In the Rider-Waite Tarot, the mysterious card of THE HANGED MAN depicts the Son of God's predicament in the Dream of Separation. Like the figure
on the card, we are suspended upside-down from the Tree of Ignorance, oblivious to the Spiritual Being dwelling within the symbolic forms our minds outwardly project. That hidden Holy Spirit, Pure Awareness, or "Purusha" is indicated by the upside-down figure's golden nimbus. Being the antidote to guilt, that Holy Presence holds the key to our spiritual liberation, as Jesus explains in Workbook Lesson 39: My holiness is my salvation.
Like THE HANGED MAN, we are fooled by what we perceive and interpret from our inverted vantage point. Consequently, we 1) put more faith in what our faulty senses report than in the unseen forces they fail to perceive; 2) value physical "proof” and "evidence" over intuitive knowing; and (like the man on the card) 3) seek contentment in confinement and chaos instead of striving to break free of our bindings.
So deceived are most of us by the illusion, we never question its authenticity (and often ridicule those who do). Until we open our minds to the Truth, we will hang upside-down in the void of nothingness we call earthly existence, as Jesus explains in the passage below from the Course's URText:
What protects madness is the belief that it is TRUE. It is the function of insanity to take the PLACE of truth. It must be seen as truth, to be believed. And, if it is the truth, then must its opposite, which was the truth before, be madness now. Such a reversal, completely turned around, with madness sanity, illusions true, attack a kindness, hatred love, and murder benediction, is the goal the laws of chaos serve. These are the means by which the laws of God appear to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin appear to hold love captive, and let sin go free.
Often downplayed as a decorative motif widely used in ancient times, the six-pointed star is, in fact, a powerful symbol in a wide range of mystical traditions. Because it appears on the flag of Israel, we primarily associate the double-triangle today with the Jewish religion and homeland. Would it surprise you to learn that the "Star of David" didn't become a formal Jewish emblem until 1897? Prior to appearing on the flag of the First Zionist Congress in that year, the Star of David or Shield of David was used by a mere handful of Jewish communities across Europe. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the star's earliest links with Judaism began in the Middle Ages, when it was popularized by Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) as a protective talisman against evil.
Interestingly, that same signet ring is mentioned in the Sefer HaRazim, the "Book of Secrets" believed to have been given to Noah (of ark fame) by the Archangel Raziel (a.k.a. Raphael). In Jewish mysticism, Raziel is known as the "Angel of Secrets," "Angel of Mysteries," and "Keeper of All Magic." He is also believed to be one of the heavenly beings that gifted the Sephirot of the Kabbalah to humankind. According to legend, the "Book of Secrets" was subsequently passed down until it came into King Solomon's possession. Thought to be a sourcebook for Jewish "magic," the Sefer HaRazim reportedly advises its readers to call upon angels rather than God to perform supernatural feats (miracles). This seems sensible, given that God doesn't act directly in our dream of worldly existence.
Okay, so ... what do the symbols on the figure above signify? Some pretty important stuff, as it turns out. The top point bears the letter Alpha, the Greek equivalent of Hebrew's Aleph -- the Father and/or Supreme Will aspect of Elohim. The lowermost point bears the Greek letter Omega, as in "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." The other four points display the Hebrew letters making up the word EHYEH, which appears in the Old Testament Book of Exodus 3:14. In the King James translation, the verse reads: "And God said unto Moses, 'I AM THAT I AM': and he said 'This shalt thou say unto the Children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."
Although EHYEH is commonly translated into English as "I Am that I Am," astute Hebrew linguists translate the word or name as "I Am the Being-One" or "I Am what always was, still is, and will be again." EHYEH is, therefore, the God-created Purusha, Spiritual Being, or Pure Awareness dwelling within all lifeforms. And the Seal of Solomon promises that that indwelling Purusha will know itself again one day as the Holy Being it's always been.
Let's jump back to the passage in Exodus, because I need to clarify two things. The first is that the phrase "Children of Israel" does not describe the Jews alone. The word "Israel" derives from the Hebrew word "Yisreal," which means "God perseveres." The phrase "Children of Israel" refers, therefore, to all the Souls bound in Ego Consciousness, whom God has promised never to abandon (however much we screw up or stubbornly refuse His help). My second point of clarification is this: As in Genesis, the Hebrew word translated into English as "God" was "Elohim" -- the Spirit of Grace, rather than God the Father Himself. Earlier in the story, the Burning Bush identified itself to Moses as YHWH or EHYEH ELOHIM. The talking shrub was, therefore, the YHWH or EHYEH power of Elohim, rather than the Mother Spirit of Grace itself.
