Tarot - The Keys To Freedom - Key21

Our topic is Tarot, the Keys to Freedom.

And you see before you Tarot Key number 21, which is the final Tarot Key in the series of the major Tarot Keys.

And the pair of opposites assigned to this particular Tarot Key is called Dominion and Slavery. And we have just read to you from the Bible from the book of Genesis chapter number one the Qabalistic and remember and we repeat the Qabalistic treatise on creation and if you will recall just as a little bit of an aside it was not very many years ago that the atheist the especially the very religious atheists, you know, the religious atheists are those who are very violently emotional about their atheism, all hounded every human being who had the slightest belief or acceptance of the Bible, calling them stupid, superstitious, moronic, unthinking, and these perhaps were the kindest things they said. They also had many other things to say about human beings who could accept such an apparently ridiculous Description of creation and call it the Word of God and Curiously enough although this was taking place as little as say 30 years ago today Today, this very description that we read to you has become ever more accepted, and some of the finest scientific minds are aghast at the accuracy of the different levels of unfoldment of life within the evolutionary scheme of things, as it is described in Genesis.

And the reason for this is, as we have told you so often, because we must always remember the prophets of the Bible, Old and New Testament, were Qabalists. The Qabalists were those and still are those who are trained in the esoteric knowledge of the universe, of the hidden knowledge of life, of the true comprehension of the meaning of God and man. And so everything that was written that has the especially the most profound areas of the Bible like for instance Revelation which is the end here the beginning and the end are more completely cabalistic than anything we can imagine and anyone who would truly understand the Bible all he needs to do is take up seriously the work of builders of the adytum which is the work of teaching qabalah to those who have reached a point where they are ready for it and they have to be ready because as you all know our work is the high school college level of occultism and so in order to truly truly understand how to guide ourselves, how to attain in spiritual ways. We have to know exactly what has occurred in relation to those who have gone before us. In other words, anyone who decides to go on a journey is going to be very foolish indeed if he doesn't take a map that has been carefully planned by those who have gone before so that he knows which roads to take which areas may be flooded which are the safest which the most beautiful and so on in order to get where he's going and this is why we have schools such as this this is why we have spiritual centers such as this in order to make available to spiritual aspirants the maps that are in our custody the spiritual maps which have remained in the custody of those trained to utilize it down through the ages back to the beginnings of time and so we say here in genesis we will repeat We have the Qabalistic description of creation, which becomes ever more startlingly accurate, especially those who study Qabalah can see it more clearly in many subtle ways.

It becomes more startlingly accurate as our modern scientific instruments delve more deeply into so-called space and come up with the secrets of the universe, that is, at least on their particular level. So how is tarot a way to freedom? Why do we have a title such as tarot the keys to freedom? Well, remember the tarot are called the keys of wisdom and they are usually referred to as the tarot keys. They are the keys that open the doors to that which we have not seen before. They open the doors to the inner life and they open the doors to a proper outer life if we learn how to differentiate them and the secret is in knowing exactly what freedom is and is not and in knowing what the laws of the universe entail in relation to ourselves and how to understand them and therefore we have tarot the whole series of tarot symbols as we know are portrayals of the way our consciousness works now why is it necessary to know how our consciousness works this is very simple let's take an analogy suppose it's been used often but but it's a very good one.

Suppose two people on two different trains.

The tracks, let's say, are parallel.

Say one train is going ahead at 60 miles an hour and the other train is going ahead at 30 miles an hour.

But suppose that the, let's just think of one train at a time. Suppose the one who is on the train that's going 60 miles an hour is looking over at the one going 30 miles an hour, it will seem to him that that other one is going backwards.

He will not know he's in motion at all. The one who's going 30 miles an hour, looking at the train going 60 miles an hour, if he doesn't know that he's in motion, will think the other train is going 30 miles an hour.

