Tarot Time Traveller

by Marcus Katz

  129 Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic (London, UK: Rider & Company, 1896), 30.

  130 Mackenzie recounted his visit in detail in The Rosicrucian and Red Cross, May 1873, and it is reproduced in full in Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London, UK: Rider & Company, 1975), 117–122.

  131 See Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin, Abiding in the Sanctuary (Keswick, UK: Forge Press, 2011).

  132 Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine & Ritual (London, UK: Bracken Books, 1995), 124–125.

  133 Ibid., 126–127.

  134 Ibid,. 128.

  135 Ibid.

  136 Henry IV, part one, act I, scene 2.

  8

  The Magical Years

  We must endeavour [once the cipher manuscripts are written up] to spread a complete scheme of initiation.

  —Letter from W. W. Westcott to S. L.

  MacGregor Mathers, 1887 137

  27 January, 1893: London, England

  We arrive in London on 27 January, 1893, 10:00 am local time. The streets are deep in snow and the buildings obscured by a thick fog. It is exceedingly cold but otherwise dry under a low cloud. It is easy to locate our target, Mr. F. J. Johnson, as he walks excitedly along Cleveland Street and takes the corner into the smaller Clipstone Street. He does not know it, of course, but we know this corner will be dominated by the imposing BT Tower, the “Post Office Tower” as it was originally known when it was completed in 1964.

  For now, though, Mr. Johnson has another Tower on his mind—the Tower, which he is studying in the library of the Golden Dawn, now headquartered at 24–25 Clipstone Street. He walks up the stairs and finds the usual small crowd of lady students, whose talk is of many matters, not all of them affairs of the order.

  For many, this has become more of a social club, but Johnson is set for study; and has loan books to return to the shelves. He takes out “Book T,” a handwritten hardback notepad with “LOAN” written in gold on the cover. It has a label inside with Westcott’s address on it, should it be lost, heaven forbid.

  The Vault lies just behind this study room, a fully illustrated pastos of seven sides with elaborate (but crudely drawn) colours and esoteric symbols of the zodiac, planets, and elements. Johnson was initiated in the Vault when it was at Thavies Inn some four years ago, and he has been visiting these new premises regularly—at least once a month—since it was moved in September last year, 1892.

  Last month he invoked the Spirit of Jupiter into the temple, and in a vision he had been told to pursue his studies of the “House of God, Struck by Lightning.” So here he sits, poring over Mathers notes in Book T, trying to make sense of his visions.

  Johnson will continue his studies, although with decreasing enthusiasm, for seven years from this time-point, when he will finally resign as the order itself declines from its teaching. But for now, we watch as other order members arrive, and begin to prepare for another adept initiation, one of thirty to be carried out and recorded in the Clipstone Street diary. 138

  Pathworking the Tarot

  The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, initiated a new phase of tarot development with the practice of “rising on the planes” and similar methods variously termed “path-working” and “scrying.” These methods are like those now known as “active imagination” or “visualization” in which an image (in this case, a tarot card) is held in the imagination and then we enter into the image as if it were a location to be explored.

  We can journey into a card without instruction or follow a “guided visualization” in which we are promoted to carry out certain actions or see specific elements of the landscape. A typical example might be:

  You are standing on a path high in the mountains. You can hear the wind about your ears and feel the gusts slightly against your body. As you look up the path you see that it is getting dark. You feel cold but not uncomfortable, as you are wrapped in something warm like a cloak. You begin to see a light shining up ahead of you and start to walk slowly and carefully along the rocky path. As you approach the light, you see that it is a lantern held by a cowled figure, the Hermit. He turns to you and says something—what it is that he says to you?

  In this working of the Hermit card we allow the participant to hear their own unique message from the Hermit and engage in dialogue with the figure. Some pathworkings can be a matter of twenty minutes, others can take up to an hour or in rare cases even longer.

  The purpose of these workings is to develop a deep and profound relationship with the archetype of the card which also aids in everyday readings. When the reader has such a personal experience over time with the images, they become far more than flat pieces of cardboard but living entities in their own right.

  As Aleister Crowley writes in the Book of Thoth:

  Each card is, in a sense, a living being; and its relations with its neighbors [the other cards] are what one might call diplomatic. It is for the student to build these living stones into his living temple. 139

  It is by pathworking that we can take one step in building such a living temple. In this section of our time travellers field manual, we will introduce images from an esoteric deck, the Tarot of the Secret Dawn, and give instructions for its exploration. These instructions can then be applied to any deck at your disposal throughout your own journeys.

  The Tarot of the Secret Dawn 140

  This deck was re-created from unpublished archive notes discovered in the vaults of a Golden Dawn collection in London. The Adept who originally created this deck was known in the Order of Stella Matutina (the Order of the Morning Star) as Frater Ex Oriente Lux, “Light from the East.”

