Hermetic Laboratory

With the help of B.O.T.A, A. E. Waite, Aleister Crowley, Joe Lisiewski, Christopher Hyatt, and Lon Milo Duquette, it began to emerge... or submerge, as you will find out... Path 20, IX. The Hermit is the most esoteric path so far. It represents the unknowable reality - the color of stuff in the mind's eye outside of the field of vision. The color of the path is not black as in the BOTA deck. The Rider-Waite deck is more accurate in the color depiction a sort of colorless gray - really should be the color of no color - but that's impossible to illustrate. The Hermit represents the hidden (out of consciousness) initiator of all activity. The invisible wind whose presense is observed by the reaction of other things to it,like the swaying of the trees, movement of water, etc. Doc. Lisiewski's concept of this path is The movement of the One Consciousness through which the forces of the universe have been set in motion The one Consciousness (God?)'s movemen...

Starting on the next path, The Hermit today... it came in as a dark ray of light... almost prophesied itself... yesterday,  a realization how skewed and illogical is the tree of life and all that's based off of it... attributions of cards to paths to letters all seem out of whack.  and yet many, myself included do utilize these attributions as authoritative.  There has to be a different set of correspondences than the one established by the Golden Dawn, Crowley, and their adherents. The main Western systems are: numbers of paths: 11..32 numbers of cards: 0..XXI letters: ת..א cards: The Fool..The Universe Astrology and the Elements: Aries..Pisces, Saturn..Moon, Fire, Water, Air, Earth The Tetragrammaton: יהוה Other systems are have and can be worked into the Kabalistic system, such as Ancient Egyptian dieties Ancient Hindu dieties Greek and Roman dieties Buddhist facets of the Buddha nature However it is the main Western systems which ar...

The idea that my mind settled on for this card is Taming, in its widest sense, but that's not all. Red Lion represents the Alchemical Sulfur, Fire, in its firiest sense.  Alchemical Sulfur is the soul, or the consciousness of a plant, mineral, or animal. The Red Lion also represents the Philosopher's stone, the ingredient necessary for transforming base metal (lead) into gold. The letter ט (tet) associated with the path represents a Serpent by it's shape.  Other than that it has no meaning.  It would appear that later interpretations of the Kabbalah assigned the meaning of "Serpent" to  the word of the letter,  טֵית,  although there's no evidence that it actually ever meant "serpent".  Serpent is נחש.   Sulfur is also associated with The Emperor . Path #19 is also called "The Intelligence of the Secret of all Spiritual Activities"... we may have to leave that one alone for the time being, at least until we come ...

  Past 2 weeks working with the Strength Card pictured above.  It would be time to go to the Hermit, but I'm not ready - the experience of "Strength", "Tet" is not complete.  The Alchemical aspects of this path/card must be considered, as well as its relation with the previous cards.