Michael McConville
It appears that the anonymity of the author of Meditations on the Tarot was destroyed. Other books can be identified containing material that could lead to a confident supposition regarding the identity of the author, perhaps most especially when reading Covenant of the Heart. This could have been established even without any other disclosure of the author's name. So I believe it is correct to say that one form of anonymity - keeping the author's name a secret - has not been preserved. I would like to suggest that there was no intention of keeping a "secret" in the first place.
This is what the UA says about secrets:
Secrets are only facts, procedures, practices, or whatever doctrines that one keeps to oneself for a personal motive, since they are able to be understood and put into practice by others to whom one does not want to reveal them. They are things hidden by human will. 4a
To seek to preserve someone’s anonymity, to keep their identity a secret when everyone who wishes to learn it can do so if they make a little effort is a futile activity.
I would like to suggest that there is another meaning to the author's anonymity that might serve to enrich our appreciation of the nature our relationship with the work.
We first meet the word "Anonymous" on the title page of the work. Then it is reinforced at the end of the Foreword, which ends the way a Letter ends – it is signed.
"Your friend greets you, dear Unknown Friend, from beyond the grave"
- no name is given where we might have expected one.
The author does three things here.
1. He makes a claim for himself - to be the friend of the reader.
2. He makes a claim about the reader - the reader is his "dear Unknown Friend".
3. He tells the reader from whence he speaks.
These are important features as we unfold a different understanding of the author's anonymity. They can be unduly overlooked.
It is the following words in the Foreword that usually attract attention when the anonymity of the author is being discussed:
He will know also that the author of these Letters has said more about himself in these Letters than he would have been able to in any other way. No matter what other source he might have, he will know the author better through the Letters themselves. (Foreword ix)
This has been interpreted as the expression of a wish on the part of the author for anonymity. If it is read that way then they express a wish on the author's part to keep his name a secret - hidden by his human will and by those who will share the undertaking with him – who yet know it.
I believe that there is a different interpretation to be made. The author does not imply anything concerning his own wishes in these lines. He is writing about what the reader can come to know. Their explicit concern is with the reader coming to know the author not just with the reader coming to know something about the author, e.g. his name. If the author did express a wish to keep his identity a secret I believe he must have done so elsewhere.
It is this concern that has a direct connection with the words that appear at the end of the Foreword. There the reader is addressed as one known by the author. The above passage from the body of the Foreword tells of the reader coming to know the author - who is his friend. By the reader coming to know him the friendship will become mutual. So the question of the name of the author would seem to be a distraction from his real concern.
The personal knowledge spoken of here humbly supports and reinforces another part of the Foreword where the reason for the numerous citations of ancient and modern authors is given.
They are evocations of the masters of the tradition, in order that they may be present with their impulses of aspiration and their light of thought in the current of meditative thought . . . (Foreword x)
The Letters seek to evoke, - from the Latin evocare, to call – the masters of the tradition, in order that they may be present. The act of reading the Letters is itself, all the more so surely, a calling forth from beyond the grave the one who has written them and addressed them to his dear Unknown Friend. He is present also, to be known in the current of meditative thought.
This, it seems to me, is the better interpretation of the words in the Foreword otherwise taken as expression of the author’s wish for anonymity.
What then is the meaning of the Anonymity of the author of these Letters if not with keeping his name a secret? Not about "not knowing him" either if the above remarks are accepted.
I believe some part of the answer is contained in the fourth Letter – The Emperor.
The shield bearing an eagle rests on the ground at his side. The Emperor does not hold it with his hand, as the Empress does. The shield is certainly there, but it belongs rather to the throne than to the person of the Emperor. This means to say that the purpose for which the Emperor is on sentry-duty is not his but that of the throne. The Emperor does not have a personal mission; he has renounced this in favour of the throne. Or, in esoteric terms, he has no name: he is anonymous, because the name – the mission – belongs to the throne. 79a
We think of the Unknown Author as one on sentry-duty and of his Letters as the fruit of one keeping watch. Neither he nor his Letters have any mission that he imposes on them – least of all a mission to preserve the name of their author. The Sentry stays on duty to the throne and in so doing confirms his anonymity. Nothing of the Sentry’s name matters here. We are in the "nocturnal" realm.
Although he is appointed to the day, he is anointed by the night and he owes his authority to the night, whose mysterious presence during the day – the blood – he guards. 103d
In the day someone may be known according to the light of the day but the name in which someone is anointed by the night is known only to himself and to the night that anoints him.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. Revelation ii.17
He is anonymous as he conceals and reveals his person at one and the same time according to the depth of meditation, according as the night is known. We withdraw ourselves into the darkness of which St. John of the Cross speaks "in secret" and in silence. As the Night is known those known by the Night are also known. They enter the stream of our meditations.
To keep a silence in these things is not to engage in a futile activity viz. to preserve information as though it was still a secret. To keep silence in the realm of Night is to affirm a friendship with the Unknown author and with him aspire to be on Sentry duty, serving, sustaining and supporting the Hermetic tradition as it guards the blood.
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