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Above all things, know thyself!

The Universes is Change; every Change is the effect of the Act of Love; all Acts of Love contain Pure Joy. Die daily! Death is the apex of one curve of the snake Life: behold all opposites as necessary complements, and rejoice.

[Letter from Harris to Crowley, 1939]

The Death Card-ATU 13 is the Qabalistic Path of Nun on the Tree of Life, and runs from Netzach (Victory) to Tiphareth (Beauty) on the Tree of Life, and is one of the three aforementioned paths that leads from the Personality to the Higher and/or Greater Self. The initiate may experience the Higher Self on any one of these 3 Paths, Art (The Path of Samekh), The Devil (The Path of Ayin), and Death, (the Path of Nun); However, the lessons of all 3 must be mastered. The figures of the Art card, the Devil card and the Death card are all different aspects of the same thing; The Higher Self and/or the Divine Hermaphrodite, the Engine behind Life.

On the Path of Nun, one is literally launching the consciousness into the Dark Unconscious of Universal Origins. This takes courage and determination, for the consciousness appears to be extinguished in the Universal Collective Unconscious. However, a new state of "ego" and/or "I" is revealed in this Abyssal Womb of Mind. I liken the body consciousness to an Artificial Intelligence, and the Universal Collective Unconscious as the Real Intelligence. This artifice aids me in trusting the dissolution of my self- consciousness, as a transition towards rebirth as it is purified of illusion and deception and the fantasy of being a form under the control of some outside authority.

In fact, the word meaning of the Hebrew letter- Nun is Fish, and reveals the whole arcane doctrine of the Qabalah, as it is the symbol for the "first matter" (Dark Mater) that moves within the Infinite Ocean of the Universal Collective Unconscious. Without death's merciful transformation, many of us could never leave the fantasy we weave as a story of Self; no matter how dysfunctional.

The perspicacious aspirant will note that the Tree of Life has a Path for Death, that of Nun, but seems not to have a Path for Birth: However, The Devil, the Path of Ayin (eye), enchains our Personality in Matter as it leaves the Higher Self on personality's journey down the Tree of Life. Therefore, the Devil, who is the Lord of the Material World, is a card of Birth. Plus there is the fact that both Death and Birth are essentially the same transition. As the invisible psyche is born into visible light and/or "outer World", their inner "I" sight dies/changes to the visible or "eye" sight of the manmade world, just as the personality transitions from the outer world back into the inner world at physical death/transformation. One energy transforms itself by the process of the illusion of destruction (energy cannot be destroyed) of energy phases as the I AM continually redefines Self from one phase of self-awareness to another. If we were to look through alchemical glasses at this phase to phase flow, it seems that the Art Card should be before the Death card in the deck, as the Art card foreshadows the final stage of the Great Work-(2=1) creating The Divine Hermaphrodite (Adam Khadmon). Death is the final stage and this is shown on the Art card as the Golden Cauldron emblazoned with the sign of the Raven and Skull, the caput mortem image, German for death. Hence, from the Divine Marriage of the Anima and Animus, comes transformation of 2 into 1. Placing this marriage as a type of annihilation of the separation caused by 0=2. All transforms back to 1 (Hermaphrodite) in the Death Card.

The Personality constructed consciousness, is indeed extinguished in the Abyss of the Universal Collective Unconscious causing a period of "forgetful sleep" before the Personality exits the Higher Self again and produces another operative artifice known as self-consciousness used to operate another material form. The exception to this recycling process, and amnesia of the past, is when the self-consciousness accompanies the Soul back to the Higher Self, without needing physical death to do so. This is done when the self- consciousness has becomes a discriminating Mercury, and knows the "tricks" of Matter, i.e. the illusions of senses, that the Personality experiences on the physical plane. These illusions or delusions come from the false perspective of separateness and survival thinking of the physical form. Hence, the fear of Death/Change, that resides in the subconscious, must be conquered by the self- consciousness so "that it won't experience the death sleep", that is, the self- consciousness that knowingly transfers from body to body, becoming a Personal Mercury/Messenger manifestation of the Higher Self. When the Whole of the Tree communicates with Malkuth, we have "As above, so Below", with manifestation being the in-form-action of the Greater Self. Hence, "I die daily", begins to make sense, as one transforms Self- Data into Self-Knowledge daily through introspection and outside as in-form- action.

