Notes of a Hermetic Conversation on May 1, 2018
Tarot Conversation May 1, 2018
Ace of Coins
We began with the protective practice on page 422 of MOTT.
We then invoked the inspiration of the Holy Trinity and Holy Trinosophia by reading from the first chapter of Mark.
We performed the fourth part of the Inner Radiance Sequence, briefly focusing our attention on the Brow Chakra with the phrase “I AM.”
We then read Revelation 1:3-6, and the quote from CS Lewis (see notes from April 10 and 24).
Our experience typically from one week to the next is that we have a strong experience with the Arcanum during the conversation; many insights and inspirations are given in conversation with and around the image. Then after the conversation ends, the inspirations go to sleep for the next week until the conversation is opened again. The experience after the first conversation on the Ace of Coins was different. Many insights and inspirations continued to flow in during the subsequent days. Joel had to write his down to put them to rest, and shared them at the beginning of this meeting. This is a departure from normal practice, but felt necessary:
First we shared Ian’s insights, sent via email:
– The card for me is echoing the World, a dancing maiden in the middle and the Holy Beasts at the corners (as VT suggests, a starting point for the Minors). The flowers suggest the elements (types of enfoldment/radiance). This is up or down with the angels who have replaced them in version 2 (Sola Busca). BTW the shield (on Sola Busca) has 10 sides…
other thoughts: “Render unto Ceasar.” The inscription is very sun-like. The plants could be human prototypes, organized around the Sun: blue ether body stem, first leaf red (physical), yellow astral, blossom a combination…
– Joel’s insights from the course of the week. First of all to answer the question, “what is a pentacle?”
A pentacle is a talisman, usually made of either paper or metal. It is inscribed with a magical symbol (generally a five pointed star in a circle, but not necessarily). It is typically worn around the neck for protection; hence, it is unclear whether etymologically pentacle is related to the five-pointed star, or to penda, hanging, as in pendant/pendulum. The pentacle is also used for invocation. Here we have already a more fleshed out picture of spiritual currency: metal or paper (just like normal currency) is inscribed with a symbol. Effort of a sacred magical (or ceremonial magical, as the case may be) nature is infused into it. Labor—payment for labor (currency)—currency can be exchanged for goods of equivalent value. Ritual (labor)—payment (talisman)—spiritual currency which can invoke or be used for protection (here the shield aspect comes in as well).
Note that sometimes a talisman/pentacle is inscribed with a Magic Square, for example this very interesting case that leads back to the Our Father: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square#Christian_associations
One wonders if Steiner’s Planetary Seals (not to mention Apocalyptic Seals) are Talismans/Pentacles.
This idea of spiritual currency is very rich. What it speaks of fundamentally is the idea of exchange. Something is given away (effort), something is gained (currency), something is lost (currency), something is gained (grace). This fundamental principle of currency/exchange/transferability is very different from the normal paradigm through which phenomena are approached, at least in Anthroposophy, which is transformability/metamorphosis. With this metamorphic perspective, all is seen as a unity in differentiation, mutating from one stage in a process to another. The spiritual activity of the Coin stands apart. It is not flow. It is exchange: one thing is replaced by another. It is related to offering, sacrifice, communion.
The pentacle touches on this directly, and also brings us back to the idea of “qualitative” currency rather than “quantitative” currency. The pentacle (or Arcanum as the case may be) is inscribed with a form which gives it a certain qualitative value, which can then be exchanged for certain ideas, inspirations, or even contact with spiritual beings who are represented by this inscription. But the quality and quantity of work/effort (the predisposition of the Hermeticist in question) that is brought to the pentacle/arcanum makes a difference too in terms of its “value” in the spiritual world (what can be drawn from or experienced through the Arcanum).
We see the basic formula of Effort from below to above and Grace from above to below. This is the fundamental law of spiritual currency. This law is elaborated into 9 other laws in the 9 Beatitudes. We could call these the 9 Laws of Spiritual Currency, for each one follows the formula effort (loss) and grace (gain).
Following on from the idea of talisman/pentacle: is the highest or most comprehensive pentacle the 5 Wounds of the Risen Christ? The “sense organs” of the Will/Resurrection body? Note that in the Ace of Coins you have the four plants (like the wounds in the hands and feet) and then the central, radiant coin (like the spear wound).