And yet this will not be correct. In the same way incidentally this is in the simplest terms the law of relativity you know einstein's law of relativity this is the simplest way we can give it just in one of its many aspects we could give it in a few more complicated forms and sound very pedantic but we don't like to do that on a sunday morning service sometimes on a thursday night we give you a few of the terms to help you understand a little better what you read occasionally in the newspapers in relation to the scientific findings nevertheless here we have this idea of the law of relativity in other words depending on whether we know whether we are in motion or not and what our motion is we are not in a position to accurately estimate the motion going on around us apply it now to our consciousness it is our consciousness as it experiences life which is taking in all these motions and interpreting them and then going into action is it not all right now if we do not know what our consciousness is and what it does we are in no position to understand what's going on around us no position at all so that if we do not know that for instance our particular consciousness is such that we bring back from past incarnations certain patterns of behavior if we do not know this as just a principle and then we look out at life and see some of the things that happen to us we don't know how to understand them and then we don't know how to do something about it for instance suppose we have a husband or a wife or a child that we have a problem with if we do not know for instance about the theory of karma in relation to reincarnation we're not going to know how to deal with that situation as well we will not be able to adjust to that situation as we should because we don't know our own motion you see the analogy is really very very apt so we have to know what our consciousness does in order to know what to do with the problems that we've got it's like the little story told about a spiritual teacher going to prison and visiting an inmate there and trying to comfort him and saying now my good man remember, prison walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage, and the man wanting to be cooperative sort of agreed and said, yes ma'am, but it sure do seem like it do, or words to that effect. Well, it's the same with us. I mean, we can sit in front of the various metaphysical and to call teachers and listen and hear them say look uh you're not really in slavery you're not in bondage you're really free and you may shake your head wisely and feel good but you would do well to say yes ma'am but it sure do seem that way about being in bondage because you see in a sense we are in the sense that we have not recognized our dominion and how to utilize it.

How to utilize it. For instance, what is freedom again? Let's look out. We drive a car. We have a license to drive a car.

This is just permission to go anywhere we want within prescribed areas. Is if we come to a sign that says private no admittance, our driver's license and our ownership of the car does not give us the freedom to drive in there. Again, if we do not obey the traffic laws and we pull a few more shenanigans, drive with a bit of alcohol influencing our judgment, it will not be long before we have lost the privilege of we have lost the freedom we are not able then to drive our car anymore they'll take away a license and even take away or they when we say they we mean those who have the rulership of that area in life so we will lose the privilege of being able to who drive our cars around. We will not have that freedom.

In the same way, we love to speak about our free institutions. Well, what do we mean by a free institution?

We are free to walk around on the streets, but if we see someone we don't like, if we feel this freedom welling up in us, we figure we better take a club and hit them over the head. How long are we going to be free?

Therefore, in this sense, we retain our freedom because we're able to discipline ourselves. That is, we're able to utilize or use controls or what might seem like the opposite of freedom. We are able to make a boundary and say, within this area, I will function in such a way. That is one of the reasons on that tarot key you have that wreath. The dance of life is a free and glorious dance of life provided you obey the rules of the country or the driving rules or the universal rules of God and all of them in the areas that are involved involved. Now, we ask then, why is it that we seem to be so tied? I mean, in this way, people are forever talking about, well, let's give up our own will to the will of God. It sounds pretty, but most of them don't know what it means. And if you don't know what it means, you're in the same position as the one who's trying to estimate the distance of that train's motion, not knowing that he's also in motion on a train.

Whereas the human being, if there were another observer who was not in motion at all but standing on a third place watching both trains, he could estimate the correct motion in each instance.

Now in the same way, these things in our lives that bring us sorrow, that hamper us that make us so miserable so unhappy what we need to do is to start understanding them to start examining them in terms of the universal laws and as we understand that then we'll know the framework of our freedom and Dominion and God said let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every creeping thing. In other words, he gave man dominion over a special area of livingness.

That special area of livingness, incidentally, we do have dominion in. But we are like the child who without strong muscles keeps falling we're like the child who learning about the world he's to live in and rule in examining it has to make many mistakes so he'll know exactly what to do you can tell a baby from now till doomsday that is a fire do not touch it or it will burn you it means nothing to baby baby's going to have to have the experience of burning the finger or whatever and then baby will know what was meant he'll know why there is such a law as do not put your hand or any part of your anatomy in a fire not until then will he understand the law and you can give it to him and give it to him and give it to him until he has experience he will not know it therefore God put put man in the areas of his dominion to gain experience, to learn how to handle and how to manipulate and how to control that which is his, which belongs to man because man is begotten of God.

And what is meant again by dominion? Dominion first of our minds and hearts.

