The Hierophant
The letter VAV corresponds astrologically to the sign TAURUS, the Bull.
This leads us to the two meanings of the word Bull: the lower body as
well as the higher body. THE HIEROPHANT is called the higher body who
is another aspect of THE FOOL (Aleph), who was called the Ox, which is
similar the Bull. THE HIEROPHANT depicts the Life Principle at its personal
work of instructing the body, and through it, the inmate of that body,
the self-conscious.
The goal of the self-conscious is to find union with the Higher Self and
to perform the union of the lower body with the higher body. That is done
with apparent self-sacrifice, and when it is done, you find you have infinitely
extended yourself.
Taurus is an Earth sign and its activity is confined to the human plane.
The Higher Self functions elsewhere than on the Human Plane, but we know
nothing about it. He has His own activities on His own plane, and all
we know of Him is when He functions in us. In the Old and New Testament
of the Bible, the word earth means the body, not merely the physical part
of it. It means the etheric, the entire personality, the threefold body-not
merely the physical, but emotional and the mental as well-the refined
body, the physical, emotional and mental nature. The emotions and thoughts
are also the "earth," though they are higher parts of the earth
than the physical part.
The words in the church liturgy, "The Lord is in His holy temple:
let all the earth keep silence before Him," refers to the activity
which you see in this card-the Higher Self teaching. The Holy Temple
is not the church edifice. It is your skull. You are the Temple, according
to the Scriptures. "You are the Temple of the Living God." The
Lord is in your skull. Keep still and listen to Him. Let all your earth
keep silence before Him. The earth is your mental body, your emotional
body and your physical body, your ambitions, your emotions, your appetites
and your instincts. Now all of them keep buzzing all of the time, particularly
your emotional body, so that you cannot hear the Voice of the Lord in
your skull. You must be able to still all three bodies to be able to hear
Him.
The astrological symbol of Taurus is a half-circle over a whole circle
and both of those apply to the subconscious. They have nothing to do with
the self-conscious, of which the astrological symbol is the cross. The
Taurus symbol really looks like the head of the Bull with two horns. What
this means is that you have no control over getting any intuition. It
comes through the Will of the Higher Self. You may seek and seek to get
your guidance, but sometimes it does not come, in spite of all your seeking.
At other times the door is open to you. You have no control over getting
intuition. All you can do is to perform the preliminary, conscious, mental
steps; but the ability to hear the Inner Voice is secured through practice
of some form. You just don't wake up and find that you have this ability.
It will not come of itself unless you have assiduously cultivated it in
a previous life and brought it over with you, as was the case of Joan
of Arc. Generally in each life, by some form of Yoga, you have to recapture
it by some form of working on yourself. STILL YOUR MIND AND LISTEN. QUIET
YOUR THREEFOLD EARTH AND LISTEN.
When you study this card, take this affirmation along with it: "I
listen for the word of the inner voice."
The message received from this card is from the Higher Self and it is
called Intuition, the inner teaching. I want particularly to warn you
against thinking of Inner Teaching as teaching to the self-conscious alone.
The teaching may be directed to the subconscious alone, and that is what
it is doing in this card. The teaching deals with telling the two forms
of the subconscious in you all that is necessary to bring about the physical
changes that they must work in the body in order for you to become truly
spiritual, in the mystic sense of the word.
The teaching of the Higher Self is destined to reach the self-conscious
ultimately. It comes through the Venus Center at the throat and is passed
up the Pituitary Gland, where she sends it into the thinking lobe of the
brain, where it registers as a voice.
VAV, in Hebrew, means nail. It is the thing which binds the personality
to the Spirit and the Spirit to the personality. VAV is the link to everything-the
instrumentality of all constructive power. This is the thing that VAV
stands for. A nail is the means by which two things are linked together.
You cannot build a house without nails or pegs, which serve the purpose
of nails. Even when you dovetail boards together it is on the principle
of a nail. So VAV is closely connected with the necessary means of building
everything.
All enlightened masters have said, "Of themselves, they did nothing,
the Father in them did the work, issued His commands, and they obeyed
them." Jesus said, "The Father in me doeth the work."
The instrument of the Soul on the physical plane is personality. He works
in you willy-nilly. You can let him work in you or you can, as you think,
frustrate his work. You have the free choice to Will to His Will, or to
frustrate, as you think, His Will. What do you do when you frustrate His
Will? You cater to your appetites, emotions, and ambitions through the
choice of the body. So here you stand between two Wills-the Will of the
Soul and the choice of the body. You can Will to His Will, or you can
allow the body to do your Willing for you. If you Will to His Will, he
accomplishes His Will easily. If you Will to the Will of the body it means
pain in the end. He teaches you by that pain. It is up to you which it
shall be.
Between the Higher Self and the body stands the thinking cells of the
brain, your Mercury. Mercury can choose to link up with the one or the
other. If he links up with the Higher Self, The Higher Self teaches you
by the short and easy route. If he links up with the body, the Higher
Self teaches you by the long and the more painful route; but always he
is teaching you. It is he that holds together your body, and he coaxes
it or whips it into doing his Will. He trains you just as you train a
dog to obey.
With the astrological sign of the Bull goes the idea of worldly possessions.
In the horoscope, Taurus is called The House of Worldly Possessions. The
reason the Bull is used for that is that in the old days before land property,
when the patriarch or head of the family roamed the world at will seeking
pasture for his flocks and herds, wealth was reckoned in cattle. "He
was a man of so many head of cattle." We still have the word "pecuniary,"
which comes from a Latin word meaning cattle. If it was a pecuniary matter,
it was a matter of cattle. Your primary earthly possessions are your thoughts,
your emotions, and your physical body. It is really astonishing to read
in the Bible of material promise, promises of prosperity to those who
dedicate themselves to the Lord. It is this ideal that the Christian Scientist
has seized hold of and emphasized so strongly. Surely it must be obvious
to everyone that prosperity is used (if this be true) in some different
sense from the way we use it. Most of the people that are exalted in the
Scriptures were poor and had no sandals.
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