– We have been practicing together the Lord’s Prayer Course, and for some time the focus has been on the first Beatitude “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” One of the recommended readings in relation to this is Tomberg’s writings on the Ten Commandments from Lazarus, Come Forth! He focuses on the practice of finding the Transcendental Self, that which is the center around which thinking, feeling, and willing orient themselves. He then refers to YHVH as the “Self of Selves”, the I AM. We can deepen further and further into our personal I AM (Transcendent Self) and find a way to the Great I AM, God. We become Poor in Spirit (erase Thinking, Feeling, and Willing) and receive the Kingdom of Heaven (contact between Transcendent Self and Godhead).
He follows this with a meditation on the names of God, leading into honoring the Sabbath and one’s Father and Mother, where he introduces the Luminous Holy Trinity in a different way than in the 19th Letter-Meditation on The Sun.
Joel’s personal experience looking for the Transcendent Self which centers thinking, feeling, and willing (and one might add also sense perception) went something like this: the first thing one notices is that behind thinking, behind feeling, behind willing, and behind sense perception is what one might call a Beholder, and this Beholder can become aware of and behold itself. It is fundamentally an openness. One might say that this beholder has the same selfless interest as a sense organ. In fact, one begins to notice that this beholder is not only deeply interested in every thought, feeling, action, and perception that one takes part in, but stores them into memory. She is more or less loving interest become complete, dispassionate. Translated into imagination, she is like a Grandmother, who beholds with the deepest interest and complete lack of judgement every portion of one’s inner and outer life. But she is so selfless and receptive, that she recedes quite easily into invisibility behind the cacophony of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and perceptions. One forgets constantly that she is there. This is related to the Our Mother prayer, all of which revolves around recognition of one’s forgetting of her, its consequences, and the remedying of this forgetting.
On the other hand, the much more “vocal” constant in one’s inner life that holds thinking, feeling, willing and sensing in His orbit is the Voice of Conscience. Unlike the “Mother” Ego characterized above, this is the “Father” Ego, who looks with something like reprimand on every thought, feeling, action and perception. All can constantly be made more ideal, and it is the Father Voice of Conscience which reminds us of this. His voice can enter into our thinking, our feeling, our willing, and even our sensing. It can act as a creative “push” in the right direction, or as a feeling of shame and penitence after a wrong action. His voice is ever-present, and unlike with the Mother Beholder, we sometimes wish we could ignore and block out his voice, but it is always there. This is related to the Our Father prayer, through which we recognize the authority of God and invite his instruction and support in manifesting His Will through our will (and his forgiveness when we fail).
And so we see that the Transcendent Ego is not so simple. It is not just the “eternal Self” that moves from incarnation to incarnation, vs the “empirical self” that only comes about in one incarnation. It is a Father and Mother: it is in this sense Two and not One. The Mother aspect one could say is entirely Sense, Archetypal Sense. The Father aspect one could say is the polar opposite, entirely Limb, Archetypal Will.
Usually we are only aware of the nagging voice of conscience. This voice can become so insistent that it only makes our inner life more disorderly, not less. It is only when we recognize the Beholder simultaneously that we can enter the fruitful activity of Meditative Reflection—it is only through calm reflection on our own activity that we can come to terms with that in us which is Fallen, without causing undo psychic disruption.
This returns us to the Five Wounds: for here we have the “sense-organs of the Will.” It is here, in the Resurrection body, that Archetypal Sense and Archetypal Will are united in Archetypal Sense-Will.
Christ’s receiving of the wounds was almost just the final, outer step in manifesting an enormous force that was there in great potential, but needed to be “activated” via the Crucifixion. The amount and quality of the Mother and Father within him was so great that those wounds could become the gateway for Sense-Will.
Notice that the Ace of Coins represents this two-fold Father/Mother aspect to us, only in a counter-intuitive sense. The “limbs” of the card are the plants, but they are blue, receptive, like the Mother-Sense. The “sense organ” or “Eye” of the card is the radiant coin, which is yellow, radiating like the activity of the limbs.
One might even say there are three “Suns” in this card: the central sun is a flower, more of an “enfolded” Sun; the middle sun is the radiant 16-rayed star; and the outer sun is the four plants growing out of the coin, somewhere in between radiant and enfolded.
Yes, this image of Father and Mother takes us to Radiance and Enfoldment, as noticed by Ian, also to Lucifer and Ahriman. The voice of Ahriman is like Father without Mother (all criticism, disapproval, coercion, coldness). The voice of Lucifer is like Mother without Father (all soothing, self-satisfied, greedy for more sensation, warm, lazy).
