Superficiality contrasted with authority

Authority alone the true and unique power of law. Compulsion there is superfluous.

The Emperor rules by means of sceptre alone. The first idea - authority underlying law All authority has its source in and law derived from . . .

The human bearer of true authority cedes his place to divine authority. He has to renounce something to this end.

The Emperor has renounced compulsion and violence. The Card described.

The Card expresses active renunciation rather than the renunciation of constraint alone. The Emperor has renounced ease, walking. He is on sentry duty. He is a guardian bound to his post.

The Emperor guards the sceptre. He has renounced action and the belt holds the impulsive and instinctive nature of the Emperor in check.

The Emperor has renounced movement (legs) and action (arms).

Every crown is a crown of thorns restraining free, arbitrary imagination of the personality, their rays - thorns for the personality within. Thought receives confirmation or is reduced to impotence. The Emperor’s crown signifies renunciation of freedom of action and of movement.

The shield belongs to the throne rather than the person of the Emperor. The purpose of his sentry duty that of the throne. He has no name, is anonymous, and has no personal mission.

God governs the world by authority and not by force. Whoever prays the first three petitions of the Lord’s prayer affirms divine authority not divine power. Prayer is the act of recognising and accepting the authority of God. The God who is almighty has no need of such petitions. God is powerful only in so far as his authority is freely recognised and accepted. Prayer is the act of such recognition and acceptance.

The problem of authority is at the same time of mystical, gnostic, magical and Hermetic significance. It comprises the Christian mystery of crucifixion and the "mystery of withdrawal" (sod hatimtsum) of the Lurianic Cabbala.

The image of the crucifix expresses the paradox of almighty God reduced to a state of extreme powerlessness. It is the highest revelation of the Divine in the whole history of mankind. The only Son of the eternal Father nailed to the cross – for our sake – this is what is divinely impressed upon all open souls.

Others react in the opposite way with derision and mockery. The same reaction encountered nowadays in Soviet radio broadcasts from Moscow. Come down from the cross and we will believe in you.

A certain dogma underlies these reactions – truth and power are identical. Only that which is powerful is of the Divine.

There are open and secret worshippers of the idol of power. Two categories:

How those who aspire to the ideal of the superman often present themselves, how they raise God to the heights of Absolute Abstraction and how they, sooner or later, fall.

The worship of the idol of power conceived of as the "superman" is relatively inoffensive. But it is not so with those who project the ideal of the "superman" onto God. Their faith depends only on the power of God.

How some prefer a God who is a mixture of good and evil, provided he is powerful, to the crucified God.

How everything that took place in the story of the prodigal son, save for his return to the father, was clearly contrary to the will of the father.

The history of the human race since the Fall is that of the prodigal son. It is a matter of an abuse of freedom similar to that of the prodigal son. Its key formula is "Father, I have sinned . . ."

God is crucified in the history of mankind.

Angelic and human beings having real existence thus have phenomenal independence and noumenal independence. Freedom is the real and complete existence of a being created by God. It is the spiritual existence of beings.

God, having given freedom to all beings, does not take it back. Death would be the absolute deprivation of liberty.

It is we ourselves who make the choice.

With respect to free beings God is either the ruling King or the Crucified. He is King with regard to those beings who voluntarily accept his authority. He is Crucified with regard to those beings who abuse their freedom.

King and Crucified at one and the same time – this is the mystery of the Pilate’s inscription - Almighty and powerless all at once.

Freedom is the true throne of God and his cross and the key to the comprehension of his role in history.

Divine crucifixion follows from the fact of freedom when it is a matter of a world governed by divine authority and not by compulsion.

It is a question of the thesis that the existence of the universe is rendered possible by the act of contraction of God within himself. Quotation from Scholem: The first act of En-Soph is of limitation not revelation.

To create the world ex nihilo God had first to bring the void itself into existence. Quotation from Berdyaev: "Freedom is not determined by God; it is part of the nothing out of which God created the world."

The void is the place of origin of freedom.

The idea of tsimtsum is inapplicable when God is conceived of in the sense of pantheism.

