Empress holds one of these shields with the emblem of the eagle, which depicts the traditional Germanic heritage of the Holy Roman emperor. The clear difference is seen in its relationship to the Fig. 4.9. The Court Jester (1985) by John Watson Nicol For Review Only 110 A Fool is Born Empress. In this card she holds the shield almost as if it was an ani- mate object. This is in stark contrast to the Emperor who has the shield placed behind him on the ground, with his foot resting on it. As is depicted in the seal, the shield would have always been presented beside the emperor, not embraced as in The Empress card and not trodden on as in the case of The Emperor. You couldn’t have two more dia- metrically opposed depictions of the way two people relate to the same object. The way the Empress relates to the shield is consistently depicted through the various versions of the Marseille Trumps. Her right arm and hand extends beyond the outside border of the shield and comes to rest on the emblem of the eagle. It highlights the idea that the bird means more than being a heraldic emblem. It can be perceived that the eagle represents something more intimate, a child maybe, given the Empress’s role as the mother. Fig. 4.10. The seal of the Golden Bull of 1356. The seal earned the decree its name. For Review Only A Fool is Born 111 The colorful 1983 Guler and Aymerich version of the Marseille Trumps, used throughout this book, depict boldly simplified versions of the cards, while maintaining the essence of the core symbols found in the seventeenth-century versions. This is seen in their style of the cockscomb in The Empress card. This is also true of the eagle on the shield. Most of the early versions of the Marseille Trumps show differ- ences in the stance of the eagle and more particularly in the way the wings are displayed. In heraldry, the position of the eagle’s wings meant different things. The eagle in The Empress card appears to be an immature bird, still at the stage of developing its ability to fly, as if exercising its wings. This Fig. 4.11. L’Imperatrice / The Empress by de Guler & Aymerich, 1983 © Naipes Heraclitus Fournier S.A. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 112 A Fool is Born is in contrast to the Emperor’s eagle, which is fully developed given the form of the legs, the shape of the wings, and the nature of the feathers. Given how the monarchs relate to their respective shields and the dif- ferences in the maturity of the eagle emblems, it can be concluded that the role of these elements in the cards are different from the role of the eagle shown in the seal of the Golden Bull. The idea of a shared association of the eagle with the Holy Roman emperor and the Fool was highlighted in Bayley’s book The Lost Language of Symbolism. The image shows the crowned monarch’s eagle embossed with the symbol of the Fool on its breast. In his explana- tion of the image, Bayleywrote, “and from the device blazoned on the Bird of Fire herewith, it is evident that the Wisdom which it, the Holy Ghost teacheth, but which to the world is folly, was symbolised as the Great ‘Fool.’ But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him.”11 This direct association between the Fool and the Spirit of God is seen in the dual name of cockscomb and zigzag of effulgence as discussed previously. Fig. 4.12. The combined symbols of the Emperor and the Fool, illustrated in Harold Bayley’s book The Lost Language of Symbolism, vol. 1 For Review Only A Fool is Born 113 This association of God and the Fool was important to the Cathar as it reflected much of what they had experienced over 200 years at the hand of the church. They would have identified with the words of the apostle Paul when he wrote, “We are fools for Christ’s sake . . . we are weak . . . we are despised. Even to this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place; And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: Being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of this world, and are the offscouring [outcast] of all things unto this day” (1 Corinthians 4:10–13). The Fool as a Child It’s universally accepted that the first seven years of a child’s life sees the formation of a set of beliefs about themselves that becomes the measure of their self-worth that permeates most of their life. There is nothing in historical records to suggest that this notion is a Cathar philosophy, but the symbols depicted in The Empress card do support this idea. The eagle on a shield, being the symbol of the developing child, alludes to a child being “framed” within a set of beliefs about their worth that are set by the Emperor, but developed in the child by the Empress. In terms of the Fool’s experience of human consciousness, this belief of self-worth becomes a personal narrative that is a filter through which all that the Fool experiences must pass. Because of the Cathar affinity with the Sermon on the Mount, they would have subscribed to Jesus’s version of what Anaïs Nin eloquently said centuries later, “We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.” Your eye [the filter of the narrative for how you see the world] is a lamp that provides [projects] light [awareness and understanding] for your body [your human experience]. When your eye [your narra- tive and filter of self-worth] is good [love-centered], your whole body is filled with light [awareness and understanding]. But when your eye is bad [fear-centered], your whole body is filled with darkness For Review Only 114 A Fool is Born [ignorance and judgment]. And if the light [the love] that you think you have is actually darkness [you think you are loving but are in fact fearful], how deep the darkness is [you are living your life in total ignorance]! (Matthew 6:22–23 )̂ This idea of ignorance was fundamental to the teachings of both Jesus and Buddha. Buddha taught there were three states of ignorance that were so harmful to the human experience he called them the three poisons: ignorance, avoidance, and attachment. Jesus taught the same three poisons in his parable of the sower. Jesus tells about a farmer who is planting seeds. A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seeds fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still others fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. (Matthew 13:3–8^) Simply explained, the seeds that fell on the path equated to peo- ple who were ignorant. The seeds that fell into the shallow soil repre- sented those who avoided, in other words, they became more aware, but couldn’t or wouldn’t use the new knowledge. Falling into the soil where the weeds grew and choked out the good seedlings was the same as Buddha’s third poison, attachment. These are the people who become more aware and through personal will and determination make a genu- ine effort to adopt the new changes, but are unable to sustain it. Their habitual behaviors are too entrenched for their changes to be sustain- able and thus revert to their old ways of doing things. The Fool as a child is typically programmed by his mother, since they are generally exposed to her the most. Of course, the programming develops from whoever the child has the most exposure in those forma- For Review Only A Fool is Born 115 tive years: grandparents, nannies, institutions, and so on. This is how programming rolls out in one’s life. Some years ago Dove (the personal care brand) released a mother/ daughter commercial where they separately asked mothers and their young daughters what they liked most and least about their bodies. When their responses were compared, much of what had been listed was identical. A popular U.S. TV host interviewed a beautiful young woman who was a model, but who was also extremely promiscuous. The search for the inspiration for this behavior led to her mother. Briefly, her mother was also very attractive and the young woman, as a young child, would witness her mother standing in front of a mirror verbally being self-critical about how she (the mother) looked and often commenting about how ugly she looked. This programmable young girl observed that if you looked this way, then you must be ugly. As she grew up, she also learned that boys weren’t interested in ugly girls, and since she thought she was ugly, she concluded that if she “put out” sexually then they might want her. A Childhood Narrative Every child possesses a programmed narrative about their worth that is the filter of the eyes for how they see and thus relate to the world. This develops subconsciously and becomes the filter that in most cases remains throughout the whole life of that person. Since you see the world “as you are,” which is primarily this childhood programming, you filter out anything else and essentially create your reality from that fil- ter. If your mother or father demanded perfection, then you will mature with a filter that sees you constantly striving for perfection. If you had to compete for attention, you create the reality that requires you to compete to be the favorite in order to get the attention. The irony in all of this is that what you want remains elusive because you are the one who has effectively created your reality from your narrative. The more elusive, the more you seek it. Before you know it (and of course you have no idea this is happening) you are sixty years old For Review Only 116 A Fool is Born and your life is still being driven by the narrative of the seven-year-old. Except now, having spent a lifetime trying to obtain what remains elu- sive, it has left you exhausted, maybe unwell, unfilled, either alone or living in an unhappy relationship, still striving for perfection and/or acceptance. This is in variance to the Cathar belief that you needed to be con- scious and “seek first the kingdom of God.” Being unconsciously caught in the story, the Fool has become fully entrenched in the Magician’s world of illusion, which is the world of the evil God. It turns out that ignorance of the narrative, this Fool’s story, is what sustains human suf- fering. Buddha’s Four Noble Truths give context to suffering. The first of his truths says: We suffer. It is a part of the human condition, some- thing that everyone will experience. His second truth explains why: We suffer because of what we are attached to. Of course, in the context of The Empress card, we areattached unconsciously to the programming of our childhood, which is our narrative of poor self-worth. This is the cause of our suffering. His third truth reveals: We can be free of the suffering. There is cause for hope that we can be free of our suffering. And the fourth of his truths states: We can be free of suffering NOW! The Magician’s ultimate trick is this narrative of the Fool. That being the case, if the Fool can be free of the narrative right now, there will be freedom from suffering now. It’s really that simple. Obviously, you would have to know what your narrative is in order to work out how to be free of it. The narrative is the default programming in the mind of the Fool, and until that time when the Fool can see it, it dis- torts the perceived reality. In the context of the Fool’s journey, as pre- scribed by the Cathar, there won’t be freedom from this narrative until The Devil card and The House of God card. In the hands of the Empress, the Fool establishes a belief about his worth. As one moves on to The Emperor, The Pope, The Lovers, and The Chariot, there is a whole lot more programming that either rein- forces or further expands this narrative. When the Fool gets to Justice, The Hermit, and The Wheel of Fortune, there is a whole lot of suffer- ing and loss to be experienced. It’s only when one gets to The Hanged For Review Only A Fool is Born 117 Man, Death, Temperance, and The Devil, which collectively constitute the Dark Night of the Soul, that the Fool has an opportunity to be free of the story and its associated suffering. In essence, the Dark Night of the Soul is an exercise in identifying and aligning one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with a new set of values. Instead of values being driven by the Fool’s narrative, the shift in one’s sense of self-worth sees the Fool’s values inspired by those things that support a more self-loving reality: inner peace, joy, and clarity of purpose. In a document called “The Formative Years: UNICEF’s Work on Measuring Early Childhood Development,” the opening paragraph states: Early childhood, which spans the period up to 8 years of age, is critical for cognitive, social, emotional and physical development. During these years, a child’s newly developing brain is highly plas- tic and responsive to change as billions of integrated neural circuits are established through the interaction of genetic, environment and experience. Optimal brain development requires a stimulating envi- ronment, adequate nutrients and social interaction with attentive caregivers. Unsafe conditions, negative interactions and lack of edu- cational opportunities during these early years can lead to irrevers- ible outcomes, which can affect a child’s potential for the remainder of his or her life. . . . Ensuring the healthy cognitive, social and emo- tional development of young children merits the highest priority for the sake of raising healthy children worldwide.12 The combination of genetics, environment, and experience estab- lishes the neural pathways of the brain that become the default for how the Fool relates to life. All three elements contribute to the formation of the narrative that, in the formative years, is managed by the primary caregiver, which until recently was typically the mother (the Empress). In the formative years, the Fool learns primarily by watching and mim- icking, reflected in the adage “monkey see, monkey do.” And as much as the genetic pool can hugely impact on the formation of who the child is physically and mentally, recent research into epigenetics has revealed For Review Only 118 A Fool is Born that how DNA is accessed and used is greatly influenced by the state of consciousness of each individual. Fundamentally, the state of conscious- ness determines the chemistry of the matrix that causes the membrane of cells to select DNA that is more or less serving to the well-being of the person. The key to all of this is that the state of consciousness forms as a consequence of the environment and experiences to which the child is exposed in the formative years. The Cathar would have had no idea about all of this from a scientific perspective, but they would have seen the difference in the nature of their children, who had been raised in homes filled with love and kindness (which was why the Cathar were called the Good Men and Women), when compared to others in their communities. This would have been important to them, since their whole agenda for living was about stopping the cycle of re-fleshing, which in accordance with their beliefs was possible the more holy you were. In the language of the Cathar, holiness was kindness. They would have done all in their power to help their children be as kind as pos- sible. And as much as it is said that they discouraged the bearing of children in order to stop the perpetuation of the world of the evil God, they would have made every effort to have their children be the best that they could be to reduce the risk of being reincarnated. The role of the mother was essential to making this possible. The importance of the role of women to the Cathar is evidenced by the inclusion and prominence of women in their theology, as depicted in the code. Not only does it highlight the importance of the equality of the feminine in human consciousness (the Empress) and differenti- ated consciousness (the Popess), but as will be seen later, the Holy Grail itself is an instrument of the Mother Goddess, the Queen of Heaven, reflecting the equality of the divine feminine in the place of undifferen- tiated consciousness. Of the twenty-two cards that constitute the Major Arcana twelve of them included female figures. For Review Only 119 FIVE Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame T his is the first labeling of “the Four” (the Fool’s four main areas of focus of human consciousness): power, wealth, love, and fame. The first of the quartet is represented by the Emperor, depicted with his legs holding the shape of the number 4 (see fig. 5.1, p. 120). The Magician highlighted this reference to the Four in the key symbols in his possession—a wand, a coin, cups, and a dagger, all of which related to the four suits of the Minor Arcana. This association of the number four with the Fool was a common inclusion in the early watermarks depicting the Cap and Bells (see fig. 5.2, p. 121). These watermarks contained symbology that illustrated key aspects regarding the transformation of the Fool into the Christ. The 4 sits atop three larger circles that typically represented the trinity or the three attributes of Christ consciousness as depicted in the Beatitudes. Three overlapping circles was one of the symbols often used by the Sforza, seen on the clothing of the Empress and Emperor portrayed in the origi- nal fifteenth-century cards. The watermark also depicts an extended horizontal arm, with a crossmember whose ends are capped with three more circles. It could be interpreted to mean that the 4 is altered by the three, which is how human consciousness becomes Christ conscious- ness. The smaller three circles could well be symbolic of justice, time, For Review Only 120 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame Fig. 5.1. L’Empereur / The Emperor by Jean Dodal, circa 1701 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 121 and chance, which will be discussed in detail in the next chapter. The larger circles then would be symbolic of The Star, Moon, and Sun cards that depict the key attributes of Christ consciousness that emerge with having entered the House of God. Once again, the designers of the seventeenth-century Marseille Tarot resorted to using references from the period of the Visconti to portray the deeper meaning of the images. Having The Emperor and The Pope beside each other is symbolic of the ongoing power play that existed for hundreds of yearsbetween these two. Different versions of the cards have the Emperor facing in different directions. Facing the Pope, they appear very combative with their symbols of power, the archbishop’s staff and the emperor’s sceptre and orb, extended toward each other. Fig. 5.2. The Fool’s Cap and Bells with extensions, illustrated in Harold Bayley’s book The Lost Language of Symbolism, vol. II For Review Only 122 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame Henry VII and Clement V After a fifty-year hiatus, the role of Holy Roman emperor sat in abey- ance until a relatively “neutral” king was selected to fill the role. Henry VII of Luxembourg had been crowned king of Germany and used his influence to be selected by the Prince-Electors as the next Holy Roman emperor. From the thirteenth century on, seven Prince-Electors were given the right to elect the king of the Romans, who would then go on to be crowned by the pope as Holy Roman emperor. With the role of the pope becoming more political and less spiritual from the thirteenth century onward, it was deemed necessary to make sure he couldn’t “stack” Western European political power to his advantage. The seven electors had a vested interest in protecting their kingdoms and generally chose someone who would serve their collective interests. Fig. 5.3. The seven Prince-Electors electing Henry VII as Holy Roman emperor, circa 1341 For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 123 Obviously, popes and kings would do all within their power to influence the selection made by the Prince-Electors. The appointment of Henry VII was no exception. Philip the Fair, the king of France, was very keen to have one of his own appointed Holy Roman emperor, and it is said he spent a lot of his resources trying to bribe the elec- tors. Philip, in his plan to achieve emperor status, even without the title, muscled his way into having significant influence on the papacy; so much so, the papacy and curia was moved from Rome to Avignon in France. Pope Boniface VIII, in response to Philip’s increasing pres- sure to bend to his demands, took a political stand that would ulti- mately result in his death. He issued several bulls that made clear his position of power over kings and princes. That he would often dress in Caesar-styled attire and that he added a second crown to the papal tiara were essentially muscle-flexing exercises specifically directed at King Philip. In 1303, an army led by one of Philip’s ministers attacked Boniface at his palace in Anagni, in Italy. It is said Boniface was severely beaten and nearly executed but was released after three days. Boniface died a month later as a result of the beating. During his papacy Boniface had changed the balance of Italian/French cardinals, now in favor of Italy. Desperate for funds to finance his military campaigns, Philip placed a stranglehold on papal taxes and by eliminating the Templars was able to take control of the movement of money in Western Europe. By means of coercion and bribery, Philip was able to influence the selection of the next pope who was the archbishop of Bordeaux. Like Henry VII, it was said the new pope, Clement V, being an outsider (he wasn’t even a cardinal) would be impartial. A subject of the king of England, it was thought this would bring a balance of power, but Edward I had his own problems and refused to get caught up in European entanglements. This meant that by 1309, Clement became dependent on France. After his appointment, Clement slowly made his way to Rome from Bordeaux but never arrived. Intervention by Philip in Poitiers and later in Lyons meant that the papacy would now be situated in France. Of For Review Only 124 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame the twenty-four cardinals appointed by Clement (many of whom were his relations), twenty-three were French and only one was an Italian. It could be perceived that the pope had become an unofficial vassal of the king. It was under this state of affairs that Henry VII pushed to be the Holy Roman emperor. It was why Henry so strongly sought to restore the power and pres- tige of the role of the emperor. That Clement V agreed to Henry being made the Holy Roman emperor may have been a strategy that would make it possible for him, Clement, to finally get to Rome. In 1310, Henry made his way into northern Italy to be crowned in Milan as the king of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy. Although Henry made a genuine attempt to quell the tensions between the Guelphs (supporters of the pope) and the Ghibelline imperial supporters, an attack by a fac- tion of the Guelphs on the imperial army resulted in Henry becoming polarized in his alignment with the Ghibelline. It is at this point that Henry VII appoints Matteo Visconti as the imperial vicar of Milan. The divide between the Guelphs and the Ghibelline escalates and under increasing pressure from Philip, Clement distances himself from Henry and backs the Guelphs. Clement even decides not to attend Henry’s coronation. The building resistance of the Guelphs results in Henry’s troops having to force their way into Rome across the Ponte Milvio to try to remove the Angevin (French troops) from Saint Peter’s Basilica. Unable to do so, Henry was forced to perform his coronation at the Lateran. The ceremony was performed by three car- dinals, aligned with the Ghibellines, who had joined Henry on his way through Italy. By 1313, Henry was dead. Some reports suggest that he was poisoned by Dominican priests at the behest of Clement. Late in 2013 the sarcophagus of Henry VII, housed in the cathe- dral of Pisa, was exhumed. Testing of the bones revealed high levels of arsenic, which supports the theory that he was poisoned. That said, it was also claimed that he died from malaria, and arsenic was