The Great Work, is Life itself as a Wholeness and not a divisionism of separates all trying to prove themselves to a Creator that by the very process of creation, had already Approve them into being! Those who are seeking approval, a survival mechanism of the social animal, are what I call "fish in the Ocean, looking for water." and/ or "Wanna-Be's" who forgot that they already Are the present- All of Being (Spirit-Mind-Body).

The Beauty of Tiphareth, the Soul collective personality of the Higher Self, is that once you return to this aspect of Personality communication, you return to your body knowing that you, as a Personality of Mercury/Magus, are completely accepted and not fearing rejection in the least ( a mask of fear of death)! In other words, you "Know thyself".

The Tarot Card- Death-key 13, is called in the many texts of the Mysteries, "The Child of the Great Transformers" and also the "Lord of the Gates of Death"; Implying that Nun is not the Great Transformers themselves, he is their Child. Thus Nun is not Death itself, rather Nun is the keeper of the Gateway into Transformation. Roughly, this states that the "first matter" and/ or "thought", is the Gatekeeper of Transformation, which is not too difficult to "wrap your head around", if you understand that how you "perceive yourself "transforms your reality.

After Traveling one of the 3 Paths of the "Dark Night of the Soul", where your consciousness is torn down, relieved of all that is not worthy of the "first" you; the archetypal Adam Khadmon. Hence, the elimination of Words as self definitions, sends you up the Tree towards the Real I AM and then being sent back down the Tree into your Malkuth-body transformation, as the information of the Divine Creative, in a figure eight flow that is unbroken by the World of Man interference. Therefore, perspectives of the Personality change from reality to the Real perspectives of the Great Work To be an aware-sensual-Soul, rather than a socially made personality. Your brain, who communicates with man-made definitions, can't do the job as it is an artificial sense of self and uses words as identity! Therefore, you must go inward into the Psyche/Soul to begin the transformations necessary to become the Mercury-messenger of the Greater Self-, but only after facing the blazing heat of the Art Card, which is used to burn away the impurities that have stuck to your I AM as if your soul has been "tarred and feathered" by the society of man; Once the "tar and feathers" of false identity/words are burned away, you stand in shining Mercurial glory before the Divine Creative as- I AM YOU!

As stated one of the alchemical aspects of the Death card, also known as The Path of Nun, meaning Fish, is the symbol for the First Matter and a fish is shown behind the dancing skeleton. There is also an alchemical symbol of this Path as putrefaction, which is the decaying black mass in the crucible that eventually transforms into gold and is considered a transformative process of turning death into new life by the alchemical process of Putrefaction, Desolution, Solution and Coagulation. The Thoth Deck card symbolizes this Transformative process as a scythe, a harvesting tool that is also a symbol for Time. Time is under the control of Saturn-Binah, the giver and destroyer of Life. This would be the Wise Crone of the Triple Goddess (Hecate of the Greeks). The Transformative bubbles of new life appear in the Thoth Death's wake, all of which, support this analogy of life giving and life destroying.

