The Church of Yahweh

I found this link while looking for study groups on the Meditations on the Tarot book. I've spent a few hours over the weekend looking over the material on the website, and it's the real deal. While I haven't seen much that you wouldn't find in the metaphysics section of Barnes and Noble or Borders, or that you would get from my favorite mystery school, the presentation is very accessible and well thought-out, with the required academic rigor.

I'm sure that anyone who follows this blog will find the site very interesting.

Book Review: The Occult Christ

Having read The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila and Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, I knew that there was a strong (if not well publicized) spiritual tradition with the Catholic Church. Meditations on the Tarot, which I've been examining in detail, is also firmly in that tradition, but none of these three books offers an explicit program of study and practice. The Occult Christ: The Hidden & Mystical Secrets of Christianity by Ted Andrews offers just such a program.

The words "occult" and "Christianity" aren't obviously compatible, especially in the minds of those Christians who prefer literal interpretations. To those of us in the know, on the other hand, "occult" simply means "hidden," and there are explicit references in the Gospels to knowledge that was shared with the Apostles but not the general public. Also, you can't have the rest of the Bible meant to be taken literally but not John 14:12, and it's no good saying "He didn't mean it that way, because it hasn't happened."

That brings me to an important point: the old saying that history is written by the winners. The Catholic Church was at one point more powerful than any king in Europe, and until the 1400's they had almost exclusive control over not only the Bible, but recorded history itself. The version of the Bible that we have now is more or less the version they wanted us to have. However, I don't think any censorship that may have happened was because they didn't want anyone to know; I think it was because they didn't want everyone to know, at least not right away. As a religion for the masses, it has to be lowest common denominator. Most people simply aren't ready for the program outlined in this book, and they need to have things be black-and-white. It can't be helped.

But that doesn't apply to us recovering materialists, and if you happen to come from a Catholic background, you'll be able to relate to the program given in the book, and that means that it would be a good choice for you.

Larry's Notes - Meditations on the Tarot: The Chariot

In this installment of my notes on Meditations on the Tarot, I will be talking about the Chariot. According to the book, this card represents the stage after overcoming the temptations against the three virtues, poverty, obedience and chastity. This is an achievement, but it presents the next temptation: getting an inflated ego and thinking you've reached the top of the mountain when you're actually just at a plateau. The antidote given for this temptation is the old Latin saying: ora et labora or "pray and work." This is effective because of the implicit recognition that there is something higher, and because of the effort expended to continue the journey.

Now this isn't to say that if you have reached that point, that you should take time out to feel the triumph and give yourself some credit for what you've done. At this point, you're living what you've learned and it's become a part of you. That's a good thing. But let's bring in a traditional Tarot interpretation of the Chariot, which is hard control. Control with a lot of effort of will on your part. What comes further down the line is soft control, without even having to think about it (Strength). And if we continue to work and pray, we'll get there.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The Lover

This installment of articles on Meditations on the Tarot is about The Lover(s). First, I'd like to talk about the two most common versions of the picture on the card. The oldest is on the Marseilles decks, and depicts a young man standing between an older woman on the left, and a younger woman on the right. There's a Cupid overhead, pointing an arrow at the young man. The newer version is on the Rider-Waite-based decks, and shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, with an angel watching over them, and the infamous serpent wrapped harmlessly around a fruit tree. The first represents a choice; the second, the results of one of the options (see the Devil for the other).

The choice is one we all must make. The first option is materialism: the belief that the physical world as we know it is all (or the most important thing) there is. The result of this option is the Devil card (the Waite version): Adam and Eve chained to a stone block with the Devil holding them captive. But if you have a copy of the card handy, note that the chains around their necks aren't really strong enough to hold them; Adam and Eve stay there partially because they want to. The point is that this option isn't permanent; we'll all eventually wake up and take the chains off. By the way, some of the links in the chains include materialism (of course), a belief in scarcity, and self-righteousness.

The second option is what I like to call recovery from materialism. When we take the chains off, we start to see the physical world differently and explore what's beyond and inside of it, and what's beyond and inside of ourselves. We look into quantum physics and find out that matter isn't really as solid as it seems, and that empty space isn't really empty. We experience coincidences and synchronicities that show us an underlying unity that we're all a part of. We realize that we are more and can do more than we ever imagined. And this new journey becomes the most important thing in our lives.