We’ve noted this progression before:
Steiner brings in the polarity of Lucifer-Ahriman, with Christ holding the balance.
With Tomberg the polarity becomes Radiance and Enfoldment. A portion of Lucifer is given to Christ and becomes Radiance, and a portion is given to Ahriman and becomes Enfoldment.
With Robert Powell the polarity becomes Father (Light/Wisdom in the Heights) and Mother (Warmth/Life in the Depths), with Christ once again holding the balance. Evil finds its redemption/defeat only when Father and Mother are honored.
Due to the fundamental nature of Arcanum, that is, Coin/Exchange, this image evokes any of the three quite precisely.
Regarding the Mother—one thinks of Estelle’s vision concerning Cain and Abel. The Mother retreats to the core of the Earth, where the blood of Abel (the remainder of Paradisiacal Innocence) is buried beneath layers of Evil (deed of Cain). The layers become increasingly darker and more Evil, then at their deepest level, a sudden flipe to the purity of Paradise/Shambhala.
The poem Ramayana. Ramayana is a hero who must slay various rakshasas in order to rescue his love, Sita, from the demon king Ravana. The tone of the story, however, is that these demons are forces of goodness that have descended or “trapped” themselves in the demonic for a Divine purpose. They are then waiting for the karmically appointed moment during which they will be battled with by Ramayana, and slain—and hence, redeemed. Perhaps this is the nature of the layers of Evil that the Mother is surrounded with—layers of “fallen soldiers” so to speak, the Good suffering from a kind of PTSD. Portions of Old Saturn, Old Sun, etc that have fallen and trapped themselves in the guise of Evil in order to accomplish the aims of the Divine.
Additionally, if we are to think of the Mother as the “Beholder of Beholders,” she requires that position, within all the layers of Evil, in order to be able to Behold all. She takes all of it in, in great interest and without judgement, good and evil alike. All are her children, and exist in her constant memory. These layers are in a sense hidden from the gaze of the Father in the Heights, whose fundamental impulse is a creative outpouring, not a reflective bearing.
We come again in the Ace of Coins to the question: what is behind the Coin? In a way, we could say that the Coin is a protective shield, guarding a holy Maiden. The Father aspect is like the Grail Knight/Grail King: venturing out to slay dragons, accomplish great deeds under the “standard” of his maiden. The Mother is like the Grail Bearer/Maiden, the Beholder of all. The Knight is the Conscience, the Bearer the Beholder. This brings us back to Perseus and Andromeda once again. Perseus’s shield is akin to this reflective capacity of the beholder in the hands of Conscience = Meditative Reflection.
Bringing these ideas and this Arcanum into connection with its predecessor, The World. Looking at page 630 of MOTT, Tomberg says that “…it is this Arcanum which will reveal the world to us as a work of divine creative art, i.e. the world of Wisdom ‘who was at work beside him…rejoicing before him always’, and it is this Arcanum again which will reveal the world to us as a work of art of deceptive mirage, i.e. the world of maya, the great illusion, who plays her game (lila) unceasingly—or, in other words, on the one hand the world which reveals God by manifesting him, and on the other hand the world which hides him by covering him.”
This simultaneous hiding and revealing brings us to the very nature of Coin, of the possibility of Exchange, and also of the positive aspect of Father/Mother, and the negative aspect of Lucifer/Ahriman.
– Next, looking at this Arcanum’s symbolic details. Joel investigated the historical use/symbolism of a 16 pointed star. Clearly this calls to mind the larynx chakra. But a 16 pointed star was the symbol of the Greek god Helios.
Helios was the Sun-god, who drove a chariot pulled by four horses.
He was occasionally interchanged with Apollo (who Steiner says is another name for the Archangel Jesus/Krishna). We can see in the Ace of Coins a central Sun/Chariot pulled by four blue “horses,” the four primal instincts/elements/temperaments/Cherubim etc. These four horses also make one think of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: the White, Red, Black and Pale (Green) horses. The Apocalyptic Christ is the true Helios.