Those who practice Tarot and/or are readers of my blog, know this charming bone dancing Thoth Tarot fellow as Death. In the British Isles, he was known as LORD DREAD or DREADLORD and the end of October is his Holy Day! He is the Semitic version of the Asiatic Sana, Samara (Aryan), or Samarium, "the leveler" And most of us know that you can level things very well with a skillful usage of a Scythe, a very particular harvesting tool of this dancing fellow. What is interesting, in early Britain, Samuel had a female counterpart, SAMOTHEA (Death Goddess) who seems to have been another form of SKADI or SCATHA. Samothea, or Skadi was considered to be the goddess of the mysterious (Arcane) and of Hyperborean, the land where Pythagoras traveled to learn the arts of letters, astronomy, and science from this All Wise Lady. What one finds throughout world of Central and South America, the image of the well known Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead, Santa Muerte, is a Madonna like image of death. What all of us should remember, we are Light Beings, who transition to Physical Entity, so that we can intimately experience information and thereby, turn it into knowledge. We then go back to being what we always have been, Intelligent Light, taking our experience to the Universal Collective Unconscious, that we all are quantumly entangled with. Once "downloaded", we come back to begin the process of sensual experience again to understand yet more information. We are Energy, and energy cannot be destroyed nor created, merely transformed and transmitted.

The astrological sign attributed to Death-ATU/Key 13- is a transformative sign of three symbolic images, the Scorpion, the Serpent and the Eagle, all of Scorpio. Thus, we have the transformation of a dangerous earth-crawling creature, to a serpent which symbolizes the Vigorous Energy of Life (sexually transmitted energy), weaving its way upward to become an Eagle (behind and above the figure's head)that sours above all heads. All of which are represented in the Thoth Tarot Card as movement. Movement being seen as change/transformation, which is the skeletal pattern of the Universe. For it is only by constant change can entropy be temporarily overcome. This entropy is shown on the Modern Witch Tarot -Death card as a dark tar like water and land that captured souls are caught in. Their struggle to ascend while in the "Group Tar Pit/Group Soul" of the race, is futile unless they conquer their fear of death.

The term "Dark Night of the Soul" was first coined by St. John of the Cross where he said:

"...although this happy night brings darkness to the spirit, it does so only to give it light in everything; and that, although it humbles it and makes it miserable, it does so only to exalt it and to raise it up; although it impoverishes it and empties it of all natural affection and attachment, it does so only that it may enable it to stretch forward, divinely, and thus to have fruition and experience all things, both above and below...."

Upon conquering the Path of Nun, the Soul is reconstructed as the Personality of the Higher Self, rather than one made by mankind, and the emptied brain is filled with the Primary Imagination/Creative Information and/or The Will to Force and Will to Form and the Understanding of the Great "Womb with a view", who is the Creatrix.

Therefore, the term "Dark night of the Soul" refers to the darkness of unknowing, where the psyche is striped of the desire nature of the personality in the Abyssal Womb and/or non-space. This leaves a dreadful emptiness, almost a complete disinterest in everything. Personally, upon experiencing these 3 aforementioned Paths of the Dark Night, The Devil, Art and Death, there was left only a thought of despair repeating over and over again, abolishing any other desire or thought. It was, “I can't be you, You must be me." The Higher Self responded to that by sending my “skeletal awareness" directly to the Great Mother Binah, who then broke down and reassembled the Personality into that of the Divine Child, and I awoke as the "Will to Be" and/or the "I Will Be" that is Eheieh/Kether/Eli.

This is a very difficult journey to explain and it requires one not to be concerned with living or dying. One becomes a mechanical motion, pushing ahead with great faith, as if Life's processes have no value, yet one still mechanically crawls towards the Higher Self. Moving forward in a total darkness, inch by inch, the Soul (Psyche) begins the process of "putrefaction", believing, but not always so sure, that there will be light that will eventually appear and lead the way. It was a Red dot of light that appeared to me out of indescribable darkness....I became the original “I” of Kether, observing the red atom of me that originally issued from the Great Dark Menstrual Sea of the Red Binah. This purifying Force of resurrection, Bathed/Baptized me, \ Loved me (indescribable ecstasy) and sent me back down the Tree into Tiphareth and the Fiery Light of the Higher Self. Once a Divine Child always a Divine Child (god-kid and/or good kid)….somehow we've forgotten that, in a process of indoctrinated amnesia and thus disinherited ourselves/ our-Soul personality of the Higher Self, from the Macrocosm parent (Divine Hermaphrodite) of our Microcosm. We were always taught to reject ourselves and comply to an outside authority. Just by rejecting the human body because of "Nudity" which is a man made description (no other creature is "nude"), making us think we are "bad" until clothed in man-made rules and restrictions. Hence, we reject our bodies before we even get to fully integrate with them! The body is the reason why you, the Great Solar Self are here on earth!