That leads me to what the book has to say about the Lovers card. The book also says the card is about choice, but a choice between vice and virtue, the virtue in this case being chastity. Since this series is shaping up to be a postmodern restatement of the principles given in the book, I will reinterpret chastity in this context as meaning purity of mind and devotion to the quest. It doesn't mean necessarily that we give up drinking and smoking and join a monastery. It just means that our lives are devoted to recovery.

This choice is not a one-time thing, and the book mentions temptation, specifically the temptations of Christ and the Garden of Eden story. We also have our temptations: the temptation to think we already know it all; the temptation to get sidetracked by day-to-day issues and lose our connection to the Infinite Light; and the temptation to satisfy the goals of what we think is our personality at the expense of growing into our real selves.

Well, that's it for now. Until next time, just remember that just like Adam and Eve on the Rider-Waite Devil card, we can always take the chains off our necks.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The Pope

In this installment of my notes about Meditations on the Tarot, I'll be talking about the Pope, more commonly known as the Hierophant. The key concept given by the book for this card is benediction, or blessing, which takes place in response to prayer on our part. Both are necessary because of what I wrote in the last posting about free will. Just to recap, the theory given in the book is that God influences the world in response to our willingness for him to do so, because only in that way can free will be preserved.

There are a couple of prerequisites, according to the book, to aligning our will with the Divine will so that Divine Magic can take place. The first is closing what the book calls the "five wounds," which correspond to the five wounds suffered by Our Lord on the cross. These five wounds are wounds in our soul, the desires "for personal greatness, to take, to keep, to advance, and to hold on at the expense of others." The book talks about acquiring five wounds corresponding to giving up those desires. My contention is that the desires themselves are wounds and need to be closed. But that's just a difference in terminology as I agree with the basic concept.

So how do we close the five wounds? The answer given in the book is "the practice of the three traditional vows, namely obedience, poverty and chastity." (Didn't expect to see that in a book about Tarot, did you?) Obedience in this context means what you think it would. Poverty and chastity require more explanation. Poverty is explained in the book as "the practice of inner emptiness." I prefer to think of it as "emptying your cup" as in the story of the man who went to see a sage, but was so full of his own opinions that he didn't have room for the knowledge he was seeking. Chastity is explained as living "without covetousness and without indifference." It sounds like a tall order, but it's really about purity of will; about the quest you're on being more important than anything else.

The best thing about the three vows is that you don't need to join a monastery to practice them. You can (and should) lead what seems to others to be a normal life. Stay tuned for the next installment about the Lover (not what you think).

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The Emperor

Today I'll be covering the Emperor card and some of what Meditations has to say about it. The Emperor is naturally associated with authority, and that's the first thing the book talks about. The key concept given in the book is that authority is based on the consent of those governed. The Emperor never actually forces anyone to do anything himself, but the people who work for him do. This implies that free will is essential to authority, that without free will, there can only be power, of the type that you might have over your car. You press the gas pedal and it has to go faster if it can. In fact, according to the book, free will is so important that God sent his Son down here and put Him at our disposal, to do with him as we will, up to and including suffering physical death at our hands.

Now we as recovering materialists don't have the concept as God as being "the Old Man in the Sky," or in other words a more powerful version of ourselves as we know ourselves. Those who do have this concepts are really materialists in denial. So we don't necessarily need the Crucifixion story to be literal truth. The important thing is that we are in general left to our own devices here, and divine intervention isn't given to us unless we ask for it, or at least be open to receiving it. Being open to divine intervention is just another way of saying that our will is aligned to the divine will, which as you may remember from my last post is the essence of divine magic.

That brings me to the fourth step in the sequence: after mysticism (experience of essential unity), gnosis (setting up a model of that unity with ourselves) and divine magic (aligning our will with that of unity) comes what the book calls "Hermetic philosophy," or integrating the experience of the first three steps within ourselves. The book says that this kind of integration also can and should be done with the Gospels, by reading them as if you're living inside of them as an observer.