  This Adept of the Amoun Temple of the Golden Dawn offshoot was in fact an English gentleman, born in Ambleside, Cumbria, named Neville Gauntlett Tudor Meakin (c. 1876–1912). He was described by none other than A. E. Waite as an “advanced occultist” and in character as a “man of honour” and “very seriously concerned” with his [esoteric] work. Waite wrote that Meakin had showed him a set of his own tarot images based on the Golden Dawn teachings in 1911.

  Meakin was educated in Edinburgh and came from a family line of churchmen including vicars, curates, and deacons. He wrote at least three books, one called The Court of Sacharissa: A Midsummer Idyll (1904), and another, The Enemy’s Camp (described at the time as a “comedy of sunshine”) with Hugh Sheringham, to whom he left his estate. He was author of The Assassins: A Romance of the Crusades, written in 1902 and dedicated to his mother. The book contains much about the “Order of the East.”

  It is unfortunate that in 1912, Meakin died suddenly from the effects of tuberculosis. He was aged around 45 and had just returned from a trip to establish relationships between the English occult groups represented by Waite and Felkin (another high-ranking Order member) and German groups. On his trip, he made a visit to Rudolph Steiner; his work appears extremely accomplished.

  He had also travelled to Egypt in 1911 on “Bahai business”—and was met with good favor by followers of that religion.

  He had been conferred to the high grade of Adeptus Minor by Waite in Dr. Robert W. Felkin’s temple at Bassett Road in London prior to his ambassadorial duties. At some point, he had held office as the Master of the Ordo Tabulae Rotundae, the “Order of the Table Round,” an Arthurian-based Rosicrucian group. In fact, he claimed to be in a long line of succession to that group.

  Whilst we do not have an exact date for Meakin’s creation of his deck, we presume it was in the last few years of his membership of the Amoun Lodge and the original manuscript is bound with a description of a vision in Egypt, recalling Crowley’s work in Egypt some years prior in 1904—so we date the deck between 1909 and 1911, likely closer to the later year, just before his death in 1912. This would also date the deck to just following the publication of the Waite-Smith deck.


  His notes were typewritten and included hand-drawn symbols for astrological, alchemical, and elemental references. The deck was then designed by the present authors from these notes and realised as a deck by artist Janine Hall. 141

  In all our time travels to date we have not been able to discover an actual original copy of the deck, so we can only surmise how close our re-creation has been to the one Mr. Meakin drew and held.

  We will now look at the instructions for travelling into the cards.

  Attaining to Spirit Vision

  In one of the additional lecture papers that circulated amongst the Order members and functioned as an early forum board for their studies, Florence Farr wrote:

  … placing [the card] before you and gazing at it, until you seem to see into it … you should then deeply sink into the abstract idea of the card … Consider all the symbolism of the tarot Card, then all that is implied by its letters, numbers, and situation and the paths connected therewith. 142

  We will now provide the steps for this journey into the living landscape of the tarot.

  Visualise the symbol. You can sit in any comfortable position—or lie down—and light a candle and burn suitable incense (see step 6). You may draw the symbol on a card and place it in front of you, and keep opening your eyes before closing them again until the symbol is firmly in your mind.

  Once you have a strong sense of the symbol, imagine it reducing in size to a small dot in the bottom-left corner of your inner vision.

  Now create an image of yourself in front of you, facing away from you, so you can see your own back.

  When you have a strong sense of your imaginary body (which may be dressed in robes, etc.,) visualizes a strong beam of light from your physical forehead into the back of the head of your imaginary body.

  When this link is connected, take a deep breath in and as you exhale, will yourself to travel down the beam of light into your other—astral—body. This is usually the step that takes most practice. We cover tricks which can assist this process in our Astral Travel and Visualization class.

  When you are present in your astral body, allow the sigil to shoot back up right in front of you from the bottom-left corner of your mind’s eye. Allow it to vibrate and be soaked with color; get a sense of its texture and even a scent such as earthy soil or patchouli to represent the element of earth.

  In your astral body, feel your arms parting the symbol like a pair of curtains and enter behind the veil through the rent. You can feel the link of light back to your body out of the back of your astral self. When you wish to return, simply come back through this veil, face it again, and return down the beam of light to your normal state of consciousness.

  Once you are through into the astral plane behind your chosen symbol, you may explore the landscape you find, meet entities dwelling there, and experience a new reality. We recommend you ask at least two questions of any being you meet:

  What can I do in my daily life to manifest the full qualities in balance of this plane?

  What can you offer me in this plane to harmonise myself in all worlds?

  When you have completed your astral journey, return as we suggested in step 7. You should spend no more than an hour in your first journeys at most. It is better to have quality experiences than long, mediocre ones; the Golden Dawn recommended that one be in a good state before any such exercise, particularly never to go into the astral in a negative state such as anger or resentment. This is because in such a state the flow of energy is reversed and you can be drained by the experience or find overwhelming attachment to certain constructs.