One the other hand it is the only serious explanation known to the author concerning creation ex nihilo. It constitutes a deep link between the Old Testament and the New Testament in bringing to light the cosmic significance of the idea of sacrifice.

Earlier material on the fourth Arcanum of the Tarot is recapitulated. The sceptre expresses the central idea of the Arcanum: just as the cross rules the world (the globe), so is the power of the Emperor over the terrestrial globe subject to the sign of the cross. The power of the Emperor reflects divine power.

What an abundance of ideas concerning the post of the Emperor of Christendom are to be found amongst mediaeval authors!

• its historical mission
• its function in the light of natural right
• its role in the light of divine right

The institution of a city or kingdom is made according to the model of the institution of the world. Similarly it is necessary to draw from divine government the order of the government of a city. If the world is govern hierarchically Christianity or the Sanctum Imperium cannot be otherwise.

The post of the Emperor was also magical. It was the principle itself of authority from which all other lesser authorities derived not only their legitimacy but also their hold over the consciousness of the people. After the imperial crown was eclipsed . . . the proletariat professes atheism.

Europe is haunted by the shadow of the Emperor. The emptiness of the wound speaks.

Napoleon sensed the shadow of the Emperor. He knew what had to be restored in Europe. But it was to the sword that he took recourse instead of ruling by the sceptre.

Hitler also had the delirium of desire to occupy the empty place of the Emperor. To rule by the sword is to perish by the sword.

The post of the Emperor has become the choice of heaven alone. It has become occult. The regalia of the Emperor are to be found in the catacombs: they are under absolute protection.

The witnesses of the Emperor’s imperial splendour – his whole imperial court – a clump of grass. He is alone in the presence of the sky.

Why so many authors on the Tarot have overlooked the fact that the Emperor is alone. One lets the image of the symbol say a little and then one is suddenly more interested in one’s own thoughts than what the symbol has to say.

The Card teaches us the arcanum of the authority of the Emperor although it may be unrecognised. It is authority as such and it is the post of authority as such which is expressed here.

The formula of initiation always remains the same. Quotation from Tabula Smaragdina

This unity actualised is "the sanctification of the divine name in man". It is the deeper meaning of SANCTIFICETUR NOMEN TUUM.

The Emperor is the unity of mysticism, gnosis and magic – designated in the second Letter as "Hermetic philosophy". It is not a philosophy derived from the organism of the unity of mysticism, gnosis and sacred magic but is this very unity in manifestation.

The formula: verum, sine mendacio, certum et verissimum states the principle of epistomology of Hermetic philosophy. It is a matter of the four different senses.

Hermetic philosophy, being the synthesis of all that is essential in the spiritual life of humanity, cannot consider itself as a philosophy amongst many others.

Dogmatism? Yes, if one understands by "dogma" the certainty due to revelations of divine worth which prove fruitful and constructive, and due to the confirmation that they receive from reason and experience together.

Hermetic philosophy does not operate with the univocal concepts and their verbal definitions, as do philosophies, but rather with arcana and their symbolic expressions. The Emerald Table compared with The Critique of Pure Reason by Kant.

So, is Hermetic philosophy only symbolism pure and simple, and has it nothing to do with the methods of philosophic and scientific reasoning?

• Yes, in so far as Hermetic philosophy is of an esoteric nature i.e. it consists of arcana orientated towards the mystery expressed in symbols.
• No, in so far as it exercises a stimulating effect on the philosophical and scientific reasoning of its adherents. This effect compared to the process of crystallisation. How one may help the intellect to habituate itself to think Hermetically. Hermetic philosophy seeks to help human reason rise above itself. To create an autonomous system of univocal concepts without formal contradiction between them would be to commit an abuse.

The occult sciences are therefore derived from Hermetic philosophy by way of intellectualisation. One should not consider symbols as allegorical expressions of theories or concepts. The opposite is true.

Hermetic philosophy is not composed of the Cabbala, astrology, magic and alchemy. The "body" of the tradition of Hermetic philosophy consists of spiritual exercises. How the Apocalypse of St John is to be approached. Mastery of the four psychurgical operations is the key to the Apocalypse.

The gospels likewise are spiritual exercises.