I'll go even farther than that and say that the technique can also be used with profit on certain fantasy novels. These novels have either explicit or implied references to mythology, qabalah and alchemy. The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber) would be a good place to start, as would On a Pale Horse (Incarnations of Immortality, Bk. 1). Try American Gods: A Novel if you'd like to get in touch with your shadow side. The point is that at some point we have to start living what we've learned, and these books provide examples (albeit fictional) of how to do that.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The Empress

If you've been following along with this series, you will remember that we stepped out of conventional belief systems, saw the Big Picture, and got a copy for ourselves. So what's the next step, according to Meditations on the Tarot? Doing something with what we've experienced so far by what the book calls "divine magic", more commonly referred to as "miracles."

Now A Course in Miracles says that miracles are natural, and that if we don't experience them on a regular basis, something is wrong. The Course has a slightly more expansive definition of miracle than the rest of us; a sudden change in how a situation is seen is just as much of a miracle as curing disease. So what's wrong if you don't see any miracles? As Maryanne Williamson puts it in Everyday Grace, "thoughts of judgement block the light." This is really saying the same thing as Meditations, which says that divine magic requires the union of divine will and human will. More on that later.

Meditations distinguishes divine magic, which has its source in the Divine, from personal magic, which uses the magician's own power, or sorcery, which uses elemental or unconscious sources. Naturally divine magic is superior. Just so it's clear exactly what is meant by divine magic, the book gives an example (Acts 9:32-34):

Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints that lived at Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years and was paralyzed. And Peter said to him: Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed. And immediately he rose.

The book goes on to say that the power behind the cure came from the Divine Will, but was enabled to act through the will of Peter. In other words, God works through us to the extent that we let Him. More on this next time.

So what does this mean for us? The New Testament is also meant in my opinion to serve as an example. Meditations puts divine magic forth as just another part of the program. We're supposed to be doing this too, at least on the small scale of enabling changes in how situations are perceived. But that's only the beginning.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot - The High Priestess

Next in the series of Tarot meditations is the High Priestess. The High Priestess is number two in the series, and a key concept associated with the number two in the book is reflection. In the discussion of the Magician, the essential unity of all things was given as a key concept, and it was implied that the experience was only the first step. The next step is to hold a mirror up to the first. The mirror is you, and the result is called gnosis in the book. This also allows for the experience of love, which inherently requires two parties.

Christ-consciousness allows for this experience of love, which is why the book says it is superior to the Nirvana experience. The book quotes Jesus as saying "All those who came before me are as robbers and thieves," and this is because, according to the book, the prior esoteric philosophies all aimed at the experience of unity, which did not allow for love because there was only the one thing. And that's the problem with non-duality.

On the other hand, if we retain our individuality, we will be able to make this experience part of our daily lives, which allows us to progress further along the path. Christ-consciousness is what I think is meant when Jesus said: "If a man believes in me, then the things that I have done, he will also do, and greater things than these will he do." I think it's better translated as: "If a man believes with me," meaning that he shares the same level of consciousness, but that's for the next installment in the series.

Book Review: Paths of Wisdom

The Mystical Qabalah is the canonical textbook for anyone on the Hermetic Path. Unfortunately, the book isn't very accessible to newbies. To be honest, Paths of Light: A Guide to the Magical Cabala by John Michael Greer, isn't much more accessible, but it's more modern, and could make a nice stepping stone after reading something like The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante's Guide to What You Do and Do Not Need to Know to Become a Qabalist.

As you may expect, the book focuses on the Tree of Life. (If all you know about the Tree of Life is that it was in the Garden of Eden, read The Chicken Qabalah first.) One difference in the treatment of the Tree of Life is the use of the Hebrew letters that spell the name of God associated with each sphere. Each letter is explained in terms of the associated Tarot card, but this isn't a Tarot book, so the associations aren't made explicit. There's also a nice explanation of the Veil of Paroketh, which separates our mundane life from the higher levels of the Tree. The key concept is that the Veil is at least partially composed of our belief systems.

