Exaudi nos, Domine sancte,
Pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus,
et mittere digneris sanctum Angelum tuum de coelis,
qui custodial, foveat, protegat,
visitat atque defendat
omnes habitantes in hoc habitaculo.
(Hear us Lord, holy Lord,
almighty Father, eternal God,
and deign to send your holy Angel from heaven,
to guard, cherish, protect, visit and defend
all who are gathered together in this place.)
(Liturgical prayer of the introductory service preceding the solemn Mass)
Everyone who drinks of this water
will thirst again, but whoever
drinks of the water that I shall give him
will never thirst;
the water that I shall give him
will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life.
(John iv, 13-14)
Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless one is born anew,
he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
(John iii, 3)
By upbringing and intellectual training,
I belong to the "children of heaven";
but by temperament, and by my professional studies,
I am a "child of the earth".
Situated thus by life at the heart of two worlds
with whose theory, idiom and feelings
intimate experience has made me familiar,
I have not erected any watertight bulkhead inside myself
On the contrary, I have allowed
two apparently conflicting influences full freedom to
react upon one another deep within me.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
Dear Unknown Friend,
The Card of the fourteenth Major Arcanum of the Tarot places us in the presence of an Angel in a robe which is half red and half blue, who is accomplishing — or presiding over the accomplishment of — a strange act, where he is pouring colourless water from one vase into another, or rather he is making it gush almost horizontally between the two vases, at an angle of about 45 degrees, the vases being held at a considerable distance from one another.
An intellectual shock!... and therefore an arcanum — something which one has to take hold of and apprehend beyond the usual plane of experience and thought. This invites us, therefore, to profound meditation — to a spiritual exercise. Let us follow this invitation.
What is the problem that the Card — its whole context — arouses spontaneously in the mind of he who looks at it attentively? What is the message of the Angel with two wings, in the red and blue robe, holding two vases, one red and one blue, and making water gush in a mysterious way from one vase to the other? Is he not the one who bears the good news that beyond the duality of "either-or" there is — or is possible- still that of "not only-but also' or "both-and"? Does not the totality of the Card, the Angel of the Card, suggest the problem of cooperating polarity, or integrated duality? Does it not first of all suggest the presentiment or suspicion that perhaps it is thanks to the two wings, the two arms, the two colours of the robe, the two vases, that the water pours forth?... that this water is the fruit and the gift of the "both-and" of integrated duality, which 'jumps to one s attention as one looks at the Card?
Thus the idea which is presented first of all to the mind, in the presence of the Card of the fourteenth Arcanum, belongs to the range of ideas relating to polarity and what this latter offers in possibilities for the spiritual knowledge and realisation — mystical, gnostic and magical — of the Hermeticist.
In preceding Letters there has already been the question, in diverse connections, of a twofold polarity — that of "polemic" (war), which produces energy of an "electrical" kind, and that of cooperation or "peace", which releases force of " 'tal" nature. Now, the Angel of the Card of the fourteenth Arcanum invites us to return to the problem of this double polarity and twofold dynamic, in promising to throw new light on this subject. Let us therefore return to this.
An expert of the first order in spiritual life and authentic spiritual experience, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, has bequeathed to posterity a doctrine of fundamental importance. This is his doctrine of the divine image and likeness of man. This doctrine lends itself admirably to serve as a point of departure for a thoroughgoing investigation of this twofold polarity. The following are its essential points:
God made man "in his image and likeness" (Genesis i, 26). The divine image and the divine likeness coincided in the first man, before the original sin. But their coincidence did not persist after the Fall. The image has remained intact, but the initial likeness has been lost. Man is, following the original sin, in the "disfigurement of unlikeness", whilst conserving the image.
Man was made in the image and likeness of God: in image he possesses freedom of will, and in likeness he possesses virtues. The likeness has been destroyed; however, man conserves the image. The image can be burnt in hell, but not consumed. It Is damaged but not destroyed. Through fate as such it is not effaced, but subsists. Wherever the soul is, there also will be the image. It is not so with the likeness. This remains in the soul which accomplishes the good; in the soul which sins it is wretchedly transformed. The soul which has sinned ranks with beasts devoid of intelligence. (St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon on the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary; French trsl. M, M. Davy, Oeuvres de Saint Bernard, vol. 1, p. 106)
According to St. Bernard, the image is therefore the essential structure of the human being and the likeness in him is the totality of functions or the functional structure. It is the essential structure of the human being, the image, which is indestructible and which establishes freedom in an inalienable and irremovable way.
Man is free, and remains so through all eternity — on earth, in hell, in purgatory, in heaven — always and everywhere. Freedom is therefore an absolute fact. As such, it entails immortality — the argument that one finds again in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, for what is his "categorical imperative" if not the divine image in man?
With respect to the likeness or totality of functions of the human being, a hotbed of sin, with its attractions towards evil, has taken root there. And it is immortal only in proportion to the measure that it conforms again to its image. Its immortality is optional.
This is the essence of St. Bernard's doctrine. It gives rise to the question: If the divine image in man has not undergone any weakening and if the divine likeness in him has partly abrogated and has had to make way for inclinations and habits tending towards evil, is there something in human life which counterbalances the bad inclinations in man's functional organism, opposing good inclinations to them? Yes. There is certainly something added to man's functional organism to play in it the role of a counterweight to the leverage of vicious inclinations and habit which have become established since the primordial Fall. This is the guardian Angel.
The guardian Angel accompanies as a faithful ally the divine image in man, just as vicious inclinations have made their way into the human functional organism which was, before the Fall, the divine likeness. The guardian Angel undertakes the functions, destroyed by original sin, in the likeness, and fills the breach wrought by them. He substitutes himself for-functions destroyed through the Fall.
As the prayer of the aspersion (that I have put at the head of this Letter) states It, in praying to God "to deign to send from heaven his holy Angel to guard, cherish, protect, visit and defend all those who are gathered together in this place", the Angel acquits his charge in five ways: he guards, cherishes, protects, visits and defends. He is therefore a "flaming star", a luminous pentagram, above man.
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