Rightly understood, the Flaming Tree itself was a message. What did it signify? That the purifying fires of the atonement would one day burn up the Tree of Ignorance from which the Son of God hung upside- down in the imaginary Realm of Perception (Prakriti).
Makes sense, right?
Have I mentioned yet that my first memory in this life was of waking to see a burning bush on the floor outside my crib? I was about one year old at the time. I was, of course, terrified by the apparition. Only these many years later do I realize it was a positive sign. The message was, I presume, that I would be lifted up in this life, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness (to quote Jesus). In case you don't know, that bronze snake Moses fashioned represented Shakti-Kundalini. Rightly understood, she is the serpent-fire that breaks the spell of the Great Deceiver -- the biting snakes symbolized in the Biblical allegory.
Okay, so ... who is YHWH? Once again, the Hebrew letters making up the word provide the answer. From right to left, they are Hey, Vav, Hey, and Yod. Hey, as we've established, is the third or Holy Spirit power of Elohim, while Yod is the Divine Spark, Blood of Christ, and Lamp of God that enables our transcendence from upside-down Prakriti Consciousness to right-side-up Purusha Awareness.
The letter Vav or Waw is the sixth in the Hebrew Aleph-Bet. The sound Vav makes is "oh" -- the same sound made when the Sanskrit word "Om" is pronounced correctly. Vav means "hook," "and," or "joiner." Thus, in the word YHWH, it signifies the "unstruck sound" that joins our minds with each other and God. That sound is the "primordial" or "cosmic" Aum, Om, or Nada vibration -- the Voice for God, Living Water, or Bridge to Eternity. Working alongside the Blood or Yod Ray, that sound dissolves the illusion of separation and restores Yechinda, Wholeness, or Unity. All of this renders obvious (to me, at least) that YHWH and/or EHYEH ELOHIM is the Holy Spirit or Hey Power of Elohim, NOT God the Father per se.
In the following from the Course, Jesus affirms much of what I've just explained:
Right perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to His altars, which He established in His Sons. There He can communicate His certainty, and His knowledge will bring peace without question. God is not a stranger to His Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other. Knowledge preceded both perception and time, and will ultimately replace them. That is the real meaning of “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,” and “Before Abraham was I am.” Perception can and must be stabilized, but knowledge is stable. “Fear God and keep His commandments” becomes “Know God and accept His certainty.”
Seeking and following that encoded inner Tao is, in fact, the ONLY purpose of human existence, as Jesus reminds us repeatedly in the Course.
From all of this we can safely deduce that the six-pointed star or Seal of Solomon symbolizes the fulfillment of the New Covenant -- God's GREAT PROMISE to save us from the Prakriti we insanely choose everyday over Him, Heaven, and the fullness of our being. Or, as Jesus says in the Course:
Salvation is a promise, made by God, that you would find your way to Him at last. It cannot not be kept. It guarantees that time will have an end, and all the thoughts that have been born in time will end as well. God’s Word is given every mind which thinks that it has separate thoughts, and will replace these thoughts of conflict with the Thought of Peace.
Just so we're clear, when Jesus uses the terms "God's Word" and "God's Voice" in the Course, he MEANS the vibration we hear with the inner ears of our Souls. That Divine Voice communicates in tones our Higher Minds understand, even if our lower minds don't. Focusing on those tones in the silence of meditation supplies the strength and/or sustenance the Purusha needs to overpower the Ego Mind. And because the Purusha is universally shared, we lift up everyone's Soul as we lift up our own. This is the idea Jesus tries to get across in Workbook Lessons 36 - 39.: My holiness envelopes everything I see, My holiness blesses the world, There is nothing my holiness cannot do, and My holiness is my salvation. In Lesson 58, wherein we review these ideas, Christ gives us the following prayer to meditate upon:
The perception of my holiness does not bless me alone. Everyone and everything I see in its light shares in the joy it brings to me. There is nothing that is apart from this joy, because there is nothing that does not share my holiness. As I recognize my holiness, so does the holiness of the world shine forth for everyone to see.
