Key 16 - The Tower

We have Tarot Key number 16, the Tower, which, as those of you know who are receiving the lessons, if not, you're going to find out now, this particular Tarot Key, the Tower, whose Hebrew letter is Pe, is assigned to the pair of opposites amongst the many Qabalistic attributions. It's assigned to the pair of opposites called grace and sin. By grace is meant, of course, divine grace. What other grace is there?

Grace and sin.

Now the pair of opposites always go with the Hebrew letters that are assigned to the planetary forces. Forces. And this Tarot key, with its Hebrew letter Pe, is assigned to the planetary force, which we call Mars. And in lots of ways, I'm sure you can see this is very Martian looking. Anyway, the power of the energy of Mars is being represented here symbolically. Now, not only is this Hebrew letter assigned to the planetary Mars and to the pair of opposites It's called spiritual grace and sin. But it is also assigned to the mouth as the organ of speech. And this is very important.

In order to understand the spirit of this key, what it is really saying, we have to keep in mind that this is assigned to the mouth as the organ of speech. Now, when we take the number of this Tarot key, number 16, one of the first things we do in helping ourselves or in order to give subconsciousness the proper suggestion for working out the energies within us so that we can react in the most positive way, we take the numbers. The number six, as we know, is assigned to Tarot Key, the Tarot Key that is called the lovers.

We all know that Tarot Key one, the magician, has to do with the power of attention, the power to concentrate. In other words, that which we pay attention to. And the pair of opposites in Tarot Key Number 1, Mercury, having the assignation of life and death, we instantly start to see that attention, the power to concentrate, is the power of life and death. To that which we see as discrimination in key six and this is all brought together here in 16 of course in another way but it brings the the attention brings life and death life and or death you realize because if we use a thing negatively it becomes death if we use it positively it becomes life in other words anything we pay attention to is something alive and there therefore alive for us within our consciousness we could be walking through the most glorious scenery but if our consciousness is locked inside our tower you know right here the tower if it's locked inside our tower if it isn't focused paying attention the number one to what's going on out there like whatever the glorious scenery might be it doesn't exist for us our life isn't in it we're not living in the beauty at all we're living in the tower locked away so that uh you might say it is a death thing or a non-existent thing to us because we have locked ourselves away in the in the tower the tower of uh which is also called the tower of babel but that that we'll go into in just a little while.

So 16 in itself, as number, is indicating that the power of attention gives life and or death to the discrimination, to the 12 signs of the zodiac. That means to everybody and everything. And behind Eve, you'll notice the fruit, 5, showing, amongst other things, the senses, the senses which could either be thought of as areas or avenues or doorways of perception, which they are, the way we perceive, experience. The response, then, that we make to the senses Senses hasn't as much to do with the senses, again, as it has to do with our own usage of the senses, our ability to utilize the vibrations that come in through the senses, whether it's through sight, whether it's through sound. After all, all is vibration.

But the reaction to the doorways of perception has to do with whether we have yet attained to a capacity for what we will now call the divine grace. But the point is that a true understanding of what grace and sin would be has to do with an understanding of desire and whether a person has this depth of power or intensity within themselves or not. Therefore being able to discriminate or evaluate at all would have to come as a result of many incarnations of having done the wrong thing incidentally or by wrong thing shall we say the less evolved thing or through many long incarnations of having suffered the consequences of sin you don't get your divine grace until you've suffered your consequences for sin, and this is something people don't realize.

The point is that which we call sin very often has nothing to do with sin at all. And we don't know what sin truly is until we've developed enough discrimination to tell the difference between words and actions, between thoughts and words and actions.

And remember, the mouth is the organ of speech, is part of the entire action level of consciousness, it being attributed to Mars. So they're tied in very much. Well, I'd like to remind you, we do a great deal of chanting here in the temple and in various esoteric portions of our work. We use it in other and very specialized way. This is the power of sound. And remember, this power of sound is a part of what's thought of and meant when we talk about the power of the word.

And when we have the mouth as the organ of speech here, the power, remember all of creation in Genesis and God said, in other words, God was using God's level or the divine level of whatever we call words. And this attempt to show it symbolically is given in many ways subconsciousness understands it and we're learning how to understand it consciously so we can gain control actual control only when we have have gotten to directly know about a thing and then make our choices are we truly evolving involving our completed humanity. We're taking those chains off and we're stopping the conduct, the brutal and brutalizing conduct that we go in for out of ignorance and out of the false worshipings, you know, and the commandments.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me when we worship and worship the material plane.

So we come to see, or we have to come to see, sooner or later, and we might as well make it sooner. Why be in that state? You know, that's not a comfortable state. The divine grace comes to us only when we earn it.