Another solar connection is the resemblance of this form to a scarab beetle. In Ancient Egypt, a scarab beetle was seen as an earthly representative of the Sun-god Ra. A scarab beetle has its egg and larva stage within the dung; when it becomes a beetle, it emerges fully formed from the dung. This was considered a magical act of resurrection, akin to that performed by the Sun each day. The new-born beetle then would tirelessly roll balls of dung long distances. The scarab beetle was a manifestation of the same archetypal being who was tirelessly pushing the Sun across the ecliptic everyday. Remember the phrase from the Sola Busca Ace of Coins: “I am drawn by fate to serve. He who persists will win in the end.” This is like the motto of the Sun, and of the scarab beetle. We are brought back to the goal of The Magician: “Turn work into play. Make every yoke easy and each burden light.”
This Arcanum could almost be seen as a sun with solar flares/plasma flares (a la the electric universe theorists: https://www.electricuniverse.info).
– This Arcanum has a magical quality of representing many things simultaneously. For example, one can see the entire first chapter of Genesis in this image. The Spirit of God (Coin) hovering over the Waters (Plants); Light (Coin) vs Darkness (Plants); Waters above and below (Plants) a firmament (Coin); dry land appearing (Coin) and vegetation growing (Plants), etc.
– Finally, Joel’s mid-week observation or pondering of the primal quality of this card, a quality akin to “Mysticism” for The Magician or “Gnosis” for the High Priestess. In other words, how is Yod manifesting in the realm of Activity, the lowest realm of the Sephiroth Tree? Which particular aspect of Mysticism is being called forth? Yes, it has something to do with “Spiritual Exchange/Currency.” But it must also be connected to the prior Arcanum, The World—i.e. to Sacred Art. Another word for The World might be Cosmos. Pythagoras was the first to describe the starry heavens as “Cosmos”, as opposed to Chaos. Cosmos means Harmony, Order—but also was used in terms of beauty (think “cosmetic.”) One is brought back to beauty as expressing Truth or disguising Truth (possibly an ugly/undesirable Truth). This term is special because it brings together succinctly the connection between cosmogony (spiritual creation) and Beauty (human artistic creation), while emphasizing the possibility in either case for the hiding or revealing of Truth (mirage vs sacred).
The question then becomes: “What does the process of creating/experiencing Sacred Art have to do with Spiritual Currency/Exchange?”
(Now the conversation proper begins)…
– A possible answer to this question might have something to do with Fiat Currency, which is not backed by gold or any other substance, but simply by confidence in the market, faith. Possibly the presence or degree of confidence and faith on the part of the human being links into the effort in crafting the symbol. Maybe this affects the value it has and hence its possibility to be exchanged for something else.
– In creating a talisman: one is creating an astral form through visualization, imbuing it with life, etheric forces. One is creating a microcosmic being with correspondences built into its structure that link it to a macrocosmic equivalent/source. The highest possible macrocosmic source for such symbolism is the Father and Mother.
– The image of Helios with the Four Horses could be interpreted/combined in a variety of ways, but one way that stands out is to see Helios as the Father, emblazoned with tributes to the Mother: the Standard on his shield, for example. Here we have the Manifest Divinity (the Father) under the insignia of the Unmanifest/Hidden Divinity (the Mother). We have an exchange, an interweaving one might say: the Father (Conscience) taking on the “forms” of the Mother (Beholding), and vice versa. The highest form of exchange.
– We have entered very deeply into a symbolic realm. The card itself is a symbol, with a symbol on it; on the symbol, symbols are emblazoned. It is “meta-symbolic” vs the Major Arcana. This is what makes it so fertile in terms of how easily it suggests different meanings/beings/activities. Unlike the Majors, who were somewhat more limited and discreet in terms of their suggestivity. The Ace of Coins is an image of the Manifest bearing all the symbols of the Unmanifest. Like Goethe’s Archetypal Plant: a single image that carries within it a whole process of metamorphosis. An “archetypal plant” of the 7 Days of Creation. Or an “archetypal plant” that contains Lucifer/Ahriman, Radiance/Enfoldment, Father/Mother. It is an image encapsulating all aspects and consequences of the Primal Act of Creation.
One hears stories of Goethe, of how he knew, for example, how an unfinished cathedral was going to be finished just by looking at it, or could predict the weather with precision just watching the clouds, discovering a bone because he knew it must be there by seeing inwardly the metamorphosis of the skeleton. One sees this state of soul as an ideal in Anthroposophy that isn’t often put into practice or attained.
– Goethe’s methods for both artistic creation and scientific perception were very similar to each other—to make room within himself for the inner aspect of the outer phenomenon to arise (scientific perception), or to make room for the outer aspect of an inner reality to arise (artistic creation). Fundamentally, Goetheanism is this process of “Spiritual Exchange” in practice—the exchange of one’s lower fantasy (mirage) for higher Imagination (Truth).
