A selection from a Meditations on the Tarot

One of the most common references that I make to the magisterial Meditations on the Tarot, (the magnum opus published anonymously and posthumously by (we now realize) Valentin Tomberg) is found in the chapter devoted to the Temperance card. The reference is to “the problem of fluids” and because of this it offers a clear analogy to the Taiyang conformation. One of the most profound lessons, and indeed the first spiritual exercise discussed in the very first chapter dedicated to the Magician is about analogical thinking as the foundation of hermeticism. Of course, it also ventures into the realm of what Thinley Norbu calls “playmind” and what is known as “wu wei” in Daoist terminology. It is that quality of thinking that delights me, and allows me to perceive the Chinese medicine in everything, including the Tarot, and Angels. What channel do you suppose angel wings would attach to, after all? And, at least in my current understanding, one can map the activity angels in such natural phenomena as the very water cycle in nature, here in this sublunar realm.

I can say unequivocally that Meditations on the Tarot has become my favorite book of all time.

The problem of fluids is that of the dynamic functioning of the whole human

being, i.e. corporeal, psychic and spiritual. In reality, it amounts to that of life —

understood as a comprehensive spiritual, psychic and corporeal process. For just

as there exists a system of physical circulation, so also there exists a system of vital

and astral circulation, which in its turn is simply a reflection of the system of circulation

comprising spirit, soul and body—the threefold body—as a living unity.

The principle underlying this total system of circulation is the divine likeness.

And as it is this which has undergone the disfiguring effect of original sin, it is

the mission of the guardian Angel to see to it that the total system of circulation

functions in as healthy a way as possible. The guardian Angel therefore watches

over the functioning of the system of spiritual-psychic-corporeal circulation, i.e.

the health and the life of the whole human being. This is why the Card of the

fourteenth Arcanum represents him to us as engaged in the accomplishing of his

office of regulating the system of circulation, or the human being's fluidic system.

The system in question comprises several active centres —the "lotuses", the nerve

centres, the glands, to name only the principal ones — but the harmonious functioning

of all these centres depends on a single thing, a single action which takes

place at the key position: this is the current which constitutes the relationship

between the image and the likeness in man. The monad (the image) should not

exist for nothing nor should it inundate the system of circulation (the likeness) (385).