The Tarot of Eli, LLC- Major Arcana: The New Orleans Voodoo Tarot-Key 16-Deluge & Thoth Tarot- ATU 16- The Tower

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The New Orleans Voodoo Tarot- Key 16-Deluge, represents the deep, and rich waters of the Soul/Psyche. In Western Qabalah, the Waters are the Astral Plane or Pleroma, the place of swirling liquid light. All the works of the conscious mind dissolve upon the water's coming as the seemingly more tenuous fabrications of the Spirit find swift succor in their sweet embrace. In Voodoo these waters are called the Waters of Return. As does water act as a solvent, whose very nature is unchanged by what it dissolves, in the Water of Return, everything is as it ever was, nothing is changed. The very waves of this Astral water chews away the shore of the self-conscious mind and its beliefs begin dissolving. Toppling thoughts are carried back to their source, the Dark Deep Sea of the Universal Collective Unconscious. According to Voodoo philosophy, the Land below the Waters, is called the Land of Spirits, which calls out and is gathered in. Therefore, from the Waters we came and to the Waters we shall return.

The Ti Bon Ange (will) and the Gros Bon Ange (love) intercourse and create within themselves the emptiness of self- The I Am. Now the sacred calabash or gourd, which represents the mixing place, is empty and nothing moves within its walls. To created idea,or thought, is to build something from nothing. Therefore, the self-conscious of the Voodooist is like the sacred calabash. Being empty, the self-conscious, who is washed clean by the Waters, is now open to the act of creation from Intuition, open to the touch of the Angels. The Self-Conscious, with its culturally indoctrinated beliefs, whether true or false, can embrace only a small part of existence, as islands only exist in a small part of the Great Ocean. Therefore, the Waters embrace and flow through All.

The Self-Conscious is a small child covered in the dust of play. The Waters come to wash, refresh and empty its essential being, leaving Wisdom behind.

The New Orleans Voodoo Tarot- Key 16-Deluge, depicts an electrical tower and the Mississippi River, being struck by lighting. The hurricane drives the water over the breaking levee, washing away house, car and road, as if the waters are reclaiming the land taken from them. Blue sky above, and blue water below reflect the axiom of "As above so below". According to the artist, Sallie Ann Glassman, the area depicted on the card is called Riverbend. The land between the levee and the river is a popular place for Voodoo ritual. Here, pieces of colored cloth hang from trees, and on the ground are numerous places of worship and ritual. When most of the land, like the City of New Orleans, is below sea level it is good to contemplate the waters.

Sacrifice, and sacred are derived from the same root word: to sacrifice is to make sacred. Both are attributes of this New Orleans Voodoo Tarot Card. For all of us, the cleansing waters come sooner or later, not necessarily bidden. The dust (self absorbed drama) will be washed away to reveal an empty core, around which the Soul will construct a new personality, wiser and ready to operate in the name of I AM. Hence, this card carries the key to immortality. Those who identify with the dust, will be cleansed, thus, dissolved, and reformed with all memory of past drama gone. If we identify with the empty core, the hollowness of the calabash, taking nothing "serious", there will be nothing for the Waters to wash away. The soul is practical, and goes by the folk axiom of " You don't fix it if it ain't broke". The personality is therefore, a Mercury, a messenger of the Soul/Spirit itself. Which is what is was always ment to be.

When the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot- Key 16-Deluge is thrown in divination, it implies:

• Sacrifice, unavoidable and often misunderstood. 
• Violent physical or emotional upheaval revealing core issues or aspects of the self-conscious.

The Thoth Tower- ATU 16 represents The Universal Key of renovation and restoration. This card is often misunderstood and seen as a doom and gloom -Armageddon end of an Aeon symbol. However, it's more about your own man-made personality, which is static and has crystallized thought to the point where you repeat the same thoughts and expect different results. There is insanity in such a process.

The Tower is a hallmark image of the Tower of Babel brought down by God(dess) the Destroyer (Shiva). In less archaic language, the personality deconstructed and reconstructed by the enlightened thought of the Soul.

•  The fire breathing dragon at the base, is the Spiritual and/or Life force that transforms life constantly in order to keep evolving the living. To the Romans this was the God Peh.
• The four figures falling out of the tower symbolize the crystallized thought of the "wanna-be", i.e. yesterday's' thought- formed- people who seek only comfort and fear change. These are thoughts that hold us back from our impeccable performance in life motion. By observation alone we can see that Evolutionary Life is all about performance rather than conformance. Thus Essential Self is progressive thought; not enslaved thought.
• The open eye at the top represents the Eye of Horus, the Egyptian god of perception; the perceptive state of awakening and seeing the deeper/inner authentic self that is not human defined but is God made. Upon Awakening personalities are required to come into alignment with the Greater Self, which is symbolized by the Western culture’s fire breathing dragon. Metaphorically, we are Dragons! (The union of Angel, animal and daemon---i.e. "those who are not bound by laws but expand and liberate laws from states of stasis by transubstantiation.).
• The haloed serpent, reminds us that by shedding old ways of thinking we become expanded and liberated. Expanded consciousness requires expanded definitions of self and the arising of the Kundalini, a serpentine force, all coiled up at the base of the Spine.
• The dove represents the inner peace that we have when we become the authentic god-made being which comes from shedding the outer definition of man-made being.

