Key 9 - The Hermit

Heights of Attainment in Tarot.

And as you can see by looking before you, it deals with Tarot Key Number Nine, the Hermit.

Hebrew letter Yod and symbol of attainment. Now, I'd like you to notice, first of all, that as the number nine, nine in itself as a number is a symbol for completion, so that every completion actually is the final result which again sends forth a new beginning, and yet it's held, the completion holds the beginning beginning and the ending within itself. Now I'd like to point out that Tarot Key Number O, the Fool, which we see above us there, here we have a very young man on a mountain, very beautifully dressed in all kinds of glorious and fancy clothes, looking off to the heights, where obviously having attained a height, he is looking, as an adventurer would, for the next height. In other words, then he's full of this gaiety, this sense of adventure, which is that part of the spirit of us. Also remember assigned to super consciousness that part of the spirit of us which is younger than the day newborn forever young we can be physically speaking something like 10 15 20 years old and have none of this younger than the day newborn spirit in us. We can be just a bunch of old stuffed ground squirrels. And we can be, physically speaking, within this incarnation, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 120, and we can be infinitely younger than the day newborn, full of that spirit of what's going to happen next, what what is the next goal, what is the next magic to work for, to reach for, to climb for.

And yet, as you can see, before the fool can climb or get to the next height, he's going to have to descend into a valley. So, here we have heights preparing for the next depth in order to go to the height which will follow it. The Tarot key, the hermit, number nine, is the symbol of an attainment without any doubt. Yet it is very important to know that the fool and the hermit are not two different Tarot keys, really, nor do they represent two different portions of our nature. They both represent the one identity. They both represent super-consciousness. But super-consciousness expressing first in one way, then in the other, or why not both ways at once if one is in the mood to express it that way, and or is able to. Now, what is the idea of being able to see the principle behind this eternal youth and also this eternal age or the ancient of days or the wisdom well basically of course not Not only do we have to come to recognize that the one identity is both the fool and the hermit, and really at the same time, but we have to come to recognize that all of the Tarot keys in between are different phases of our own nature, as are Tarot Key 0 and Tarot Key 9.

Here with the hermit what we want to do is learn how to more completely identify with this portion of our being which is incidentally called the one identity now that by one identity the Western Christian mystery system is very definitely saying, I am the Lord and there is none else. This is the one identity. That means this is symbolizing your identity and my identity.

I am that I am. I am the Lord and there is none else.

Now, why then problems? How are we going to come to know that I am the one identity and there is none else? This becomes the problem. All right? Remember, when we're in the valley, as I've pointed out so often, or in that phase of a cycle of our own self-growth, self-experience, self-enfoldment. When we're in the cycle where we have descended into the valley in order to gain new abilities, new vistas, new growth, new attainments, new enlargements, new experiences, new mountaintops. While we are in that valley, we can't see very far. That is the part of us that, of course, is then the limited part of us. That limited part we call our personality, personality, and we call it all personalities. Not that anything is as limited as it appears, but this is the way we experience it because we have to experience things in this manner. This is what you call concentration. We surely know and have recognized by now that being able to concentrate means that we are able to use the principle of limitation.

And I have often pointed out to you that you all are absolute masters of concentration.

You are definitely as powerful as this hermit, which is a part of your being. You have no problem in concentrating. And when you say you do, it shows how deluded you are and how unaware you are of your own powers because as I like to point out the easiest way to realize this is to recognize the fact that no one ever has any problem concentrating on something that they're worried about you have a problem can you get your mind off of it isn't that concentration I'd like to know any way better of course you also have no problem concentrating on someone you're in love with try to take your mind away from someone you're in love with does it work of course not because you are concentrating that powerfully you also are concentrating very powerfully indeed when you're in hate with somebody which is really just as as powerful as being in love with somebody because the same principle is being used.

So you see, it isn't a matter of being able to concentrate. It's a matter of learning how to direct the concentration more consciously as that part of us is doing, as pictured here in the hermit and as Tarot Key Number One shows as a principle in the magician. Now Now Tarot Key Number One is tied up so intimately with the Hermit in so many more ways than is obvious. Because you see this Tarot Key assigned to the Hebrew letter Yod, the Hebrew letter Yod is assigned to the zodiacal sign of Virgo. Now, Virgo is the sign in which Mercury is exalted, and also Mercury is the planet that's the ruler of Virgo. So that we have the double whammy here, you might say. It isn't just one aspect of Mercury that is so intense in this particular sign. To have both rulership and exaltation. Mercury is the only planet which is given a sign for both rulership and exaltation within the same sign.