Or, to borrow from John F. Kennedy, "A rising tide of Purusha lifts the arks of all Souls."
Let's now compare the Seal of Solomon, as depicted in the Codex, with the Hindu image above of the Anahata or Heart Chakra, which contains a six-pointed Shatkona. The pictographic symbol in the center hexagram denotes the seed mantra "yam." The repetition of that sound-mantra (allegedly) helps to unblock this chakra. The "bindu" or dot atop the symbol signifies Ishvara -- the Supreme Self, Soul, or Purusha, which (as the Course also teaches) is part of Shiva/Christ. That Self, Soul, Divine Spirit, Holy Presence, or Purusha is said to reside in this transitional chakra. You will feel it there, radiating Christ's Holy Presence, when you reach the fourth stage in the ego-undoing process.
With regard to the Shatkona, Hinduism rightly teaches that the right-side-up triangle is ruled by Shiva -- the Christ-as-savior figure in that ancient religion. The upside-down triangle is ruled by Shakti -- the personified Creative Force of Divine Will, Spirit of Grace, or Elohim. Shakti -- or Shakti-Kundalini -- rules the upside-down triangle because it is the serpent-fire that burns away the illusory Prakriti in the dream of time. As the Prakriti dissipates, we behold more and more the Purusha, Christ Presence, Holy Light, or originating Divine Idea concealed within the illusion's projected forms. In Course terms, we begin to perceive the Face of Christ in everything.
The idea the joined lignum and yoni actually represents is this: Shiva/Christ upwardly penetrates Parvati/Kundalini to fertilize the "Cosmic Egg" of inverted perception (Prakriti) with the "seed" that makes rebirth as the Purusha possible. That "seed" is the Tao -- the sound and light the Holy Spirit (our realized Higher Self) employs to gently guide our ego-deluded minds out of the dream. To lead us along the True Path or Tao, Shiva and Parvati "join" to produce Ganesh, the elephant-headed remover of obstacles, and Skanda/Karthikeya, the spiritual warrior aspect of Christ-the-Redeemer. Like Lakshmi and Sarasvati, Ganesh and Skanda are Hindu personifications of the Blood and Water Rays Jesus (as Christ) "brought forth" to activate the Atonement Plan.
I hope you take away from this discussion just how universal the symbols of salvation really are when they are interpreted correctly. In Catholicism, for example, the Satan-slaying aspect of Christ is portrayed as the Archangel Michael.
For Protestants, Orthodox Christians, and some Muslims, the same role is filled by George of Lydda (a.k.a. Saint George the dragon-slayer).
In the Rider-Waite Tarot, the Christ-as-spiritual-warrior concept is depicted on THE CHARIOT card. Note the incredible symbolism in the image below, not the least of which is the red lignum-yoni emblem on the front of the chariot. The black-and-white sphinxes in the foreground represent the choice we must make between the firm forces of light (yin) and the yielding forces of darkness (yang). It's hard to see in this image, but the drawn-back curtains atop the chariot are covered in six-pointed stars.
Before we move on, let me emphasize that the union of Purusha and Prakriti is STRICTLY symbolic and spiritual. Having no bodies and, therefore, no genitals, Shiva and Parvati do NOT engage in actual sexual congress, as (misleadingly) suggested by the Yab-Yum posture of Tantric Yoga (shown below).
The joining of Purusha and Prakriti has NOTHING to do with the sex act. In a similar vein, sexual energy can NOT be transmuted into Kundalini, as practitioners of Tantra and Sex Magick erroneously profess. In sections cut from the original dictations of the Course, Jesus explains that the sexual impulse arising from the Ego Subconscious covers or blocks the natural miracle-impulse in the underlying Soul Subconscious. He used slightly different words, but that's the gist of what he says. He also indirectly advocates the Hindu practice of Brahmacharya, which permanently "uproots" the sexual impulse.
Jesus also says (as do the Old Testament and most genuine gurus) that engaging in non-reproductive sexual coupling, however spiritually motivated, defiles God's Inner-Altar within us and our partners. That Inner-Altar is the dwelling place of the Purusha in our Spiritual Bodies, Temples, or Chalices. That Spiritual Body, Temple, or Chalice IS the upward-pointing triangle of the six-pointed star.