Mars rules Scorpio; Scorpio rules the sex organs. Hence, this Death Card, represents a Sexual vigorous energy, a reproductive energy which is consciously directed in a physical exercise such as that of Tantra, or that of Crowley’s Middle Pillar, an activity best represented by Crowley's Death Card. The initiate is now following the "Path of the Flaming Sword”, which is both destructive and constructive and is not for the weak of character or for those who fear death, a phenomena shown by trying to dominate others and your environment, rather than becoming them. What I find curious, is that when you combine the images of Scorpio, the scorpion, the serpent, the eagle and the Path of the flaming sword you get: A Dragon who becomes a Phoenix

Qabalists know that Hermes/Thoth is the Magician (Magus) of letters, words and sound, while the Art of Forms(astronomy) is definitely the Domain of Binah as the Star card and science from The Art Card...(Alchemy) where He and She combine to Transform, making the superstitious identity of the Dread Lord into a Hermaphrodite. Therefore, one could say that the Supernal Triangle of the Tree of Life is a type of Hyperborean and/or Shambolic type of existence, known as the World of Aziluth, which is across the Abyss and a place you can only reach after a death of your human realities.

Hyperborea

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For other uses, see Hyperborea (disambiguation).

Arctic continent on the Gerardus Mercator map of 1595.

In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans (Ancient Greek: Ὑπερβόρε(ι)οι, pronounced [hyperbóre(ː)oi̯]; Latin: Hyperborei) were a mythical people who lived in the far northern part of the known world.^[1] Their name appears to derive from the Greek ὑπέρ Βορέᾱ, "beyond Boreas" (the personified North Wind), although some scholars prefer a derivation from ὑπερφέρω ("to carry over").^[2] Despite their location in an otherwise frigid part of the world, the Hyperboreans were believed to inhabit a sunny, temperate, and divinely-blessed land. In many versions of the story, they lived north of the Riphean Mountains, which shielded them from the effects of the cold North Wind. The oldest myths portray them as the favorites of Apollo, and some ancient Greek writers regarded the Hyperboreans as the mythical founders of Apollo's shrines at Delos and Delphi.^[3]

Later writers disagreed on the existence and location of the Hyperboreans, with some regarding them as purely mythological, and others connecting them to real-world peoples and places in northern Europe (e.g. Britain, Scandinavia, or Siberia).^[4] In medieval and Renaissance literature, the Hyperboreans came to signify remoteness and exoticism. Modern scholars consider the Hyperborean myth to be an amalgam of ideas from ancient utopianism, "edge of the earth" stories, the cult of Apollo, and exaggerated reports of phenomena in northern Europe (e.g. the Arctic "midnight sun").^[5]

(The Hyperboreans were "Ancient Astronauts")

Around the world, there is a celebration set aside to commemorate this transition from flesh to light and it is called All Soul's or Halloween night. Christian's of the day, described the All Soul's night as heretical practices, where magic charms and divination, reading the future with Witches mirrors and nutshell ashes and other objectionable rites: Even the unholy act of ducking for apples in tubs of water, which was said to represent souls in the Cauldron of Regeneration.

But this is not just limited to past superstition, even today it is believed that if a girl peels an apple before a mirror, on Halloween, she will see the image of her future husband in the glass.

However, today's celebration of parties, and candy/gift giving actually follows the original version of Samuel’s day, as the original divination was considered to be Oracular utterances by the Elder dead (Ancestors) who came up from their tombs on Halloween/All Souls Day, bearing gifts for the children of their living descendants. According to the pagan lunar calendar, festivals were celebrated on the "eve' rather than the day. Hence, Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, was the original festival that was later displaced to the following day. The Irish called this Holy Night, the Vigil of Saman.