Again, we are being told then by the Western mystery system that the principles of Mercury, which we see is the magician, incidentally, remember that, really are the most powerful or is the most powerful principle that exists and what is it attention what is it concentration and I just pointed out you don't have to learn how to concentrate so the next thing we what we have to do is say all right what am I doing then I don't have to learn how to concentrate so what we have to do is discover what have we been doing with with this power, which we don't have to learn to develop, we've really got it.

We've got to discover how we've been using it. And not only how we've been using it, but start learning how to use it in another manner. And we have been, if we deceive, we've been using it in ways that are bringing the ends or the heights or the results, because the height in a way is also a symbol for a result, incidentally, if it is bringing the kind of result that makes us experience sorrow, unhappiness, frustration, irritation, or what have you, whatever the host of demons we may think of in terms of unhappiness.

Now then, the importance of this magician as tied up with the hermit cannot be overestimated or overstressed but here with the hermit we are seeing the concentration in an area and expression that has achieved a real knowledge of whom what it is and this is what you are being prepared for and helped to do because whatever level we want to reach to to speak about this particular Tarot key we can utilize it and we can find it because every level is a height of some kind and was a height at some time in our past because as we should realize by now evolution is not a straight climb going uphill evolution is like spiral motion you go up and then you go down in a movement movement. And then you go up again to the next up is higher than the previous up, and then we go down again. And we go up and down. In other words, it's a cyclic motion that goes on. And finally the time comes when what was our highest high becomes our low, because because we have achieved so much greater heights.

Therefore, anyone who feels that he's attained the ultimate is in for some happy surprises when he enters again into the full part of himself, which invariably we must, you know, after the Hermit part, and discovers the joy of new adventures that are there to be unfolded. But it is while we are in the valley that we suffer but we don't have to suffer in the valley or while climbing towards the next height we don't have to suffer once we have managed to develop an ability to stay with what this key symbolizes because I want you to notice that the Hermit wears a little cap that's That's shaped also like the Hebrew letter Yod. Though I have been speaking about the Hebrew letter Yod and pointing out that it's a flame. In fact, one of the reasons that the Hebrew alphabet is called the flame alphabet from, incidentally, its Chaldean aspects, is because every single letter in the entire Hebrew alphabet alphabet consists of that particular flame, yod, and variations of it. Every single one, which is one of the symbolic ways that the Western Occult Training System is saying that every one of you and your personalities, everything that lives, everything that is, is made up above the flame of consciousness, the flame of life, the flame of light, which is the divine one identity.

And that all that we experience is, as Dr. Case liked to put it often, congealed light. In other words, your body could be called congealed light, in a sense.

And this is a pretty accurate sense, incidentally. It is still of that one stuff and the one identity.

Well, the top of this flame is in the crown, and one of the Hebrew words for that is yechida, which means the one, the one identity, the indivisible identity.

And this, the entire figure here is representing that one identity. And then the bottom part of the flame is in wisdom, which is part of that divine aspect of our nature, which is the cosmic father. So that we have here a symbol of what you might call both the one identity and the cosmic father aspect, but also of the principle of the cosmic mother, because the color blue Blue itself is the color of the high priestess, which is the feminine aspect of memory. And the entire mind stuff, which is always being portrayed as fluidic, actually is seen here also except as snow. And Dr. Case points out that the snow is actually the same stuff which we see running as rivers and watering the garden below in the valley.

If you look at Tarot Key number two, the flowing of the waters begun from the heights, incidentally, from the heights of the magician or with the heights of the magician working in the depths.

And you see there's the water that's in the Empress. This is the same water, yet here we see it as snow. Snow, and yet snow or water are merely a different state of the one thing. Now this fluidic aspect, which we see as the waters, and this cap being worn by the hermit actually are indicating the fact that here the one identity has been able to utilize utilize that which seems non-living like the snow and utilize it even in its fluidic aspect to wear as a crown so that that part in you which is in charge of your entire evolution evolution is also growing you so that you will be in complete and consistent memory of who and what you are. Because remember, memory is the principle of the high priestess, and that's what he's wearing on his head. The continuous memory of the flame of identity. Entity. The best analogy is the analogy of the stalagmite and the stalactite. Now in caves, as we know, the stalactite is that portion that's above and keeps drop, drop, drop of water, water that has mineral in it. The minerals are very rich in the water and it goes drop drop drop the waters drop below and gradually from what from nothing it the drop drop drop congeals from the stalactite so that from below the stalagmite starts to grow and it grows grows gradually, little by little, and drop, drop, drop, in time, the stalactite grows the stalagmite into itself, grows it upward. And there you have a complete union of the above with the below. Well, your one identity could be thought of as that stalactite, which which is drop by drop, drop, drop, drop, growing your personality or its personality via experience, via movement, and it is doing it with the lantern, the six-star lantern.