The Tower Card-ATU 16, is the Path of Peh, meaning Mouth. Paul Foster Case calls the Path of Peh," The Exciting Intelligence", as vibrations excite matter and the Mouth sends forth vibrations as sound or words. The 8th Sephiroth-Hod (Splendor), the center of the reasoning process is connected to the center of the intuition-desire nature, the 7th Sephiroth-Netzach (Victory) as the Path of Peh-THE TOWER. This Path of the Personality brings into balance what is out of balance and is related to Mars, the Roman god of War and the North. Traditionally the North was the quarter seen as the "greatest place of darkness", for when the Mysteries where initiated, the North side of King Solomon's temple was the darkest side. But all is not doom and gloom here, as any initiate in the Mysteries knows, it is from the darkest night that comes Light and that "enlightenment has its origin in the hidden sources of power which terrify the minds of the ignorant". To us moderns who are familiar with Quantum Physics Theory, it is said that from the Invisible Dark Energy and Dark Matter are the birthplaces of Visible Light energy and visible matter.

Peh, the Hebrew word, is called a double letter, for it not only means -Mouth but also-Grace and Indignation, a union of opposites. Double letters, are considered "gateways of the Soul", that have two possible directions of passage. It is also a fact that the mouth has two passages as well. One passage takes in nourishment into the organic system and another expresses speech. Thus, we can see the similarity between the two actions of the Path of Peh. For it not only is a devastating Path of the Higher Vibrations that burn away the dross of our Personalities, it is also the entrance that nourishes the consciousness with Spiritual knowledge, (enlightenment) from the Real Personality.

Many of us are familiar with chanting and the effects of the power of vibration on the physical body. Many Mysteries propound on the use of "god names" or "Words of Power" to effect the destruction of "negative energies”, in body and environment. (Relative to speech, we know that the Logos, is also called the Word,) These "negative energies" that The Tower card represents the destruction of, are our own personal towers of false concepts and institutions that are commonly believed to be reality. By tearing down, room is made for something new.

Now I know that Mars is the symbol of the war god of destruction but few remember that Mars is also attributed with the power of crop fertility. Again the process of destruction to build anew is seen here as the peace and calm of the soil is distributed in order to plant healthy crops. This really is the core of the message of The Tower-Key 16.

In the Thoth version of THE TOWER. we see stylized lightning or energy strikes knocking off the geometric shapes of human forms which symbolize the man-made personalities that see reality as a world of straight lines; straight lines as in 'black and White" or "good and bad". The Man-Made personality, sees a reality foreign to Nature and the Universe, which is circular and/or spiral in nature, and is known for its lack of straight lines. Spirit and Spiral share the same root word, Spiro, a Greek word meaning "breath" or "to breath". The "Word" requires breath to be "spoken".

The Tower symbolizes the construct that most people call "I" or self, were perspectives of the Personality are being shattered by the influx of the Fiery High Self, as place is being made in the consciousness for higher Knowledge. The toppling Tower also represents the destruction of manmade institutions, government, religions, or any accepted values.

Yet this striking down, is not to be construed as the destruction of evil, rather it is a process of change, as "stepping stones" of perspective are built that contributes to the continual building up and striking down of concepts that lead into the Inner Realms of Higher Self; Kind of like the building up and striking down of miles as one travels. Another way to understand THE TOWER'S process, is that upon first approach to these 'Higher Planes" of reality, many people anthropomorphize the States of Conscious Energy, as Archangels or "Spiritual Beings”, as that is how they "realize" them; However, these Creative Forces are formless, so in order to incorporate these forces into our own anthropomorphized "reality", we must deconstruct the previous false concepts of these angelic beings as outside ourselves, and know them as states of I Am Me. This is a necessary process of progressive and expanding Self-Awareness as we mentally journey on the "Above all things, know thyself" Paths of the Tree of Life. Just to travel to greater destinations in the present, we must deconstruct the perspectives of our past!

The Higher or Greater Self, is the True Ego of the "ONE", which is not ours alone, so The Tower's solitary destruction also represents the eradication of the personal false ego made by the survival consciousness of the animal body. The lightning flashes are representative of sudden inspiration, or flashes of perception, that occur when we realize our Real Identities. This inner conflict is why A. Crowley subtitled THE TOWER card as WAR. But this is not a new perspective on the inner conflict of survival persona and the Higher Self, as throughout esoteric literature there are depicted these moments of "inner-war". For instance, in the Bhagavad Gita, there is described symbolic battle of self-perspectives, and/or component parts of Self: The Higher Genius is portrayed as Krishna (Solar Logos), guiding Arjuna (lower personality) onto his inner, and personal field of conflict.