Let's now look at another symbolic depiction of the Tao or Way, which is rarely (if ever) interpreted correctly. That symbol is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Like most accurate depictions of the Sacred Heart, the one below shows flames at the top of the heart, shooting upward. Rising out of these "purgatorial" fires is a cross. As I've just explained, the cross represents both the Tau and the Tao -- or Christhood and the Path or Way to Christhood.
If we rightly view the icon as a map, the key would read as follows:
Heart = Anahata Chakra, the Inner-Altar where the Purusha dwells
Thorns = chitta and grievances preventing Anahata Realization
Lance + Wound = the "forgiveness" help available through the Blood and Water Rays
Flames at top = Atmic Consciousness or "Purgatory" -- the next step on the path of purification
Cross = Christ Consciousness or True Perception -- the final step in the At-one-ment process
As a map of the final three steps in the At-one-ment process, the Sacred Heart icon belongs at the center of the Seal of Solomon, where it just happens to fit like a glove.
One of the best-known representations of the Sacred Heart is by Pompeo Batoni, an Italian painter who lived from 1708 to 1787. In his painting, Batoni strove to capture the scene described by Sister Mary Margaret Alacoque, the French nun to whom Jesus first revealed the Sacred Heart symbol in 1673.
Sister (now Saint) Mary Margaret described her experience as follows:
The Divine Heart was presented to me in a throne of flames, more resplendent than a sun, transparent as crystal, with this adorable wound. And it was surrounded with a crown of thorns, signifying the punctures made in it by our sins, and a cross above signifying that from the first instant of His Incarnation, […] the cross was implanted into it […].Her account is, of course, filtered through the dark lens of sin, guilt, and suffering, as well as the ingrained and erroneous beliefs that 1) Jesus suffered and died for our sins and 2) suffering and sacrifice are the means by which we must purge ourselves of sin. As Jesus explains in the Course, the thorns signify the grievances that defile the Inner-Altar, thereby depriving us of God's Love and Grace. We remove those thorns through the practice of True Forgiveness. That the cross was implanted in his heart from the moment of his incarnation simply means he was scheduled to achieve Christhood (and do his part in God's Plan) in his lifetime as Jesus. It also suggests that the same potential exists within all of us.
In her account of the Sacred Heart visions, Sister Mary Margaret also said:
And He [Christ] showed me that it was His great desire of being loved by men and of withdrawing them from the path of ruin that made Him want to manifest His Heart to men, with all the treasures of love, of mercy, of grace, of sanctification and salvation which it contains, in order that those who desire to render Him and procure Him all the honour and love possible might themselves be abundantly enriched with those divine treasures of which His heart is the source.
This part of her narrative is much more consistent with the Course. It's also why she was mocked by the others in her order and denounced as a heretic by the Vatican for more than a century after her death. As an interesting aside, the life and experiences of Sister Mary Margaret and Sister Faustina, to whom Jesus appeared with the streaming Blood and Water Rays, are so uncannily similar, it's as if the two women were living the same life in different time periods. That is, in fact, possible, as I'll explain when we get around to reincarnation.
In modern-day Catholicism, the Sacred Heart of Jesus represents not only “God’s boundless and passionate love for mankind” (which is true, in a sense), but also "Christ’s long-suffering love and compassion for sinful humanity" (which would be true, if the words long-suffering and sinful were removed). The standard prayer to the Sacred Heart reads as follows:
The prayer misses the mark by such a narrow margin, it's almost painful. If not for the second line, the prayer would, in fact, be spot-on. Nowhere in Sister Mary Margaret's account did Jesus say his heart is “broken by our ingratitude and pierced by our sins.” This is the BIG LIE the Ego Mind wants us to believe, so we'll be too afraid or too ashamed to seek the help of the Atonement powers.O Sacred Heart of Jesus, filled with Infinite Love;broken by our ingratitude and pierced by our sins, yet loving us still;accept the consecration we make to Thee of all that we are and all that we have.Take every faculty of our souls and bodies, only day by day draw us nearer and nearer to Thy Sacred Heart;and there as we shall hear the lesson, teach us Thy Holy Way.
