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.What has beensaid in Part I has relation to the exercise of a purposive faculty, guided by intelligence and experience.Itrepresents Determinism in its application to the hidden laws of Nature.We are now, however, concernedwith the automatic faculty, the intuitive and divinatory process of the human mind.Many of the methodsby which the automatic faculty finds expression are allied to the purposive methods of the Occult arts.Cartomancy or divination by cards, for instance, can only be effected after a preliminary understandingof the meanings attaching to the cards, and this is in no sense an automatic or unconscious process, but avoluntary and empirical one.We do not begin to employ the automatic faculty until we shuffle the cardswith a view to ascertain the unknown elements.Even the disposition of the cards for this purpose is apurely voluntary empiricism.It controls our interpretation and our prognostics.The construction of thecards, the meanings attached to them, and the method of laying them out for a divination are allprejudicial elements of the art.The automatic faculty triumphs over these limitations in the simple act of"shuffling" - and therein lies the whole secret of Nature.Let us suppose for a moment that we decideupon a certain combination of cards falling together that they shall signify Death.The odds against thesecards coming up in the required order and combination are thousands to one on any occasion.That theydo occasionally turn up is not, however, so remarkable as that, whenever they do, a death immediatelyfollows, and the faculty of the Cartomante lies in predicting to whom that judgment is determined.In seership or scrying by means of the crystal, etc., a distinction exists between the purely involuntary orpassive use of the faculty of clairvoyance and that in which media are used.Moreover, some passives seedirectly and describe things as they actually are or will be at the time indicated, while others do not seeotherwise than by symbols which require rational interpretation.In Geomancy also the automatic faculty is directed by definite methods and is supplemented by the useof the rationa1 faculty in the process of interpretation.Marks made haphazard in the sand or upon a pieceof paper have no meaning for those who are ignorant of geomantic symbolism, so that inasmuch as thesymbols gain their meaning by the intention of the mind, there is a consent between the rational and theinstinctual faculties in man.It is by reason of this consent in nature that the methods of divination we areabout to consider are rendered possible.Nevertheless, it is not possible to apply any dogmatism or arbitrary methods to the interpretation ofsymbols.We cannot, for instance, determine that a flight of two crows is a symbol of death and one ofseven crows a marriage, and straightway go forth to observe if death or marriage is our immediate fate.ACHAPTER Isymbol is such by reason of its analogy and correspondence with certain principles in nature which arereflected in our minds.Thus we may speak of the universe as a symbol of the Deity, and of man as asymbol of the universe (which indeed was anciently depicted as the Grand Man, Adam Kadmon, etc.),and these are not arbitrary relations but have their origin in a natural correspondence which exists quiteapart from our recognition of it.The symbol is the means by which we express our recognition of thatrelationship.Figures are primarily symbolical; if we use them to denote quantities it is a mereconvention.Every material form is a symbol of the forces which generated it.When we come to the consideration of the automatic faculty, we have to suppose a superior degree ofintimacy between the soul of Nature and that of the individual in whom the divinatory faculty is active.Itis undoubtedly a fact that the more practical the individual may be the less intimate are his relations withthat subconscious or submerged part of his nature which is related to the Universal Soul.Individual consciousness cannot actively engage in that which is external and that which is internal atone and the same time, except the person be in a state which is altogether abnormal.The normal mind isactive in the waking consciousness during the day and active in the sleeping consciousness during thenight.The waking consciousness is otherwise known as the attentive mind, and it is by the depolarizationof this that sleep is induced.In certain phases of hypnosis both aspects of the mind may besimultaneously active in part, and the same phenomenon is observed in somnambulism.The following diagrams illustrate (1) the normal waking consciousness, (2) the normal sleepingconsciousness, (3) the hypnotic or somnambulic semi-consciousness, and (4) permanent dislocation ofthe mental axis in cases of insanity: -The faculty of self-depolarization and of diving down into the region of the submerged consciousnessappears to be naturally developed in the genuine medium and the diviner.Others may induce this facultyby the use of suitable media such as the hypnotic disc, the crystal or "the magic mirror." In others, again,it is induced only by hypnotic treatment.It is chiefly when in doubt that we make our appeal to it, and no Divination would be possible without itsconsent of function.It has been affirmed, with some show of reason, that the subconscious mind is the intelligence principleof the evolving human entity, and that it is the storehouse of the digested memories of all pastincarnations.Others, however, affirm that it is nascent and rudimentary, the intelligence of the animalsoul, in distinction from the rational principle of the human soul.But whatever we may argue concerningCHAPTER Iits status and functions in the human economy, we cannot deny that its powers transcend those of thesupraliminal mind and that its association with the Soul of things is far more intimate.All divination, in effect, consists in the ability to bring into the region of our normal wakingconsciousness the things which lie hidden in the womb of Time.Some of the means by which this iseffected will now be explained.CHAPTER IICHAPTER IITHE TAROTDIVINATION by means of cards is a very ancient practice.It has been affirmed that the cards as weknow them were invented for the purpose of beguiling the hours of a feeble-minded monarch.My onlycomment on this statement is that any king who believed the story would be very easily beguiled.I donot presume to say when cards were first used for gaming purposes, but the Tarot from which ordinaryplaying-cards are obviously derived, has a very ancient origin and moreover a very profound one.It issaid that Hermes the Thrice Great engraved the symbols of the Tarot upon 22 lamin� of gold [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]