The Mandala of life
This mandala is a representation of the cosmic Creative Force that is at the same time Logos and its own Expression within the material realm.
We should first familiarize ourself with one of the alphabets the Mandala expresses itself within this earthling dimension: The Tarot cards
Origins of the Tarot
First thing to say about Tarots is that they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with each generation of authors adding and changing things around to this piece of human culture.
Here are a few examples:
Each author has drafted different approaches and correlations between cards and their archetypical meanings, thus proposing different ways to access this ancient wisdom.
One deck of particular importance is the Oswald Wirth one, chiefly because it points toward the origin of this artifact by embedding the letters of the Jewish alphabet within each card.
At its inception, the Jewish culture produced two masterpieces of literature with the following attributes:
1) One was masculine, the other was a feminine book
2) One was a very long book, the other very short
3) One spoke of sacred things of God, the other was all about mundane daily things
4) One was digital and immutable in its core essence, the other was analogic and made to evolve and change
5) Their titles are mirroring each other
The first book that I speak of is the Torah, with its rigidly aligned alphanumerical code embedded within it (see the Bible Code), the second one is the Tarot deck, being both short (only 22 cards/letters), intuitive (made of images rather than letters), speaking of mundane things (used in common divination techniques), and free to be modified and revisited by any author throughout time.
We have already outlined the links between the ancient Egyptian civilization and Atlantis, so there is a possibility that the origin of Tarot being even more ancient than that.
In any case these two books were made by an advanced civilization, not just in in mathematics thus capable of embedding a coded message within the Torah, but also emotionally advance to efficiently embed archetypical meanings within the Tarot card artifact to be used again as a guide or help in all these instances where dogmatic religion can’t reach or resonate.
The meaning of the letter SPACE
One oddity of the Tarot book is the censorship of the 13th letter/card for a blank letter.
This is not a mistake of the author, it’s a functional necessity to highlight the existence of a BLANK letter, also known as SPACE, which is often a non trivial within a functional language space, as well as in mathematics where the hidden number ZERO is de facto the foundation of all constructs along with his brother known as ONE.
The presence of a BLANK or absence of something is often very difficult to see, it is literally hidden in plain sight, everywhere in the text we read, and yet it helps to make things work and give them meaning.
If we were to make an analogy with light, the BLANK that we speak of would be called the color BLACK, but the true black color intended as the absence of any electromagnetic radiation is in fact a bubble of space suspended in absolute 0 K temperature (also known as -273.15 deg C).
Any matter or person existing at such temperature would see his time slowly decaying to zero, meaning the rest of the Universe out there would be fast forwarding toward the future the more we approach the absolute 0 K mark.
Of course the outside universe speeding toward the future would be imperceptible to us in this time bubble, simply because the very absence of any electromagnetic radiation within our bubble severs any informative connection between us and what is happening to the universe out there. We would be suspended in an infinite silence and true black, we would be in an OHM state.
Likewise the outer universe operating above (or below!) the 0 K temperature mark is nicely minding its own daily business, unsuspecting of the existence of a 0 K time bubble quietly existing in its OHM unperturbable state just under the surface.
These two universe states are intertwined and yet unsuspecting of each other’s existence.
The hidden side of nature
The existence of these two states is represented within the core of the mandala of life:
The female or material part (literally the World) is exposed on top of a hidden card behind it (the Fool) that is a plastic clay state capable of taking any shape the powers above command him to be.
The two cards are looking at each other, thus underlying their functional dependence: One cannot be without the other, they are functionally dependent, in symbiosis with each others.
These two cards remind us of a primordial beginning of reality and universe, and although the Foundation is not a fan of the Big Bang theory, we must acknowledge a moment of creative act which set things into motion.
This continuous core creation might well still be going on, a bit like a furnace of God, continuously radiating and spewing matter and light off. Some clumps of these ejections eventually coalesce into a specific worldline or line of universe.
After that event of sheer creation, things had to cool down before they could be shaped up into new forms and experiences. The universe was just beginning its day, every possible development and evolution and all the worldly experiences that will go with it were not yet, but their potential was there as we add the four suits or pillars of the Arcana Minor and namely the Aces:
The pentacles represent the material dimension, clubs represent the creative spirit that seeks embodiment within the material creation whilst at the same time drawing inspiration from the mentalic dimension, the sword suit.
