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XII. THE HANGED MAN---LE PENDU
The number Twelve completes a cycle, and this highly mystical Trump represents the Completion of the Great Work. This startling design might be also represented by a cross above a triangle within a Tau, that is, by four multiplied by three and enshrined in a Universe.
The pack of Tarot Cards, otherwise the Book of Taro---which word is an anagram of Rota, a wheel or cycle---consists in truth of a magical, hieroglyphic and kabalistic alphabet, to which are added four decades, and four quaternions, which enshrine the mystic significance of the Wheel of Ezekiel. The true aim of the Great Work is to volatilise the fixed after having accomplished the fixation of the volatile.
By a mystical rectification and a subsequent sublimation is the Universal Medicine to be obtained, and so is also the art of the Transmutation of metals; by which art indeed even the most gross and impure substances may be at once changed into pure and living gold. But no one will succeed in this magical transmutation until he has learned to despise earthly riches, and is content with the holy poverty of the true adept. So, then, if any one attains to this sublime secret, he will treasure it with almost superhuman care, and it will so never be divulged to any other human being; it must be self attained. The secret matter of the Philosopher is composed of volatilised Salt, of Mercury which has been fixed, and of purified Sulphur; this perfected Matter is the Azoth of the philosophers. The Salt is only to be volatilised by condensation from the Seven rays of Sol, which are the respective soul essences of the seven metals. The Mercury is fixed by saturation with the Solar essence. The Sulphur is purified by the heat of the Seven luminous rays.
When a man is fully initiated he has a knowledge of all those processes, and he knows that he holds these secrets under the penalty of death. The Taro can preserve you from the danger of such punishment, by rendering you incapable of the commission of such a crime. Remember the histories of Prometheus and Tantalus. The former stole the sacred fire from heaven and transferred it to the earth. The latter violated the privacy of nature to seize the secrets of divinity. Remember also the fate of Ixion, who attempted to ravish the Queen of the Sky. Remember also the Cross and the Stake. Ponder over the long martyrdom of Raymond Lully, the inconceivable sufferings of Paracelsus, the madness of William Postel, the wandering life and miserable end of Cornelius Agrippa. Love God, gain wisdom, and preserve unutterable silence.
Notes
The Twelfth Tarot Trump, named the Hanged Man, is the most closely veiled of all Tarot hieroglyphics. Its real meaning is now known to but very few; there is the gravest doubt whether Levi knew it himself. Papus, who has produced a work on the Tarot, gives a clearly faulty explanation. Neither Etteilla nor Court de Gebelin grasped the hidden meaning. But its significance has in some cases been found by clairvoyant visions, and in a few by intuition. The key is held by such as know rightly to which Hebrew letter it belongs and the correspondences of that letter.
The picture shows a man with his hands tied behind his back, and a rope is seen tied around his ankles, the other end being attached to a beam, so that when the card is held with its number at the top, the man appears to be hung up by his feet. Levi in his Dogme gives the following statement:-----
"This hanged man, then, is the Adept bound by his engagements, spiritualised, as is shown by his inverted position. He is Prometheus subjected to everlasting torture as a punishment for his glorious theft; or similarly he is Judas the traitor, and his sufferings threaten any one who should reveal the Great Arcanum. Lastly, to the Kabalist, this hanged man, who corresponds to his twelfth dogma, that of the Promised Messiah, is a protest against that Saviour whom the Christians worship, and they seem to be still saying to Jesus, 'How canst thou save others, thou who couldst not save thyself?' "
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