February, 1960
More on Tarot and Tarot Readings
T. LOBSANG RAMPA, author of The Third Eye and of Doctor from Lhasa, furnishes us our test person for readings this month, using the PSYCHOMETRIC ANALYSIS methods as laid down in my book of that title. In his book, Doctor from Lhasa, will be found a picture of this author in his Tibetan lama’s robes. A less clear picture of him can be found in the March issue of FATE magazine (see ad on page 100).
The author is what might be called “The controversial figure of the occult year.” He is an Englishman who claims that his body was so completely taken over by the spirit of a dead Tibetan lama, once a resident of the Potala Monastery in Lhasa, that he has by now become that lama, with all his memories. The blurb on the dust jacket of the book just mentioned, admits that the claim may seem “palpably absurd to many,” but continues hopefully, speaking of his first book, “yet few people have read the book without acquiring a very real respect for the author’s undeniable sincerity, his intimate knowledge of Tibetan life which experts have been unable to disprove and, most of all, his story’s strangely convincing ring of truth.”
I will take a book reviewer’s privilege to give a sample of the things in the second book which are hard to believe. I quote from page 12. “On several of my trips to the higher parts of Tibet I flew in man-lifting kites, soaring above the jagged peaks of the high mountain ranges, and looking for miles and miles, over the countryside. I took part in a memorable expedition to the most inaccessible part of Tibet, to the highest part of the Chang Tang Highlands. Here, we of the expedition found a deeply secluded valley hidden below clefts in the rock and warmed by the eternal fires of the earth, which caused hot water to bubble out and flow into the river. We found, too, a mighty city, half of it exposed in the hot air of the hidden valley, and the other half buried in the clear ice of a glacier, ice so clear that the other part of the city was visible as if through the very clearest water. That part of the city which has been thawed out was almost intact. The years had dealt gently indeed with the buildings. The still air, the absence of wind, had saved the buildings from damage by attrition. We walked along the streets, the first people to tread those streets for thousands and thousands of years. We wandered at will through houses which looked as if they were awaiting their owners, until we looked a little more closely and saw strange skeletons, petrified skeletons, and then we realized that here was a dead city. There were many fantastic devices which indicated that the hidden valley had once been the home of a civilization far greater than any now upon the face of the earth.”
The ad in FATE which tells of the second book of the author, reads “At long last, the author is able to speak freely of many hidden secrets he could not mention in The Third Eye. Not a single fact has been cut out.” Looking with great anticipation for the promised revelations in the second book, I finally passed over some “hidden secrets” which have been common property of the “schools of occultism” for several decades (explanations of astral travel for one thing), and settled for this choice bit on page 102, “Controlled imagination. The person imagines that he can do this, or can do that, and so he can. He has the imagination telling him that he can, and he has the will telling him to do it. That means complete success. So, if you want to make your path an easy one, and your life pleasant in the same way as the Easterner does, forget about will power, it is just a snare and a delusion. Remember only controlled imagination. What you imagine, you can do. Imagination and faith, are they not one?”
The reading I get for this strange gentleman, if by chance it is correct, shows a man subject to spirit control and acting in response to that control to perform constructively, destructively and with great will or determination — the strange trident pattern. [image] ( for the Auhane). The reading for the Aunihipili [image] with a strong medium sized counterclockwise “personality circle” would show a Aunihipili which is destructive. The degree reading is in the lower level of mediumistic or psychic ability (341 degrees). It is interesting to note that his reading is very similar to the readings given in the January H.V. for the leading people named in the article, “The Men Who Ride Saucers.” What do you get?
THE HAUNTED MIND is the title of a new book by HRA Dr. Nandor Fodor, Helix Press, price 5.00. The subtitle is, Psychoanalyst Looks At the Supernatural. In this book Dr. Fodor has presented a collection of cases and stories from the realm of psychism, abnormal psychology and occult fiction. He tries to lay before the reader, in very simple terms, the elements of the several problems raised by each unit. The stories of the cases are very well told and make exciting reading in themselves, but when an effort is made to get to the bottom of the forces at work, using all that is known or suspected in modern psychological circles, the interest doubles. Lacking copies of Dr. Fodor’s out of print Encyclopedia of Psychic Science, as we now do, this new book is helpful as a general survey of the field of psychical manifestations. Some ghosts and other things appearing to the living have been rather neatly explained away as unreal and simple reflections of mental distortions. Others cannot be so easily explained or discounted. Dr. Fodor tells many tales of what he saw at first hand, and introduces the reader to many famous people. 320 pages of excellent reading and study material, well indexed and worthy of an honored place on your shelf. Any book dealer will get you a copy if he does not have one in stock. (Please do not order it from me. Our firm handles only my own books.)
IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THE TAROT CARDS or the Huna Vistas, please do not hesitate to drop a line to ask me to stop sending H.V. to you. Many HRAs were put on the list to get the H.V. because they were on the TMHG or old Newsletter list. You may NOT have written to say you liked the idea of the new Tarot study. Cigbo and I will thank you for a “Stop” as for a “Start.”
THE LETTER BOX
“Dear Max Long:
“When Cigbo starts scratching on my door for lettuce, and I say, SCAT! THEN WHAT? My desk is loaded — ready to go! — with splendid studies and I do not have enough time to study. HUNA VISTAS has very little to offer us as we already KNOW the thing you are trying so hard to find! It is TRUTH. At least it is Truth to us, and to our students who have the wonderful instructions direct now, from The Elder Brother, Lord Buddha, our own Master Teacher and priceless books! We still also receive the Pelley Nostradamus Weekly Letters, not always accurate either, when we believe that an error has been made!
“Who are we to feel so sure of ourselves? Well 81 years of continuous striving upward counts for something when it is added to a life dedication to AGELESS WISDOM! Guidance becomes so dependable and instructions so timely and helpful! And we have fifty or more 1200 to 1800 foot tapes from the trumpet lessons to repeat, play back and study! We are acquainted with all the saucer contactees, whose readings you gave from pictures in February FATE, and they are all wonderful people as well as friends. There is a Psychic Path which is RIGHT, though it may not, probably does not, follow the run of the mill mediums. Nor does a good medium determine the quality of ‘spirits’ contacted. It is the student who attracts those whose HELP is earned.
“We like you, Max, a lot, but our path up the Mountain is by a different route.
Love and blessings, W.S.”
CIGBO REPLIES: “Dear Auntie,
“I wasn’t scratching for money on your door. You donated that dollar last July and was in good standing. What you musta heard was me scratching the dickens out of my cigar box down here at Vista or mebby you mistook my intentions when I was up at your seance in my aka body and between Lord Buddha and The Elder Brother grabbed the chance to see what I could do with the trumpet. I didn’t intend to make such a loud MEOW! It isprized me as much as it did.you, I guess. Love and purrrs, Cigbo. P.S. Boss says he’ll see me in the wood shed, and that I gotta remember that everyone has to be allowed to have his own brand of TRUTH, even if isn’t the brand we think is best. C.”
FIRE WALKING AGAIN IN HONOLULU is reported. In a letter from HRA E.S. of Buffalo, N.Y., who sends a clipping from Island ad literature, showing a young Polynesian standing with lowered or closed eyes behind a brazier which appears to be filled with burning coals. The caption reads, “Tau, young high priest from the island of Tahiti, performs his thrilling fire walk daily at the Edgewater Beach Hotel’s Polynesian Village as part of the Pearls of the Pacific drum dancing troupe. Tahitians are the last of the Polynesian people to practice the ancient ritual of fire walking.” This is very interesting news. If any of you have been to Hawaii recently and have seen this performance, please tell me about it. It has been several years now since the old chief came up to stage the public fire walking which Charley Kenn told about in his book, FIRE WALKING FROM THE INSIDE (long out of print), and in which he gave the chants and prayers used, both in the native language and in an able translation with commentary. Charles resigned from the HRA, disagreeing with my version of Huna, but still writes.
A LETTER FROM A THOUGHTFUL HRA touches on one of the most important problems to confront Huna and also the psychologists and religionists of all schools and faiths. I will give parts of the letter. “Sometime I wish you would publish an account of someone who has been able to overcome the thing eating inside. Surely you know of someone. There may not be very many who are aware of some force outside of themselves that hinders and obstructs one’s living to his very best. With me I believe it to be spirit obsession. I have made some progress in re-educating my subconscious according to the Huna teaching. Still, it is uncooperative at times and stubborn. I cannot accept your statement that if these hindrances cannot be resolved, one can only learn to live with them. I will keep on trying… “
SUCH A LETTER calls for at least a small book to contain my answer. I could assemble the book by going through the books already written on Huna, and the HRA Bulletins, and selecting material touching on the problem. This problem has several parts, the two most important are easily stated in questions.