This is the first place we have to learn to put the ring pass not to put the disciplines to apply the brakes because unless we can apply the brakes to ourselves in what we think and what we feel we're not going to be able to have the Dominion with our relationships with our accomplishments because you see if we don't apply the brakes to hate why we manufacture hate by subconsciously broadcasting it to other people who will play it back to us another way if we do not teach ourselves with our own disciplines how to stop manufacture the feelings of being unjustly treated and therefore being martyrs, we will be broadcasting this martyrdom. And the result will be that the other people in the area and all of life, creeping things upon the face of the earth, the foul of the air, these are all conditions, don't you see? They have to do, you see the four fixed signs of the zodiac there on that tarot key.

Each one of those are assigned to one of the elements, fire air earth and water and incidentally that is the secret behind an understanding of the story of Genesis and in a short sermon on a Sunday morning like this we cannot begin to give it to you detail for detail and show you how completely accurate all of this is in understanding our Bible and again as an aid to guidance nevertheless we can show you these little spots so that within us within our nature is that which in occultism in alchemy in mysticism is called air earth fire and water and he who learns how to master his own inward inner elements this is attaining to the full Dominion this is attaining them to the freedom to apply that rulership to the rest of life and that is why in occultism we continuously harp on the fact that the one great work is to study your own consciousness and in order to study it you have to know how studying your own consciousness means you have to become aware of what you think and how you think and why you think what you feel and why you feel and when you feel and to learn how to get it to do something with it in other words to change it over into the terms of the universal law and the moment we start using the traffic laws of the universe we find ourselves able to go into ever larger areas of of life practicing our dominion and remember and god said that it was good we have much pain in this world we have so many tears and heartaches so many problems that we knock up against so many physical pains as well as emotional agonies of heart and soul which come to us and as we go through them sometimes we wonder my god my god and some of us will sometimes say how can there be a god to create a world where this sort of thing can exist and then other people will say it must be that I am so terribly evil to have to experience such terrible things and others might say it must be that I must have been a horrible creature in a past incarnation to have to have this kind of frustration this kind of agony this kind of betrayal this kind of loneliness and the truth is that the The whole understanding of what causes pain is involved with achieving the dominion of it.

And remember, it is in the tarot techniques, it is in the tarot studies, that the inner doors become open so we start seeing it ever more fully and with ease. And as we start seeing, for instance, why it is that perhaps we have attracted betrayals either in friendship or in love or in business over and over again. And we do start to see this when we learn how to look within with this symbolic training. Why is symbolic training necessary, like with the tarot? Well, it's like this.

Abstract thinking is a very wonderful sort of thing, but it cannot get you down to specifics. And when we try to analyze our own nature just in an abstract way we do not get to the heart of the problem because the subconsciousness has a language and indeed it is the universal language of God it is called the angelic language also and this language is the language of symbol now it is these glorious symbols that we have in the tarot and in the qabalah which we are the custodians of which have been used as a means for training spiritual aspirants who are ready for it to achieve dominion of their own nature and therefore the rulership which gives them a freedom and a joyousness and a lift of heart that is beyond description. It is the utilization of these symbols that helps to open these inner doors and gates to the insight and the control. Because when you speak the language of subconsciousness, you develop a partnership where before you have been sort of cut asunder set aside in a way we wish that we had the time to explain this eating of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil because that is involved also and that's involved with the tree of life here in Qabalah but we will have to take that up at other times as they come in the thing we want to try to understand tonight to try to take out uh with us when we walk out to return home to our families to our friends to do whatever it is that we need to do we want to take out with us the realization that in essence we have dominion over our own feelings and our own thoughts and we do not need we do not need to be slave to the old patterns that make us keep coming up with the same agonies over and over again we do not need to be slave to the patterns that keep us insecure or or lonely. We do not need to keep repeating any of the things that have brought us the sorrows.

It is unnecessary. We cannot become free of these elements till we learn to study it like the one who studies it from the analogy of the trains. That is from that third point of view, and the tarot helps to train us to do this in fact it definitely does it and we know that if you would make up your minds and we know many of you already have never to let a day go by without putting in those few minutes in the tarot exercises and techniques which are really so simple and to go through the day bringing into your mind into your heart that symbol that lesson that you've been studying and meditating on we know that if you really did this every day with true and sincere aspiration that within one year from the time you started you would be astonished at how much freedom you would have attained in relation to the slavery that we all suffer from the slavery to the customs of our own hearts.