often a key ingredient for “medicinal” remedies then; if the malaria didn’t kill him, the arsenic from the medication might well have. Examination of the body revealed anomalies to one knee that suggests he spent a lot of time For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 125 on bended knee, alluding to the idea that prayer was a significant part of the emperor’s daily routine. Along with a bolt of ten-foot-long silk cloth, his coffin also included his scepter, crown, and orb. As expected, his scepter and orb were sepa- rate, not joined as depicted in the cards. The element of consciousness depicted by The Emperor is all about power, symbolized by the wand held in the left hand of the Magician. The Cathar are stating that any power and authority other than that of the good God is illusory and belongs to the world of the evil God. Their fundamental message being that anyone who seeks dominion or authority over others can in no way enter the kingdom of Heaven. The seventeenth-century Marseille shows the Emperor wearing a very unusual headdress (see fig. 5.1, p. 120). The style is indicative of battle attire, a style of helmet called a sallet that emerged from Milan during the fifteenth century. It isn’t clear that Henry would have worn Fig. 5.4. The coronation of Henry VII as Holy Roman emperor by three Ghibelline cardinals (with the red galeros, shown in color plate 25), circa 1341For Review Only 126 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame this style of helmet as it became popular after his time, but its style was unique and one that people in Western Europe would have known about. As a symbol it was portraying important information. It was not uncommon for the sallet to be covered in velvet and other adornments. The long trail at the back of the helmet was specifically a German adaptation of the sallet, which lends more weight to the idea that the Emperor depicted in the cards was a king of Germany. Wearing battle attire reveals the focus of the role of the Emperor, and it comes as no surprise given that much of Henry’s time as king was spent in battle. His final resting place in Pisa reflected his special connectionwith the city, which was one of his primary sources for the finances required to fund his army. From the time he entered Italy in 1311 to his death just a few years later, he was in battle with either Guelph armies or vassals of the French. The joined scepter and orb, as discussed in the section on the Empress, has no historical context. It has to be assumed that it holds a much greater spiritual message to the seventeenth-century designers of the cards. Being the power card, and given the prominence of the joined scepter and orb, this could be depicting what divine authority might look like in comparison to worldly authority. The depiction of the hie- ros gamos is stating, right from the beginning of the Fool’s journey, that this must be the focus: the sacred marriage and the bridal chamber, the union of the masculine principle with the feminine principle. If you were to have your eyes “single to the glory of God” you wouldn’t be caught up in wars and power struggles. This was important to the Cathar, particularly since they were pacifists. Many accounts of their genocide during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw mass slaughters and burnings of the Cathar where they demonstrated nonresistance. This was their commitment to totally trusting in the authority and power of God. By resisting, they would have been acknowledging the power to their earthly enemy, which would perpetuate the world of illusion. Besides, Jesus the exem- plar of Christ consciousness demonstrated nonresistence when he was condemned and sentenced to death by the Romans and Jews. For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 127 Power The Fool as a child, depicted as an immature eagle on the shield being nurtured by the Empress, has matured given how its portrayed on the shield of the Emperor. The development of neural pathways in the brain of the young Fool that were so “plastic” under the care of the Empress are now well established. The Fool has been programmed with the beliefs, expectations, and attitudes of his parents, and for as much as the early imprint was made by the mother, the Fool is now “underfoot” of the Emperor, in other words, they are subjugated or subservient to him. Collectively, the symbols depicted in The Emperor card clearly establish that its theme is about power and authority. More specifically it depicts a continuum of power with the subjec- tion of the Fool being under the Emperor’s foot at one end of the con- tinuum and his being modeled the power and control of the emperor and king at the other end. This alludes to the idea that the Fool in his formative years could identify with either an active or passive approach to power, in addition to being motivated by love or fear. The active expression could range from benevolent leadership to tyranny. The pas- sive expression might be humility and temperance or victimhood and subservience. Since the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” the Fool will watch the parents and with repeated demonstrations of how the parents approached power and authority, the Fool establishes a narra- tive, a belief system about what power is to them. On the one hand, the Fool who lacks worth in this regard will either try to establish it through behaviors like bullying, or constantly find themselves being bullied. A Fool who has a strong sense of self-worth won’t seek power or control but will naturally lead and inspire, and if inclined to be more introverted, will have meekness and temperance, both of which require power and control. Into adulthood, the Fool’s story about self-worth in terms of being either powerful or powerless turns up in all types of relationships: per- sonal, work, and social. Of course, if your story is about being a vic- tim, then for it to exist there has to be an assailant of some kind, and For Review Only 128 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame typically there will be more than one. The key to being free of this sort of control by another is never about “getting away” from the assailant. Of course, finding a place of safety is important. How often do you hear of abused women finally finding the courage to leave an abusive rela- tionship, only to find themselves in another relationship with another bully? If you are watching a movie being projected onto a screen and decide you want to watch something else, you don’t change the movie by changing the screen. No matter what the screen is, the same movie will keep being projected. To change the movie, you have to change what is being projected. The victim has to find their center of power, they have to be released from the narrative that has them believing that their self- worth is so poor that a life of victimhood is all that they deserve or is their lot in life. Whether you are the victim or assailant, both represent authority out of balance. War, conflict, and arguments all arise from an attempt to establish authority and power. It could be perceived that the need to attack someone or something else, being an attempt to exert control, can only come from someone who feels powerless, thus needing to act in this way. Not only was this an issue for Henry and Clement, but it was significant in the life of Matteo Visconti. The battle between the Visconti and the Guelph-aligned Della Torre family for control of Milan was prominent in the life of Matteo Visconti. It was the author- ity of Henry VII that finally gave Matteo the “right” to rule Milan. As previously explained, the positioning of the Emperor’s leg is no mistake. He is highlighting that he and the following three cards sym- bolize the four key expressions of human consciousness. The Parisian designers of the Trumps were making very clear what aspects of human consciousness would lead to the Fool being re-fleshed, that is, to be reincarnated. You were given a preview in The Magician card, where his symbols suggested that power, wealth, love, and fame were typical of the themes of the human narrative that perpetuates the world of the evil God. In the case of The Emperor card, the Cathar are saying that if you turn up in the world as the victim (as one needing power) or exert- ing your power (as one needing control), then you will remain tied to For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 129 this world of illusion, you can in no way enter the kingdom of Heaven, the world of the good God. Wealth Who would have thought that The Pope represented wealth? The obvi- ous association would be spiritual, but given that the Pope depicted in the card shown in figure 5.5 is most likely Clement V, then its associa- tion with wealth is perfect. Clement amassed a considerably large sum of money; but owing to his feebleness of character, the greatest profit went to the place-hunt- ers at the curia, to his own family and dependents, which gave him a bad name as a “simonist”; while his lack of attention to administra- tive detail led to abuses at the curia itself, by officials who demanded exorbitant payments for every service. And though he accumulated an estimable treasure, it was not used for the church; about a half went to his relatives, and a third was lent to the kings of France and England, with little prospect of repayment.1 Whatever was the correct interpretation of Jesus’s metaphor about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, the intent of his metaphor is clear. According to the Cathar, if your wealth defines you and you are attached to the trappings of the world, then you will be preventing your entrance into Heaven. The pope was also into power, but in the case of Clement, King Philip of France had it all over him, which saw Clement resort to using his wealth to buy his political privilege. He also bought the allegiance of the curia, depicted in the card with two tonsured, kneeling priests. The priest on the left is wearing a galero, the name given to the hats that wereofficially sanctioned in 1245 to be a part of the cardinal’s attire. They were typically red in color as depicted in Noblet’s Parisian version of the Trumps. Clement V, as the pope, was condemned for simony, nepotism, for For Review Only 130 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame Fig. 5.5. Le Papa / The Pope by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 131 excessive luxury, and waste. Selling positions of power (simony) and making familial appointments (nepotism) resulted in what has been described as one of the most abrupt revolutions in ecclesiastical history. Pope Innocent III was one of the first to introduce papal taxes to fund his crusades, but Clement V took it a step further, using the funds for his own personal and political agendas. A focus on needing to accumulate wealth, whether you are rich or poor, was the second aspect of human consciousness that would keep you coming back to the world of the evil God. That the Magician holds the wand and a pentacle in his hands suggests that these two elements have the biggest impact on stopping the Fool from progressing spiritu- ally. The Cathar lived simple lives. They subscribed to honest labor and even their clergy, the perfecti, worked to support themselves. In fact, it is said that if they visited a believer, instead of expecting a handout, the perfecti were expected to leave a gift. Their desire for stopping the reincarnation cycle was so strong that their commitment to kindness and doing good meant that they were highly respected by both nobility and the common people. The Cathar way of living with their spiritual tenets was in stark con- trast to the church, which having placed unreasonable demands for con- tributions and taxes, saw bishops and clergy accumulating much wealth and living lives of excess. It was obvious to the common people that Jesus lived a simple life, a lifestyle that they related to and struggled to see how the investment in wealth by the church in any way related to the teach- ings of Jesus. Barraclough in The Medieval Papacy observed that “the real cause of the heretical movements was not doctrinal difference, but protest against a secularised church.”2 People related to the Cathar and their sim- ple approach to living, and as such, the appeal of the missionary perfecti attracted a fast-growing interest that saw a rapid rise in Cathar adherents. The Spirituals This rapid growth of what the church called heresy became humili- ating, and something had to be done. In addition to moving toward For Review Only 132 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame stamping out the “heresy” with the creation of the Albigensian Crusade, Pope Innocent III also officially recognized the mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, to prove that the church was also committed to a spiritual approach that included apostolic pov- erty. Even within the Order of the Franciscans a divide arose between those who felt they needed to strictly align with apostolic poverty, called the Spirituals, and those less inclined, called the Conventuals. Like the Cathar, the idealism of the Spirituals won widespread support from both nobility and the people that saw them rise to be a major force. The Spirituals subscribed to the teachings of Joachim of Fiore, who prophesied that the need for a church, with its strongly secular approach, would be replaced by the Age of The Holy Spirit. This would see people being moved by the Holy Spirit to live Christlike lives, no longer needing a church. Naturally the apostolic ideal and approach to living was in alignment with this. What emerged for the Spirituals was a backlash not too dissimilar to the Cathar, since their exemplary apostolic lives also became an embar- rassment to the church. Needless to say, it was during the time of Matteo Visconti that Pope Boniface VIII declared the Spiritual Franciscans her- etics, which saw them receive the same treatment as the Cathar. The Conventual Franciscans betrayed the aims of Saint Francis, which included strict poverty and the dissolution of the Franciscan houses. They, along with the Dominicans, were said to have been tempted by the devil to become more like the monastic orders, moving away from the primitive Christianity of the apostles: spiritual values, poverty (living on alms and begging), itinerate preaching, and redemption. [T]he majority (of the Conventuals) took their place among the existing orders and, devoting themselves to preaching, took up the study of theology in order to preach sound doctrine. By the middle of the thirteenth century Dominicans and Franciscans were firmly ensconced in the universities, and were already the leading lights in the intellectual sphere. They had fixed houses and, as study needed an income, were amassing revenues.3 For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 133 Indeed, Saint Francis had been betrayed. In just the same way that The Emperor card was highlighting attachment to power, irrespective of whether you were in a position of power or you were powerless as a victim, The Pope card was highlighting the attachment to wealth. It doesn’t matter if the Fool is like Clement V, who was driven by the need to accumulate wealth, or the Spiritual Franciscans who wore their pov- erty as a badge of honor—both positions are just flip sides of the same coin, attachment to wealth. Of course, being wealthy or being poor doesn’t necessarily infer that one is attached to wealth. When the need for wealth or to avoid it becomes the priority, then Christ consciousness is impossible. The Cathar professed no attachment to wealth. The facts suggest that they lived lives of sufficiency. They were honest and hard- working and wealth, if they possessed it, was a means to an end, which in their case was about social justice. Their tenor was “to abandon the world, to retrain the appetites of the flesh, to provide our food by the labour of our own hands, to do no injury to anyone, to extend charity to everyone of their own faith.”4 “And the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul. Neither did anyone say that aught of the things which he possessed was his own: but all things were common unto them” (Acts of the Apostles 4:32). This state of consciousness could not be achieved where one’s desires are attached to either seeking or avoiding wealth. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks a lot about the futility of accumulat- ing material wealth, and he sums up his thoughts on it when he said, “Make your first priority the kingdom of God, and doing good; and the material things you need, you will be provided with” (Matthew 6:33^). Having detailed two of the Four aspects of human consciousness, as portrayed in The Emperor and Pope cards, the Cathar go on to reveal the third key aspect of human consciousness: love. Love Typical of the canon of the seventeenth-century Marseille are the char- acters found in Card VI, The Lovers card. Eros, who in the majority For Review Only 134 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame of cases is blindfolded, is always depicted. A man with either one or two women in his company is also typical. There is little known of the marital affairs of Matteo Visconti, but it’s known that Bianca Maria Visconti, for whom these cards were gifted, was the illegitimate daugh- ter of Filippo Maria Visconti. Filippo was the last of the Visconti rulers as Duke of Milan. Filippo was married twice. His first wife, Beatrice Lascaris Di Tenda, came with a dowry of half a million florins. Typical of those times, the marriage was motivated by fiscal and political agen- das. But it turns out that his wife’s lady-in-waiting, Agnese del Maino was the only person the shy and secluded Filippo ever truly loved. Beatrice Di Tenda had been married to Facino Cane, a military commander and condottiere who had worked at various stages for theVisconti dukes. Uncharacteristic of the times, he was said to have treated Beatrice with respect and inclusion, such that she would even accompany him on his military campaigns. Facino died in 1412, leav- ing Beatrice a very rich widow. Given her wealth and territorial control, advisors of Filippo strongly advised him to seek her hand in marriage, in spite of the fact that she was twenty years his senior and possibly unable to bear him any children. The additional territories and wealth saw Filippo reconstruct the Visconti state to reflect what had existed in his father’s time, when he was Duke of Milan, most of which was lost during the time that Filippo’s brother ruled. It is of note that Filippo’s brother Giovanni, the then Duke of Milan, and Beatrice’s husband, Facino, both died on the same day! Many reasons have been postulated as to why Filippo grew averse to Beatrice, including the fact of his favoring the much younger Agnese del Maino, now his mistress. By 1418 he denounced his wife, claim- ing she had committed adultery, which led to her beheading later that same year. It would normally be enough to finish that story here, but the details of the historical account of the accusations that resulted in Beatrice’s execution, given that this is The Lovers card, are worth detail- ing. Typical of the nobility of that time, Filippo contrived evidence that would give him the result he wanted. For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 135 Fig. 5.6. Le Moureux / The Lovers by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 136 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame Among the friends and household of the duchess was a young trou- badour, Michele Orombelli, who regularly entertained Beatrice with lute and song. To avoid drawing attention to the execution of his plan, Filippo secreted the duchess, her troubadour, and two handmaidens to the castle of Binasco, about nine miles to the southwest of Milan. Filippo went to the trouble to even close the city gates of Milan until midday to minimize alarming supporters of the duchess who might try to free her. They were brought to the castle to be tortured for confessions that they were privy to the adulterous relationship between Michele and Beatrice. The handmaidens confessed to seeing Beatrice’s troubadour playing the lute on her bed. Orombelli being tortured, confessed to having an affair with Beatrice. Despite denying any guilt to her confessor, Beatrice her- self received twenty-four lashes. Within the month, Beatrice along with her troubadour and handmaidens were found guilty of adultery or its complicity and were executed—Beatrice by beheading. Seven years later, Filippo’s mistress gives birth to Bianca Maria, who would turn out to be the duke’s only heir to the Duchy of Milan. When Bianca was just six months old, she and her mother were sent to the castle of Abbiategrasso, situated in the Po Valley, fourteen miles to the west of Milan. Agnese and Filippo never married, even though she was his true love. For reasons of state, Filippo married a second time in 1428 to Marie of Savoy. Filippo and Marie’s father, Amadeus VIII of Savoy, were bibliophiles, both having a passion for collecting books. It is speculated that their shared interests and political expediency were the main reasons for the marriage, not love. The Troubadours Like the Cathar, the troubadours were also eventually treated as her- etics, often experiencing the same fates. They too made their way to the Lombardy region of Italy in the early fourteenth century, as there was tolerance and in many cases acceptance of their work. Many popular historical commentaries lay claim to the notion that there was a strong link between the Cathar and troubadours. This is difficult to rational- For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 137 ize given the Cathar belief about intimacy and relationship. In the con- text of their beliefs there was only one “true” love, the love of the good God. They would have decried any thought of love that would distract one from their love of God. The troubadours on the other hand were promoting romantic love, love with passion, both constrained and relaxed in its expression. The troubadours promoted this new approach to rela- tionship that was called courtly love. Courtly love gave space for relation- ship to exist, expressed or otherwise, that was inspired by the Roman god, Eros. This was perfectly demonstrated in Filippo’s world of relationships. Ironically, he acted on his desires without consequence. Beatrice on the other hand, may well have had an affair of the heart with Michele, but her nature would suggest that it was never consummated, as she swore in confession, and yet she was beheaded. All of this would have been a perfect reason for the Cathar to include this in their code. Given that Filippo lived after the demise of the Cathar in Lombardy, they would not have used his story to illustrate the human context of love, but they were aware of the troubadour approach to love, which still promoted an approach to relationship that distracted people from the most important relationship, the one with God. So the Cathar could not have used this fourteenth-century drama as the metaphor for their portable stained-glass “Love” window and Bembo Bonifacio would have most certainly been sensitive of Bianca Maria’s parentage in how he por- trayed love. It was a different matter for the Parisian designers of the cards 200 years later. They would have used Filippo Maria Visconti’s story to embellish the meaning of the card; that said, this scenario was quite common throughout Western Europe. Marriage and Sex The Cathar, according to inquisitional records, were against marriage. So much so, if it was found that a suspected Cathar heretic, who was being questioned by the Inquisition, could prove that they were mar- ried, they would be either released with a caution or made to wear the yellow cross if deemed to be a sympathizer, thus avoiding harsher For Review Only 138 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame punishments. Believers were permitted to be married, but the perfecti on the other hand, were expected not to marry or have sexual relations. This was because there was a high chance that having sexual intercourse would lead to pregnancy, especially since there was little knowledge about contraception. In medieval times, withdrawal was the main form of contracep- tion, although it is thought that the insertion of lily root and rue into the vagina may have also been used. Of course, any effort to prevent pregnancy was deemed immoral by the church. Abortifacient herbs like pennyroyal were used by “witches” to terminate pregnancies. This was also abhorrent in the eyes of the church. From the Cathar perspective, abstaining from sex stopped pregnancies and halted the growth of the human population. Ideally that stopped the perpetuation of the world of the evil God. This avoidance of sexual intercourse became one of the reasons why the Cathar were often accused of performing sodomy, much to their abhorrence. From the Cathar perspective, the only union that was sanctioned was the sacred marriage and its bridal chamber. This was the union that would take place within the consciousness of each individual. This was the marriage of Sophia and Christ, the union of the soul and the spirit that resulted in the formation of an androgyny. This could only be achieved if the Fool could get free from the programming that kept one attached to the Magician’s illusionary world and a personal narra- tive based on power, wealth, love, and fame. From the perspective of the Cathar, sex is seen as a key element of human consciousness that has to be “risen above” if one is to be reunited with the good God. The Fool card often depicts the pilgrim with their arse and genitals exposed, which draw the attention of a small animal,mostly a dog. It’s as if these “animal” desires are at the foundation of human consciousness. Given the sexual nature of the symbols included in The Devil card, these sexual urges that the Fool “hungers and thirsts for,” must be replaced with an equal hunger and thirst for righteousness. The inclusion of Eros suggests a force that is outside the control of the Fool. In other words, Eros is going to indiscriminately (because For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 139 Eros has a blindfold) cause a strong attraction, often sexual, to arise: a teacher and their student, a business professional and their secretary, a patient and their doctor, the best friend of a spouse, a work colleague, or just someone met socially. Because Eros has a blindfold, where the arrow lands is random. Anytime the Fool acts on the urge, or chooses not to act but gets caught up in the fantasy, their behavior and thus their con- sciousness gives more power to the world of illusion. Whether acted on or not, like Dante’s love for Beatrice (limited only to his desire for her), either way both result in being distracted from the one union that really counts. Yes, Eros’s arrow will strike, but the Fool still possesses the right to choose to be either consumed by the passion of attraction or stay true to seeking first the kingdom of Heaven. The intrinsic sense of self-worth and clarity of purpose that comes with one’s devotion to the Divine takes away any power that Eros might possess, even if he’s using his strongest potion. No discipline is required in this case when presented with the temptation. It will never be about choosing what’s right or wrong, it will always be about aligning with what’s more self-loving to you and to the others in your life. Motivated by pure love, the Fool will only act in ways that are loving to every- one concerned. It’s this agape type of love that also has the Fool be more aware of how one relates to the Magician’s other domains: power, wealth, and fame. Fame Hubris, excessive pride that was thought to bring nemesis (one’s undo- ing or downfall), was typically associated with the triumphal wagon or chariot and fame. There was a time when the king or victor, while driv- ing the chariot, would have another person riding on the chariot with them whose sole purpose was to remind the king or victor to be humble, thereby avoiding hubris. Hubris was said to be the most heinous of sins. The Roman triumph, or triumphus as it was called, was a ceremony of ancient Rome, held as a procession to celebrate and acknowledge the success of a military commander who had led Roman forces to victory. For Review Only 140 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame In the Roman tradition, the victor rode in a four-horse chariot through the streets of Rome in an unarmed procession, along with his soldiers, the captives, and whatever booty they claimed as the victor. The mor- als of the Roman Republic required that, despite these extraordinary honors and its associated fame, the victor had to conduct himself with dignified humility, as this was as much about a victory for Rome and its people as it was personal. The chariots depicted in the Marseille canon, are consistently typical of the wagons used throughout northern Italy from the fourteenth cen- tury. A tradition emerged in Italy where the knight who had the honor of carrying the victor’s flag, called il palio, in the victory procession won that right by winning a horse race against other knights. A horse race not too dissimilar to the original, called Il Palio, is held in various north- ern Italian cities every year, the most famous being in Siena. This spectacle is held in the Piazza del Campo, which is converted twice a year into a horse-racing arena from what is normally a paved public square. The Corteo Historico, a pre-race procession of Disney proportion, unfolds as knights, pages, and members of the ten compet- ing contrada* dressed in medieval attire parade through the streets of Siena. The procession is followed by drummers and trumpeters play- ing warlike rhythms and people performing precision flag twirling. All of this is then followed by the carroccio, the wagon-styled chariot that bears the winner’s flag, the il palio. The Warrior Woman The original Sforza-Visconti Chariot card made by Bonifacio depicts a woman riding a chariot drawn by two winged white horses. This was Francesco’s way of paying tribute to his wife. Imagine sitting around play- ing cards with your friends, and here is a card that has you on a pedestal. Mind you, Bianca deserved it. It was chronicled that in 1438, two years *A contrada is a designated neighborhood, with its own church, museum, and insignia. There are seventeen contrada in Siena of which only ten get to compete in each of the Il Palio, in rotation. For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 141 prior to the cards being created, Bianca Maria donned a suit of parade armor and, in the absence of her husband, joined their troops to defend Cremona in a skirmish with Venetian troops. Her courage earned her the title of “warrior woman.” This type of leadership was also seen in the way she managed the state of affairs of the Duchy of Milan in the absence of her husband, Francesco. Her steel was further demonstrated by the indif- ference shown toward her husband’s philandering, although a mistress was said to have disappeared under suspicious circumstances. That the Chariot is pulled by horses was unusual, as these wagon- styled chariots were typically drawn by bulls. The horses may have been a reference to the humility demonstrated by Francesco and Bianca when they chose to ride horses after having refused to ride the triumphal chariot to their investiture as the Duke and Duchess of Milan. The Parisian canon of the Trumps depicts a man wearing a crown and holding his scepter of authority (see fig. 5.7, p. 142). Confirmation of the elite status of what appears to be a newly crowned king or prince, is the baldacchino (or the canopy of state) held up by four posts on the chariot. That he is unaccompanied by his human reminder to stay hum- ble, plus the inclusion of horses being symbolic of the humble entrance of Francesco and Bianca strongly themes the message of this card. Castruccio Castracani Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) is famous for his book The Prince, which justified the use of tyranny as an acceptable approach to being an effective politician. He also wrote a book titled The Life of Castruccio Castracani. Castruccio’s family were Ghibelline nobles who suffered at the hands of the Guelphs. They were exiled along with other Ghibelline families from their home city, Lucca. By age nineteen, Castruccio is orphaned and becomes a mercenary for King Philip IV of France. He later returns to Italy and is mentored by Uguccione della Faggiula, the general of the army from Pisa. In 1314–15, Castruccio plays a vital role in the defeat of the Guelphs in Lucca and in the Battle of Montecantini. He plays a significant role in the victory of that battle since despite being For Review Only 142 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame Fig. 5.7. Le Chariot / The Chariot by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 143 seriously outnumbered, they still managed to defeat the Florentines who were backed by 60,000 Neapolitan troops. His rising popularity becomes an issue for his former mentor, who has Castruccio imprisoned and sentenced to death. Here, the theme of The Chariot card is coming to the fore. Uguccione has successfully established himself politically as a result of his military victories, but fears being usurped by his younger pro- tégé. Within twelve months of his victories, with the help of the people from Pisa and Lucca, Uguccione is driven out of office and replaced by Castruccio. For years Castruccio goes on to do battlewith the Guelph- governed Florentines, with towns regularly being won and lost in this ongoing conflict between these two opposing parties. It was the Battle of Altopascio in 1325 that saw Castruccio win back Altopascio and many other towns from the Guelphs, in addition to capturing many of the Guelph commanders. As a result of his suc- cess, Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV made him Duke of Lucca, for which the city gave him a Roman-style triumph. There are several ver- sions of how the procession unfolded; the less entertaining was the most likely one, where the Florentine captives led the procession, being made to carry candles in honor of Lucca’s patron saint, Saint Zita, the patron saint of maids and domestic servants. It was Castruccio’s way of belit- tling his enemy, many of whom were reputable knights and noblemen of Florence. The accepted protocol would have seen the enemy knights and noblemen treated more respectfully, without hubris. To add salt to the wound, Castruccio participated in the triumphal procession in the Florentine’s own carroccio, a spoil of the victory. The Patron Saint of Lucca The story goes that at twelve years of age Zita became a servant to the Fatinelli, a noble family of Lucca. In spite of serious abuse by her employers and co-workers, it was said that Zita never lost her inner peace, her love of those who did her wrong, and the respect that she had for her employers. It was said that her meekness, humility, and For Review Only 144 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame self-restraint eventually overcame the hostility of her employers, to the extent that she was put in charge of all of the affairs of the house. Her approach to life demonstrated her pure faith, which made it possible for her to “suffer” the years of abuse, and her unfailing devoutness softened the hearts of those she worked for and with. It is nearly as if Saint Zita was also highlighting the Cathar theme of this card—humility. She was the perfect example of what the Cathar would have intended this card to highlight. Indeed, this was a perfect example of how they themselves approached medieval life. There is a paradox in all of this, in that Castruccio’s acknowledgment of Saint Zita became part of his hubris in having the Florentine knights and nobles carry “her” candles. Remember, nemesis is the companion of hubris. Within a year of being appointed as imperial vicar, Castruccio is denounced by the papacy and excommunicated. He then dies twelve months later from influenza. Uguccione was made redundant by the people and replaced by Castruccio. In turn, Castruccio is made redundant by ill fortune and is also replaced by a younger protégé, Pagolo Guinigi. Within two years, Guinigi loses control of all the provinces held by Castruccio to the Guelphs, except Lucca. The seventeenth-century canon of the Trumps resorted to using Ghibelline contemporaries of Matteo Visconti to portray the Cather meaning of The Chariot. Castruccio dies in 1328, Matteo in 1322. Both were dedicated to the Ghibelline cause and both were constantly in conflict with the Florentine Guelphs. Matteo typically didn’t demonstrate hubris, but Castruccio was famous for his hubris, made more so because of the writing of Machiavelli. Castruccio became the ideal symbol of fame and victory with hubris, the theme of The Chariot. The Chariot Wheels The wheels depicted in The Chariot card, because of their placement, have more of an appearance of the Wheel of Fortune then they do wheels of a chariot. This could be alluding to the notion that fame and For Review Only Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame 145 the sustainability of its rewards, when accompanied by hubris, is out of the control of the victor, since nemesis may well be the hand that turns the Wheel. This is in stark contrast to Saint Zita’s victory, where she won favor with her enemies, who were her employers, through total humility. Her dedication to working hard with kindness and compassion was reward in itself. The passion of her heart didn’t expect anything or anyone to be different, because her heart was already filled with the love of God. That was reward in itself. On his deathbed, according to Machiavelli, Castruccio was to have said, “If I could have believed that Fortune would have cut me off in the midst of the career which was leading to that glory which all my suc- cesses had promised, I should have laboured less. . . . But Fortune, who insists upon having the arbitrament of human affairs, did not endow me with sufficient judgment to recognise this from the first, nor the time to surmount it.”5 Fortune trumped fame. Earthly Treasures The Cathar knew that getting ensconced in human values could only result in suffering and reincarnation. They are complicit in the human experience that makes finding the world of the good God impossible. Having revealed the Fool’s journey after being expelled from the king- dom of Heaven, the Cathar were then able to clearly describe the jour- ney through human consciousness, a journey that in a state of ignorance meant a life imprisoned behind walls made from the bricks of power, wealth, love, and fame. These were preempted by the Magician with his array of props that were needed for him to perform his tricks. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that whatever it is that you treasure or value most, that is where your heart will be also. That is where your passion will direct how you use your body, mind, and emo- tions, the tools of human consciousness. In the case of the emperor, his passion was authority and power, and in its pursuit, ended up losing his life and that of his wife, both before the age of forty. The pope’s passion, in the case of Clement V, was about accumulating wealth. His financial For Review Only 146 Wealth, Power, Love, and Fame contributions to the kings of England and France and support of the curia meant that his wealth safeguarded his position, making sure he didn’t suffer the abuse experienced by his predecessor, Boniface VIII. In the matter of love, the Cathar knew that this “new” romantic love pro- moted by the troubadours would turn the focus of the heart from God to infatuation and fornication. This left hubris—the measure of human worth that came off the back of another’s humiliation and loss; the belief that the ultimate success was measured by human endeavor, devoid of the spiritual values that included, peace, justice, mercy, and pure love. The Magician’s table had other props. One consistent prop was a trio of small balls, either joined or closely situated. That they were obviously related in some way suggested a trilogy that would hold significance in the human experience. As seen in Bayley’s “Fool” watermark (see fig. 5.2, p. 121) the figure 4 at the bottom of the Fool is attached to both a small and larger group of three. This would suggest that the Fool in the state of human consciousness (represented by the 4) will be counterbalanced by a lesser and a greater trio of influence. Since there are only three more cards left under the control of the Magician, it could be interpreted that these are a part of the counterbalance that the Fool must experience that will result in experiencing being “poor in spirit.” Something has to occur that forces or at least strongly encourages the Fool to let go of attachment to the four unsustainable values of human consciousness. As described in the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, it has to be a catharsis that breaks the Fool’s spirit, since this is the only way to break the cycle of re-fleshing and find the kingdom of Heaven. For Review Only 147 SIX Justice, Time, and Chance “[A]nd a wise man’s heart discerns both time and justice. Because everything you do is impacted by time [ageing and death] and judgment [divine and natural justice], [and when that happens] the misery of a man is great” (Ecclesiastes 8:5–6 )̂ (italics added). This is fromEcclesiastes, which was thought to be the ruminations of Solomon in his advanced years as he reflected on his life. He goes on to write, “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race isn’t always won by the swift, nor are all battles won by the strong, neither do the wise receive their sustenance, and men of understanding aren’t always financially rewarded, or those that are truly skilled get acknowledged: but time and chance impacts them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11^) (italics added). Justice, time, and chance make folly of power, wealth, love, and fame. Such is the impact of these three, and such is the impact of trump cards; Solomon goes so far as to describe that impact as mis- ery. The Fool tries all that can be done to subvert them. In the case of natural justice, billions are spent on prescribed drugs and surgery to circumvent the effects of poor lifestyle choices. When it comes to time and ageing, billons are spent on cosmetics and surgery to maintain the appearance of youth and postpone ageing and death. Billions are also spent on insurance each year in an attempt to minimize the losses For Review Only 148 Justice, Time, and Chance of bad fortune. When you consider the investment in trying to avoid the effects of justice, time, and chance, and the investment in trying to achieve power, wealth, love, and fame, it brings clarity to the role of the Magician, flagging that this world is truly one of illusion. For all the suffering that justice, time, and chance bring, these friends of the Magician are in fact the Fool’s friends too. Without them, the chances of finding the Cathar’s world of the good God would be impossible. The Fool would be perpetually living in the world of the evil God, not only trying to maintain the perceived hap- piness that power, wealth, love, and fame brings, but also the antith- esis of that experience brought about by the scarcity of these things. For power to exist, there also has to be powerlessness. For wealth to exist there has to be poverty. For love to manifest there has to be lone- liness, and fame demands there be obscurity. As explained by Neale Donald Walsch, of Conversations with God fame, in the absence of those things that you are not, that which you are, can’t be. To know cold, you have to know hot. To really know what love is, you have to know what loneliness is. The irony in all of this is that someone might possess great wealth but still behave as if they are poor. Someone could have position of authority, but live in fear of losing it. Another might have the love they seek, but keep looking for it elsewhere. And there are those driven by recognition where fame and achievement still isn’t enough. Whether you have plenty or not enough, more is better and any loss is a tragedy. The suffering experienced with loss was called being “poor in spirit” in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. In his equivalent to Buddha’s Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, Jesus’s Beatitudes details the steps of his path for finding the kingdom of Heaven. The Cathar subscribed to this Beatitudinal formula, given that it was a part of the Christian scripture they accepted. The first Beatitude said that those who were poor in spirit could obtain the kingdom of Heaven. This suggests that a broken spirit is a good thing, in fact a blessing. Spirit is about what you desire and therefore, what motivates you. So, when your drive to get more power, wealth, love, and fame has been thwarted, then it’s For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 149 actually a good thing, even though it doesn’t feel like it at the time. This is the role of justice, time, and chance. They are the only things capable of breaking your spirit and your attachment to the things of the illusionary world. In terms of the Cathar Code, the Hanged Man rep- resents this state of being poor in spirit, which is the result of the work done by justice, time, and chance. Justice The Visconti and Sforza cards from the fifteenth century depict Justice as seated, holding her classic symbols of the scales and a sword (see fig. 6.1, p. 150). Being pre-sixteenth century, she was not blindfolded. The inclusion of a mounted knight with a sword was not included in the Trumps of the seventeenth-century Marseille canon (see fig. 6.2, p. 151). The knight is an important distinction as it helps to clarify whether the Justice depicted in the card was Themis, the goddess of divine justice, or her daughter Dike, the goddess of earthly justice. The principle differences were that Dike presided over fair apportion- ment, the protection of individuals, and keeping political and social order, whereas Themis was the embodiment of divine order, fairness, natural law, law, and custom. Themis had a particular interest in the injustice of hubris. If you remember, Castruccio in his victory over the Florentines had displayed hubris by having his captors carry candles that symbolized the lowly patron saint of Lucca. Hubris is best described as exaggerated self-pride or arrogance. It was said that when mortals demonstrated hubris, they attracted the judg- ment of Themis and the retribution of Nemesis. Nemesis was claimed to possess indignation at unmerited advantage and was often depicted alongside Themis. In Bembo’s Justice card, Nemesis is ready to dish out retribution off the back of Themis’s judgment, as symbolized by the knight on the horse. This clearly ascertains that Justice in the Marseille Tarot is Themis and not Dike. Avoiding the retribution of Nemesis was paramount, which is why in the great Roman triumphal entries the vic- tor always had someone reminding him to be humble. Poor Castruccio For Review Only 150 Justice, Time, and Chance forgot about Themis and Nemesis, and chose to humiliate his captors. Even on his deathbed, he attributed his demise to Fortuna, still igno- rant of how his behavior drew the attention of Justice. Divine justice is the champion of kindness. This was found in the origin of the word justita from which the word justice arose. It pro- vides the same Latin root as the word righteousness, which is a quality of consciousness that demonstrates “loving your neighbor as yourself.” This dual meaning was found in both Greek and Hebrew languages, where there was just one word for both justice and righteousness. In Hebrew, that word was tzedakah, which also meant charity. This gives rise to the word justice being used in the context of social justice. Fig. 6.1. Justice by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1450 © Lo Scarabeo (images). Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 151 The Scales and Sword Themis uses the scales to weigh the facts. Disclosing the true nature of the scales, Solomon in Proverbs explains, “A false balance is an abomi- nation to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight” (Proverbs 11:1). He goes on to say, “A just weight and balance are the Lord’s,” meaning that bringing the scales back into balance is the role of God, or in the case of the Greeks and Romans, the gods. “All the weights of the bag are his work” (Proverbs 16:11). In the case of the Cathar Code, the weights of the bag are divine and natural justice, time, and chance. Of the divine intervention for bringing things back into balance Solomon writes, “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his Fig. 6.2. La Justice / Justice by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 152 Justice, Time, and Chance correction: For whom the Lord loves, he corrects; just like a father and his son, who the father loves dearly.” Going on to explain how the Fool benefits from this chastening Solomon writes, “Happy is the man that finds wisdom, and the man that gets understanding. For the value of wisdom and understanding is greater than that of silver and fine gold” (Proverbs 3:11–14 )̂. Any time the Foolexpands understanding, this results in becoming more aware and less ignorant. This expanded awareness means that the Fool has more choice, no longer limited to the programming received in the formative years, which was typically centered on the human val- ues of power, wealth, love, and fame. Through Divine providence, the Fool is learning about kindness and compassion, those qualities that resulted in the Cathar being called the Good Christians, the good men and women. Typically, more modern statues and art of Themis portray her hold- ing the scales aloft. In the Justice card, Themis holds the scales over her abdomen. John the Evangelist wrote, “But anyone who is materially abundant, and sees someone in need, and fails to extend bowels of com- passion, how can the love of God be in him?” (1 John 3:17^). Themis is weighing up the extent to which someone possesses bowels of com- passion. This is Divine justice, where the state of the heart is weighed up, not whether someone has obeyed the law. It’s more about why you do something and less about what you do. The why is the domain of Themis; the what is the domain of Dike. Jesus highlighted this distinction on many occasions, using the scribes and Pharisees as the example. He said, “That except your righ- teousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, there is no way you can enter the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:20^). He justifies this position by quoting Isaiah, “These people align to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrine, the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:7–9^). The scribes and Pharisees were the interpreters of Jewish law, they were the living models of obedi- ence and were looked up to as such. Jewish law was based on obedience. For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 153 The teachings of Jesus were based on having bowels of compassion, “the love of God.” This distinction between the “why” and the “what” even applied to the Cathar who were committed to living life with kindness. The motivation for being kind was what determined whether you could go to heaven, or not. Just being kind wasn’t enough though. It was one thing to act kindly because it was what was expected if you wanted to go to Heaven. It was a completely different thing if you acted kindly because you had bowels of compassion. Kindness without compassion wasn’t enough to qualify to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Since it appears that Solomon is the key inspiration for the inter- vention of justice, time, and chance, it could be assumed that the sword held by Themis would also be associated with Solomon. “Bring me a sword” was what Solomon said when seeking to determine who was the real mother in a dispute in which two women both claimed to be the biological mother of an infant. Threatening to cut the baby in two, one mother supported the notion, the second mother said to give the baby to the other woman so as not to harm the baby. It was Solomon’s judg- ment that the latter was in fact the real mother and he gave the child to her. It was this wisdom for which Solomon became renowned and led to him exhorting the possession of two more symbols depicted in the Justice card. The Crown and Neck Chain In almost all of the cards depicting Justice, from the fifteenth century through to the seventeenth-century canon of the Marseille Tarot, she wears a crown and necklace. In discussing the law and wisdom in his proverbs, Solomon wrote, “For they will be an ornament of grace on your head, and chains about your neck” (Proverbs 1:9). Giving more understanding for the symbolism of the necklace, Solomon declared, “Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck and write them upon the table of your heart” (Proverbs 3:3). And of the crown he said, “Wisdom is the principle thing; therefore, get wisdom: For Review Only 154 Justice, Time, and Chance and with your getting [of wisdom] get understanding . . . [and she] shall give to thine head an ornament of grace, a crown of glory shall she deliver to you” (Proverbs 4:7–9). Justice, being crowned with the “ornament of grace” must therefore possess wisdom and understanding, and having her neck adorned with a golden chain, must also possess truth and mercy. Possessing the attri- butes of wisdom, understanding, truth, and mercy, “Then will you understand righteousness, judgment, and equity; yes, every good path” (Proverbs 2:9). Nemesis and Natural Justice Justice naturally implies an inquiry of guilt or innocence. Innocence resulted in freedom; guilt meant some form of punishment. It could be said that Nemesis and natural justice carried out the dirty work of Justice. Nemesis metered out the punishment for hubris and natural justice, the consequences for not complying with the laws of nature. For example, the law of gravity if compromised would mostly result in an immediate pain- ful consequence. The laws governing body metabolism, if not respected often result in lifestyle diseases, which could take decades to manifest, but manifest they do. It was believed that the retribution of Nemesis, like the consequences of being out of alignment with the laws of natural justice, was inevitable. As Solomon explained, “Pride goes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:19 )̂. Solomon had lived long enough to know that not all who were guilty received their just rewards. “There are men who are just, who have things happen to them that should happen to those who are wicked, and there are those that are wicked, that get the rewards of someone who does good” (Ecclesiastes 8:14 )̂. Solomon explains about another form of punishment beyond the powers of Nemesis and natural justice. “If you see the oppression of the poor, and violent perversion of judg- ment and justice somewhere, don’t be alarmed by the matter: for he that is higher than the highest will see what they are doing; and there really is someone higher than them” (Ecclesiastes 5:8 )̂. From the perspective For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 155 of the Cathar, the punishment was reincarnation, getting to come back and do it all over again in the world of the evil God with the added bur- den of karma. From the Cathar perspective hell was here, and you kept coming back until you developed a consciousness that fully embraced compassion and kindness, not because of obedience, but because your heart is filled with the “love of God.” When the drive to accumulate and sustain the human values of power, wealth, love, and fame comes at the exclusion of righteousness, or having bowels of compassion as John describes it, Old Man Time and Fortuna are the weights that bring balance to the scales of Justice. The greater your attachment to whatever your perspective is of power, wealth, love, and fame, the greater the suffering when time and fortune intervene, as “time and chance happen to them all.” The Hermit and Time The fifteenth-century Visconti tarrochi shows an old man with a walking stick, carrying an hourglass (see fig. 6.3, p. 156). At various stages, two names are given to this card, il tempo, meaning “time” and The Hermit, the latter being how it was labeled in the Marseille Tarot. Over the two centuries that separated the changes in the style of the cards, the old man has his hourglass replaced with a lantern (see fig. 6.4, p. 157). This icon of an old man with a walking pole and hourglass was extremely popular at the time of the creation of the Visconti cards in the 1400s. A book titled Trionfo was written by Petrarch, an Italian humanist philosopher, between 1340 and 1374. Petrarch, a contemporary of the Visconti, used a poetic con- text to explore six allegorical themes, which included Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Eternity, the last two written just prior to his death. Most of the extant illuminated manuscriptsof Petrarch’s work were dated from 1440 to 1480, of which all but a few were crafted in Florence. Two came from Milan. Up until 1450, the manuscripts had already themed Time as an old man with a walking stick in one hand, but with various other objects held in the other. From 1450, the same For Review Only 156 Justice, Time, and Chance time the Visconti cards appear, Time is still an old man with a walk- ing stick but now holds an hourglass. It became the most common object held in the old man’s hands. By 1480, many illuminated manu- scripts had been created suggesting that Petrarch’s Trionfo was a pop- ular inclusion in the mushrooming academic libraries of Lombardy. Simona Cohen, in her article “The Early Renaissance Personification of Time and Changing Concepts of Temporality,” encapsulates Petrarch’s discourse on time. Gazing at Sol, the author speaks about the vanity of setting one’s heart on the things that time takes away. He says, “How swiftly time before my eyes rushed on after the guiding sun that never rests.” Fig. 6.3. Il Tempo by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1450 © Lo Scarabeo (images). Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 157 Life is brief. “This morning I was a child and now I am old.” It is no more than a single day. “Cloudy and cold and short with grief.” He admonishes men against false hopes and describes them as a group of blind fools who move quietly onward without fearing time. Time dissolves all mortal things, both physical and mental. Man turns to disgust and life to smoke. Old age brings misery and Glory melts like snow in the sun. Time, in his avarice, steals all and thus tri- umphs over the world and Fame.1 The Hourglass Have you ever played a game where the timer used to limit a phase of play was a miniature hourglass? How often were you stuck watching Fig. 6.4. L’ermit / The Hermit by Jean Dodal, circa 1701 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot. com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 158 Justice, Time, and Chance the grains sliding down the narrow neck, helpless in being able to stop the inevitable? It was this sense of urgency and finality about life that Petrarch conveys in his writings. Evidence of the emergence of the hour- glass in popular culture in fourteenth-century Italy is a fresco found in Siena (ca. 1338–1340), by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, depicting Temperance holding an hourglass. By the fifteenth century Temperance replaces the hourglass with a mechanical clock. A clock, like the hourglass is a measure of time, but there is a certain drama in seeing the final grains sliding through that narrow neck that is lost in the movement of a min- ute hand. That drama ensures the longevity of the hourglass as an icon of inevitability. This heightened urgency highlights another connotation of Old Man Time with his hourglass. Cohen explains, “It was probably shortly after its appearance in Trionfo del Tempo illustrations that the hourglass became an attribute of death. It can therefore be assumed that the illus- trators of the Trionfo del Tempo were responsible for introducing the time-death motif that would be widely adopted in paintings, prints and sepulchral art in the later Renaissance.”2 Petrarch’s focus on the passage of time, “this morning I was a child and now I am old,” could go on to say, “and soon I’ll be dead.” The bearded, stooped old man is walking counter-clockwise to the flow of the rest of the cards. Petrarch describes the passage of time of a human life as being a single day. “This morning I was a child, but now I am old.” This connotes that being an old man, he must be at the end of the day. The sun sets in the west, which is the direction the old man is heading. This may explain why a lantern replaced the hourglass. As clocks became more popular, the hourglass would have had less mean- ing and possibly held no symbolic context when the Marseille canon was created. Holding a lantern was an indication that the old man was close to death. The sun had gone and he needed a light to encounter the darkness. But even the lamp would eventually go out! Both the symbol of the sun and the hourglass supported the Cathar belief in reincarnation. The sun would rise again, which meant a new day. The hourglass can be flipped over causing the grains to recom- For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 159 mence their predestined flow. Both allude to this idea that the Fool gets many opportunities to “get it right.” It gives a new meaning to “O death, where is your sting?” This may be why the card in the Trumps sequence that is referred to as the Death card is the only card not to have a label. It’s so that the death illustrated in Card XIII is not to be confused with the mortality alluded to in The Hermit card. Death and the Consolamentum The Cathar it seems, didn’t fear death, more so if they had participated in the baptismal rite that they called the consolamentum. This meant they had become a perfecti, a Perfect who was then committed to living an ascetic life. It was for this reason believers would wait until their death- bed to take the baptismal rite as an extreme unction. This minimized the chance of compromising the state of purity that came from taking the consolamentum. Some that were terminally ill would even voluntarily refuse food and water and expose themselves to extreme cold in order to expedite death. This was known as the endura. Having become a Perfect, and having sustained their commitment to purity, they were assured that reincarnation no longer applied to them as they would be “at one” with the good God in Heaven. This is why the 200 Cathar at Montségur allowed themselves to be corralled and burnt alive as a group. Of course, if you didn’t take the consolamentum or invalidated it by “making a bad end” by compromising your vows, then reincarnation was inevitable. The Hermit card was there to remind you of the inevi- tability of death and to do all in your power avoid the hourglass being inverted or the start of another new day, where in the morning you are the child and old at the end of day. In death, power, wealth, love, and fame meant nothing except that having any attachment to them meant that you would be re-fleshed. No hell or purgatory other than the suf- fering one endures while experiencing human consciousness. The idea of mortality gained traction with the advent of the Black Plague in Italy in the middle of the fourteenth century. It has been estimated that almost half of Europe’s population was eliminated For Review Only 160 Justice, Time, and Chance because of the plague. In the Mediterranean region, the plague flour- ished from 1347 to 1351 and was thought to have killed between 70 and 80 percent of the population. The plague commenced around the same time that the last of the Cathar were finally eradicated in Italy. So the plague would not have had any relevancy for them in their teach- ings, but for the likes of Petrarch, he was hugely impacted. His son dies from the plague, as does Laura, the unrequited love of his life. His son was in his twenties when he died, and Laura in her late thirties. The potency of his message coupling time and death has profound personal meaning. Given the extensive time that Petrarch spent in Milan and his involvement with the Visconti, it fits that a popular symbol of Old Man Time that was inspired by Petrarch’s prose would be used to illustrate Solomon’s observation that “time and chance happens to them all.” The Wheel of Fortune and Chance In the last decade of the fifteenth century, Baldo degli Ubaldi was an academic at Pavia University, in what would become his last tenure as a professor of law. Baldo had held tenure at universities all through Lombardy and elsewhere throughout Italy. His body of work on legalities would be significant for centuries. Sometime between 1390 and 1395, Gian Galeazzo Visconti presentedhim with a manuscript that included an illumination called De consolatione philosophiae (see fig. 6.6, p. 162). Crafted by notable Italian painter and illumination artist, Michelino da Besozzo (whose patrons were the Visconti) and Pietro de Pavia (who typi- cally wrote text for Michelino’s work), the gift of the seventy-five-page manuscript was in recognition of his contribution to the university and to law. Besides a deathbed scene where Boethius in surrounded by a bevy of women, the illumination includes the Wheel of Fortune, reminiscent of the style that was popular at that time. Two of the figures on the wheel have been rubbed out intentionally, just leaving Fortuna in the center and the two remaining women. It’s of interest that the two who have been removed represent ill fortune, with only the aspects of good For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 161 Fig. 6.5. La Roue de Fortun / The Wheel of Fortune by Jean Dodal, circa 1701 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 162 Justice, Time, and Chance Fig. 6.6. Severinus Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae (ca. 1390–1395) by Michelino da Besozzo and Pietro da Pavia, The Malatestiana Library, Cesena, Italy (see also color plate 13) For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 163 fortune remaining. It was as if leaving the depictions of ill fortune on the illustration would be a bad omen. A book called The Consolation of Philosophy, from which the illumination was inspired, was referred to in the medieval period as the “the scholar’s familiar companion.” Along with Petrarch’s books, it would have been included in the extensive library of the Pavia University. The book’s influence was unparalleled, as evidenced by it having been translated into every European tongue. It was written by Anicus Manilas Severinus Boethius, who lived at the turn of the fifth century. He had the good fortune of being awarded the highest position in civil administration, Magister Officiorum, during the reign of Theodoric, the Ostrogoth king who through his conquests had made himself master of Italy. Life for Boethius was as good as it gets. Married with two sons who in an unprecedented act were made joint consuls while still quite young, it could be said Boethius had everything going for him. As fate would have it, within twelve months of what could only be called his greatest triumph (the appointment of his sons as con- suls), Boethius is a solitary prisoner at Pavia, stripped of honors, wealth, and friends, with a strong prospect of facing execution. His greatest terror was that repercussions might also extend to his fam- ily. His trumped-up charge of treason was upheld and shortly after writing The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius is brutally executed. It is uncertain which form his execution takes, but one account says he was cut down by soldiers’ swords right before Theodoric’s judg- ment seat. Another account says a rope was fastened around his head and tightened until his eyes popped and then he was bludgeoned with a club. Either way, it was barbaric. Boethius explains how he is dis- traught with grief, almost angry at the injustice of his misfortunes. He resorts to writing verses about how he is feeling to give some relief to his melancholy. Suddenly a woman of great dignity and beauty appears before him, being the divine figure of Philosophy. Through a succession of “very direct” discussions, she describes in detail the nature of Fortune and convinces him of the “vanity of regret” for the For Review Only 164 Justice, Time, and Chance gifts (position, intelligence, and family) that had been afforded him by Fortune. She helps him to bring his mind back to focusing on the “true good,” that which is divine. Philosophy reminds Boethius, “Thou hast resigned thyself to the sway of Fortune: thou must submit to the mistress’s caprices. What! Art thou verily striving to stay the swing of the revolving wheel? Oh, stupidest of mortals, if it takes to standing still, it ceases to be the wheel of Fortune.”3 This concept of a wheel symbolizing good or ill for- tune emerged as a Roman concept in the third century BCE, attested by what is thought to be two temples dedicated to Fortuna around 293 BCE. Some of the earliest references to the fickle nature of the Wheel of Fortune are in Seneca’s tragedy Agamemnon written in the first century CE. O Fortune, who dost bestow the throne’s high boon with making hand, in dangerous and doubtful state thou settest the too exalted. Never have sceptres obtained calm peace or certain tenure; care on care weighs them down, and ever do fresh storms vex their souls . . . . . . [G]reat kingdoms sink of their own weight, and Fortune gives way ’neath the burden of herself. Sails swollen with favouring breezes fear blasts too strongly theirs; the tower which rears its head to the very clouds is beaten by rainy Auster [the southerly winds]. . . . Whatever Fortune has raised on high, she lifts but to bring low. Modest estate has longer life; then happy he whoe’er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with unambitious oar keeps close to land.4 Italy’s most famous inlaid mosaic floor in the Siena Cathedral, a church dedicated to Mary, depicts fifty-six tiled scenes. The first laid during the fourteenth-century extensions to the cathedral was The Wheel of Fortune (fig. 6.7). In 1502 the Story of Fortuna was also added, giving testament to the significance that Fortune played in the beliefs of medieval Christians. It’s a paradox that a pagan concept managed For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 165 to sustain such inclusivity in Christianity for as long as it did. The Carmina Burana, a manuscript housing a collection of 254 poems and dramatic texts, was thought to have been created between the eleventh century and thirteenth century near the region of the German/Austrian Fig. 6.7. Routa della Fortuna, circa fourteenth century, one of fifty-six tiled scenes in the floor of the Siena Cathedral For Review Only 166 Justice, Time, and Chance border. One miniature illumination depicts the Wheel of Fortune in a style similar to the wheel in the Siena Cathedral. An excerpt from one poem, Fortune, Empress of the World reads, “Fate—monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain always may melt away, shadowy and veiled you plague me too; now through the game bare-backed I bear your villainy.” Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343–1400), English poet and author, met Petrarch and his Florentine contemporary Giovanni Boccaccio in Lombardy during various missions between 1368 and 1378. It was in this time that he was introduced to medieval Italian poetry by his Italian contemporaries. One of Giovanni Boccaccio’s more significant work was titled De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (On the Fates of Famous Men), which were essentially moral stories of the fall of famous men (fig. 6.8). An illumination from a 1457 Parisian manuscript uses the Wheel of Fortune to illustrate Boccaccio’s theme. Inspired by the mes- sage of the wheel, Chaucer includes it in many of his works. The legacy of Boethius was immortalized by these medieval poets and authors, which also included authors like Dante and John Lydgate. It’s possible that Boethius’s text has a strong influence on more than just the Wheel of Fortune in the Trumps. The four states of human consciousness—power, wealth, love, and fame—that keep the Fool shackled to the world of the evil God was integral to his message. The key Christian theme of not being attached to these values that “rust, moths, and robbers” make unsustainable is what allowed the Wheel of Fortune, with almost no scriptural rationale, to sit comfortably along- side more rigorously justified doctrines. To these four that were symbolized in the Trumps as The Emperor,The Pope, The Lover, and The Chariot, Boethius adds a fifth element, which he describes as the supreme desire: “It is plain, then, that the only object sought for in all of these ways [wealth, rank, power, glory, and pleasure], is happiness. For that which each seeks in preference to all else, that is in his judgment the supreme good. And we have defined the supreme good to be happiness. . . . So, then, these are the bless- ings men wish to win; they want riches [wealth], rank, [and] sovereignty For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 167 Fig. 6.8. Fortune and her wheel, circa 1467, from vol. 1 of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (On the Fates of Famous Men) For Review Only 168 Justice, Time, and Chance [power], glory [fame], pleasure [love], because they believe that by these means they will secure independence, reverence, power, renown, and joy of heart.”5 Lady Philosophy goes to great length to help Boethius understand that he has allowed his happiness to be defined by something that came as a result of good fortune. She then helps him to see that “Fortune can- not aspire to bestow happiness by reason of its instability.”6 [A] man borne along by this transitory felicity must either know or not know its instability. If he knows not, how poor is a happi- ness which depends on the blindness of ignorance! If he knows it, he needs must fear to lose a happiness whose loss he believes to be possible. Wherefore, a never-ceasing fear suffers him not to be happy. Or does he count the possibility of this loss a trifling matter? Insignificant, then, must be the good [happiness] whose loss can be borne so equably [calmly].7 Good Fortune vs. Ill Fortune Lady Philosophy is reinforcing the message clearly embedded in The Magician card. Human consciousness is an illusion. Power, wealth, love, and fame are all an illusion, more so the happiness that they perceivably bring. As such, any investment or attachment to them has to be relin- quished if you have any hope of finding the kingdom of Heaven. This was the primary message of the Cathar. These allegories made popular by authors who were highly respected at the time and situation of the Visconti meant that in the fifteenth century both the likes of Bonifacio Bembo and Michelino da Besozzo could translate the Cathar teachings into these por- table stained-glass windows using the popular literature of the time. In his ongoing dialogue with Lady Philosophy, she goes to great length to see that Boethius understands the true gift in his experience of ill fortune. She helps to reinforce Solomon’s idea that justice, time, and chance were in fact the Fool’s friends. They were God’s handmaidens who made sure the Fool could get free of the world of illusion. She explains: For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 169 But that thou mayst not think that I wage implacable warfare against Fortune, I own there is a time when the deceitful goddess serves men well—I mean when she reveals herself, uncovers her face, and confesses her true character. Perhaps thou dost not yet grasp my meaning. Strange is the thing I am trying to express, and for this cause I can scarce find words to make clear my thought. For truly I believe Ill Fortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune. For Good Fortune, when she wears the guise of happiness, and most seems to caress, is always lying; Ill Fortune is always truthful, since, in changing, she shows her inconsistency. The one deceives, the other teaches; the one enchains the minds of those who enjoy her favour by the semblance of delusive good, the other delivers them by the knowledge of the frail nature of happiness. Accordingly, thou mayst see the one fickle, shifting as the breeze, and ever self-deceived; the other sober-minded, alert, and wary, by reason of the very discipline of adversity. Finally, Good Fortune, by her allurements, draws men far from the true good; Ill Fortune ofttimes draws men back to true good with grappling-irons.8 The Gift Not only does Fortune bring the Fool back to “true good with grappling irons,” she is capably assisted by Old Man Time and Themis. Their col- lective intervention causes the Fool to become more aware; aware that nothing external to the Fool can bring the true good—“independence, reverence, power, renown, and joy of heart.” Becoming more aware challenges the programming of the Fool, who from the formative years was taught to believe that power, wealth, love, and fame were the only measures of worth. If you possessed them, then you had worth; if you didn’t, then you were worthless. There is a fine distinction here, in that it isn’t the possession of these things that is the issue for the Fool, more the attachment to them and consequently needing to possess them. That means when you are attached you could have power, wealth, love, and fame, but constantly live in fear of losing them. Equally, you might For Review Only 170 Justice, Time, and Chance not possess any of them and live your life either striving to get them or resolve that they are too elusive and give up on life. It was an interesting distinction that Jesus made in his Sermon on the Mount about these earthly treasures. He doesn’t teach that they are wrong or evil, in fact he makes it clear that it’s the attachment to them that is the issue. It’s that they are the thing that you treasure most. He explains, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things [wealth, power, love, and fame] will be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). Treasure righteousness, which could be best described as kindness. Make kindness the treasure of your heart and you will nat- urally receive the rest. It’s clear that the possession of these things isn’t wrong, but their possession without kindness is the issue. Power without kindness, in its worst expression, is a despot. Power with kindness inspires by example and promotes self-empowerment. Wealth without kindness is greed. Wealth with kindness is charity and social justice. Love without kindness is self-serving and codependant, love with kindness is empathetic and compassionate. Fame without kindness is dismissive and exclusive, whereas fame with kindness sup- ports and encourages others and is uplifting. Power, wealth, love, and fame are self-serving without kindness. With kindness, they are a means of serving others. This is about a change of heart, a change in what the Fool treasures, what is valued. The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel explained it this way: For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean: from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you [a] heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:24–26) This is effectively what Fortuna, Old Man Time, and Themis have done. By having the Fool become more aware, through loss, what is For Review Only Justice, Time, and Chance 171 desired (the state of the spirit) and treasured (the state of the heart) are transformed. And if the awareness can be sustained (sufficiently cleansed), then the Fool obtains a soft heart, better known as kindness. As you may well imagine, leaving this land of the “heathen” with its filthiness and idols and being taken to “your own land” isn’t a walk in the park, so to speak. This journey to the “promised land” begins with the intervention of justice, time, and chance, but that is only just the beginning. It’s one thing to be made aware of a kinder way of living; it’s another thing to have that be a sustained way of life. In fact, awareness without a commitment to being mindful is just knowledge. Knowledge imbued with love becomes wisdom, and can only become a new habit, a newway of living, with the practice of remembering to be kind. That is being mindful; that is the essence of Western mindfulness. Justice, time, and chance are gifts. They usher the Fool to a cross- road to be presented with a choice of four options, but only three paths. Only one is the direct route that will lead to the kingdom of Heaven. According to the Cathar, they all led to the kingdom of Heaven, it’s just that some take much longer to get there. They clearly understood the route that the Fool must take to find the world of the good God and knew that the catalyst needed for this to happen was this cocktail of justice, time, and chance. Being at a three-way, the Fool, upon deciding to move on, can go in one of three directions. In ancient Greek and Roman times, in the same way Hermes was the guide at the four-ways, Hecate was the guide of the three-ways. It seems that the Fool is now in the care of Hecate. She has the knowledge that will help the Fool decide which route to proceed down. For Review Only 172 SEVEN Coming to the Crossroads The Fool has made their way around the world of the Magician, now coming back to The World card. Having been born of the Empress, the earthly mother, the Fool has taken on another incarnation. As in previ- ous lives, the Fool’s sense of worth in this world of illusion is established against four benchmarks, power, wealth, love, and fame, although they typically only focus on just one or two. It’s the Fool’s childhood program- Fig. 7.1. The Cather Code key, the cards by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 173 ming that established which of the four was the focus for this particular incarnation. If the focus was power, the Fool might be found in positions of authority or at the other extreme, having to deal with victimhood, like bullying or sexual abuse. In terms of wealth, one Fool might be a million- aire, while another could be living on the streets of Mumbai, both having to deal with issues around wealth. With love as the focus, one has a life immersed in all of the issues of family, lovers, and friends, where another goes through life as an outcast, mostly being alone. With fame, one per- son experiences life being very popular and a darling of society, and yet another might be infamous or worse still—a nobody. In the full pack of tarot cards, besides the Trumps, there are four suits of fourteen cards each that typically align with the Magician’s four objects of human consciousness, symbolized by the wands, cups, coins, and swords. A tarot reading that includes these cards, which is typi- cal, is highlighting the way power, wealth, love, and fame will play out in an individual’s life. Tarot readers were said to be fortune-tellers, in that they are giving the individual some insight into how the Wheel of Fortune is going to turn for them. Each of the fourteen cards repre- sents facets of how the four states of human consciousness can be expe- rienced. Of course, the degree to which the Fool is attached to their lot in life determines whether a particular card will be beneficial or not. These fourteen aspects represented by the aces through to the kings could be seen to be aligned with the four figures depicted on the Wheel of Fortune. Each of the four figures was attributed a Latin label that described a different state of fortune. At twelve o’clock on the Wheel the figure typically sits on a throne, or at least wears a crown and car- ries a sword. It was labeled il regno, which means “I reign.” It can be assumed that the more rewarding cards in each of the four suits would be aligned here. At the bottom of the Wheel is a figure labeled sum sine regno, meaning “I have no kingdom.” Obviously the most challenging cards would be aligned with this figure. The other two are labeled according to the direction they are facing. Some of the Wheels appear to be turning clockwise and others counter- clockwise and so these two figures will appear on different sides of the For Review Only 174 Coming to the Crossroads Wheel depending on which way it turns. The one who is head-up is labeled il regnabo, “I will reign,” and the one who is head-down is il regnavi, “I have reigned.” The one on the way up will be “pulling cards” that reflect improving fortunes, and the inverse is true for the other. If the Fool’s worth is linked with how much power, wealth, love, and fame they have, then being at the top of the Wheel will be impor- tant to them. If their loss results in the feeling of diminished self-worth then the Fool will be more inclined to be aligned with the figure at the bottom of the Wheel, who in the Visconti cards looks a lot like Old Man Time (fig. 7.2). A very interesting change appears in the features of The Wheel of Fortune card between the Bembo tarot of the fifteenth century and the Marseille canon of the seventeenth century (see fig. 6.5, p. 161). In almost every case, the movement of the wheel has gone from Fig. 7.2. The Wheel of Fortune by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1450 © Lo Scarabeo (images). Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 175 clockwise to counter-clockwise, and in the latter canon of the Marseille cards, the figure at the bottom of the Wheel, sum sine regno, is absent. Sum Sine Regno There is no recorded rationale for this change in the features of the card. When the Visconti trionfi were being crafted by Bembo, the cul- turally accepted configuration for the Wheel of Fortune was as depicted in those cards. This matched the configuration of the Wheel of Fortune mosaic on the floor of the Siena Cathedral. It was quite possible that the Cathar version looked more like the Marseille Tarot, but possibly didn’t make sense to Bembo. So, either the seventeenth-century custodians of the Cathar Code were working off original Cathar manuscripts when they designed the Marseille Tarot or had added insights that inspired their changes to the configuration. The absence of the bottom figure is very significant. The label given to this figure was sum sine regno, meaning “I have no kingdom.” In terms of what this means in the human experience, the Fool would have lost whatever power, wealth, love, or fame Fortune had bestowed. The king at the top of the wheel sits on his throne on a very tenuous foundation: a flat platform on a wheel that readily turns. This platform appears in The Star card, but in that case, it represents a foundation of stability. It’s obvious here that it wouldn’t take much for the king to topple. And as Lady Philosophy said to Boethius, “Dimmest of fools that you are, you must realize that if the wheel stops turning, it ceases to be the course of chance.” The wheel must turn and the Fool, as the king, must topple. Yet, in the Marseille Tarot, when the Fool reaches this lowest point, they have disappeared. This suggests that whatever was the nature of the world in which the Fool existed up until this point, it has changed. In other words, having disappeared, the Fool is no longer a part of that world. That world was clearly illustrated in The Magician card symbolized by his four primary props: the wand, coin, cups, and sword (dagger). It would seem that Ill Fortune has forced the Fool to lose the things For Review Only 176 Coming to the Crossroads that were valued most, and now given the missing figure at the bottom of the Wheel, the Fool has decided to opt out of the Magician’s world of illusion having lost the attachment to what was valued in that world. As no one fills this bottom position anymore, it can be assumed that there might well be another kingdom, since sum sine regno was filled when the Wheel turned clockwise. During the Fool’s sojourn through the Magician’s world the progression has been clockwise, which resulted in the Fool turning up where the Angel (Man) is at theintersection. The Intersection The Fool has four options at this juncture in what can be done next; three of which will eventually result in reincarnation and only one, the path of the Dark Night of the Soul, leads to the kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom you have when you don’t have a kingdom. The first option sees the Fool stay put at the Angel (Man), where The Wheel of Fortune card sits next to The World card. Option 1: Maintain the Status Quo Given that the Fool is older, possibly dealing with a lifestyle disease and with limited financial resources, in the majority of cases there is nowhere else for the Fool to go, particularly if one’s context for reality is limited by an attachment to power, wealth, love, and fame. In fact, the prospect of putting in the effort to do anything else in that con- text is too overwhelming and, being at an impasse, many Fools who are already exhausted or burnt out become depressed. In modern times, to better accommodate this state, society created retirement. This results in any residual energy and resources being spent on maintaining the status quo, making sure that the Fool can survive until they “pass-on.” Although, with more and more people reaching burnout and depression before retirement, and still needing to “live,” many resort to antidepres- sants and/or addictions to survive. The reality is that neither strategy is sustainable in terms of health and well-being. There are some Fools who see virtue in doing personal develop- For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 177 ment as a way to survive. Their “spiritual journey” sees them buying self-help books and attending a plethora of workshops by gurus who promise “enlightenment.” The result being a stack of books on or beside the bedside table, and a collection of workshop manuals that were almost never opened once the workshops finished. The latest fashion in improving one’s lot in life is through life coaching and mindfulness meditation. In the majority of cases, when the program stops the bene- fits stop. They lack sustainability. Pilgrimages, silent retreats, and vision quests all challenge the status quo, but when the dust settles, the Fool, not having found and aligned with more sustainable values, is found still wanting or attached to power, wealth, love, and fame, the measures of worth in the world of the Magician. So effectively the Fool is just marking time—not going anywhere, almost as if stuck in limbo. Using the template of the Cathar Code (see fig. 7.1, p. 172), the Fool is a long way off from finding the kingdom of Heaven (also see color plate 30). This option is indicative of the major- ity of people in the Western world. The only context they have for life is the one prescribed by the Magician, and given that the need for power, wealth, love, and fame forms the matrix of the Fool’s filter for life, they become trapped in a reality of suffering because that matrix also includes justice, time, and chance. Given that the Fool isn’t going anywhere, you would expect that the figure at the bottom of the Wheel would still be there. This was the case in the Wheel of Fortune depicted in the Visconti tarot. But in those depictions, the Wheel was still turning clockwise. Option 2: Midlife Crisis This option is for those Fools who still have plenty of energy. They go back and reengage the Magician’s world of illusion via the Bull in The World card. Given that the Wheel is turning in a clockwise motion, a Fool still possessing the inclination and the energy will have another go at doing power, wealth, love, and fame, but this time doing it dif- ferently. Typical of a midlife crisis, this Fool walks away from their old life. Where they reside, what they drive, and who they are in relation- ship with are typical of the jetsam. Possessing wealth makes this more For Review Only 178 Coming to the Crossroads possible, but their resources are substantially drained having made such a significant change. One of the first things to change is their appearance. They go to a lot of effort to improve their looks, which might include a nip and tuck, a personal trainer, a new hairstyle, and new fashion. They move to a trendier suburb and purchase the latest mode in home furnishings. They replace their car with a new, sportier model, and their partner with a younger, sportier model. Once again, they have reinforced their belief in the reality of the world of illusion, the Magician’s world. They still haven’t worked out that the choice to focus on power, wealth, love, and fame also includes justice, time, and chance. The impact is that instead of it taking twenty or more years for them to get around the Magician’s route as it did the first time around, they doin five years or less. Justice, time and chance are more potent this time around. If the Fool run out of money and energy, then they end up with the rest of the population trying to maintain the status quo. It’s hard to believe that there are people who go back a third and fourth time, and in the majority of cases, if old age, death, and repu- tation don’t stop them, the lack of money will. In spite of all they have been through, these Fools continue to maintain the belief that the Magician’s world of illusion is real, just that now they are too exhausted and too poor to do anything about it. Lifestyle diseases including obesity, stroke, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer are the primary symptoms of this option. In terms of mental health this option typically results in depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and eating disorders. All of these are the result of poor lifestyle, which in the majority of cases are the consequences of balancing the priority of power, wealth, love, and fame with the stress caused by jus- tice, time, and fortune. If the Fool continues to buy in to the illusion, premature death is imminent. Option 3: Quick or Slow Suicide This option speeds up the exit from the Fool’s current incarnation. In terms of The World card this would see the Fool moving in the direction For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 179 of the Eagle (see fig. 7.1 and color plate 30). The card beside the Eagle is called The Judgment, which depicts a resurrection scene. It can be assumed that since the Fool is being resurrected, they must be dead. It is at this juncture that the Fool has either qualified to enter the kingdom of God or is reincarnated back into the world of illusion having been given another chance to “get it right.” Death then is the third option. The World Health Organization estimated that over 63 percent of deaths globally are a result of lifestyle disease. And 25 percent of those deaths are premature, before sixty years of age. It’s this premature sta- tistic that reflects this idea of slow suicide. It has been observed that lifestyle diseases including heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancer, and chronic lung disease all share, more or less, the same risk factors: tobacco use, an unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, and the harmful use of alcohol and drugs. In the same way someone has the choice not to commit suicide, people who die from lifestyle disease also had a choice. It’s a fair call to label a death suicide if someone with type 2 dia- betes sustains dietary habits that exacerbate