The world is still full of miracles. –Eli Levi
Magical thinking or (to put it more aptly) thinking like a magician, is the mindset that there is a message in the moment, that reality itself is capable of dialogue. The belief in an animate spirit, a will, a desire behind every act, every evolution, is a legitimate philosophical proposal. This is the reason why children are natural mystics; they still have the ability to be amazed with the world.
The Tarot tells a story, and a story is only as good as its ending. According to Eli Levi, this story ends with Eve triumphant “the great initiatrix, the heavenly mother of the Zohar, the Isis of Egypt, the Venus-Urania of the Platonists, the Mary of Christianity, throned upon the world and setting one foot upon the head of the magical serpent.”
Symbolically, in the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck, the snake may be represented by the green scarf wound around “Eve.” There is actually a snake under the feet of Shiva Nataraja as well, because the dwarf, who represents ignorance, holds a cobra.
“Nature abhors Equilibrium” - Buckminster Fuller
Effects are coexistent with their own causes. In other words, effects cannot be removed from what they cause without unbalancing the equation. Unlike modern algebra, where finding the terms to balance an equation is the solution, in nature/reality, a balanced equation means death, because it removes movement. The Universe card is what happens when you look at God face-to-face. Which is why, in the Kabbalistic sense, God is considered as existing apart from his creation, or as having negative-existence. The eye of Shiva destroys what it sees.
Abomination of Desolation: the Unfitting Sacrifice
Abomination is another term for “idol,” which reminds us of the Biblical Commandment against worshipping brazen images. Eli Levi reminds us that the original commandment was not against idols themselves, but against mistaking a metaphor for what God actually is. An analogy is silent; it points. This is a hard distinction to make, especially when, as I said above, belief in animate spirit is a major tenet of magical thought.
The original ankh symbol may have been (according to Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner) a pictograph sandal strap, symbol for Mercury, or the Logos, the Word of God who “races across the universe.” The most rudimentary symbol for “going” is the hieroglyphic sandal strap, of which the winged shoes of Mercury are only iteration. What is a better symbol for a “primary mover?” Mercury, we remember, is the messenger of the Sun. The Logos, therefore, is synonymous with light, “no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Additionally, Hermes, the Greek version of Mercury may have gotten his name from the word eirein, which means power of speech, as in “I am the word.”
Buckminster Fuller referred to the Universe by dropping the common proceeding “the,” making it similar in expressive use as when one refers to God. As in: “There is nothing outside of Universe.”
In Crowley’s Thoth deck, Universe is depicted with a solar-generative eye of Shiva, similar to the one depicted on the Tower card. In the Indian Sanskrit language, the word ambaka means eye, while the word amba or ambika means Mother. Therefore, we have another example of Robert Graves “triune Goddess” contained in third or three eye symbolism. Indians call their three mother goddesses The Ambikas.
Sources:
Wikipedia article on The World Tarot card: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_(Tarot_card)
The Thoth Tarot Deck, and the Book of Thoth, by Aleister Crowley
Understanding Aleister Crowleys Thoth Tarot, by Lon Milo Duquette
Transcendental Magic, Eli Levi, Translation by Waite
777, Aleister Crowley
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_One/Aleph-Bet/Tav/tav.html