- What is it that makes us DESIRE to do what we know is bad?
- Why are we unable to resist the desire to do bad? IN THE OLD DAYS religionists taught that man was just naturally bad and that the individual could, if he wished (or through the help of some “saving” higher being, simply stop doing bad things. It was seen that stopping did not end the desire to sin, and so the quest was begun for a way to kill out desire. In Yoga, the way to do this is not too clear, but seems to depend on a process of gradual training in the art of resisting the demands of desires.
A Aunihipili was postulated in a vague way (possibly borrowed from Huna), and as this self was thought to be more closely connected to the body than to the mind, efforts were made to CONTROL THE BODY as a staruing point. One sat for meditation, completely shutting out the external world, and concentrating on taking over the one bodily activity which the mind self shared with the body self. This was the breathing. Of course, the voluntary muscles were already in the control of the mind self, but efforts were made to increase that control by holding an arm aloft and resisting the desire to lower and rest it. The mind self was taught to exert ever stronger “will” powers to bring the lower self under control, and the mind self practiced rejecting from the focus of consciousness every desire or urge or mental picture of performing an act considered bad. In fact, all acts, good and bad, were rejected as the urge came, and the mind was held empty of all but the major thought of keeping out all other thoughts which might arise. The mind self was also considered partly evil. It was ruled by the force of mental evil while the body was ruled by the lower or more material force (Rajas and Tamas) in the effort to stop both lower parts of the man from being or thinking “bad.” The teaching was (and still is) that all is bad except the divine self in man. One must reject all thoughts and actions which are not of the divine self. (Sattva or “Light” using the same symbol as in Huna for the Aumakua, the Aunihipili being symbolized as “darkness” in the Sanskrit word Tamas.)
In Christianity there eventually grew the idea of restraining the body and mind urges through the monastic life, and the hermits resembled the ascetics of India in many lesser ways. However, the final decision in Christianity was that while man could not resist the evil urges of his nature alone, he could do so with the help of Higher Beings, after “conversion,” giving him “salvation.”
The Huna beliefs which can be traced in Christianity included the almost universal idea that an atonement was needed before sins could be forgiven. In Huna a sin was a hurt done to others (or to one’s own body by bad living) and the score was only balanced by repaying the one or ones hurt. Kahunas often used their psychic ability to learn whether spirits were punishing the one who had hurt one loved by the said spirits. They talked with them and came to an agreement as to the atonement needed to undo the wrong. If no specific instance of hurting could be found and still a client was suffering, it at times was decided that the Aunihipili in the patient was convinced that punishment was due, and was causing illness or ‘bad luck’ of its own accord. Or, hurts may have been far in the past or of a nature making it impossible to make direct amends to the ones once hurt. In such cases general penance was (as in the Catholic Church today) ordered, with general good in mind as a sufficient number of good deeds was performed. This was the basic kala or cleansing, which we incline strongly to accept as we work to reconstruct and use Huna. However, there was the contaminated Huna in which, as in the Jewish and other religions, a separate category of “sin” was added — the sin of breaking a taboo connected with the contamination of temple worship in Polynesia, and the sin of breaking the “Commandments” of the Church Rules or Teachers in various religions. In Christianity the Jewish idea of heaping the sins on the scapegoat and driving it into the wilderness was replaced by the belief that Jesus had accepted the sins of all who believed in the accepted version of his mission, and that he replaced the scapegoat in carrying away sins. This fantastic idea was also combined to a great extent with the offering of a sacrifice as a method of obtaining forgiveness from God or the gods, and in some communities, from the wrathful spirits of all sorts and sizes (to say nothing of devils whose aid was needed to help one succeed in evil undertakings). On the side, there was ritualistic protection to be obtained from spells and evil eye and a variety of similar dangers. The rituals very often contained the element of bribery involving powers that be and the payment of protection money to the witch doctor. Often a fetish was worn as a protection.
WITH THE DISCOVERY OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS in modern times, there came no corresponding recognition of the fact of spirit influence. Everything was a “complex” or “fixation” and from these were supposed to come all the compulsions and unreasoned urges, desires, fears, and abnormal emotional and mental reactions short of insanity and the upsets caused by physical lacks or damage. While the theories now generally accepted in psychological circles have been a step in advance of most of the older beliefs, they are still so limited that very poor methods have been evolved to help a patient get rid of his strange mental emotional troubles to help him become fully in control of his thoughts, emotions and compelling desires or urges.