the condition. It obviously isn’t someone putting a gun to their head, but it’s the next best thing. Invariably, people with diabetes know that if they radically change their lifestyle, they can manage their diabetes. So, by making the choice not to change their lifestyle, they are writing their death warrant. It’s a form of suicide—just that socially, it’s a more acceptable way of committing suicide. The majority of all deaths are the result of lifestyle diseases, the consequence of natural justice. Remember, this is a lifestyle that is completely impacted by the illusionary matrix of power, wealth, love, and fame. If that’s the commoncause, it makes sense that any effort to “treat” the cause would resolve the effect, in this case premature death. Of course, the more that the remedy is motivated by love and not by will or discipline, the more sustainable the outcome. If just doing a diet was enough to stop obesity, then there should be no obese people. It would be fair to say that almost anyone who is overweight has done at least one diet, and in the majority of cases also managed to lose weight. For Review Only 180 Coming to the Crossroads It was the inability to sustain the discipline that became the challenge. It’s a different kettle of fish by having developed a greater sense of your worth and then naturally choosing to relate to yourself with more kindness. In this context, choosing a more serving lifestyle no longer requires will or discipline; it’s now an act of self-love. This approach doesn’t deny anything, but naturally makes choices that are better serv- ing. Since kindness hasn’t been part of the first three options, it must be part of option four. Option 4: The Journey Within This is the option that would take the Fool in the direction of the Lion on The World card (see fig. 7.1, p. 172 and color plate 30). It’s the rec- ommended option, since in many of the Marseille canon the Angel can be perceived to be looking in the direction of the Lion, as if to indicate that is where the Fool should go next. In this same regard, where the Lion is looking comes as a surprise. In the majority of the Marseille Majors the Lion isn’t looking left or right, up or down, he looks straight ahead, he’s looking right into your soul. It’s as if he is saying that where up until now everything has been about what’s happening “outside,” now the journey of the Fool goes within. It can be assumed that this part of the journey is not going to be easy because the card sitting beside the Lion is called Strength, which depicts an elegantly dressed woman holding open the mouth of a lion. When you think about that scenario, the woman would have to possess two qualities to survive such a predicament—purpose and courage. Purpose gives motivation and courage gives motivation momentum. The Fool’s new purpose has sufficient energy that it causes the Wheel to turn counter-clockwise. It comes as a result of the deci- sion to get off the merry-go-round with its horses of power, wealth, love, and fame that are constantly going around and around and up and down. The Fool is no longer on the Wheel because he has disap- peared; there is no fourth character at the bottom of the wheel. This was the simple but profound symbolism of this card. Arriving at this For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 181 intersection is a significant time in the journey of the Fool. The mes- sage of the Cathar Code clearly shows what the options are and their consequences. Planting the Seeds Where is the Fool then if they are not on the Wheel? That’s what the Lion reveals. His glance informs us that the Fool will go within, no lon- ger without. That is why the Fool is no longer found on the bottom of the Wheel, their awareness has shifted form the external to the internal. Having gone within means that they have at least recognized that the values of the Magician’s world are no longer serving, and they are highly motivated (mostly because of their suffering) to find values that are bet- ter serving. If the filter of the Fool can only relate to the Magician’s values, they won’t even see that this fourth option exists and will resort to the other three options. You can’t look within while still looking without! This is the state of ignorance that Jesus alludes to in the par- able of the sower and the seeds that fall onto the sealed soil. These are the seeds that can’t take root, the seeds that the birds consume. If they do manage to accumulate enough knowledge to know that this fourth option exists, when they see the advertisement for what this route involves, which is the Strength card, then Jesus’s second scenario in the planting of seeds has relevance. These seeds do get planted, but because the soil hasn’t been worked properly there are still too many rocks, which compromises the roots becoming properly established. When circumstances get too difficult (wind, rain, or heat) the plant dies. The Fool knows what is required to stop the suffering, but because option four looks like too much effort, they choose to revert to flick- ing the switch and getting back on the merry-go-round as it once again takes on its clockwise rotation. In describing the challenging nature of this place, Dante, a contempo- rary of Petrarch and Boccaccio, wrote in his Divine Comedy, “Along the journey of our life, halfway I found myself in a dark wood wherein the straight road no longer lay. How hard it is to tell, make understood what For Review Only 182 Coming to the Crossroads a wild place it was, so dense, adverse, that fear returns in thinking on that wood. It is so bitter; death is hardly worse.” This is why the Strength card is found in this position. The Fool is also about to experience the first gatekeeper. To embark on this counter-clockwise journey the state of one’s heart has to be right, otherwise it will be impossible to do. But even with passing the gatekeepers, there is still no assurance that the Fool will be free of the Magician’s world. If you recall, there are three legs of the Magician’s table exposed in his illustration (see fig. 3.1, p. 64), alluding to the idea that he has control over three of the four “legs” of the journey. It’s in this part of the Fool’s journey that in spite of having attempted to be free of power, wealth, love, and fame, one can find oneself being drawn back into the illusionary world with its unsustainable values. In the parable of the sower, this situation was represented by the seeds that fell in soil of a depth where the roots could get well estab- lished, but this soil also harbored weeds that grew and eventually choked out the good growth. So, having passed the gatekeepers is still no guarantee that the Fool will get through this part of the journey, but it is a strong indication of what would be necessary to even begin this part of the journey. These three “seed” scenarios from Jesus’s parable clearly reveal that these three states of consciousness are responsible for stopping the Fool finding the kingdom of Heaven. The consciousness of ignorance sees the Fool living life totally gov- erned by the programming of the formative years. This is where one has never questioned their perspective of life, either because they have never thought to, or because they were afraid to. This means that their total engagement of life is governed by issues around power, wealth, love, and fame, perpetuated by their parents, the Emperor and Empress. They know nothing else. When justice, time, and chance intervene resulting in suffering, they don’t understand why they are suffering and don’t know what to do to resolve it. The second state of consciousness, symbolized by the seeds taking shallow root amongst the rocks, refers to those people who are made aware, who have gleaned more knowledge about what’s going on, often times as a result of their suffering, but making any change is too diffi- For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 183 cult. Requiring too much effort, they stick with “the devil” they know. Of course the adage, “if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got” applies. The pain and suffer- ing doesn’t go away. The third state of consciousness is the weed scenario. In this model, the Fool has experienced enough suffering to be highly motivated to change, and exert enough will and discipline to change both their thinking and their behavior. For a time, they reap the benefits of a change in consciousness, but the effort required to sustain the change gets exhausting. It’s a case of not understandingthat to change reality you have to change what created that reality in the first place. In the majority of cases, very few people understand what created their real- ity and as such, find themselves being choked with the weeds of power, wealth, love, and fame all over again. The First Gatekeepers You’ll notice that there are two lions beside each other in this layout. One in The World card and the other in The Strength card. Statues of two lions at entrances were a global occurrence. Being the entrance to the world of the good God this is significant, as the two lions were said to check that the state of the heart of those entering a building or city was not hard (see fig. 7.3, p. 184). Nineteenth-century Christian historians and archaeologists, John Neale and Benjamin Webb argued that the lions served two fundamental purposes for anyone choosing to enter a sacred space: first, it was the entrance to Heaven for martyrs (the Cathar would have seen themselves as martyrs) and secondly, it was a reminder that you had to be prepared to turn your back on all worldly attachments if you were wanting to enter into the kingdom of God.1 This suggests that to choose this path you first have to be soft hearted, that your dark night of the senses—the journey through the Justice, Hermit, and Wheel of Fortune cards—has resulted in you being much less attached to material values. Hardheartedness was about what one treasured. As Jesus explained, “where your treasure is, there will be For Review Only 184 Coming to the Crossroads your heart also” (Matthew 6:21). It’s this change of heart from material to spiritual values that results in what Saint John of the Cross described as noche oscura, or the dark night, and what would later be called the Dark Night of the Soul. The Dark Night People often confuse suffering with a Dark Night of the Soul. In many instances, their suffering is a consequence of the Wheel of Fortune hav- ing turned, resulting in the loss of one or more of the treasures of the Magician’s world: power, wealth, love, and fame. As much as this can be associated with a “dark night” experience, it’s different from the Dark Night of the Soul. Sometimes called the dark night of the senses, this form of the dark night experience sits within the context of human values, and the world of the Magician. This means that a release from the dark night Fig. 7.3. Lions at the gate, Fonfroide Abbey, Narbonne, France Photo taken by the author, October 2014For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 185 of the senses typically occurs when the Wheel of Fortune continues its clockwise rotation, where the changing fortunes see the Fool moving towards the top of the Wheel again, thus alleviating the Fool’s suffer- ing. Even if the Wheel doesn’t turn, the hope and belief that it can turn and possibly free the Fool from suffering is still evidence that the Fool is having a dark night of the senses. For as long as the Fool continues to fill the position of sum sine regno on the Wheel, looking out instead of within, they will be experiencing a dark night of the senses. When the Wheel turns counter-clockwise and the Fool disappears off the Wheel, this signifies that the Fool has made the choice to enter the Dark Night of the Soul. The Cathar understood the difference between the two, and more to the point, they had an intimate under- standing of the journey through the Dark Night of the Soul. It’s this knowledge that makes the Cathar Code both unique and profound. The Dark Night of the Soul is the bitter cup from which the Fool must drink—that part of the Grail experience they would prefer to avoid. It seems that if the Fool wants to find the kingdom of Heaven, there is no alternative; this is the only way to leave the world of the evil God, the only one way to enter the world of the good God. “It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God” (Hebrews 10:31). “[A] dark wood. . . . It is so bitter; death is hardly worse” (Dante). The Dark Night of the Soul is the death you have with- out dying. It’s the suicide of human consciousness. If you thought the dark night of the senses was challenging, as they say, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” In the same way The Magician card held a lot of clues as to the nature of his world that the Fool was about to encounter, so too does the Strength card. Being at the crossroad, like the Magician, she too has clues allowing the Fool to know in advance the nature of her world. Strength and Courage Lions were typically used as the symbols of strength and courage, which is why they would turn up so often in heraldry. It could be per- ceived that a lion should have been sufficient to depict the strength and For Review Only 186 Coming to the Crossroads Fig. 7.4. La Force / Strength by de Guler & Aymerich, 1983 © Naipes Heraclitus Fournier S.A. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 187 courage theme of this card. But this wasn’t just ordinary strength and courage needed here. To convey what was needed, the designers of the cards used a courtly woman dressed in her finery, and had her hold- ing open the mouth of a lion. That takes strength and courage to a whole new level. It was to impress upon the Fool that to go down this route will require almost more strength and courage than is imaginable. Some of the early cards resorted to images of Hercules and Sampson, but using them suggests that they already possess strength and courage. Using a woman conveys the idea that it’s not something possessed but something mustered, something for which the Fool would have to dig deep. One of the early Visconti packs and the Marseille canon used this image of a refined woman to portray the message of this card. Hecate was said to have been a consort of Hermes, and like Hermes, statues and tributes to her would be found at crossroads, in particular three-ways. It’s a plausible conclusion to draw that the woman depicted in the Strength card is symbolic of Hecate. She and Hermes helped to retrieve Persephone from Hades because they both possessed the unique ability to traverse the liminal place between mortal and divine spheres, which included Hades. In Greek mythology, Hecate is often depicted carrying two torches that she used to put light on the passage through dark places. This is exactly what the Fool needs when they are about to encounter the Dark Night of the Soul. Her role was primarily to protect those going through dangerous, liminal places, the entrance to which were crossroads. Crossroads were thought to be one place where the realms beyond the world of the living were easily accessed. Like the two lions, statues of Hecate would flank the entrances to a city (also a liminal space) and would often be depicted holding a torch and keys, which by virtue of the torches allowed a visitor to be identi- fied and with the keys be given access. The Roman equivalent to Hecate was Diana Trivia (“of the three ways”). It appears that reverence for the practice of honoring Diana lasted well after Christianity had been made the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. In a seventh-century sermon by Saint Eligius, he warns against leaving devilish charms at crossroads and Saint Ouen taught that no Christian For Review Only 188 Coming to the Crossroads should “make or render any devotion to the deities of trivium, where three roads meet.”2 For many centuries, crossroads, like fences and entrances to homes and cities, were thought to be magical places and were deemed special because they provided easy access to the spirit world, the afterlife. In ancient times, both Hecate and Hermes were said to lead the souls of the “deserving dead” into Hades (hell). It is for this reason that people who committed suicide or who were executed as criminals were com- monly buried at crossroads. It was believed that the spirits of these “evil” peoplecould be more quickly ushered through to the spirit world, unable to hang around haunting the living. To the Christian mind this association with crossroads transformed Hermes and Hecate from being guides of consciousness to feared elements of witchcraft. The result being that Herms and statues of Hecate were replaced with Christian crosses. As Diana, she was the Moon Goddess, and was called mother of the Lares compitales, the spirits of the crossroads. Offerings were left on nights of the full moon as she was invoked by rites of magic and divination for protection and guidance. Festivals called compitalia were regularly held at her crossroad shrines. It’s very clear that in the journey of the soul, crossroads were intrinsic and the idea of a spiritual map not having a crossroad would be nonsensical. Given that Hecate was often depicted holding keys that opened the door to the next realm, it makes sense that her card would hold knowledge of that key, as the Fool is about to pass through a portal between the world of illusion and the kingdom of Heaven—God forbid, a portal “so bitter, death is hardly worse.” So not only did the Fool need the key, a light bearer was also needed as a guide through the dark. Hecate provided both! The programming of the Fool with the focus on power, wealth, love, and fame meant that the engagement of life was predominately focused externally. Since there was no value in introspection other than to be more successful at doing power, wealth, love, and fame, the Fool was ignorant of the inner world. Being shrouded by ignorance, the inner world wasn’t even known except in religion, whose whole premise was For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 189 based on an inward awakening. Even then, Roman Christianity lost the “inward” plot as it became embroiled in the two things the Magician indicated were his greatest tricks: power and wealth. As such, the church lost its mandate to teach the journey within. In medieval Europe, revealing the knowledge needed for the inner journey was left to the likes of the Cathar. They believed that the values belonging to the Magician’s world also belonged to the evil God, and as such, they did all within their power to distance themselves from power, wealth, love, and fame. Since these things were not part of their framework for life, there was only one place to go, and that was within. The Cathar became the experts of going within. They got to know the inner world intimately because they were the keepers of the map that revealed how to safely make one’s way through that Dark Place. The Crowning Glory The woman depicted in the Strength card, besides wearing a hat that turns out to be the key that unlocks the Grail mystery, also wears an unusual shaped crown (see fig. 7.4, p. 186). Its zigzag shape is symbolic of the cockscomb that was beside the buttock of the Empress. If you Fig. 7.5. The crown with the zigzag symbol, illustrated in Harold Bayley’s book The Lost Language of Symbolism, vol. 2 For Review Only 190 Coming to the Crossroads recall, that symbolized the birth of the Fool. So, it would appear that this is another reference to the Fool. This zigzag symbol was often used in watermarks to represent a crown, which symbolized Christ, the ulti- mate crowning glory. It can be concluded that since it is being depicted here, it’s highlighting that this is the route that will take the Fool to the ultimate crowning glory, Christ consciousness. So besides telling the Fool how arduous this quest will be, Strength is also telling the Fool that seeking the kingdom of Heaven can be found here. The depth of strength and courage being depicted here can only come off the back of someone who is extremely motivated. Unless there was a highly desired reward at the end of this journey through the Dark Night, there would be nothing to motivate the Fool to take on what appears to be the most challenging of quests. This is another indica- tor that the Fool is about to encounter the journey through the Dark Night of the Soul and not just another dark night of the senses. If the Fool isn’t driven to want to adopt Christ consciousness, then the suf- fering being experienced is a dark night of the senses. So besides letting the Fool know how difficult the journey is from here, Strength is also letting the Fool know there is a need to be seeking the Crowning Glory of Christ. It’s the only thing that will get them through. They won’t survive otherwise, and this is why during this third leg of the journey, the Magician can still sway the Fool. It may be that the Fool still isn’t fully aware of what adopting Christ consciousness looks like, but they are clear they want to get off the Ferris wheel of human consciousness. They have an idea that they can replace human consciousness with something more spiritually based; something with sustainable values that minimizes the effects of justice, time, and chance. Being uninitiated, they still decided to go down this path, even knowing that it is going to take great courage and strength. It’s desperation that drives the Fool, as the other three options no longer hold any appeal. Once again, if the Fool can’t get to that place where the motive changes from desperation to desiring Christ consciousness, they won’t survive the journey through the Dark Night of the Soul. These are the people who have put their hand up to live lives more For Review Only Coming to the Crossroads 191 aligned with Christ consciousness, but who can’t let go of their need for control, or who worry about their finances. These are Fools who are caught up in the challenges of relationship or feel lonely, or who live unfulfilled and without purpose, all symptoms of the Fool still being enmeshed in the world of the Magician. Justice, time, and chance have played their role in having the Fool become more aware. Without awareness, nothing can change. In igno- rance, nothing can change. It’s only by gaining more knowledge and understanding that a context for change is made possible. Change requires choice and choice is only possible when two or more options are available. Knowledge and understanding provide the additional options needed for choice to exist. Without a choice, nothing changes. Of course, choice automatically involves being put into a position of having to let something go, and herein lies the Dark Night of the Soul. The more one is attached to power, wealth, love, and fame, the less likely you are to want to go down this route. Besides which, the lions at the gate will only allow those Fools with soft hearts to enter this pas- sage. Everyone else will have to take one of the other three options. If you are still attached to your programmed belief that you are defined by how much power, wealth, love, and fame you have, or don’t have, then you will have no interest in going down this route. Your tunnel vision will even exclude this as an option. Besides, Strength as the guide at the three-ways is fulfilling her role by telling the Fool exactly what three things are required to succeed in making it through this passage: courage and strength and the desire to obtain the Crowning Glory of Christ. The absence of any of these will almost guarantee failure. Having softened their heart, plucked up enough courage and being clear that what they want is that crowning glory, the Fool is now ready to encounter the Dark Night of the Soul. For Review Only 192 EIGHT Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul T he Dark Night of the Soul is depicted in the four cards titled The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, and The Devil. As previously discussed, the shape of the legs of the man hanging from the gallows, like the Emperor, takes on the form of a figure 4, albeit upside down. In the context of these cards being Trumps, it is assumed that these four cards are now trumping the four cards of the illusionary world of the Magician: The Emperor,The Pope, The Lovers, and The Chariot. These four cards represent the four aspects of differentiated conscious- ness (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) going through an evo- lution. As indicated by the inverted 4 of the Hanged Man, this part of the journey shows the four aspects of human consciousness being “turned on their head.” The Importance of Forty The first thing Jesus does immediately after his forty days in the wil- derness and on commencing his ministry is to deliver a sermon that became known as the Sermon on the Mount. Fresh from whatever he experienced during those forty days, his mind is still impressed with his temptation and with what he had been immersed in during this time For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 193 in the wilderness. The number forty was quite significant in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Many of the time frames to do with Moses and the children of Israel included periods of forty days and forty years. The same was true of Jesus. It’s no coincidence that the four is included here, as this is symbolic of the Fool’s forty days of fasting in his own wilderness. Obviously the four represents the four aspects of differentiated con- sciousness: mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. The zero according to Bayley was the “circle of perfection.”1 He also claims that the Gnostics believed the four to represent the Supreme Being, “in whom nought unequal dwells.”2 In terms of human and differentiate consciousness, this would represent the four states of consciousness being in perfect balance. The forty is the catalyst for human consciousness to become aligned with the Supreme Being through perfection, which is Christ consciousness. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) best sums up the number forty. To choose to encounter the Dark Night of the Soul is metaphori- cally choosing to “fast” for forty days in the wilderness. The word fast originally meant “to have firm control of oneself.” It is more commonly associated with the notion of abstaining from food, but as a religious practice, fasting was a means of heightening spiritual awareness. By less- ening one’s exposure to the corporeal, you would be allowing your spiri- tual self to come to the fore. In addition to food and in some instances water, fasting would also include any sexual activity. In the case of the Cathar, part of the reason their perfecti were thought to be the Holy Spirit incarnate was because of their perceived purity. A core part of their devotion included three forty-day fasts every year. They were emulating Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness, and obvi- ously if it was good enough for him, as the exemplar, then it must be necessary for them to follow suit. The Nativity Fast or Advent as it was called, went from November 13 to Christmas Eve. What is now called Lent went from the Monday before Ash Wednesday to Easter, and what was called the Apostle’s Fast went from Pentecost (the seventh Sunday after Easter, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit onto the For Review Only 194 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul disciples of Jesus after his ascension from earth to heaven) to the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul on June 29. The perfecti were already vegetarians and so in addition to the typi- cal abstinence from animal products (all red meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy) the fast also included fish, wine, and oil, although these last three were allowed on certain days throughout the fast. But fasting was not just about the food and sex. While fasting, one was also expected to intensify prayer and self-reflection. Confession, repentance, and restitu- tion for sins would have been necessary along with almsgiving and a heightened rededication to having the four states of consciousness be better aligned with Christ consciousness; although in this regard, the perfecti had a monthly ritual of confession and repentance called the apareilementum. This forty days in the wilderness of the Dark Night of the Soul, as depicted in the Marseille Tarot, was about giving up any attachment the Fool might have to power, wealth, love, and fame. This included not only those who possessed these things, but also those who didn’t and who expended their energy desiring them. And where a normal fast only went for forty days, this was to be a perpetual abstinence from any attachment that the Fool might have to what was valuable in the world of the Magician. As you might expect this wasn’t just a case of denying these things. It’s Not about Sacrifice To deny anything suggests sacrifice. That this wasn’t intended to be about sacrifice was evident in Jesus’s explanation about fasting in his Sermon on the Mount. “Additionally, when you fast, don’t be like the hypocrites, who display a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, to give the appearance that they are fasting. Truly I say, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face: that way no one knows you are fasting, it’s just between you and your Father [in Heaven], and your Father who sees what’s in your heart, will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:16–18 )̂. For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 195 There are essentially two ways to approach change, the most com- mon is through applying personal will and discipline, in other words, sacrifice. In the majority of cases this isn’t sustainable. The more sustainable way is when change is adopted as a voluntary act of self-love and kindness. When the decision to adopt change is done this way, the focus shifts from what you are sacrificing to what is more serving to your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. The weight and challenge of relinquishment has been replaced with being mindful of a more loving alternative. Most people come to this place of wanting things to be different as a result of the effects brought on by justice, time, and chance. As will be explained shortly, most Fools have to expe- rience being humbled or having their “spirit broken” before they will make changes. It’s the spirit of attachment to what is perceived to be valuable in the Magician’s world that has to be broken. When attach- ment is replaced with grieving it’s because something has either been taken away or has had to be sacrificed. When the awareness of the bur- den of attachment is weighed up against the possibility of a more self- loving reality, then in that state of being mindful, a new reality, a more joyful way to live life can manifest. Nothing is sacrificed, only observed. This approach to healing was what Jesus was explaining when he said, “and at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their hearts . . . I will heal them” (Matthew 13:15^). His reference to seeing, hearing, and understanding are ways that one can observe. He is saying that if you can genuinely be in the place of being the observer, then his healing can work. He also explains that the state of the heart, in other words what people trea- sure, “where your treasure is there will be your heart also” (Matthew 6:21), determines your reality. “By hearing you will hear and not under- stand; and seeing you will see but won’t perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross . . .” (Matthew 13:14^). This means that healing can’t occur when you are unable to “be the observer,” which happens when you have a heart that is attached to the treasures of human conscious- ness, which he describes as being “waxed gross.” This reference to observation is explaining the shift from looking For Review Only 196 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul outward to now looking inward. This is the Lion in The World card looking into your soul. This is about observing the state of the heart. This shift from external points of reference to internal ones would also mean thatthe symbology of the cards would no longer have any refer- ence to things going on in the physical world of the Visconti. From this point forward the external world has little relevance and so sociopoliti- cal references become almost obsolete. This change in the nature of the cards reflects a change in the nature of the Fool’s pilgrimage. From here on the Cathar rely on their understanding of Gnostic and Christian teachings to reveal the Grail mysteries. The Cathar weren’t fully aligned with either Gnosticism or Christianity as they had developed their own unique blend of teachings that resulted in a blended Gnostic/Christian belief. This meant that they subscribed to some of Jesus’s teachings, but not all. They saw Jesus less as a savior and more as a shower of the way. He successfully adopted Christ consciousness, showing that it was pos- sible to become one with the good God. Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit The twelfth card in the Trump sequence is called The Hanged Man. An upside-down hanged man was an unusual symbol by which to por- tray the first of Jesus’s eight steps for reaching the kingdom of Heaven. This is the formula for finding the good God since four of the states of supreme happiness (the etymological meaning of beatitude) described in the Beatitudes make that very clear: verse three—for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven; verse eight—for they shall see God; verse nine— for they shall be called the children of God; and verse ten—for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven (from Matthew 5:3–10). There is no doubt that this is the “Jesus Formula” for stopping the cycle of re-fleshing and returning to Heaven. Since this is all about eternal life, then this must also be about the Holy Grail, the sacred knowledge that made it pos- sible to achieve this mystical union with God. Inverted hanging has a very limited medieval context. Given that this was depicted in the fifteenth-century cards, there would have been For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 197 a medieval context for using it as a metaphor for being poor in spirit. Hanging was a punishment typically given to thieves. If you were a con- demned thief who gained the courts favor, you might be lucky enough to be beheaded. Beheading was thought to be a more merciful way of being executed. At the other end of this continuum of the severity of punishment, was the “Jewish execution,” which was being hung upside down. This was primarily practiced in the Germanic region, and with most of the Holy Roman emperors being of Germanic origin, knowl- edge of this practice would have extended as far as the emperor’s reach. So why use hanging, and why upside down? Historian Rudolf Glanz gives insight into these questions: The answer to the first question is furnished by a piece of old Germanic folklore, recoverable from its later survival in popular Fig. 8.1. Le Pendu / The Hanged Man by Jean Noblet, circa 1650 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 198 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul speech and legend. Persons sacrificed to Odin by being hanged on a tree were thought to become “estranged” from the earth and given up to the wind. As a concrete expression of this idea, they were actu- ally suspended in mid-air . . . likewise for a thief there was no rest- ing place on earth, and that he too had to become “estranged” from it. Accordingly, he was condemned to hang and be drawn up high enough to prevent contact with the earth . . . suspended [so] that sufficient space would be left for grass and herb to grow up—symbol of the new life which would be rendered possible by the removal of such taint and miasma.3 In both the fifteenth- and seventeenth-century cards, The Hanged Man has this gap between his hair and the earth. The context of this card being linked to the element of air sets a precedent for all four traditional elements to be included: Card XIII, referred to as Death, has the element of earth as its primary theme; Card XIIII, labeled Temperance, depicts a woman pouring water between two vessels, placing a focus on the element of water; and Card XV, The Devil in the seventeenth-century Trumps, is depicted holding a flaming sword, obviously the element of fire. Making up the four classical elements found in Ancient Greek phi- losophy and science, air, earth, fire, and water were attributed one of each of the four states of consciousness: mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Air related to intellect and soul, earth to matter and the senses, water to emotions and intuition, and fire to energy and passion. These elements were also seen to possess qualities or properties that included hot, moist, dry, and cold. Each element shared two qualities. Air was both hot and wet. Earth had both cold and dry. Water had to be moist and cold, which left fire being hot and dry. It was an easy conclusion that the degree to which these elements were in balance was reflected in the state of health of the body. A Greek physician, surgeon, and philosopher, Galen of Pergamon (present-day Bergama, Turkey) after having received a substantial educa- tion in his formative years, traveled extensively learning diverse medical theories and making discoveries that would establish his credentials as For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 199 a physician. He eventually settled in Rome where he became personal physician to several emperors. Galen subscribed to the thought that these elements, as they related to the human body, were directly linked to the four humors. The humors were described as vital body fluids. An essay titled On the Nature of Man, attributed to Hippocrates who was a key inspiration of Galen, elaborates on the theory of the humors. The Human body contains blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These are the things that make up its constitution and cause its pains and health. Health is primarily that state in which these constituent substances are in the correct proportion to each other, both in strength and quantity, and are well mixed. Pain occurs when one of the substances presents either a deficiency or an excess, or is separated in the body and not mixed with others.4 Galen subscribed to the idea that the four elements and their quali- ties were also associated with these four humors: yellow bile (fire), black bile (earth), blood (air), and phlegm (moist). If these humors were in balance then a person was deemed to be healthy. Sickness and disease manifested when these humors were out of balance. The role of the physician was to help maintain and restore the balance of these four humors. Galen took this understanding of the humors one step further, theorizing that each humor correlated with a particular human tem- perament. Individuals with yellow bile / fire temperament was said to be choleric, which manifested as being independent, decisive, goal ori- ented, and ambitious. Those with blood / air disposition were sanguine, being highly talkative, enthusiastic, active, and social. A black bile / earth nature was said to be melancholic, being self-reliant, thoughtful, reserved, and anxious. Phlegm/moist temperament was labeled phlegmatic, which was characterized as being relaxed, peaceful, kind, and easygoing. Galen’s medicine, including the humors and their temperaments, along with Aristotle’s science and philosophy were foundational to an eleventh-century medical text called the Canon of Medicine, written by Persian polymath Avicenna. Because of its encyclopedic content and the For Review Only 200 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul systematic arrangement of its five volumes, the canon was implemented into medical university courses throughout Europe from the fourteenth century and remained as such up until the seventeenth century. Having become a popular reference for medical scholars in the thirteenth cen- tury, it would have been animportant resource for physicians for treat- ing the plague. Petrarch detailed his own “plague” experience where Avicenna’s medical approach would have been the recommended treatment. Gentile de Foligno was an Italian professor and doctor of medicine who studied and taught at universities in Padua, Bologna, and Siena who was well known for his texts and commentaries of Avicenna’s Canon. His writings in a book titled The Soul of Avicenna were reproduced in both manuscript and, eventually, print and was a key medical text during the Visconti reign in Milan. His approach to medicine was popularly accepted academically, especially at Pavia and Padua universities. This idea of health being achieved and maintained through balanc- ing the four qualities of hot, dry, moist, and cold was translated in the Trumps in much the same way. The inclusion of these qualities with The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, and The Devil was intentional in that it was a language with which people in the fifteenth century were familiar. No one was left untouched by the ravages of the plague, and given that maintaining a healthy balance of these four qualities was said to be imperative to health and well-being, it was language that everyone understood. By using them as key symbols in these images, they were stressing that to achieve the healing of the soul, the aspects of consciousness represented by these four cards needed to be kept in bal- ance. This would have been a perfect way to portray their message, as people knew that the balance of the qualities represented by air, earth, fire, and water was necessary to maintain physical health. The accepted association between the qualities of the humors and the qualities of temperament would have also enriched the motive for these cards to be symbolized in this way. Once again, mental health was thought to be achieved through creating a balance of the four temperaments, which occurred when the four humors were in balance. For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 201 Upside Down To be hung upside down was the ultimate punishment, the ultimate degradation. This was how animals were hung when they were slaugh- tered, and to be hung in this way essentially alluded to the idea that this person was less than human, at best they were equated with being animals. If prior to their execution a Jew converted to Christianity they would be hung by the neck, but if not, they were hung by their feet. In many instances two dogs would be hung upside down, flanking the Jewish thief, further compounding the degradation. This reassigning of human worth to being equivalent to that of animals was a core element of an annual “religious” celebration that existed between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries called the Feast of Fools. The wearing of monster and animal masks symbolically trans- formed a human into an animal. It was a behavior that was condemned by the church. Where man sat somewhere between God and animals, and where normally the aspiration of man was to emulate the nature of God, during the Feast of Fools, people emulated the nature of animals. The liturgy would be expressed in gibberish and with animal sounds. For a day, the trend of moving closer to God saw this turned upside down, with men adopting the behavior of animals.5 The purpose of the Feast of Fools was to present a world turned upside down. In Disney’s 1996 animated feature, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Chopin as the movie’s narrator sings “Topsy Turvy,” which was all about the Feast of Fools. In the song, Quasimodo the hunchback bell ringer of Notre Dame, by circumstance, becomes the “fool” who is made king for a day. On this day of inversion, the lower clergy would become bishops, a deacon might become a pope, but in these roles, they would act as clowns. The Eucharist, one of the most sacred sacraments of the church, saw would-be priests eating blood pud- ding and sausage at the horn of the altar during the Mass. Catholics believed in transubstantiation, where they believed that the bread and wine of the Eucharist was literally converted into the flesh and blood of Christ. On the Feast of Fools, even the Eucharist was turned upside For Review Only 202 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul down as the flesh and blood of animals replaced the transubstantiated bread and wine. The sublimely divine was mocked in the same way the pope and bishop became fools. Witchcraft It’s uncertain how the Cathar related to the Feast of Fools but given their objection to the supremacy of the papal church and their disregard for the Eucharist, they would have at least found it amusing. Having the upside- down Hanged Man depicted at the beginning of the Dark Night of the Soul may well have been an indication that they subscribed to the idea of inversion and reversal. This idea of reversal was made evident in the counter-clockwise movement of the Wheel of Fortune. The Fool could only be in this situation because the wheel reversed. So not only has the wheel reversed but the world has also gone topsy-turvy. These beliefs were deemed to be witchcraft, which justified the stance of the church in which they accused the Cathar of satanism and witchcraft. This inver- sion and reversal meant that everything that the Fool thought was real in the Magician’s world is in fact imaginary or fake. The difference in the Cathar Code is that instead of one becoming a Fool for a day on the Feast of Fools, the Fool permanently becomes a Fool for Christ. As early as 1435, attempts were made to forbid the celebration of the Feast of Fools by ascribing severe penalties, and by 1445 it had all but disappeared. It did reappear in the form of soties, short satirical plays that became common throughout France in the sixteenth cen- tury. The word sotie comes from the word sots, who were “fool” char- acters in these performances. The purpose of these plays was to present an upside-down world where the Fool became the source of wisdom. Different from other genres of theater, the sotie characters weren’t given real names, they were labeled First Fool, Second Fool, Everyman, and Pilgrim, titles that easily translated to the Fool of the Marseille Tarot. Soties became so popular that associations for sots emerged, which were called sociétés joyeuses, essentially French urban confraternities. Sots were often played by law students and were afforded great leniency in For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 203 the degree to which they could make fun of prominent people in medi- eval society, including kings and popes. Reversal and Inversion This reversal and inversion symbolized by the Wheel and the Hanged Man resulted in a relinquishment of the Magician’s world. Since the things of the outer world were becoming less important, there was only one place to go and that was within. This required the Fool to, either voluntarily or reluctantly, completely let go of the familiar. Being linked to the element of air and intellect, the Hanged Man is in the position of having to change one’s thinking. Where previously the thinking cen- tered around power, wealth, love, and fame, now, through the interfer- ence of justice, time, and chance, thoughts are turning within. “And don’t be conformed to this world: but be transformed by renewing your mind, and do this by proving what is the good, and acceptable, and per- fect, will of God” (Romans 12:2^). This renewal of the mind was to be achieved by not just seeking to understand the mind of God but proving it, in other words putting it to the test. This was essential if the Fool was to become one with the good God. To know the mind of God, humanity was given Christ. By adopting Christ consciousness, the Fool had a context from