Mars is a workforce, remember. And we earn it only when we start developing enough discrimination and enough recognition of the evil of isolation, of thinking that we can gain any good at the expense of another.

That's the isolation of this Tower of Babel.

So good is not necessarily that which is outer plane lawful, nor is evil necessarily that which is considered evil on the outer plane because the people who are clever with words and have, as I pointed out, and have the powers, the Mars powers, and the powers of communication, that's the Mars powers too, are able to weave spells upon us, enchantments, and this is an evil, enchantments that is going to bring gain at the expense of another.

Is evil, says this tarot key, because it's isolation.

And in other words, inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my children, ye have done it unto me.

Now, I can say this and know it. It isn't that Jesus is said to have said it some 2,000 years ago. What Jesus said was what he was saying from the center of Kether, the crown, the one, the only, the individual, of which were all parts being shown on this Qabalistic tree of life.

He had conscious awareness of where the true crown belongs. And remember, the one, the only is the crown. Notice the crown being knocked off here on the tower because that's the false crown. As a matter of fact, in the Lessons, on this Tarot key, you'll notice that in the numeration of gematria, which is part of the Qabalistic training, although it's very light in the beginnings of the work, the numeration is given that adds up to the word Cain. And remember, in the Bible, Cain slew Abel.

So the false crown is Cain and it's the false crown or the false will the idea of thinking that I am separate from you that I could have any gain at your expense that I can get good by taking advantage of you that I can indulge myself by bringing you down to a degraded level in any way because there are all sorts of ways of doing it, not just in the ways with silver or gold. That seems to be more precious now, apparently, the way all of the money-mads are just betting with their monies and they're screaming, gold has gone up to this amount and gold's gone up to that amount, and everybody's all so focused on the gold.

Look at the life. They're not living.

Look at what they're missing talk about poverty what can be more poverty stricken than a consciousness all enchanted and entranced with how many pieces of paper are going to get a piece of metal it is staggering it is just staggering now this is living in the power indeed when we don't even know how to properly evaluate what's riches, what's goodness. In other words, the pair of opposites. What's the right and what's the wrong? And each thing has its own right and its wrong. Sin, again, I will repeat, is not something one can sit down and lay out in a whole group of rules and regulations.

Societies need regulations. You have to have organization, you have to have laws.

God apparently himself-herself needed laws or we wouldn't have the cosmic laws laid down and the Ten Commandments to help guide in conduct that is in harmony with the divine plan. Laws are needed, but when man uses laws for purposes opposite, then thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all my heart with all I mind with all my spirit in other words when one goes into worshiping the false idols of which material things are just one of the many things that are false to worship at that point then man is entering a state of sinfulness which makes it inevitable that the lightning is going to have to strike.

In other words, when we, the Cain in us, is slaying the Abel in us. You know, it's rather interesting. Cain offered God the fruit of the ground.

And Abel offered God, if you will recall, the lamb. Now people, when they try to become overly literal, or just losing their way all around because this is a principle given here. Now, what is the fruit of the ground? Remember, Adam was created out of the dust of the ground.

But arise and sing, O ye who dwell in the dust, sings Isaiah, and that's what we chant when we chant and sing, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Arise and sing oh ye who dwell in the dust dwelling in the dust is dwelling on the material plane not that there's anything wrong with physical or material things God made them and said they are gorgeous they're beautiful trallah I've done it I've succeeded look how marvelous it all is God is in rapture and ecstasy he said it's good it's good It's good. It's good. It's marvelous. But I mean, because it's an expression of the glory of the Most High.

But when we start worshipping the false images, transfer the worship to this specific thing, instead of seeing that it is there for the divine to experience in and through us all these other ways of rich awareness.

Well arise and sing we work we work here at singing more ways than one but our tongues it better start singing the dirge in the many ways that they do because remember the offerings from laying ground God's burned them in other words you can't buy God off with some pieces of silver apparently at any rate This isolation in the Tower of Babel, it's built, remember, with the mouth as the organ of speech as part of the idea, and also with our misuse, incidentally misuse, of the Mars force, which has to do with the reproductive drive. And every time we misuse these things, we are building ourselves the kind of offerings that God must, you know, turn down because the Lamb, remember what the Lamb is? The lamb is one of the many designations for Tiphareth, beauty, the son of God, which we are. Adam means humanity.

It is also called son in Hebrew, Ben, son of God. That's the lamb.

Lamb is another term for that particular area of the tree, which is the area of human beings or where human beings are going, what we are evolving towards.

And the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, that's us. We are the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, except that we've sort of slain ourselves in a way, but that's part of evolution.

To consciously experience the heaven and God and unity is different than unconsciously marching around in the Garden of Eden. There's a difference.

