Notes of a Hermetic Conversation between Phillip and Joel on August 4, 2023.
Something about her looks like she’s playing the cello. But the cello is separated. The fretting is in her right hand, but then the body of the cello should be in front of her. Instead it’s also on her right, appearing within the folds of her robes. Somehow, however, there is this allusion to making music.
Overall hints of flowing, something beautiful and harmonious.
The fold/opening (cello body) caught Phillip’s eye. Almost like there is a person on her shoulder—the head of the baton, a little hair, a dress.
This “person” has two faces. Is it two beings? Dark vs light. Janus. There are clear ridges on the “light” side facing her. And she too is split in two (esp below), cinched together by her band?
Her hair looks fish- or serpent-like. Not good or bad, just creature-like. There’s an indication of an eye on her left side. A sea creature, a sea serpent.
So…a shadow face, a light face, and sea creature, in addition to her own face.
There are two faces in the Chariot as well. And a fishy/serpent hair/crown in Force. Force’s torso is stitched together, akin to the Queen’s.
Everytime we bring out the Majors, we get so distracted by details we never noticed before. Look at the cuffs on Force. So different from any other figure. And her hair is flesh colored, so strange.
The Queen’s hair looks like Death’s spine. Or the garland in the World?
The opening in the Queen’s robe stands out strongly. Should be signifying or expressing something. In the World, the dancer has a cloth in a similar place, on her right hip.
The blue in front of the Queen of Batons is different than her (red) garment, separate from it. A rug that she’s beating. So the opening is the meeting point of the blue and red. Point of both contact and separation.
There is a theme of splitting. The red robes vs the blue rug/apron. The two beings in one baton. Her torso cinced together by the band. It goes back to this question from last time—why such a strong relationship with the Two of Coins?
The wholeness breaking. The infinite becoming living, not finite per se. We associate “living” with “finite”, but not necessarily—it is simply living.
In terms of Judith von Halle in Das Wort—is “pre-primal existence” living? Or is life a point of degradation and diminishment of the pre-existing Logos, the whole?
The Two of Coins stands apart strongly from all the other Numbered Coins. The rest of them, in one fashion or another, bear the pattern of The World, four corners and a fifth in the center. Perhaps the Two is living, in contrast to the (static) eternal?
The Two doesn’t necessarily play the same role, however, in the other Suits. The Two of Cups is totally out there, strange. But the Two of Swords and Two of Batons are not at all unique. It’s more the Ace in the Suit of Swords that stands apart.
The Coins as static eternal archetype overall. The Two as the one out of ten that allows breakage and life to emerge. Further development. Breaking the mold.
The meeting point of blue and red in the Queen of Batons, and the sapce in between as related. Her baton is the seedling coming out of the ends somehow. The modifications of the same overall archetype are drawn all over her.
Something of the middle section, the cinching, is reminiscent of the Nine of Cups.
The throne of the King of Swords also seems related. This bird or butterly form. Or a flower in the shape of a bird, attracting a pollinator. A squirt of nectar.
Who drew this? So trippy. Someone in a medieval hallucinatory state?
The Cologne Cathedral, trippy shapes. The King of Swords—no real structure. It’s not really a throne.
For being basic blockprint pictures, they aren’t very clear. We have to use our imagination.
On that note—what is going on with the floor in the Queen of Batons? What is it supposed to be? Weird puzzle pieces? Stairs? There is no throne whatsoever, not even an attempt to imply one.
In the Queen of Cups, there isn’t really a throne either—a weird curtain? Chariot? Saddle? The Queen of Swords seems to have a proper throne. The Queen of Coins has a kind of tub, as does the King of Coins. Maybe these are alternate versions of the Emperor’s curved chair/throne?
There is at least something in the back space of the other Queens indicating a throne. But there is nothing in the Queen of Batons.
The protuberance in her lap—a wingtip? Like the Empress’s throne-wings. Not really distinct though.
The throne sits on her, rather than she on the throne.
She is the being who has been behind/below all these other thrones, bearing them up.
If the red protuberance on her left is one (still frozen/gestating) wing, is the baton a yellow wing that has fully come to life? Are angels’ wings like flowing sap in a tree? More of a life-quality, an organic pulsation, not like a birds wing?
It feels significant that the baton is much more differentiated on the light side vs the dark side.
The throne is divided (stunted red, growing yellow), but the part that has grown is also divided, retaining an element of the ungrown part.
We wonder if there is a Sea of Glass, with Holy Living Creatures worshipping the One seated on the throne, depicted in a more bizarre unfolding kind of way.
Interesting if so—because only what is in the lap/blue is mentioned explicitly in the Book of Revelation. The whole setting, the stage of Sophia goes unmentioned, that which surrounds the throne and sea of glass.
We are in a way back at the beginning. With this repeating form that seems be in contrast with one of its own elements, broken by one of its own elements—the One broken by the Two. And yet—they were always the same. The One was always Two.
At the start of the journey, there was more of the “One” expressed. Nine of the ten Numbered Coins express the same archetypal form (of the Ace, the “One”), with 1/10 expressing the Two. A gradual inversion as we move through the Minors, until it is almost an entirely expressing the “Two” and the “One” recedes into the background.
We take the opposite journey of the Majors. We begin with the basic form of The World, with the four corners surrounding a fifth in the center (the “One” image). We end with the Magician. The four have been lowered onto the ground (as the table), and above is the horizontal lemniscate. A division.