which to test the “will of God.” Being detached from the treasures of human consciousness isn’t easy when that is all you have known. Having to let go of the need for controlor of one’s victimhood requires trust and forgiveness. Only then will you know the will of God in terms of power. Letting go of your attachment to wealth or your incessant struggle with scarcity requires trust and a desire to be charitable. Only then will you know the will of God in terms of wealth. Relinquishing the idea of a special relationship or surviving being alone requires trust and understanding the love that arises from being “pure in heart.” Only then will you know the will of God in terms of love. Letting go of your longing for recognition and acceptance or your being reclusive or overlooked requires trust and the ability to see yourself as God sees you. Only then will you know the will of God in terms of fame and acceptance. For Review Only 204 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul In every case there first has to be an emptying out. If you think of consciousness being a vessel or a cup, in order for anything to be poured into a cup, it first has to be empty. To empty a vessel or cup you have to turn it upside down. This card is showing the Fool being emptied by being inverted. They first have to empty their current state of consciousness to make it possible for a new state of consciousness to be poured in, and of course the beginning of the vessel being refilled is where Temperance, in Card XIIII, is depicted pouring water between two vessels. In his sermon, Jesus is clear that the first step in returning to the kingdom of Heaven is by being poor in spirit. If you think of spirit in terms of passion and motivation (think team spirit) and you apply the quality of being poor to it, then Jesus is saying that those who have lost motivation and drive for life are in a blessed state. In terms of today, when you think of someone having lost the motivation and drive for living, you immediately think depression. What if depression wasn’t a mental health issue to be treated with medication, but was actually a spiritual malaise? What if depression is the Hanged Man who is at the entrance to a profound spiritual journey? This would mean that instead of hundreds of millions of people being on antidepressants, they would be guided through this journey of letting go of human consciousness and replacing it with Christ or Buddha consciousness, a consciousness that prioritized peace, joy, and kindness over power, wealth, love, and fame. There would be fewer doctors and psychiatrists in the world and more spiritual mentors and aware priests, people who have been on this pilgrimage and who can now put a light on the path to guide others. Imagine if the Cathar Code and its Holy Grail were the cure for depres- sion. If they were, then in today’s vernacular, Jesus might say, “Blessed are the depressed, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Card with No Name Card XIII was the only Trump card not to be given a name. The Visconti decks didn’t have titles on any of the cards. By the seventeenth For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 205 Fig. 8.2. The Card with No Name by Jean Dodal, circa 1701 © The Flornoy Estate, Letarot.com Editions. Used by permission of the owner For Review Only 206 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul century all the cards except the one depicting the Grim Reaper were named. Death, as it was referred to, was depicted in the Visconti cards holding an archery bow. The suddenness of death was symbolized by images of arrows, darts, or javelins that would seemingly appear from nowhere, not unlike Eros in The Lovers card. The Sforza-Visconti image of Death depicts the same sort of character, but is shown riding a black stallion carrying a scythe and in its path is a group of people hud- dling together, including a pope and a cardinal. This shift in imagery transforms Death from picking off individuals a bit like a sniper, to being a force of mass destruction. The Black Plague meant that Europe would never see death in the same way again. The gravity of its impact was described in detail by Fig. 8.3. The Death Card by Bonifacio Bembo, circa 1450 © Lo Scarabeo (images). Used by permission of the owner For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 207 Petrarch, who was confronted with the prospect of his own death, hav- ing been infected with the plague himself. In a letter to his brother, who was the sole survivor of thirty-five others in a monastery at Monrieux, Petrarch wrote: Alas! My beloved brother, what shall I say? How shall I begin? Whither shall I turn? On all sides is sorrow; everywhere is fear. I would, my brother, that I had never been born, or, at least, had died before these times. How will prosperity believe that there has been a time when without lightning of heaven, or the fires of the earth, without wars or other visible slaughter, not this or that part of the earth, but well-nigh the whole globe, has remained without inhabitants. When has any such thing been ever heard or seen; in what annals has it ever been read that houses were left vacant, cities deserted, the country neglected, the fields too small for the dead and a fearful and universal solitude over the whole earth?6 Petrarch laments that he wishes he had never been born or at least had died before these times. One can only imagine the horror of a pestilence that basically took four days from when lymphatic swelling appeared in the groin or arm pit to when a person died. It was so con- tagious that there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. And of course, it didn’t discriminate. Mass graves saw bodies of nobles lying alongside commoners, bishops besides heretics, and cardinals beside prostitutes. There was no bell ringing or ritual burial, nothing that distinguished the rich from the poor, those of power from the plebs, the famous from the obscure, or the loved from the unloved. The nature of death took on a whole new meaning. The Dance of Death A mural depicting people of different gender and status dancing along with skeletons appeared in the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris in 1424. Called the danse macabe, it became a popular theme in art from For Review Only 208 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul the fifteenth century and was included in the Passion of the Christ pro- cessions held at Easter in villages throughout Italy, Spain, and south- ern France. It is still enacted as a part of the Passion Parade to this day in the town of Verges in Northern Spain. Dressed as skeletons and carrying scythes, candles, a handless clock, and a banner, the danc- ers hop and gyrate to a drum rhythm as a reminder, as in the plague, that eventually rich and poor, the wise and the foolish, will all have to do the danse macabe. This notion was popular with peasants since it brought them hope of there being equality in death. As early as the late fourteenth century, Petrarch, in his Triumph of Death, makes reference to the indiscriminate nature of death. This was made more poignant with the plague, since the trappings and rituals that for a fee gave death class distinction all disappeared. Prince and pauper were ravaged by the plague in just the same way and their corpses could be lying side by side in a mass grave with a hundred other rotting bodies, all having had the same dance partner, Death. The Death That Wasn’t Death It’s significant that the Marseille Tarot of the seventeenth century has no title on the Death card. It would suggest that this card may Fig. 8.4. Danse Macabre, circa sixteenth century, artist unknown, Regional Museum Koper, Slovenia For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 209 not actually be about a physical death. As previously discussed, The Hermit/Time card was more aligned with the notion of mortal- ity. Given that this is the second part in the sequence of the Dark Night of the Soul, and the Hanged Man was the first part in the Fool being distanced from worldly treasure, one would expect the narra- tive to continue inthis vein. In one of the Sforza-Visconti versions, whole bodies are huddling together, enveloped by the scythe. In the Marseille version, pieces of bodies are scattered around on the earth. The earlier cards highlight impending death and its associated fear; where in the Marseille image, Death has completed its deed with pieces of bodies lying strewn over the ground. The shift is from fear to grief and mourning, although both versions still highlighting the indiscriminate nature of Death. So, if this wasn’t about dying, why depict Death? If this part of the journey of the Fool is describing an internal journey and the transfor- mation of consciousness, then the card has to be interpreted in the con- text of changing consciousness. In that regard, this death then is about the exit from human consciousness. It’s that point in the Fool’s journey where this could potentially be the final incarnation. It’s the death of one’s personal narrative that relied on the external measures of power, wealth, love, and fame. Now it makes sense that what is scattered on the ground are the remnants of an emperor, a pope, a lover, and possibly a victor. It’s a symbolic severance from the Fool’s attachments to human consciousness, those things that belong to the Magician’s world. As described by Petrarch, this is the Triumph of Death. Imagine for a moment what is left of a person if the reference points for existence as a human disappear. Who would you be if you could no longer be defined by your possessions, your relationships, your achievements, or your autonomy, irrespective of whether your experience has an abun- dant or scarce filter? Many people are robbed of their consciousness with diseases like dementia, Alzheimer’s, and to some extent, depres- sion. In each instance there is a disassociation from those defining attri- butes of human consciousness. These are perfect examples of a death without dying. For Review Only 210 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul The Cathar perfecti committed their lives to being free of any attachment to the defining elements of human consciousness. This meant that even though, as a part of being human, it would be natural to have relationships, possessions, and want to maintain one’s autonomy and achieve success, the key was not to be attached to or “hung up” on any of it. At no stage were these things to define who you were, other than by your nonattachment to them. As much as the Cathar believ- ers lived more “normal” lives than the perfecti, they too were encour- aged to become nonattached to the treasures of the Magician’s world. Describing it as mammon, Jesus said that it was impossible to serve God and mammon. It has to be either Christ consciousness or human con- sciousness, you can’t have a bet each way, so to speak. Blessed Are Those That Mourn Jesus’s second Beatitude says that it’s a blessing to be in a state of mourning. Mourning is evidence that you are no longer grieving some- one’s passing, or the loss of something to which you were significantly attached. Mourning is evidence that having become the observer of your grief, you are either in the process of letting go of your attachment to someone or something or have already let it go. It’s the space that exists between grieving the absence of elements from of your past and the prospect and engagement in a new expression of life. If you were still grieving, you wouldn’t be mourning. In the case of the Dark Night of the Soul, what has died is the loss of that version of yourself that was defined by human consciousness. And that was important because it was the only version of you with which you were familiar. Mourning was serious business in medieval Italy. Men in particular were said to have resorted to uncontrollable demonstrations of grief and mourning. Up to a hundred men could gather in the streets and squares of a town and very publicly and loudly wail and weep. They would be bareheaded, clapping and tearing at their hair and clothing, even rip- ping at their own face, demonstrating their depth of grief. It’s uncer- tain, but it would appear that they were taking Jesus’s second Beatitude For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 211 to the extreme. Seen as unmanly expressions of feminine passion, com- munes passed legislation that made these demonstrations illegal. It was perceived that social stability required men to show emotional restraint and decorum. It was more socially acceptable for women to mourn. In fact, in some regions of Italy, women made a livelihood out of “profes- sional” mourning.7 Grief is the pain of detaching, forced or voluntary. It’s the inward struggle of coming to terms with loss or separation. When the Hanged Man had his world turn upside down, he was effectively being forced by justice, time, and chance to reconsider what the real value was of the treasures of human consciousness. Now encountering the Death card, the Fool has taken the next step, having made the decision to let go of the need to possess those things, since it seems that none of them have lasting value as their possession and loss are at the whim of Fortune. Like inversion, mourning belongs to the liminal space between what was and what will be. This liminal space is a poignant part of the Dark Night of the Soul experience. The Fool is now found in a no-man’s land. On the one hand “the world of the evil God” has been rejected with its defining measures of power, wealth, love, and fame, but the Fool also hasn’t been able to identify who they are in “the world of the good God” expressed as righ- teousness, mercy, pure love, and peace. These are literally worlds apart and the Fool is right bang in the middle. If the Fool has access to the Cathar Code, knowledge that details how to make one’s way through the Dark Night, then at least there is cause for hope, but without it, the chance of finding one’s way through is slim. Being stuck in grief is a horrid thing. It’s a perpetual hell since the thing from which you have been removed, in most cases can’t be retrieved, or if it can, then at a price. When the Fool finds the Dark Night and the grief too challeng- ing, they will choose to turn their attention from the internal back to the external. It becomes a case of “better the devil they know.” Having made this choice, the Fool reappears on the bottom of the Wheel of Fortune. There they have to reengage living in the world with its focus For Review Only 212 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul on human consciousness. In effect they become the living dead, zom- bies of sort. They do all that they can to numb their pain and suffer- ing through medication and addictive behaviors. Antidepressants, sugar and refined carbohydrates, and alcohol and drugs are the most popular ways for coping, and given the proliferation of these globally, it would seem it’s an epidemic. For They Will Be Comforted According to Jesus’s second Beatitude, relief from grief comes through mourning, a truly outward expression of one’s grief. This Beatitude sug- gests that creating an external way for expressing grief can bring com- fort. As explained by Jesus in his healing formula, when you can see with your eyes, hear with your ears, and understand with your heart, then he can heal you. This healing approach is about gaining an expanded awareness, in other words, seeing things differently. Effectively, mourn- ing helps to bring a new perspective. In mourning, reality morphs. A fundamental principle of change states that you can’t change what you can’t see, so the inverse must also be true. Therefore, when some- thing can be truly observed, then it can change. Mourning is the act of observing your grief. While it remains internal, it can’t change. Mourning makes it possible to see your loss differently, and that’s where the comfort comes from. First, you have to become aware of your grief by stepping back and observing it. Eitherthrough your own external weeping and wailing, or that of others, whether they are pro- fessional wailers or friends, you are in a position to witness your grief. In this place of becoming the observer of your grief, you recognize that there is that part of you that is witnessing the grief but doesn’t have to feel the pain. This is different from what you normally experience, being immersed in both the grief and the pain. You become aware that without having to deny the pain, there is a place you can go that allows you to be free of it. This is the “seeing with your eyes and hearing with your ears” that Jesus talked about. This is the moment where you realize that you For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 213 have thoughts and feelings but you are more than that. In this place of mourning it’s possible to be the witness of the thoughts and feel- ings of grief and see that your thoughts and feelings can be observed or witnessed dispassionately. In that instant there is a moment of relief, a moment of peace, albeit fleeting, since guilt often floods in bring- ing you back to your grief. Fortunately, that one moment of relief was enough, and you go in search of it again. The relief from the pain felt so good, you want more. Eventually you find yourself being able to remain in this place of being the witness for extend periods of time, free of the experience of the pain but not in denial of it. It would appear that con- sciousness has another dimension. There was that state of consciousness where all that you experienced was defined by your thoughts, feelings, desires, and the senses, and now you have found an expression of con- sciousness that sits outside of all of that. The more you choose to be in the place of the witness, you realize that it’s a place of peace and stillness, a salve for the soul, respite for the spirit. Now you know what Jesus meant when he said “for they shall be comforted.” Being in this place of the witness brings a certain objectivity to what is witnessed, diluting the subjectivity that arises from personal filters. The latter causes reality to manifest in a way that matches those filters. This is the framework that is responsible for your suffering. Being objective means that you are in a position to see things differently, no longer constrained by the belief that life has to be a certain way. Meditation and Contemplation This capacity to spend time being the observer was called dyhana in the East, later to be called meditation in the West, both essentially meaning contemplation or reflection. As explained previously, it’s becoming that which observes as opposed to being the observed. Modern scientific research has built a strong evidence-based understanding of the benefits of meditation for which the word comforted would be an appropriate blanket description. In simple terms, meditation is having the ability to observe without giving what has been observed a meaning. What you For Review Only 214 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul observe will not be seen to be right or wrong, or thought to be good or bad. It’s the detachment from needing to judge, which originally meant to form an opinion. Whether it’s grieving or any other thought or emo- tion, there is always this capacity to observe them without needing to have an opinion or to give them a meaning. In the case of mourning, because the thoughts and feelings of grief have been given expression, they are more easily observed, which makes it easier to separate fact from fiction. In this context, fiction is the per- sonal meaning that you give to your loss. As an example, it’s the dif- ference between someone making the observation that they are getting older, having observed the symptoms of ageing that they are experienc- ing, and someone else seeing themselves getting older and having it mean that they have lost their youthfulness and usefulness. When you give something meaning, the mind wanders. Who will want me if I lose my looks? Society only values youthfulness and given how I now look, I will no longer have any value. I’m going to have to spend a lot of money trying to maintain my youthful appearance. I’ll look younger if I dress and wear my hair and makeup in more youthful ways. I’ll drive a car that supports a younger image. I’ll go to the hip places, where the younger set hang out. This is going to cost a packet, so I’ll have to keep working . . . and so it goes. The observer just sees the effects of ageing to which they attach no meaning, in just the same way the mourner sees their loss but then doesn’t go on to extrapolate what one imagines that might mean. The peace that accompanies observation inspires contemplation that seeks ways to sustain and further develop that peace. Choosing a New Set of Values Mourning is the place where the Fool gets to decide what it is that is valued most. This is the point where the Magician can still have an impact on the Fool, in that the Fool can still decide to be realigned with human consciousness. If the repose and comfort from having become the observer have been sweet enough in the Fool’s experience, For Review Only Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul 215 then the freedom from the unrelenting stress of the Magician’s world might be enough to motivate the Fool to choose peace as the thing they value most. There is a high probability that the motive for being aligned with Christ consciousness hasn’t developed yet, as that typically comes later when the Fool learns that it’s Christ consciousness that brings sus- tainable peace. It’s sufficient at this juncture that the Fool knows how good being comforted feels and that it exists in stark contrast to the exhaustion and stress that human consciousness brought. Most people have adopted their values through their programming from the Emperor and the Empress, their father and mother. Given the narrative that the Fool has about their worth, sourced from the same place, much of what they value either is directed toward building or sus- taining their worth or avoiding being seen as worthless. Even if the Fool has a choice about what they value as opposed to being controlled by the sense of their worth, they would still be focused on power, wealth, love, and fame, since that is all they know. The focus will always be about which of the four to value most and where on the continuum of each one would you invest your time and resources. This will be the first time that the Fool has been given the option of an additional value, peace. Peace that brings comfort and stillness, peace that is a repose from the suffering that has led to the Fool finding themselves in this position. If the Fool decides to completely empty their cup while in this lim- inal place, they have in effect desired something new; they are wanting something different from what they had. They can see the possibility of a new reality that brings hope. Sure, they are uncertain about how to integrate it into their life, but they have tasted it and now want more of it. In their place of contemplation that has followed on from the meditation, the Fool can see what has been more and less serving in the past. The difference between meditation and contemplation is that meditation observes the facts, contemplation both observes the facts and observes how beneficial, or not, those facts have been. It’s in this place of contemplation where the Fool begins to see the gift of justice, time, and chance. Their intervention has caused the For Review Only 216 Traversing the Dark Night of the Soul Fool to become aware of having a choice, which includes a choice that appears to be better serving. It’s enough now that one can be grateful for the scales seeking balance, the sands falling, and the wheel turning. The Fool’s focus has shifted from the grief of what was lost, to gratitude for the experience of a new reality of peace and stillness. It turns
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