And so the attainment of this conscious ability and capacity, conscious enlightenment, is brought about through this function we see here as the tower. We see then that it is the light, the sun, that strikes the lightning. Do you notice? The lightning hits, knocks off the false crown, That is the judgments that are erroneous, the lies that we've told ourselves and others, the misuse of our tongue.

In other words, the misuse of speech. You remember the Tower of Babel was built, you know, people figured they're going to get to God and actually figured trying to get to God on a mountain of words.

So finally, when they got so high, You know, Elohim said, hmm, that's not the way to get to me. By me, you know, some people, you know, you might say by God, but God can't say that. God would have to say by me. I can't permit that.

So by me with a capital M.

So God gave them a confusion of tongues. In other words, in order for them to learn how to consciously act, to do, to work, to act in harmony with the divine thinking and the divine plan, they were going to have to get themselves back to a unity of speech and the use of speech. And as it is, we do have a confusion of tongues. We use the same words and they mean different things. We don't even hear what we say to each other when we use certain words some people use words to sweet talk another in order to get something out of them you know whether it be uh to reaffirm one's own masculine or feminine feelings about oneself using sweet talk uh with another without being willing to undertake responsibilities that go with it is actually that sin whether we like it or not I don't care how often our beautiful young people want to announce and start announcing I you know after all freedom I'm free there's no such thing as freedom without earning freedom man earns freedom and man earns freedom by learning what are the cosmic laws and following them otherwise like this our earth laws you get thrown in jail Only in this case we throw ourselves in jail, in the jail of this Tower of Babel, built with the misuse of words, which means that we've been misusing our thinking, misusing our feeling, the driving desire nature, and misusing certainly our doing, because Mars is the action planet also.

Also, let's then learn how to be a bit more careful in the use of this tongue. This tongue is a very precious thing, you know. It does all sorts of things besides enjoying the taste of food and quenching itself with water. It says things to another person, and what it says is very powerful. Notice how the serpent was able to entice. That's powerful. And notice also that when we if we use our words to give false impressions to get other people to go our way whether our way is really the right way or the truly ethical way when we do this we are exposing ourselves to the absolute necessity for great pain and yet that very pain Pain, my darlings, is the grace of God.

This I hope you will know from the depth of your soul because it is corrective and it isn't anything outside that did it. It is our own requirement for growth. But when we find ourselves in a state of pain, in a state of disappointment, in a state of unhappiness, instead of saying, using our words, that's so-and-so, it's your fault and your fault and your fault. Of course, I think it's easier to say, God, it's your fault.

No.

After all, what's God going to do? I live and breathe and have my being inside God, and God can't throw me out.

Because God doesn't live in this tower. But after I get through telling God that, if I'm in the mood to, I get busy and do with myself whatever one has to. In other words, every pain that we suffer in our mental, emotional life is due to the fact that we are still under the delusion of the isolation. We are still thinking or feeling or evaluating from the false standards and therefore from the misuse of our tongue, basically. Basically, to be told that we shouldn't bear false witness against our neighbor is a lovely thing. But how often do we forget the spirit of this and bear false witness against our neighbor by talking to each other in such a way as to make the person we're talking to turn against some third or fourth person by deliberately presenting unbeautiful things about them?

Or how often, you know, so that we can be bearing, you see, sin goes a little beyond, or wrongdoing goes a little beyond what we often think. This mouth belongs to God. This tongue belongs to God. Just like your eyes and your ears and your touch.

And every one of us are going to have to learn how to be very careful not to commit sacrilege against this miracle and mystery, which is the tongue of God. When we do, lightning will strike. Sometimes it takes a little longer than others. And God's voice will thunder. You know, lightning crackle, crackle, and roar down the vibratory pads. And we could scream all we like. We can't avoid it. We ourselves would have been causing it. See, you notice the lightning and thunder of God, the fire, though, the agony. It purifies us so that finally in time we will come to see that every pain I have ever had has been there in order to purify me, to purify me not in that area or way where the original Adam and Eve were pure, because they just simply didn't have a consciousness, let's face it. I mean pure because we've gone through the temptations of this fellow the devil here the previous tarot key and along with the story of the our own initiation has taken place we have been evolved as we evolve ourselves where we're able to say ho ho you you get behind me satan and then ha ha and the time comes any uh these various temptations to misuse our fellow man the bare false witness uh to get our beloved ones all upset and excited mainly because we want to maneuver them around or whatever it is you know we're not going to want to do that we're going to want to be too full we're going to be treasuring and this is what you're being taught to do to treasure your seeing and hearing and touching and talking the word in the beginning was the word and that word is mighty mighty let's watch that we don't permit ourselves to get enticed into evil but other people's golden words or or using golden words to entice them away from the unity of God, the true crown, not the false.

Perhaps you know what the grace of God is, then. It's being able to be corrected by God via that.