Visio Smaragdinaさんのイラストまとめ

‘The Arcana XV and XVI are those of FIRE, whilst Arcana XIV and XVII are those of WATER. CONTINUOUS TRANSFORMATION is the essential manifestation of the agent of growth, just as CREATIVE LIGHTNING is that of the magical agent.’

‘Meditations on the Tarot’, Valentin Tomberg, 1967

‘The Moon is the antithesis of the 17th arcanum The Star..the latter evokes..the evolution of life and consciousness, concerning their infinite DEVELOPMENT, the former evokes..the inversion of the evolutionary movement, i.e. to their ENVELOPMENT and retrograde movement.’

The central star of the 17th Arcanum. ‘I am ACTIVITY, the efficient cause who set all in motion; and I am CONTEMPLATION, the final cause, who draws towards himself all that is in movement. I am PRIMORDIAL ACTION; and I am ETERNAL WAITING- for all to arise where I am.’

@ejwatson @FutureCon I can see what he’s getting at but it all seems a bit reductive, for something that’s fundamentally experiential, deeply irrational, paradoxical and mysterious !

Pray bring us wine.
Lord, how we need thy sweet intoxication.

Art: Gustave Moreau, The Triumph of Bacchus, circa 1875-1876.

‘The Canaan Moloch who demanded the bloody sacrifice of the first born, mentioned in the Bible, is not a hierarchical entity-for good or evil- but rather an evil EGREGORE, i.e. a demon created artificially and collectively by human communities infatuated with the thrill of fear.’

‘Women of Eleusis’ by Jean Delville, 1931.
Eleusis is the site of the Ancient Greek mysteries of Demeter and Persephone.

‘It is initiation ‘per se’ which constitutes the Hermetic tradition across the ages, and not the transmission of initiation by way of rituals and formulae...Now it is he who KNOWS FROM FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE who represents the tradition’

ATALANTA FUGIENS, Michael Maier, 1618, ‘Following in the Footsteps of Nature’.

(Nature, Reason, Experience and Reading must be the Guide, Staff, Spectacles and Lamp to him that is employed in Alchemical Affairs.)

This image reminds me of myself!

MYSTES -the initiate into the Ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries- was directed by the Mystagogos. The highest initiates were called Epoptes. Here are surrealist artist Agostino Arrivabene’s dream-like representations of these esoteric rites. (Mystai Demetra epopteia; Mystai II)