For example, let's have an example or two to show what can happen. I know of someone who, being raised in poverty, and having had a very unhappy childhood, had a tremendous insecurity.

This man grew up as insecure as a human being could be.

Because both through poverty and through lack of enough love and attention, he felt like he had nothing and that he felt he had nothing to give to life. Actually, he was also very talented. And on the other hand, he always had to brag about all the talents that he had in order to try like whistling in the dark. Now, he took up the study of tarot, and until this time, incidentally, he had poor luck in every business he went into dreadful misfortune followed him wherever he went in love he was always coming out the loser even though he had such a sweet and kindly nature and then he and when he took up the study of Tarot the impact of these symbols he started to experience experience, insight after insight into the kind of feeling he had been holding in his heart wherever he went, the fears and anxieties that had been with him when he woke up in the morning, when he went to sleep at night, and he realized that he had actually had the freedom all his life, he'd been he had the divine freedom to build the sorrow and insecurity and poverty which he had built and made he actually had had this Dominion at all times and that all and all that he had to do to change it was to transmute these feelings so we again with the help of Tarot he went to work and he changed these feelings of insecurity to security by realizing that God the Christ the Lord of life the oneself walked in him with him and through him consistently and always he practiced this with the 14th Tarot key as one thing then he practiced with this particular Tarot key the feeling of the dance of life that he He needed no physical objective evidence for his security, just as this dancer dances on air.

Dances on air.

He used this tarot key to make himself feel the security of God and the dance of life, not requiring the physical evidence, but knowing that it would be built and created as a result of his feeling. And do you know within one year after he really went to work on these practices but he worked very hard this man found the ideal companion and for the first time in his life and he was very late in life he had a beautiful and an ideal mystical marriage that had all the fulfillment and he out of the clear blue received an offer to go into a partnership in a business where he became well actually immensely wealthy and yet the material wealth was something that never afterwards meant too much to him though he enjoyed it because it was very very good all the things in creation are very very good we must learn to love whatever we look at as god created it to know it is very very good and to know that we share in the ability to create this harmony and remember when the seed after its kind every creature begets and multiplies after its own seed you know kabbalistically What it is saying is just what we've just been talking about.

Multiplying after our own kind. If we have hatred, this is the seed that we multiply after its own kind. This is what is meant in Qabalah. Every bit as much and even more in relation to Genesis than trying to give it a purely phenomenal meaning. And it has a phenomenal meaning. It is true on all levels of life so we beget after our own kind and if we do not like what it is that we seem to have been giving birth to in our lives all we need to do is start training ourselves to remember that in as much as we are created in the image and likeness of God we have the same creative power to beget after our own kind and see that it is very good and we can start creating the very good we can start making our fulfillment by utilizing our true freedom to be sons and daughters of the most high and the first thing to do in the first area to work in remember is in the love because without love it profiteth nothing and nothing that will come to you will have any meaning without the love and with love everything will have meaning whether it's the outer things seem to come or not but they come to him who hath shall be given develop then the love through the use of tarot develop you can develop the love by recognizing that God lives you and therefore all creation is creation in and through you in a continuous creation creation did not begin and end it is going on now we are are the way God is creating.

We, and it is not yet the seventh day, we are in the sixth day, and it is very, very good, and we are destined to be the rulers and to have dominion in all ways, but you see, we're still in the process. It takes a few hours in the eyes of God to us it seems like many many weary lifetimes but from our higher self point of view when we attain the ability to contact it we will see it is like the blink of an eye yesterday today and tomorrow are a simultaneous now and with the work of tarot and qabalah you will learn to touch that center and when you have touched it you will have become the perfected completely begotten son and daughter of god whereas some of us are sort of pretty much you might say in the act of being birthed or so it would seem because we have many immaturities yet to work with but remember have heart put your shoulders back hold your head high you belong to heaven and you have dominion over the heaven and the earth and it is being created now if you would be a conscious co-administrator because this Tarot King is also assigned to the rulership to the administration of life if you would be a conscious co-administrator with God and dance through life from the depths of your heart practice what we have just spoken of and the many other techniques that we give you to aid you and it shall be and indeed in a sense it already is