If you look back in the thread, we haven't really discussed Buddha's Seven Stages of consciousness as described in Post #21. Let's throw this into the mix as well:
http://www.deeptrancenow.com/exc3_7operations.htm
Taking up our later theme of mystery religions, let's consider overall - what are mystery Religions and Secret Esoteric Societies (like O.D.O or, heck, Freemasonry) all about anyways? You're loaded up with a bunch of symbolism and ritual, and
initiated into the group. Wait... couldn't that even describe the special group of... um. Tarot Card Readers?
But what's the underlying
purpose of all these groups? Part of it is to feel like you're part of a Special Club, a Community. You know Secrets that "normal" people don't. But when you boil it down, what exactly
are those secrets? And what are the Initiates
doing with them that's so special? For the most part, I'd describe it as: 1) we want to be able to perceive the world in a deeper and more complete way - to predict the future, know what others are thinking, assure ourselves that everything will be ok. 2) we want to have some influence over events purely through the power of our faith and will. 3) We want to believe there is some Deeper Purpose and Meaning to the Universe, maybe even to the point as to an assurance that our own role in the Universe will extend beyond our own deaths.
Dangerdork Has Totally Lost It, I hear you saying. But I guess the point I'm struggling to make is this: It seems to me that the Golden Dawn and the Alchemists and the Rosicrucians and the Pythagoreans, heck the Catholics and the Muslims and Buddhists are ALL trying to address the same issues. All of those systems of thought have personae and archetypes and rituals and steps and procedures and Secrets... and ALL of those concepts can be broken down into the basic building blocks we find in the Tarot. The Tarot is a
language that can be used to describe most, if not all, of the great religious and mythical and esoteric traditions.
It's like you have a little pile of those "refrigerator poetry" magnets that all say stuff like "Mother" and "Father" and "Love" and "Death" and "Hope" and "Tragedy." Of COURSE they will seem to make sense no matter how you arrange them... but what's been interesting to me here is looking at the sentences spelled out by this one particular array, and the more I look, the more they seem to resonate with SO many cultures and systems of thought stretching back thousands of years. It's like I've been playing solitaire with a deck of Cultural Anthropology Flash Cards... and I just won.