  Tips for Dealing with a Wandering Mind

  The Golden Dawn also provided useful methods of dealing with the more common challenges that astral travellers encounter in their first journeys. In tracing a symbol in the air in front of you in your journey, you bring the energies and specific qualities associated with that symbol into the astral, which is where the symbol is most powerful.

  So if you find that your mind is wandering, draw the symbol of Venus, which is a symbol of unification; if you cannot get clear messages from those you meet in the astral, draw the symbol of Mercury, the symbol of communication. If you require protection, draw a banishing pentagram, and so forth. In the learning of the correspondences of these symbols, the neophyte is also learning the basics of control of the astral plane in addition to other planes, including the material plane of daily activity.

  Entering the Astral

  You may wish to read this out and record it with pauses, then later listen to it with headphones.

  You stand before a stone portal in which hangs a rich and elegant tapestry upon a black rod above the portal. There are three large stones forming an arch above the rod.

  You take a moment to look at the tapestry and see that it is of an ancient Egyptian landscape, complete with pyramids, camels, palm trees, and an oasis. You can almost feel the dry heat of the landscape from the tapestry.

  You step forward and draw the tapestry aside so that you can step through the portal. When you are ready, take a step forwards.

  You find yourself in the desert that was upon the tapestry, only now it is more real. You can feel the heat on your face and body, and your tongue tastes the dry air. Ahead of you is a single large pyramid. Here and there are a few signs of vegetation.

  There appears to be a small stream running from the portal towards the pyramid, so you begin to walk along its banks, noticing perhaps lotus blossoms budding in the water and the occasional movement of life deep beneath the surface as the stream widens.

  When you arrive at the base of the pyramid you see an open archway leading into a dark tunnel. Above the archway is carved a globe with wings like those of a falcon. You feel a little concerned considering the darkness and must decide whether to enter the tunnel.

  As you pass along the tunnel, you can feel seeds breaking beneath your feet, as if crops had been stored here in the past or carried along the tunnel for some other purpose.

  The tunnel eventually opens out into a triangular room, with the apex on the other side from where you have entered. In the centre of the room floats a large white egg that appears to be surrounded by flames that do not burn it.

  You can feel a strange cold sort of heat against you as you approach the egg in the centre of the triangle.

  As you look upon the egg and feel the flames, you notice that the seeds on the floor of this temple sanctum are sprouting to life into all manner of flowers and blooms.

  You realise the stream is also entering the sanctum from the tunnel and carrying the flowers out into the desert. It flows both in and out of the pyramid on a magical tide.

  After awhile of sensing the work of this place, you turn and walk along the darkness of the tunnel, seeing the desert light ahead of you.

  Upon leaving the pyramid, you take a moment to get used to the light and follow the stream back to the portal.

  The tapestry appears to have been placed over the portal on the other side. When you are ready, you can pull it to one side and feel yourself returning to the present time and place.

  Take a moment to ground yourself after any travel into the cards. It is useful to have a small meal thereafter as a further grounding and return to the body.

  The lexicon for the main symbols we have used in this experience is:

  Egg: Rebirth, immortality, fertility, aura, receptivity

  Pentagram: Life, power, protection, grounding, invoking, banishing

  Water: Sustenance, life, promise

  Triangle: Trinity, three-in-one

  Bud: Hope, innovation, growth

  Flower: Spring, female energy

  Seed: Fertility, virility, ideas, expectation, cycle of death and rebirth

  Pyramid: The work of initiation

  Winged Globe: The will, the core of
self

  You can now look back over the experience as you refer to these correspondences and discern how it was created and how the symbolism is based on a teaching of complex relationships. As every tarot card in every deck is an illustration of combined symbolism, the working of a card and its discrete symbols can be followed in an identical manner. In effect, the illustration is already primed to teach you more than itself.

  We next turn to a slightly more advanced method when you have mastered exploring individual cards for a while.

  Create Your Own Tarot Time Portals

  We can now reveal a hither-to secret method initiates of a magical order have used for some years. In many published works, there are references to pathworking and visualization techniques that draw on a single card, so for example, you might enter into the “Hermit” card for guidance.

  However, as the tarot cards are metaphors composed of many symbols, we can construct a simple portal sigil out of a combination of cards.

  We first shuffle and draw three cards for a simple timeline reading:

  What has happened.

  What is happening.

  What will happen (if nothing is changed based on 1 and 2).We can also consult the base card (at the bottom of the deck) if we want a card for:

  What we can do towards achieving—3) if positive or changing; 3) if negative.

  We then chose one key symbol from each of the three cards as we have done in previous books when learning to read tarot by pin-pointing and chaining. 143

  Let us imagine that we have drawn the King of Pentacles, the Queen of Wands, and the 5 of Swords in those three positions.

  Whilst we might read those cards as indicating we have been somewhat stubborn in the past, and controlling in the present, and must be careful to avoid argument and trouble in the future, we can also create a portal.