The treatment of the Tree is quite thorough, including even the four color scales and magical images. An instructive exercise for the artistically inclined would be to paint or draw the magical images. The Yeziratic Texts (an obscure description for each of the spheres and paths) are covered, and these can be hard to make sense of, but the book provides good explanations. The Golden Dawn models of the Garden of Eden before and after the fall are also included and explained.

So what's the bottom line? I recommend this book for serious Hermeticists who have read at least one (preferably three or more) books on the subject already. But you still need The Mystical Qabalah.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot: The Fool

Continuing my series about the chapters of Meditations on the Tarot, tonight I want to talk about the Fool. Meditations has the Fool as next-to-last in the series, so why is he the second installment in my series? Because he should have been first, but I wasn't really sure about it until I finished reading the book for the second time. And it's not just because the Fool is numbered zero.

To really understand why the Fool should be first, let's look at two literary figures Meditations refers to in its discussion of the fool: Don Quixote and Dr. Faust. I started reading Don Quixote again a couple of months ago, and stopped about halfway through because it was like watching the Detroit Lions play football. Now if Don Quixote's problem is self-deception, Dr. Faust suffered from deception at the hands of the demon he summoned, which really amounts to the same thing.

I apologize in advance because this will sound trite, but these two literary figures are important because they are metaphors for the human condition. We deceive ourselves and have been deceived by others, and deceive them in turn. The road to recovery involves recognizing the deception and stopping it. This brings me to a third literary figure discussed in this chapter of the Meditations: Arjuna from the Bhagavad-Gita. For those of you who don't know the story, it's set in ancient India on a battleground. Arjuna is about to lead his army into battle, but is somewhat reluctant. Krishna, a god who for some reason is acting as Arjuna's chariot driver, explains to Arjuna why he must fight, along with a bunch of other things. My take on the story is this: Arjuna represents the ego, Krishna the higher self, and the assembled soldiers are the components of Arjuna's belief systems. All of the belief system must be slain for Arjuna to be left with his higher self.

So how does this all relate to the Fool? Remember what I said above about deception, and in the prior paragraph about destroying our belief systems. The word "our" is key, because these belief systems are shared. Stepping outside of them will make us appear to be fools to those not on the journey. And that's exactly why being willing to do so must be the first step.

Larry's Notes: Meditations on the Tarot: The Magician

I started reading Meditations on the Tarot again recently, and realized that it was a course of study in itself. As such, it's a perfect candidate for a new series of posts called "Larry's Notes." It's not a summary like Cliffs Notes, but instead I'll talk about key points in books that are helpful to us as recovering materialists.

This book uses for discussion the twenty-two cards of the major arcana from the Marseilles Tarot deck. So first, let's talk about the word "arcana" and what it means. The dictionary lists it as the plural of "arcanum," which means "secret." This book, on the other hand, says that these arcana aren't secrets; they're tools. They are things you need to know to progress along the path. By the way, the path outlined in this book is called "Christian Hermeticism," which is, in fact, the hermetic path that some of us are on, but with Christian (and specifically Catholic) emphasis.

The first point from the chapter that I want to talk about is illustrated by this quote:

Now Hermeticism, the living Hermetic tradition, guards the communal soul of all true culture. I must add: Hermeticists listen to-- and now and then hear--the beating of the heart of the spiritual life of humanity. They cannot do otherwise than live as guardians of the life and communal soul of religion, science and art.

This quote calls to mind the Vestal Virgins, whose job it was to keep the flame in the temple lit at all times. They devoted their lives to the maintenance of the temple and the flame, and their function today has been taken over metaphorically by various writers and occultists. And, what's best of all, because you're sitting there reading this, you're also helping to keep the flame burning.

The next point is that some concept of the essential unity of all things is necessary to even take the first step on the path. The good news is that just holding this concept on an intellectual level is sufficient for starters. After all, if you had continual experience of essential unity, you wouldn't be starting on the path; you'd be close to the end. The essential unity is presented in this chapter in the form of a section of the Emerald Tablet: "That which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing." Again, this is a good starting point, and if you're especially materialistic, you can interpret the "One Thing" as referring to the zero-point energy field, which is from where matter is thought to arise. There's also the "One Mind," but that's a topic for the next post in the series.

The final point is the attitude toward the work:

Learn at first concentration without effort; transform work into play; make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light!