Notice now the light cannot be separated basically from the fluidic mind stuff because that, the fluidic mind stuff has also been called the fiery hidden water of divine consciousness and this light which is the six starred light tells us one of the major portions of the story and how we should use that part of our nature because the six-pointed star as we know is also called the Star of David and what does David mean David means beloved that is the literal meaning of David beloved so that the hexagram the six-pointed star could also be called the star of belovedness or the star of lovingness or or the star of capacity to love, or the light of love.

And the light of love perhaps makes it easier for us to image in special ways.

So that what is the one identity, the hermit, the higher self then, holding out? The holding out the light of love. And this light of love, this flame of love is being held out to those that are climbing, climbing upwards. In other words, to those who have evolved to the point of aspiration.

Your aspiration to develop spiritual beingness, your aspiration to know union with God, your aspiration to develop the capacity for true happiness and true fulfillment and living a life of true beauty and true love comes from the drop drop drop of this light of love of your higher self that has been growing a very particularized part of itself which we call your personality growing it so that that inevitably and inexorably, you in your personality will have conscious knowledge of your oneness and identity with the Higher Self and you will have constant and continuous knowledge of who and what you are. You will have continuous recognition of the fact that that you are a star, a light of love, a ray of this divine love, and you will have continuous ability and capacity to experience this love in its cosmic and personal aspects. Because once you have experienced its cosmic aspects, the personal aspects inevitably come and inevitably are experienced and inevitably are expressed.

In other words, to experience union with God is to inevitably have the capacity to know and experience personal love. And this Tarot key actually shows us what is involved and why if we know how to understand it and we can't understand it all at once just like the stalagmite and the stalactite we've got to be willing for it to go drop drop drop and give it its time it's also a sign to the sense of touch Touch, touch.

And the object given, because each Hebrew letter is also given an object picture as part of the esoteric groupings to help the consciousness bring together its, shall we say, symbolic language or symbolic alphabet, so that altogether it brings a sudden realization where we know many things at once, or the illumination. So we also have the idea of the hand. You see, the yod means, as an object, it's the hand.

And it's the sense of touch, the ability to touch. And one of its functions is coition.

And another word given for its function is union. That ought to give you some more ideas. Is and then another one of its functions is called response because certainly it's from the sense of touch isn't that what is the responding part of consciousness now union with the higher self is always experienced via the inner sense of touch it is union itself remember member, whether it be with the higher self or whether it takes place with a beloved in other ways, two minds that are at one, for example, amongst friends or people who are close, two hearts that are one in an ideal. All of this is a portion or part of the union that takes place between individuals which are part of the one identity. So we have many varied aspects of this idea of touch and union. So whereas aspirants have a tendency to think of the attainment of this highest area as being the result of giving up and sacrificing, in reality this attainment comes from the the very reverse from the ability to touch to respond to others to take on service to be willing to work in anything and everything to have the true humility to have the compassion and to be expressing it and to have the love and to be able to express it and just imagine how much hidden knowledge is being given in what appears so other on the surface and of course this is where our problems usually come in we misinterpret states both states that we're in and states that we aspire towards and then we wonder why we're not getting the kind of results or attainments that we want well what we have to do basically then is to practice recognition of the fact that only by expressing touch compassion service and Union are we going to be able to develop the capacity to experience the highest union, the very highest, the most profound union, and that when we do, although to others it might seem as though we're on some sort of cold, solitary mountaintop, you can see this figure isn't uncomfortable.

This figure is very concentrated and preoccupied with love and service. The handiwork of man really is the signature of god the signature of the one identity is a matter of fact because it's a love that is continuous cap on the head and this one identity in you my beloved is continuously in love with you what do you think of that your higher self and your your one identity, is absolutely as concentrated on its personality, which is your personality, as is the figure here, concentrated on the guidance. Whether you think you're alone or not, you are not alone. The stalactite of your higher self is drop, drop, drop, dropping love love and training and help onto, into and through you all the time. If you think you walk alone, you are mistaken. It is in touch with you via the light, even though you may not recognize it growing upward, but remember what is growing you.

Remember then that this height is something that is your truest and innermost self. You are able, most of you right now or soon, to feel the love of that one identity flowing through your being, letting you experience a rapture. What do you think that love is that so many of you feel when we chant? And who do you think it is? It's not me and the personality. No, No, it's the one identity of us all because we are one and because I know that your identity and mine are one.

Touch the beloved wherever you go.