– We are approaching here the single-term virtue (akin to “Mysticism”) for Yod in the realm of Action, the Yod of Coins. The Yod in Action is the experience of a flash of a snapshot of the overlay of all these different metamorphic stages. The remainder of the Coins, the remainder of the “Realm of Action,” is simply the unfolding/elaboration of these metamorphic stages in detail, rather than in snapshot/summary. The Ace of Coins represents the comprehensive fact of convertibility, not the details of its process.
We can see in this somewhat explosive image a representation of points of intersection and convergence, of emergence—and finality.
It seems that metamorphosis fundamentally relates to Time, to the unfolding of Time. From pages 26-27 of Romantic Religion, a book about the Inklings: “Barfield believes that Goethe came closest to this sort of imaginative science in his work on the morphology of plants. Committed by his poetic theory to a belief that there is an ‘inside’ to nature, that natural phenomena have meaning, he did not approach his subject empirically but imaginatively. He saw what the plant ‘stood for’ or ‘meant,’ or what it ‘symbolized.’ It meant ‘metamorphosis,’ he said; all the disparate parts of the plant are explainable as metamorphosis of the leaf; from seed to leaf is a process of sameness in difference, or transformation. The empirical approach can only show change from one thing to another—what Barfield calls substitution. In the same way the empirical approach to evolution can only show the same sort of substitution, not continuity, not sameness in difference. Darwinian evolution is committed to saying that matter evolved into something wholly different from matter: mind. But Barfield’s notion of evolution is one of transformation, not substitution; it is a process of essentially the same thing metamorphosing into many forms but yet remaining itself: mind, meaning, spirit.”
So from the Anthroposophical/Goethean perspective, all events unfolding in time are processes of transformation, not substitution—or in our terms, exchange. How can we reconcile this picture of Exchange with the Goethean notion of Metamorphosis?
Here, with the Ace of Coins, we are dealing with processes that stand to one degree or another outside of time, what Tomberg might refer to as Vertical events, rather than the Horizontal events of Time/Metamorphosis. Moments like the Creation of the World; the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ; Pentecost; the End of the World—these are moments of Substitution, Exchange, where something that exists outside of the stream of Time enters in and affects its course utterly.
We might say these are primal acts of Substitution/Exchange. Secondary acts would be those of true human creativity—where something that did not exist, and no one had dreamed could exist, comes to life within someone due to an inner or outer sacrifice. These acts of true human creativity are moments of “Let there be Light” in miniature.
The so-called “Normal” unfolding of life, in metamorphosis, passes between these nodal “snapshot” moments that seem to be spread out in our lives, in human and natural history, but are actually all connected in the realm of the Eternal. They are all manifestations of the One Thing—which is exchange between Father and Mother. The higher reality, the Eternal, is made up of what these flashes of exchange expose—exchanges of Beings of equivalent significance in the Archetypal realm.
The Symbols, Arcana. They are silent and fixed, but speak in a symbolic language that is “all in one go”, contains all at once, and when “conversed with” (meditated upon), they reveal a dramatic outpouring of expression from the Macrocosm. Compare this with our never-ending babble in the “normal,” (i.e. metamorphic, mutable) everyday life—using “normal” language, that is increasingly “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Always expressing, sounding, but saying nothing, moving from one moment to the next without ceasing—vs these Blocks of Symbol (the Arcana) that expose a vast Reality in one Arcanum, disappear and metamorphose “behind the scenes” into the next Block of Symbol that exposes another vast reality.
In normal life, we are “swimming in the stream,” drawn along by the passage of time, and the nodal points seem few and far between—sometimes going unnoticed. But the Arcana show us only the nodal points, the flashes of Eternity. The metamorphosis between and amongst them is up to us to discover. They reveal to us in as clear a way as possible that which is so difficult to put our finger on in everyday life—the Eternal.
– Looking at the numerical symbolism on the Ace of Coins.
In the very center, there is 12 (12 dots, and also 3 stripes on each of the 4 petals of the central flower).
Then the 8 foldness of the flower (4 petals, 4 leaves)
Then the 16-rayed “Sun”
Then the 4-foldness of the plants growing out of the coin.
