Excerpt from Meditation on the
Sixth Major Arcanum of the Tarot

THE LOVER
_____________

L'AMOUREUX

She seizes him and kisses him,

And with impudent face she says to him:

I had to offer sacrifices,

And today I have paid my vows.

So now I have come out to meet you,

To seek you eagerly, and I have found you.

(Proverbs vii, 13-15)

I, Wisdom, dwell in prudence,

And I possess knowledge and discretion...

I love those who love me,

And those who seek me find me.

(Proverbs viii, 12,17)

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

As a ring upon your arm;

For love is strong as death...

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

A flame of the Eternal.

(Song of Songs viii, 6-7)

Dear Unknown Friend,

Here the whole composition of the sixth Card is translated from the visual language of the Tarot into that of the poetry of Solomon. For there a dark-haired woman with an impudent face clad in a red robe seizes the shoulder of the young man whilst another, with fair hair and dressed in a blue mantle, makes appeal to his heart with a chaste gesture of her left hand. At the same time, above, a winged infant archer, standing out against a white sphere emitting red, yellow and blue flames, is about to let fly an arrow directed at the other shoulder of the young man. Does one not hear, in contemplating the sixth Card of the Tarot, a voice which says: "I have found you", and another which says: "Those who seek me find me"? Does one not recognise the voice of sensuality and the voice of the heart, and likewise the flashes of fire from above of which king Solomon speaks?

The central theme of the sixth Arcanum is therefore that of the practice of the vow of chastity, just as the fifth Arcanum had poverty as its theme and the fourth obedience. The sixth Arcanum is at the same time the summary of the two preceding Arcana — chastity being the fruit of obedience and poverty. It summarises the three vows or methods of spiritual discipline in contrasting them with the three trials or temptations opposed to these vows. The choice before which the young man of the sixth Arcanum finds himself placed is of greater significance that that between vice and virtue. It is a matter here of choice between on the one hand the way of obedience, poverty and chastity and on the other hand the way of power, richness and debauchery. The practical teaching of the Arcanum "The Lover" is to do with the three vows and the three corresponding temptations. For this is the practical doctrine of the hexagram or sexternary.

The three vows are, in essence, memories of paradise, where man was united with God (obedience), where he possessed everything at once (poverty), and where his companion was at one and the same time his wife, his friend, his sister and his mother (chastity). For the real presence of God necessarily entails the action of prostrating oneself in the face of Him "who is more me than I myself am" and here lies the root and source of the vow of obedience; the vision of the forces, substances and essences of the world in the guise of the "garden of divine symbols" (the garden of Eden) signifies the possession of everything without choosing, without laying hold of, or without appropriating any particular thing isolated from the whole — and here lies the root and source of the vow of poverty; lastly, total communion between two, between one and another, which comprises the entire range of all possible relationships of spirit, soul and body between two polarised beings necessarily constitutes the absolute wholeness of spiritual, psychic and physical being, in love — and here lies the root and source of the vow of chastity.

One is chaste only when one loves with the totality of one's being. Chastity is not wholeness of being in indifference, but rather in the love which is "strong as death and whose flashes are flashes of fire, the flame of the Eternal". It is living unity. It is three-spirit, soul and body-which are one, and the other three-spirit, soul and body-which are one; and three and three make six, and six is two, and two is one.

This is the formula of chastity in love. It is the formula of Adam-Eve. And it is this which is the principle of chastity, the living memory of paradise.

And the celibacy of monks and nuns? How does the formula of chastity "Adam-Eve" apply here?

Love is strong as death, i.e. death does not destroy it. Death can neither let one forget nor let one cease to hope. Those of us-we human souls of today-who beat within ourselves the flame of the memory of Eden cannot forget it, nor can we cease to hope for it. And if human souls come into the world with the imprint of this memory, and also with the impression of knowing that the meeting with the other will not take place for them in this life here below, they will then live this life as if widowed, in so far as they remember, and as if engaged, in so far as they hope. Now, all true monks are widowers and fiancés, and all true nuns are widows and fiancées, in the depths of their hearts. The true celibate bears witness to the eternity of love, just as the miracle of true marriage bears witness to its reality.

Yes, dear Unknown Friend, life is profound and its profundity is like an abyss of fathomless depth. Nietzsche felt this and knew how to express it in his "Song of the Night" (Nachtlied from Thus Spake Zarathustra, part iii, ch. 15):

Thus, it is the same arrow — "the arrow of fire, of the flame of the Eternal" — which brings about true celibacy as well as true marriage. The heart of the monk is pierced — and this is why he is a monk — just as is the heart of the fiancé on the eve of the wedding. Where is more truth or more beauty to be found? Who can say?

And charity, the love of one's neighbour ... what is its relationship with the love whose prototype is given by the formula "Adam-Eve"?

We are surrounded by innumerable living and conscious beings-visible and invisible. But rather than knowing that they really exist and that they are as much alive as we ourselves, it nevertheless appears to us that they have a less real existence and that they are less livingthan we ourselves. For us it is WE who experience the full measure of the intensity of reality, whilst other beings seem, in comparison with ourselves, to be less real; their existence seems to be more of the nature of a shadow than full reality. Our thoughts tell us that this is an illusion, that beings around us are as real as we ourselves are, and that they live just as intensely as we do. Yet fine as it is to say these things, all the same we feel ourselves at the centre of reality, and we feel other beings to be removed from this centre. That one qualifies this illusion as "egocentricity", or "egoism", or "ahamkara" (the illusion of self), or the "effect of the primordial Fall", does not matter; it does not alter the fact that we feel ourselves to be more real than others.

Now, to feel something as real in the measure of its full reality is to love. It is love which awakens us to the reality of ourselves, to the reality of others, to the reality of the world and to the reality of God. In so far as we love ourselves, we feel real. And we do not love — or we do not love as much as ourselves — other beings, who seem to us to be less real.