The attitude should be one of adventure, wonder and discovery; if it's boring, you're doing it wrong. The example of a child at play is given in the text. Children at play can be very intense, but it's still not work to them. There's a lot we can learn from that.

Well, that's it for this installment. Next I'll be talking about the High Priestess. Stay tuned.

Next Steps on the Hermetic Path

So you've read a couple of books and want to know what to do next. The next thing is detailed study of the four major fields of hermetism: qabalah, astrology, tarot and alchemy. Studying these four fields together will help your progress as the four are interdependent. You'll see that for yourself as you progress. Ritual magic is optional at this stage, and ceremonial magic is right out.

If you're reading Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation: A Complete Course and like the program given, you should follow it, at least for now. The important thing is to not hurry; there's a lot of information, and it takes time for it to sink in.

For the rest of you, the first book I recommend you read at this point is Kabbalistic Handbook for the Practicing Magician. The book gives very good basic information about Qabalah, but more importantly, it will give you an effective study method. And study you will, if you choose this path. This book recommends studying A Garden of Pomegranates: Skrying on the Tree of Life and The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism as qabalah books to read first, and I agree with this recommendation.

A good place to start with tarot is Tarot Awareness -- Exploring the Spiritual Path, or Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners if you can't get a copy of Tarot Awareness. For astrology, start with Astrology for Yourself: How to Understand And Interpret Your Own Birth Chart or Astrology for the Light Side of the Brain. Finally, for alchemy, start with The Complete Idiot's Guide to Alchemy.

At this point you may also want to consider group work. There are many choices here, but I recommend B.O.T.A.

Just so you know what you've gotten yourself into, I was looking at a tarot book (I forget which one) and saw a statement comparing learning tarot to learning chess. There's only a few basic concepts, but years are needed for mastery. The other fields of hermetism have the same characteristic. But at least you'll have something to do for a while.

Getting Started

It's been a while since I talked about how to get started on the road to recovery from materialism, so an updated roadmap is probably in order. The first important thing is that you have to start where you are. That sounds trivial, but hear me out. There may be a lot of learning ahead on whatever path you choose, especially if it's one of the hermetic paths, but there is also a lot of unlearning that needs to be done.

So, let's say you come from a Roman Catholic background as I did. You could decide to immerse yourself in Zen Buddhism. It may work for you, and you could make progress, but your background doesn't go away. It's still there, and you'll have to come to terms with it, sooner or later. On the other hand, if you start with the Hermetic path, you'll be in somewhat familiar territory. You'll run across correspondences to things you already know. You'll hit the ground running, as it were.

That said, a good place to start is the "New Age"/metaphysical section of your local bookstore. Pick any book that looks interesting and start reading. If any veterans are reading this, don't worry. I haven't forgotten Sturgeon's Law; it's just that some things have to be learned through experience, and this is one of them. The type of person who believes everything they read will be led astray regardless.

Once you've looked through a few books, you should have an idea of what specifically interests you, and the general direction in which you want to proceed. If you want to study astrology, go for it. The same applies with Tarot and Wicca, though I draw the line at numerology (just kidding). Even the channeled books by Ramtha or Kryon (or the Urantia Book if you're desperate) will be helpful. The point I'm trying to make is that you're going to have to wade through a lot of muck to find the good stuff that's under it, so you may as well start now.

Now you're ready to choose one of the two paths. There's no wrong answer to this question. The relevant quote is: "In the end we all become mystics." The mystic path aims at experience of unity with God and the universe. The hermetic path has the same eventual aim, but uses symbolism to balance out the different components of the personality. If you like symbolism, ritual, nice pictures and the like, choose the hermetic path. Otherwise, the mystic.

Now for reading material. If you're on the mystic path, the choice is relatively simple: Path of Light: Stepping into Peace with "A Course in Miracles" or The Disappearance of the Universe: Straight Talk About Illusions, Past Lives, Religion, Sex, Politics, and the Miracles of Forgiveness or anything by Marianne Williamson, followed by A Course in Miracles.

If you're on the hermetic path, The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante's Guide to What You Do and Do Not Need to Know to Become a Qabalist or Tarot Awareness: Exploring the Spiritual Path would be a good start, or Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation: A Complete Course if you're especially adventurous.

