Meditations on the Tarot 5: The Pope

(This post is fifth in a series on the book Meditations on the Tarot. See the first for explanation.)

5. The Pope

• The number 5: The number 5 stands, according to Eliphas Levi, for "the domination of the mind over the (four) elements" (106). For the author of Meditations on the Tarot, the number also represents the five wounds of Christ, and the five senses "though which the objective world, withot regard to our will, imposes itself on us." The author continues, "But the senses are organs of perception, not of action. Imagine that the five organs of action--the limbs, including the head in its function as a limb--were to have analogous wounds, i.e. that the five currents of will of which they are an expression were to give access to an objective will which would be to personal desires what sense perceptions are to play of fantasy" (110).

• The Pope: The Pope is performing a blessing, a benediction: "the putting into action of divine power transcending the individual thought and will of the one who is blessed as well as the one who is pronouncing the blessing" (100).

• The two columns (and the two acolytes): "The Cabbala compares the role of prayer and benediction to the double movement, ascending and descending, similar to the circulation of the blood. The prayers of humanity rise toward God and, after having been divinely 'oxidised', are transformed into benedictions which descend below from above. . . . The two blue columns behind the Pope symbolise in the first place this twofold current." They also symbolize "the two columns of the Sephiroth Tree [of the Kabbalah], the pillar of Mercy and that of Severity, and similarly the two pillars of the Temple of Solomon, Jachin and Boaz" (100).Just as prayer and benediction are analogous to the circulation of the blood, they are also analogous to respiration, breathing out and breathing in. Respiration, says the author, can be "horizontal" (taking place between "outside" and "inside") or "vertical" (taking place between "above" and "below"). "The 'sting of death' . . . is the abrupt passage from horizontal to vertical respiration. Yet he who has learnt vertical respiration whilst living will be spared from this 'sting of death'" (100). "The law of horizontal respiration is: 'Love your neighbour as yourself'"; that of vertical respiration is "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind'" (101). 

• The Pope's triple cross: The three-level cross represents the "three levels of horizontal respiration . . . : love of Nature; love of one's neighbour; love of the beings of the spiritual hierarchies," and "the three stages of vertical respiration . . . : purification (by divine breath); illumination (by divine light); mystical union (in divine fire)" (101). Two other sets of three are also featured in this chapter. One set comprises the traditional monastic vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity (112-114). The other set comprises the journey "from the natural state ('limbo') and from the state of human suffering ('purgatory') to that of the blessedness of the divine state ('paradise')" (115-16).  [This journey parallels Dante's journey, as well as Joseph Campbell's monomyth, the journey of the hero. It is also the pattern of open systems, moving from a relatively organized status quo, through the threat of disorganization, to a new level of organization.]