Tarot

A system of twenty-two images originating with the third-density population of Venus, designed as a training tool for studying the archetypal mind and developing the magical personality.

What Ra means

Ra identifies Venus as the origin of the tarot (88.13). The Venusian third-density population, whose experience centered more deeply on relationships, sexual energy transfer, and philosophical inquiry than that of Earth's entities, produced through many generations of work on the archetypal mind a system of images that their people used as a training aid for developing the magical personality (88.14). Ra describes the Egyptian version as the least distorted rendering of the images Ra offered (92.8), and notes that the one significant advance made by those who worked with the system after Ra's direct involvement was giving proper weight to the twenty-second arcanum — the Choice — which Ra's own earlier Venusian work had not fully developed (88.16).

The twenty-two Major Arcana are not for divination. Ra draws a sharp distinction: as a divination tool the cards function through astrological and psychic impressions of the practitioner; but taken as twenty-two archetypes of the archetypal mind, they are something altogether different — a resource for the student's own evolution, and pictures with no meaning to anyone else (88.23, 93.16). Alongside astrology and the Tree of Life, the tarot is one of three organized approaches to the archetypal mind Ra recommends for deep study; the seeker chooses one and follows it seriously enough to go beyond what is written and form unique personal correspondences (76.9).

The images were originally taught in a deliberate sequence — first comparing the mind, body, and spirit archetypes of the same rank; then in pairs — so that the student could perceive the fundamental relationships among the three complexes before attempting to embody each archetype individually (88.24).

In Ra's words

The tarot's origin — Venus, many generations of study, a training aid for the magical personality:

The tarot was devised by the third-density population of Venus a great measure of your space/time in your past.

As we have noted, the third-density experience of those of Venus dealt far more deeply and harmoniously with what you would call relationships with other-selves, sexual energy transfer work, and philosophical or metaphysical research. The product of many, many generations of work upon what we conceived to be the archetypical mind produced the tarot which was used by our peoples as a training aid in developing the magical personality.

88.14.2-4

Three equal paths to the archetypal mind; the call to go beyond the written:

It is appropriate to study one form of constructed and organized distortion of the archetypical mind in depth in order to arrive at the position of being able to become and to experience archetypes at will. You have three basic choices:

You may choose astrology—the twelve signs, as you call these portions of your planet’s energy web, and what has been called the ten planets.

You may choose the tarot with its twenty-two so-called Major Arcana.

You may choose the study of the so-called Tree of Life with its ten Sephiroth and the twenty-two relationships between the stations.

It is well to investigate each discipline, not as a dilettante, but as one who seeks the touchstone, one who wishes to feel the pull of the magnet. One of these studies will be more attractive to the seeker. Let the seeker then investigate the archetypical mind using, basically, one of these three disciplines.

After a period of study, the discipline mastered sufficiently, the seeker may then complete the more important step: that is, the moving beyond the written in order to express in an unique fashion its understanding, if you may again pardon the noun, of the archetypical mind.

76.9.3-11

The Major Arcana distinguished from divination — a resource for evolution, not astrology:

We must first divorce the tarot as a method of divination from this Major Arcana as representative of twenty-two archetypes of the archetypical mind.

The value of that which you call astrology is significant when used by those initiated entities which understand, if you will pardon the misnomer, the sometimes intricate considerations of the Law of Confusion.

88.23.2-3

To the student, images for evolution; to others, pictures only:

To the student, the tarot images offer a resource for learn/teaching the processes of evolution. To any other entity these images are pictures and no more.

93.16.2-3