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of the Law are the answer to it.
But water is the element of Illusion; one may regard this symbol n evil legacy from
the old Aeon; to use an anatomical analogy, it spiritual vermiform appendix.
It was the water, and the Dwellers of the Water that slew Osiris; it is the crocodiles
that threaten Hoor-Pa-Kraat.
This card is beautiful in a strange, immemorial, moribund manner. It is the card of
the Dying God; its importance in the present pack is merely that of the Cenotaph. It
says: "If ever things get bad like that again, in the new Dark Ages which appear to
threaten, this is the way to put things right." But if things have to be put right, it
shows that they are very wrong. It should be the chieftest aim of the wise to rid
mankind of the insolence of self-sacrifice, of the calamity of chastity; faith must be
slain by certainty, and chastity by ecstasy.
In the Book of the Law it is written: "Pity not the fallen! I never knew them. I am not
for them. I console not: I hate the consoled and the consoler."
Redemption is a bad word; it implies a debt. For every star possesses boundless
wealth; the only proper way to deal with the ignorant is to bring them to the
knowledge of their starry heritage. To do this, it is necessary to behave as must be
done in order to get on good terms with animals and children: to treat them with
absolute respect; even; in a certain sense, with worship.
* * *
Note on the Precession of the Aeons. "The Hanged Man" is an invention of the Adepts
of the I.N.R.I.-J.A.O. formula; in the Aeon previous to the Osirian, that of Isis
(Water), he is "The Drowned Man". The two uprights of the gallows shewn in the
Mediaeval packs were, in the parthenogenetic system of explaining and ruling
Nature, the bottom of the Sea and the keel of the Ark. In this Aeon all birth was
considered an emanation, without male intervention, of the Mother or Star-Goddess,
Nuit; all death a return to Her. This explains the original attribution of the Atu to
Water, and the sound M the return to Eternal Silence, as in the word AUM. This card
is therefore specially sacred to the Mystic) and the attitude of the figure is a ritual
posture in the Practice called "The Sleep of Shiloam".
* * *
The Alchemical import of this card is so alien to all dogmatic implications that it has
seemed better to deal quite separately with it. Its technical qualities are independent
of all doctrines soever; here is a matter of strictly scientific bearings. The student will
be prudent to read in connexion with these remarks Chapter XII of Magick.
The Atu represents the sacrifice of "a male child of perfect innocence and high
intelligence"-these words were chosen with the utmost care. The meaning of his
attitude has already been described, and of the fact that he is hanged from an Ankh,
an equivalent of the Rosy Cross; in some early cards the gallows is a Pylon, or the
branch of a Tree, by shape suggesting the letter Daleth, Venus, Love.
His background is an unbounded grill of small squares; these are the Elemental
Tablets which exhibit the names and sigilla of all the energies of Nature. Through his
Work a Child is begotten, as shewn by the Serpent stirring in the Darkness of the
Abyss below him.
Yet the card in itself is essentially a glyph of Water; Mem is one of the three great
Mother Letters, and its value is 40, the might of Tetragrammaton fully developed by
Malkuth, the symbol of the Universe under the Demiourgos. Moreover, Water is
peculiarly the Mother Letter, for both Shin and Aleph (the other two) represent
masculine ideas; and, in Nature, Homo Sapiens is a marine mammal, and our intra-
uterine existence is passed in the Amniotic Fluid. The legend of Noah, the Ark and
the Flood, is no more than a hieratic presentation of the facts of life. It is then to
Water that the Adepts have always looked for the continuation (in some sense or
other) and to the prolongation and perhaps renovation of life.
The legend of the Gospels, dealing with the Greater Mysteries of the Lance and the
Cup (those of the god Iacchus Iao) as superior to the Lesser Mysteries (those of the
God Ion=Noah, and the N-gods in general) in which the Sword slays the god that his
head may be offered on a Plate, or Disk, says: And a soldier with a spear pierced his
side; and thereforth there came out blood and water. This Wine, collected by the
Beloved Disciple and the Virgin-Mother, waiting beneath the Cross or Tree for that
purpose, in a Cup or Chalice; this is the Holy Grail or Sangreal (Sangraal) of
Monsalvat, the Mountain of Salvation. [Grail (gréal) actually means a dish: O.F.
graal, greal, grasal, probably corrupted from late Latin gradale, itself a corrupt form
of crater, a bowl.] This Sacrament is exalted in the Zenith in Cancer; see Atu VII.
It is most necessary for the Student to go round and round this Wheel of symbolism
until the figures melt imperceptibly the one into the other in an intoxicating dance of
ecstasy; not until he has attained that is he able to partake of the Sacrament, and
accomplish for him- self-and for all men!-the Great Work.
But let him also remember the practical secret cloistered in all these wind-swept
corridors of music, the actual preparation of the Stone of the Wise, the Medicine of
Metals, and the Elixir of Life!
XIII. DEATH
This card is attributed to the letter Nun, which means a fish; the symbol of life
beneath the waters; life travelling through the waters. It refers to the Zodiacal sign
of Scorpio, which is ruled by Mars, the planet of fiery energy in its lowest form,
which is therefore necessary to provide the impulse. In alchemy, this card explains
the idea of putrefaction, the technical name given by its adepts to the series of
chemical changes which develops the final form of life from the original latent seed in
the Orphic egg.
This sign is one of the two most powerful in the Zodiac, but it has not the simplicity
and intensity of Leo. It is formally divided into three parts; the lowest is symbolized
by the Scorpion, which was supposed by early observers of Nature to commit suicide
when finding itself ringed with fire, or otherwise in a desperate situation. This
represents putrefaction in its lowest form. The strain of environment has become
intolerable, and the attacked element willingly subjects itself to change; thus,
potassium thrown upon water becomes ignited, and accepts the embrace of the
hydroxyl radicle.
The middle interpretation of this sign is given by the serpent, who is, moreover, the
main theme of the sign. [The Qabalists embodied in the Book of Genesis, Caps I and
II, this doctrine of regeneration. NChSh, the Serpent in Eden, has the value 358: 50
also MShICh, Messiah. He is, accordingly, in the secret doctrine, the Redeemer. The
thesis may be developed at great length. Later in the Legend, the doctrine reappears
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