Here we have Heart Chakra (12), Crown Chakra (8), Larynx Chakra (16), and Root Chakra (4). A feeling of warmth and enlivening is occurring during this conversation, centering around these different regions.
In fact, here we have Saturn—Sun—Moon—Mars: the first half of the 7 Planetary Stages. Where are Mercury, Jupiter, Venus?
– We are getting closer to experiencing an answer to the question posed before: what do the processes of cosmogenesis and artistic creation have to do with Spiritual Exchange? And what “virtue” summarizes this?
– All money, or most money in history was a talisman. It was engraved with a magical phrase (“Motto”), the image or symbol of a god, etc. Including our own, modern US Dollar.
– We are witnessing in this Arcanum the primal fact and act of Exchange—but what is the Agent, the Great Magical Agent of Exchange? What or who is the origin of this process? It is hidden, despite the fact that all the signs and symbols point towards it. Like The Magician: he represents Mastery, but in a very sly and nonchalant way. Possibly the Ace of Coins will become clearer as we come to know it better.
– The implied element or agent of exchange is The Stone, i.e. The Philosopher’s Stone: the Ego. The Transcendental Ego or the empirical (Fallen) ego? One might think the Transcendental Ego, but in reality it is both together that are the agents of exchange. The split is the agent of creation, as there can only be exchange where there are two or more. But the split implies a wholeness.
This brings us to a crossroads, a new crisis: what does Primal Unity mean? If, as we have discovered above, all moments of true Creation are moments of Exchange, doesn’t this imply that at the beginning there were Two and not One?
Maybe Two is the first moment of Time unfolding, the moment of Creation, but Oneness, Unity is that which precedes all beginnings.
In the end though, this is a form of thought that can only exist in abstraction. There is no such thing as “before beginnings,” as we are still speaking in terms of Time.
We tend to think this way:
1) Seed-like origin of the world—2) the unfolding in metamorphosis of that which was contained in the seed—3) a descent from some mysterious “Above” that is the “lightning flash” of creative exchange, which changes the course of the metamorphosis.
But this is incorrect, as it is essentially linear and horizontal, with the vertical just “added in” above.
In reality, the origin is the center. Out of this center, time moves in concentric circles. The “flashes” of primal creativity that change the course of the metamorphosis create openings in the circles, changing them into spirals. The metamorphosis then doesn’t get caught in a blind alley. It is periodically reminded of the Eternal that exists in the center. What is at the center of this spiral, radiating out lightning flashes of adjustment/creation?
Is it the Seal of Solomon, the Luminous Holy Trinity: Three-Fold Trinity and Three-fold Trinosophia, Father and Mother?
Perhaps it is Primal Love at the origin of the World, and not Primal Unity. Certainly if it was any kind of unity, it wasn’t uniform. When anthroposophy makes the generalization that “all proceeded from a unity of Spirit/Nature, descended into a separation of Matter and Spirit, and will proceed to a unity again, only this time with ego-consciousness intact,” it seems that something is missing. In a way, it is only following the same course as mainstream science, only the “primal unity” at the origin and destination is complete spiritualization of matter, not the complete materialization of spirit as in the case of modern cosmology.
There is an implication in the Bible that in the beginning “the Spirit of God (Father) hovered over the face of the Waters (Mother)”—that there were two primal essences, substances, activities, beings…a duality of some kind interacting with each other. Anthroposophy seems to be only describing one half of the equation, and if not Darwinian evolution than possibly someone like Chardin is describing the other half of the equation.
– Looking at the last paragraph of page 655: a reminder that with the Coins, we are only looking at images, facts, memories, experiences…the lowest form of knowledge that must be eradicated as we head further up the Tree of Life.
Tomberg’s lectures on the Foundation Stone Meditation are important here, especially the last series from 1939. See page 52, where he lays out this diagram:
The Stone or Coin of the Ego is the highest below, and the lowest above. The Stone or Coin of the Physical Human Body is the lowest below and the highest above. The suit of Coins should be seen in an analogous light—we are here both at the highest and the lowest simultaneously.
– The Law of Spiritual Currency: “Make of yourself a Talisman, that when the Spirit invokes you, you can create and perceive that which is Eternally True, Beautiful, and Good.”
Romanticism or Goetheanism as the virtue of Yod in Action: the harmonization of Art, Religion, and Science.
We ended with saying the Fourth Part of the Foundation Stone Meditation, next week to be performed in eurythmy due to its relationship with Pentacle (five-pointed star).
The Unknown Friends 