That should be enough to get any of you newbies started. Later, I'll talk about the next step.

Book Review: Ceremonial Magic

In this posting, I will be discussing a book about ceremonial magic, specifically the calling forth of spirit beings. I don't do this, and I don't think you should either. There is plenty of less dangerous work to do.

So why am I reviewing a book about it? First, some of you reading this may decide to try it anyway, without the support and safeguards offered by a suitable mystery school. The results of a mistake from this type of operation can be annoying at best, and life-threatening at worst. If anyone is really intent on trying it despite the dangers, Ceremonial Magic & the Power of Evocation by Joseph C. LIsiewski, Ph.D., will at least give them the tools they need. Another reason is the "subjective synthesis" that Dr. Lisiewski mentions in all of his books. Also, the graphic descriptions of what he calls the "slingshot effect" may just convince some of the readers that ceremonial magic is not for the faint of heart, and shouldn't be tried without proper training and preparation, and probably not even then.

There is one thing to be said for this approach, however. Lon Milo Duquette indicated in his Chicken Qabalah that these spirits are actually parts of our minds, and if we don't learn to control them, they will ruin our lives anyway. That is a good point: we don't really know how big our minds are, therefore we can't be sure that these spirits have an independent existence as opposed to being parts of us. And if they are parts of us, learning to control them is of paramount importance. But the method given in Dr. Lisiewski's book seems to me like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. The proper use of Tarot will serve the same purpose, and without any slingshot effects.

Book Review: Kabbalistic Handbook

For anyone who is on the hermetic path, Kabbalistic Handbook for the Practicing Magician by Joseph C. Lisiewski, Ph.D., is recommended reading, but not for the reason you may think. The book, although not for beginners (except maybe beginners who are dedicated to the point of obsession), is very sound technically. It has detailed information about qabalah, tarot, and planetary hours, with references to books containing much more. The reading list at the back of the book is a valuable resource in itself, and could be used with profit as the reading list of a college degree in hermeticism.

That brings me to the reason I recommend this book: it teaches effective study habits. The method of study outlined in the book can be used for any topic. I tried it myself on the Celtic Cross spread. Here's how it works. You pick a primary source and two other sources by different authors. Then you read through the primary source, comparing what's there to what the other authors have to say about the subject. Take notes and write down any questions you may have. You can go back later and answer those questions based on what you've learned since then. By the time you're done, you'll have a much deeper understanding of the topic than you would if you only read the primary source.

I'm trying this method with astrology and tarot. I'll post later with my findings.

What is a Mystery School?

In an earlier post, I said that a mystery school was a support group for recovering materialists. While true, that description is not precise enough. Mystery schools are strictly for the hermetic path of recovery, that path that emphasizes balancing the different components of the personality using symbol systems with an eventual goal of realization of Unity Consciousness. There are support groups for people on the mystic path, but they go by different names: churches, ashrams and the like.

That said, there are many mystery schools, but this is my favorite. So what can you expect from a mystery school? A good mystery school will provide the following:

1. lessons explaining the group's doctrine


2. a knowledge base or reading list


3. the opportunity for group work

Do you need a mystery school? Strictly speaking, no. You can learn everything you need to on your own with a suitable reading list and sufficient dedication. Also, mystery school or not, there's a lot of work that you'll have to do by yourself. However, a mystery school is helpful in that they can point you in the right direction, and provide support from the other members. So here's how to decide: if you know, or can determine, which books are worth reading, and have enough time and energy to devote yourself to the study of those books and the exercises therein, you don't need a mystery school. Otherwise, give it a try, at least for a little while.

Book Review: Kabbalistic Cycles

Joseph C. Lisiewski, Ph.D. has three books that together make a valuable addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in the hermetic path. In this post I will talk about Kabbalistic Cycles & the Mastery of Life. This book describes the planetary hours and how to use them in your daily life. I should warn you up front that this book is not only not for beginners, but that it also needs to be studied in depth to be of any practical use.