In Western literature, we have Christ, going through his days in the desert, solitary and alone, while being continually tempted by the lower personality of Satan, which relates to the survival based ego trying to usurp the Rule of the True Ego.

I mentioned that this card is about the destruction of the old order. In the Thoth Tower card, the all seeing eye (I) observes and directs the destruction of the Tower, representing the old order, while Dis, the Roman god of the dead, belches flames against the tower base. These illustrations reinstate that the path of the Tower, is often considered to be an affirmation of the Primal Will; that it alone is the True Crown that brings into balance the pure positive or male Chokma and the pure negative or female Binah. Neither of which are man-made definitions.

On one side of the card is the dove, representing one of the two forms of desire, “The will to die". On the other side of the card, is the Sacred Serpent, which represents the other form of desire, "The Will to Live". These are ancient symbols of Life and death, as the serpent sheds its skin, as a kind of resurrection and the dove flies towards the heavens as a "Holy Spirit". The Dove is also considered to be a Feminine symbol and the Serpent a Masculine one, as she is balanced peace of magnetism and he is the serpentine-lightning-electric force that is the "motion in all movement".

There are obvious sexual connotations to this card, in the past, these were broadly suggested so that "polite society" would not be offended. However, "God is Sex", the Tower itself is a phallic symbol, the Mouth, is the opening of the male reproductive male organ from which the Yod (seed of life), ejaculates. In Crowley's 1923 diary, he states that,"...the Blasted Tower which is really a Phallus shooting forth lightning’s of seed". The forced transmutation of energy from one form to another is done by Fire's destructive nature. This initial activation of transformation ultimately leads to fruition as energy is released to be restructured into another As a practicing Tantric and Qabalist, I know the Physical Male body is a type of capacitor of Positive electric force and the Physical Female body is a crucible (womb) of Negative Magnetic Energy (female Shakti), that captures the electric discharge of the Solar Logos (Male-Shiva), eventually producing active form. As in Tantra, Qabalah understands that the Tree of All Life, is a balancing of opposites; a balancing of Force and Form.

In the Tower card, the Mars force is presented as the sexual energy of the Microcosm (Microprosopus), and the image of the Tower is in some ways the phallus. The theory of which points to the all-important understanding that, it is the Higher Sexual Energy (that at first flows from Chokma to Binah, in the Upper Trinity of Kether), of Chokma/ Binah that is called the Supernal Triangle that destroys the motionlessness of Space and begins the dance of Time.

There is a kind of destruction of the male sex organ itself in orgasm which relates to the destruction of the Singularity in the "Big Bang" (no pun intended)!

There is an interpretation here that the fall from the Tower, enables the sacrifice of one's perception of the self-absorbed- sexual function that is continually required by human kind, in order to maintain intercourse with the given Path by which one may return to the Source of All. However, the Path is initiatory as it prepares us for the Knowledge and Conversion of the Solar Logos of Tiphareth. What should be noted here, is that when you "ejaculate" electric energy into the magnetic crucible, you get electromagnetic energy; a place where the,"... male the male and the female are one and the same..." ...a partial quote from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

Here's the whole quote, when asked by the disciples when they shall enter the Kingdom of God (The Supernal Triangle ), : (22) "Jesus said to them,' When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then you will enter the Kingdom."

This completely explains the Qabalistic Tree of Life and will require in depth study, skrying of the Tower card, and Self Knowledge to understand, However, I'll give you some clues, "eyes into an eye" refers to changing perspective of the reality of sight, from the separatism of eyes, to the All seeing eye (I)......the turning of a hand into a hand refers to the Hebrew word Yod--meaning Hand and also called the Seed of Spirit. The male female transformation has already been explained, in this text. It should be noted that the Higher Mysteries are sexual, but in sacred perspectives far beyond the libido of hormone besotted bodies locked in puberty, as would our society of flesh-o-phobes dictate.

The Path of Peh, The Tower, may be symbolically phallic, but this does not make it a "male only Path" as this Path exists prior to the differentiation of the sexes that are necessary for multiple and diverse incarnation. This Tower path is an amalgamation of both male electric and female magnetic force. However, on the path of Peh, one must focus on the male electric force, sexual expressive creative force, that resides in all of us, as on other paths one must deal with female receptive components. Only in working in groups are the different polarities of the physical male and female bodies considered as they both experience the Path differently, according to their polarities.

To the querent, the Tower Card means:

•  Ambition, fighting, war and courage.
• Unexpected events that require us to let go. 
• The necessary toppling of existing forms to make way for new life and new ways.
• It usually means that the querent will be experiencing an ego- personal process of eliminating all that is artificial, false-to-fact, and no longer useful to them; usually in a 16 week or month process.

• Healing, and restoration comes from this process. This is much like a doctor’s axiom of, “This is gonna’ hurt a bit, but it will feel better soon".
• Enlighten perception that strikes like lightning and destroys false or ridgid ideas.

If ill dignified by the cards accompanying it:

• The Tower can mean destruction of the querent’s creation.
• Blind destruction.

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