Really the whole thing is this pulsing between One and Two, who are in reality the same. Between the bird’s eye view and the earthly view (a reference to our earliest Coin conversations, when we realized the Ace and the Two were the same object, only that in the Ace we view it from above in a bird’s eye view, and in the Two we view it as though standing next to it on the Earth).
No one quite has a crown the way that she does. The Queen of Swords has the fleur-de-lis form.
But the vertical lines on her crown—those take us back to the Ace of Swords. The only time we have seen those.
Interesting return to both the Two of Coins and the Ace of Swords, both of which show to us what is “under” the Ace of Coins (we came to see the Ace of Swords as the “Breaking” or “unplugging” of the Ace of Coins).
Her baton has a strong sword connotation, with the sharp line down the center.
One of her arms needs to pass out of the hollow of the cape. It could slip in and out. The other doesn’t. And on one sides, the blue rises all the way under her arm, and the other side doesn’t. Did she pull it out of her right sleeve? Is it still emerging? Is the baton a big knitting needle? Dragging excess fabric out of her sleeve.
For being so wild looking, she’s also very calm. No urgency or intense action. There is this powerful air and flowing around her. She’s not caught up in it though.
The cinching at her chest is in the shape of the Pope’s mitre. Maybe these two “wings” of the throne growing out of her lap are the back of a throne, and we can see the back of someone sitting in it, facing away from us? We are witnessing the purely “natural religion” side of reality. This blue gateway in the Pope…maybe this takes you into her domain:
The triple cross, and the two pillars—do they become her baton? This red wing?
It is reminiscent of Michael guarding one side of the threshold (cognition of revelation) and Sophia guarding the other side (beings bestowing revelation), described in Inner Development.
The idea that orthodox, conservative tradition can allow you to pass through into a pagan fairy world, exactly mirroring the heirarchical structures. Nature’s instinctive ordering. The manmade world is intended, not instinctive.
This all goes back to the Two that are One.
Describing the stages—finally grasping the Two that are secretly One:
The other stages had become relatively clear:
- The Knave of Coins scrutinizes the coin, perhaps gradually raising into consciousness the coin below.
- The Knight of Coins has a revelatory experience with his coin, transforming his consciousness in the Knave of Swords (state of naive revelation).
- The Queen of Coins is the metamorphic gateway through which the Knave of Coins passes, becoming the hyper-evolutionary creature we see in the Knight of Coins. His process is unwieldy, leading to illness as the Knave of Cups.
- The King of Coins invites the dying acolyte into his tent—for a price. There the Queen of Swords performs the mercy killing. The Knight of Cups shows the process of regeneration, leading to the fully regenerated Knave of Batons.
- The King of Swords displays the full power of this regenerated being. He has the power to sacrifice himself as the Queen of Cups, and yet remain unscathed as the Knight of Batons, a kind of Lord of the Dead.
- The sixth stage was always confusing. We move from this all-powerful series in stage five to the strange King of Cups. What is it all about? Now it becomes clear. Just as the Pope and the Queen of Batons are two sides of the same threshold, we can see that the King of Cups is simply one side of the Queen of Batons and vice versa. A hermaphroditic being, but not a single being—two that are one. The King of Cups only makes sense when he is the other side of the Queen of Batons. Each of them subtly expresses androgyny. They are the integrated duality, the perfect marriage of opposites. The Knave’s two coins?
Interesting similarities between them. The strange hat/shoulder garment that links up to him and his cup, yet is not him. It is similar in the Queen, in terms of the blue robe and the baton. Doesn’t disturb the object in question but doesn’t quite fit either. It is the same theme—I am separated from my object, yet one with my object. Am I giving birth to it or did it give birth to me?
The King shattering his cup. And leaning on—not-a-throne? Is it a staircase behind him?
Finally seeing the primal couple—you two are kind of bizarre.
Like a dream state with very specific instructions/rules.
This is all the divine’s way of creating absolutely perfect balance in the realm of bifurcation—the strangest things that have to recombine and change shape to achieve balance.
Like good cooking—surprising flavors that shouldn’t work together, and yet they do, achieving a new wholeness.
Love to only become really conscious now of this little signature that’s been there all along—never the same way twice—of the living emerging out of the static form. Now we can see it clearly.
Makes us tired—it’s been a long journey. Hard to stand up and express what exactly I am looking at—so inviting—yet a lot of effort—it carries all the rest of where we’ve been with it.
We know there is so much more there, but we are comfortable to stay at this immediate level. There is no need to know what that “more” is. No urgency to get it all, because we’ll never get it all.
There was always an urgency to get to the essential in any given Arcanum.
We get her power. A counterpart to the Pope. Wild instinctual presiding-over. No need to see in full clarity and detail.
Part and parcel of her archetype—not precise or crystalline, living, surprising unfolding.
In the Two of Coins, there is an expression of the sevenfold (seven parts to the ribbon, with the name/ego in the center). A biographical unfolding. No crystalline structure. We only see the order in our biographies in hindsight.
We close with the first panel of the Foundation Stone Meditation—so much of it lives in her!
Human Soul!
Thou livest in the limbs,
Which bear thee through the World of Space
Into the Spirit’s Ocean Being.
Practice Spirit Recollection
In depths of soul,
Where in the Wielding Will
Of World Creating
Thine own I
Comes to being in God’s I.
And thou wilt truly live
In Human World Being.
For the Father Spirit of the Heights holds sway
In Depths of Worlds, Begetting Being.
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones!
Let there ring out from the heights
What in the Depths is echoed.
This speaks:
Ex Deo Nascimur.
The Spirits of the Elements hear it: in East, West, North, South—
May human beings hear it!
The Unknown Friends 