Swords are all about abstract concepts, mathematics, ideas, music, etc, all mental concept seeking embodiment in the dimension below (material manifestation of the clubs) whilst at the same time inspiring the soul of the world, the Cups.
The domain of Cups is the domain of emotions, collecting and waiting to be powerful and inspired enough to bring about something new, either by inspiring new ideas (back to the domain of Swords) or by allocating more worldly and material space for new things to develop (the Pentacles dimension).
To note that has the universe and experience develop, they feed back this experience into the genetic layer of the universe (the Aces) and these in return distill their knowledge back to the core of the Universe, the creative Force hidden at the center of it all.
At the base we have the frail state, where things are beginning to get in motion.
It’s a moment of silence, and gathering scraps of energy and matter as we wait to get more solid bases for our existence: It is the gestation and childhood phase. On a monetary metaphor (because money IS space) here we are poor, awaiting for money to trickle down to us, or on the human development this is a fetus or childhood phase.
It is the domain of the Jack or Valet.
The second layer is the one where all the action happens, Energy and matter moves fluently to create functional structures, it’s a very dynamic state. Money wise things are moving fluently, whatever is earned is spent back in new things that we will need to make our foundations strong. Human wise we are young adults spreading our wings out of the parent’s nest and going our own way, beginning our life.
This is the domain of the Queen.
Third layer is all about consolidating the stability and reaping the fruits of the hard work before. Money comes easily, it’s about deciding how to invest it better for the long term reward. Here we are old wise humans, maybe not as strong as when we were young but strong in experience.
It is the domain of the King of pentacles.
In the last phase, the abundance of everything is overwhelming, it is no longer a struggle to survive. Money overflowing need to go beyond themselves and need to find a way out to bring something about, new fruits, maybe some suit funding or some form of investment on the welfare of the community.
All the creation of matter is now ripe to produce something else, it now wants to create something out of all this abundance!
At the base there is once again the valet, inexperienced but eager to start create and to learn how to manifest himself into the matter with his creations.
At the Queen level we are skilled creators of things, artifacts, music, we are crafty, using the matter (our body, our material resources) we gathered in the Pentacle stage and using these skillfully to create new things and in general beautify the world around us.
At the King level we are masters at whatever we do, easily changing things around us in something beautiful but maybe more interested in contemplating the beauty of our creations and teaching them to others than to create new things.
The final level is the Knight, nothing left to do, to make, to build, everything that could be done it has been. The need to move past the dimension of creativity with the bag of experience achieved in this process.
The creative experience brought about Knowledge of the things of the world and how to manipulate and change them creatively.
In the mental plane we first gather scraps of ideas and generic concepts at the Valet level.
Eventually these evolve into stronger and robust theories, it is the domain of pure mathematics but also music and all kind of artwork ideas and untried concepts (the Queen).
At the King level all theories and their corollaries have grown to their full expression and correlations, all the songs have thought of and have been sung, all the plays have been conceived and performed. There is nothing much to learn or discover here because the theories are fully self sustaining and sufficient within their closed circle.
Finally the Knight level breaks the impasse, something new is at the horizon, something unsuspected comes and makes a crack at the foundation of our self sufficient body of theorical work.
All the knowledge in the world cannot tell us what to do with it, what we should create with it, it’s time to move into the domain of Cups.
At the beginning of it all it is just scraps of emotions we have no control upon. We feel generically what is right or what is wrong or love along with pain for what is happening around us.
Eventually we learn to control and master our emotions, we can actively influence and change the emotions around us in an harmonic (or disharmonic) way. We begin to feel the bliss of the emotional plane.
At the King level we can feel all that is around us, we could also change that whichever way we wanted to but here is the rub: How should we change things around us?
This is the domain of inspiration and miracles, notably it has long cycle times within the material and human dimension.
Think of the space program back in the 50s and 60s: People made the inspired decision to pursue the dream of the stars, it inspired millions of people to work into that direction.
Likewise Communism, Capitalism, and many other ideologies governing the structure of our society and underlying the way we think and live, well they all had to have a moment of inspiration when someone thought of them and said: This must be Good.
Finally we reach the Knight level, our heart is fully in love and totally inspired by this beautiful idea, it must be brought about into the World at all cost, we can no longer linger, the urge to go back into the material plane and bring this about is too strong.
Another circle begins within the material plane, space must be made first in order to bring this new inspiration into active creation.
The Mandala of Life according to the Tarot tradition