Sicilian Halloween tradition, states that, "the dead relations have become the good fairies of the little ones." There are many more traditions across Europe. Even in Lithuania, there were burn offerings of domestic animals to their god ZIMIENNIK(Samanik) believing that if the Lord of the underworld accepted the offering on behalf of the dead, the spirits would do no harm. The Fact That Death is seen as an active force (The Dancing Skeleton) by the ancients, relates to the fact that Death, acts like the Dark Energy that pushes the Universe outward, by pushing Life forward. The objective Self, the Mortal Form, may fear its own demise, but the Subjective Self, (that is 99.6% of you) does not. Spirit knows Death to be but a tool that transforms, as is Life, which Transforms Self Concepts in to Self-Reality and/or Self in-form-action. In-Form-Action, makes it possible to experience information and thereby, creating personal knowledge, thereby making the Soul a collective consciousness.

On that note:

The celebration of Halloween Death, should be a celebration of the Spirit who survives mortality, knowing full well, that by owning your own beast based "survival Mind", you can push your Identity Forward into the Invisible Universe---and be Lord over Death. Therefore, the Thoth Death Card is a Rebirth Card, where we drop the old, and become the new. Knowing that all is Mind, and that everything is imagined into being, allows you to understand that I AM- is Truth and that all that you think you are, is merely an assumption; a fantasy, that you control by image-making, measurement and/or I-Magi-Nation.

By comparing the Modern Witch Tarot- Key 13 with the Rider-Waite-Smith-Key 13 one can see they are very similar. This is because the Modern Witch Tarot is a modernized version of the Waite cards. Both The Rider-Waite Death Card, and The Modern Witch Tarot, as did Crowley in the Thoth Card, departed from the Tradition set by the Golden Dawn or the older Marseilles cards. Here the warrior quality of the Death card is expressed as a Skeletal Knight. His medieval presentation of Death as the Black Knight, riding past the fallen King of Matter. Before the Death Knight is the Bishop with fish-shaped Miter, implying the passing of the Piscean age. The rising sun behind the two towers (first seen on the Moon card) refers to resurrection which is the conquest of death. The flying banner, depicts a white rose of ten petals, five inner and five outer. Being based on five, the white rose refers to Geburah's Martian force. However, the totality of the petals, refers to the entire Universe under Kether, as Kether is presented as the White color (perfect balance of all colors). This also relates to the 0-Fool and Uranus, to which the White Rose is related.

The Modern Witch Tarot-Key 13-Death, shows the same fallen king, and the Queen who tries to fight death but fails, and the old woman who greets death fearlessly. The young woman can't bear to even think about death, and turns her head away in denial. The little girl is bright-eyed and innocent. She doesn't understand why she should be afraid. Death is eternal, and everything that lives, dies; therefore, death is inevitable and necessary, there is no reason to be afraid. To fear death, is to fear life. To those whose life is fear based, there is only death as their companion and they spend their life trying to run from it. A running that is a total fantasy, for one is running away from living the moments they have.

When the Death Card, ATU/ Key 13 is thrown, it implies:

• Time, Age and transformation. 
• Rarely does it symbolize physical death and only if borne out by the accompanying cards, such as the 10 of swords-Ruin-Swords being the traditional death suit. 
• For the Querent, this is the Principle of letting go, and moving on.
• A rebirth out of Old conditions. 
• A type of transitional metamorphosis which destroys the something old to build the something new. 
• A Realization of Life Power as it is released from past confines and revitalized by change and regeneration.
• Psychology of letting go.
• New opportunities. 
• Rebirth from one form into another.

If surrounded by ill defined cards it implies:

• Resisting change.
• Stagnation.
• Inertia.
• Pain of giving something up.

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