The basic premise of the book is that there are cycles that affect everything that goes on. The cycles used in the book are daily and hourly, and correspond to the seven "planets" as known to the ancients: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. Each planet is given a day, and the 24 hours in each day are divided among the planets. The influence of each planet favors certain endeavors, and makes others more difficult. Some of the combinations of the planets governing each hour and day have attributions to the Major Arcana cards of the Tarot, and these attributions are more powerful than the hourly and daily influences. The idea is that if you schedule your activities to an appropriate day and hour, your chances for success are greatly improved.

Does it work? I honestly don't know yet. I'm still learning the attributions, but I have noticed some positive correlation. If you want to try it, there's a program that will help you calculate the hours. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the Tarot attributions, which, according to the book, are the most important factor. I'll post again about this topic when I have more data.

Book Review: Deceptions and Myths of the Bible

Tonight I want to talk about Deceptions and Myths of the Bible by Lloyd M. Graham. I bought this book about 8 years ago, when I was still in my atheist phase. The title appeared to me, but I put the book away after reading a few pages and concluding that the author was a total crackpot. I'm not sure why I kept the book around all these years, but I picked it up again recently and was surprised to discover that the author was actually very knowledgeable about hermeticism. You wouldn't know this from the title, but the major theme of the book is the Bible as an allegorical creation story: not just the first part of Genesis, but most of the Old Testament, and major portions of the New Testament.

According to this book, Genesis is about involution, the descent of spirit into matter, and Exodus is about evolution, the development of the resulting combination. Involution was done by God; evolution is our responsibility, but we have help. If Graham harps on the deception and politics involved in writing the Bible, it's just because continuing to interpret the document literally gets in the way of our evolution.

This is all perfectly compatible with the model of religion given in Cloud upon the Sanctuary. At some point we're supposed to question things. We're supposed to ask why there are two conflicting stories of Noah's Ark. We're supposed to ask why the four Gospels don't agree about what happened on the first Easter Sunday. We're supposed to ask why it was so important to Yahweh that the Hebrews took no prisoners in their battles to claim the Promised Land. When we ask the questions, we're ready for the next level of interpretation. This book can help with understanding the next level.

Learning Tarot

Thanks to a couple of years with B.O.T.A., I'm familiar with the Major Arcana cards of the Tarot, but recently I decided to learn more about the rest of the deck in preparation for doing Tarot readings. I've read a few books, and I'm currently reading Learning Tarot by Joan Bunning, which has an associated website.

One thing I've noticed is that if you look in 5 different books for a description of the same card, you will get at least 4 different descriptions. Even the different decks have vastly different artwork for each card. It seems that Tarot is like a book that is written once for each deck that gets produced, and once again for each author that interprets it. What's even worse is that every author who writes about Tarot has a slightly different way of reading the Celtic Cross spread. This can be very confusing, so I've decided to stick with one deck (the Rider-Waite, pictured above), and one system of readings, which I haven't decided on yet.

My approach to the readings will be: "What's on your mind?" The consensus theory is that the order of the cards is changed during mixing or shuffling to reflect the state of mind of the person for whom the reading is being done. Of course, the cards can't be seen, so this theory only works if the subconscious mind somehow has access to the order of the cards. I'm O.K. with that. Everything I've read, and the practice readings I've done, indicate that it works, and that's good enough for me.

Book Review: Cloud upon the Sanctuary

Did you ever have the feeling that someone "up there" was looking out for you? Or in the alternative, do you agree with the Matrix guys who think we're being farmed like sheep? And is there really any difference? Either way, we're being monitored by beings much smarter (or more powerful) than us for reasons we can't determine. But enough paranoia. Let's look at the positive side of this idea.

Cloud upon the Sanctuary by Karl von Eckartshausen is a classic work of hermeticism based on the idea that there is a body of knowledge being held in escrow for us, to be released when we're ready for it. In the meantime, symbols pointing to that knowledge are spread throughout the world's cultures and religions.

When will we be ready? Those of us who realize that there's more to the world than can be measured by our scientific instruments, and that there's more to religion than rules and rituals, have already started the journey. Contact with people who have more information, either directly or through books, is inevitable at that point.

Will this book help you get ready? Probably not, at least not by itself. But it does point to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and sometimes knowing the pot is there can be helpful.