I have known people who, by refusing to respond, have freed themselves of “voices” and trouble apparently caused by spirits of the several grades recognized in Huna. I am not so sure that I have seen complexes identified and drained off, but think that I may have. As to the objection to my belief that if one cannot get clear of these abnormal conditions one learns to live with them, I agree that this may still challenge the Auhane to try to clean house. If this is found to be impossible for any one of a dozen reasons, it is THEN that I say one had better try to keep from rousing the sleeping dogs and learning to live with them as best one can until help is found.
TARO CARD SYMBOLOGY – Initiatory Unit Seven
“THE LODGE OF THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HRA TARO is now in session,” intones the Fabulous and Woefully Worshipful Grand Master, who is Ol’ High Card again since no one else has offered to read the lesson.
The member who happens to occupy the chair of The Oh! & Ah! Department speaks up. “I have been too busy to read the Huna Vistas since you started the Tarot Card business, and perhaps you have already explained this, but may I ask this one question? Just how does it happen that this Order is so ancient, and that I was never told about it until last September?”
O.H.C. “It has to be an Ancient Order, hasn’t it? Aren’t ALL Orders ancient? Think how it would sound if we called it, ‘Just Trying To Get Started Order of HRA Taro?'”
Chorus of members: “Well how about it? Mustn’t a Lodge based on the Taro be truthful and honest above all things?”
Ol’ High Card scratches his head and pulls his robe of office away from his neck where the gold thread is scratching. “We have to be honest, of course. But if we rename the Lodge, ‘Young Order’ then what would we do when it gets old, say next year or in thousands of years from now?”
Member in the Chair Which Rocks: “When we get that old, perhaps we could join one of the seventeen ‘ABSOLUTELY ORIGINAL and ONE AND ONLY Rosicrucian ORDERS.’ They all go back so far in time that they have a first claim on anything ever heard of, and they will probably claim soon to have invented our Lodge and that all our secret work was stolen from them anyway.”
All but three members rise in protest. Ol’ High Card holds up a silencing hand to restore order. “I am sure the gentleman who just spoke had no intention of insulting any of you present or ex-Rosicrucians. Let us pour oil on the troubled waters of the Lodge by saying that every single one of the seventeen ‘original, genuine and than-whicher [sic] orders of Rosicrucians’ is the original and so is entitled to be the recognized authority and to collect the three dollars a month dues for ‘as long as you may live, so help you.'”
Everyone is satisfied. All resume their seats and straighten out their magnificent robes so that the Taro symbols emblazoned on them in gold and glittering gems will show to the best advantage.
Cigbo, the HRA kitty, suddenly has a brilliant idea. He rushes around with slips of paper to have all members pledge to give three dollars a month to his cigar box as long as they live, or die trying. It turns out that everyone will be only too happy to sign up, but that there, by some strange chance, is not a single pen or pencil in the hall. Cigbo discouragedly gives up. He crawls into his cigar box and closes the lid. (He makes very noisy scratching sounds from time to time as the work of the Lodge goes forward, and lifts the lid a bit from time to time to see if any member has found a pencil or is beginning to show signs of a guilty conscience.)
O.H.C., looking around the hall at the happy faces, “Do all of the committees report progress? I take it that they do.”
The member in the Royal Scribe’s chair, “Don’t they always, in every Lodge, whether they have done anything or not?”
O.H.C. “Yes, I suppose they do, but I promised Cigbo faithfully that I would try to get a report from the committee on stamp collecting and stencil and paper providing. However, no great difference.”
THE SEVENTH DEGREE material is about to be presented by Ol’ High Card.
As we have no Scottish Rite in our Lodge as yet, and as some members have begun to feel the lack, the Seventh Degree will be known as the “Polynesian Rite,” and its feminine side will be “The Western Star,” with “North Star” and “South Star” optional.
THE DECK OF KALO CARDS is spread out on a piece of tapa cloth on the floor. All candidates for initiation are now decked out with flower or feather leis, and all rise to recite the Lodge dogma.