The Old Testament also contains parts which are spiritual exercises. The difference between Cabbalists and the other faithful depends only on the fact that the former drew spiritual exercises from the Scripture whilst the latter studied it and believed it.

The aim of spiritual exercises is depth. Symbolism is the language of depth.

Spiritual exercises in common form the common link that unites Hermeticism. That which one knows is the result of personal experience and orientation, whilst depth is what one has in common. A certain degree of depth is safeguarded by the practice of spiritual exercises.

With respect to the knowledge of individual Hermeticists – it depends upon the individual vocation of each one of them.

But this knowing, in so far as it is not a matter of arcana consists of facts and not theories. Thus, for example, reincarnation is in no way a theory which one has to believe or not believe. For the Hermeticist it is a fact which is either known through experience or ignored. The awakened memory is not always beneficial; it is often a burden.

One can perform miracles without the memory of former lives, as was the case with the holy vicar of Ars – and one can also perform miracles, wholly in possession of this memory, as was the case with Monsieur Philip of Lyons. Reincarnation, God’s forgiveness and his infinite goodness

When one says there is a mechanism of infinite evolution . . . there is no grace . . . a blasphemous interpretation. God is reduced to the function of the engineer of a moral machine.

Reincarnation is in no way an exception in what is liable to a double interpretation. In fact, every pertinent fact is liable to it. The two interpretations of heredity given.

Whatever the personal interpretation of a fact may be, a fact remains a fact and it is necessary to know it when one wants to orientate oneself in the domain to which it belongs. An arcanum practised as a spiritual exercise for a sufficient length of time becomes an aptitude. The initiate is one who knows how to attain knowledge, i.e. who knows how to ask, seek and put into practice the appropriate means in order to succeed.

(Luke xi, 9)

Thus, Hermetic philosophy does not teach what one ought to believe concerning God, man and Nature but it teaches rather how to ask, seek and knock in order to arrive at mystical experience, gnostic illumination and the magical effect of that which one seeks to know about God, man and Nature.

It is a matter here of the development and usage of the fourth spiritual sense. The aptitude for "knowing how to know" is the characteristic trait of this sense. In the second Letter defined as the "sense of synthesis". Now we are able to define it more profoundly as the "initiate sense".

How does this sense function? It is not identical with the "metaphysical sense" – the taste and capacity for living in abstract theories, the liking for the abstract; the "concept of God". The Hermetic philosophic sense is orientated towards the concrete – spiritual, psychic and physical; the living God – a being.

The metaphysical sense works in such a manner as to deduce the laws of facts and the principles of laws. The Hermetic philosophical sense perceives through the facts the entities of the spiritual hierarchies, and through them the living God. For the initiate sense the Archangel Michael is a living being whose face is invisible because it has given place to the face of God.

The Hermetic-philosophical sense is that of concrete spiritual realities. For the initiate sense God is that which is most real and therefore most concrete. And what we designate as concrete fact is in reality only an abstraction from divine reality.

What makes him a Hermeticist – in the sense of the Emperor of the Tarot – is the Hermetic-philosophical sense.

Is this not the tragedy of Rene Guenon who, being gifted with a developed metaphysical sense and yet lacking the Hermetic-philosophical sense, sought, always and everywhere, the concrete spiritual.

The last orientation of Rene Guenon is not without reason. For the Hermetic philosophical sense has more in common with the plain and sincere faith of simple people than abstract metaphysics has. Perhaps the Emperor owes his authority not to his power over human beings but rather because he represents them before God.

Hermetic philosophy also has a human ideal to which it aspires, the practical aim of realising the man of authority, the "father-man", the man worthy of the throne of David.

Practical Hermeticism is alchemy. The more one becomes truly human, the more one manifests the divine element underlying human nature. The ideal of abstraction invites people to do away with human nature, to dehumanise. All the forces of human nature are susceptible to transformation into what they are when they share in the image and likeness of God.

The divine in human nature . . . and what of the Divine that transcends it? It is necessary to have one wound more. The following Card, The Pope, will teach us the Arcanum of the manifestation of the Divine transcending human nature by means of the five wounds.