I believe that the Polynesians discovered the basic ideas upon which the symbology of the Kalo Cards secretly rests. The word Kalo is Taro in some dialects, and the word means “that which gives the Guidance from the Higher Sources.” I believe the symbology is based upon the THREE MANAS, the THREE AKA BODIES and THE THREE SELVES. The physical body is the tie with the physical world and incarnation in the physical body is represented by the symbology of THE FOOL.
(One of the members ventures the question, “Why must we stress the words ‘I believe?’ Perhaps some of us do not.” O.H.C. replies, “All through the pages of history we find that when a thing cannot be proven to the satisfaction of everyone, the effort to find proof is given up and BELIEF is substituted. It has worked well. Islam put the ones who would not believe to the sword, and the early Church found the Inquisition very effective. Let it be decreed here and now that those who refuse to BELIEVE this dogma must fire walk… and, if they can do that successfully, of course, they will be certain to believe in the Polynesian dogmas… at least those of yesterday.)
The Kalo Cards, THE CHARIOT VII and THE TOWER XVI, having the same number value, and so being paired in the secret card order of the Lodge, are placed on the tapa cloth at one side. All members produce the illustrations of the cards and the presentation of the initiatory rite proceeds.
OF ALL THE PAIRED CARDS there are none more completely illustrative of the basics of HUNA than these. In the CHARIOT picture we have the Aumakua as the driver of the chariot, and as the Aumakua is made up of a united male and female self (the “marriage which is made in heaven”). The two faces are made to appear, one on each shoulder. The front of the chariot is adorned with a double symbol which repeats the greatly important fact of this union. The rod is passed through the ring and over it is placed the symbol of spirit, the wings of a bird, and between the wings, the circle of the sun, which is the symbol of LIGHT, which is in turn the symbol of the Aumakua or Utterly Trustworthy Parental Pair. On the breast of the Aumakua figure is a square and, as the square is often the symbol of the physical body and physical life, this indicates that the Aumakua is a part of the three-self man, and is attached to the Aunihipili, the Auhane and to the physical body during earthly life, and to the shadowy or aka bodies after physical death. The stars on the canopy above the Aumakua may symbolize a great lapse of time, and we are reminded of the incarnations needed to allow each of the three selves to grow and evolve from the physical to the higher levels of conscious being. Two posts hold up the canopy front and back, once more reminding us of the pillars behind the Hierophant and the High Priestess, the pillars of the two sexes parted but striving to unite more and more completely until they make the perfect union.
EACH OF US LIVES BEHIND A MASK. Learn to look past the ugly features of the MASK of the mate and see behind the perfection which you can help emerge by slow steps with your love and understanding If you are teamed with one NOT your mate, but who will one day be the perfect mate of another, help that person forward and pray that your own mate, somewhere, will likewise be receiving help to grow.
The two creatures who draw the chariot are the male and female mates, the animal part of each, the Aunihipili, [and] the human part, the Auhane in the symbology. They are resting easily under the guidance of the Aumakua, and the symbol is that of the good and harmonious way of life in which all three selves work as a team for mutual good. This is the ideal condition, and in it there is no lack of time. Growth and evolution are easily and slowly and pleasantly made. There is, “All the time there is” to be enjoyed. The ascetic idea that one must struggle at all costs to force and hasten this growth is belied in Huna where the ideal growth is the normal and happy one, not the rushed and frantic leaping against walls.
THE TOWER XVI, in contrast, is the reverse side of the happy picture of the three selves working in perfect accord. The tower is shown on the card with three windows, representing the three selves, but the highest and largest window, which stands for the Aumakua, is empty. The lightening strikes and the two figures, representing the Aunihipili and Auhane, are cast out and are falling to their doom. The figure wearing a three pointed crown would limit a Auhane who was aware of the three selves as a great TRUTH, but because the Aumakua was not asked for guidance and protection, the lightning passes the large crown of the Aumakua and blasts the tower.
Another reading of the symbology can make the two falling figures a man and woman who have failed as mates to live under the guidance of the Aumakua Pair with love and tolerance and understanding.
TURNING TO THE ILLUSTRATION SHEET, we see how convincingly the secret order of laying out the cards repeats the basic story in the contrasting of the ideal as against the not ideal way of life and of growth. In the illustrations note that below the TOWER stands the STAR, a symbol of the waste of mana or life force, water being poured into water arid on the land to run back into the stream. The two vessels from which the water of life is poured can represent the mates, man and woman, working at cross purposes, the Aumakua GUIDANCE being replaced by the distorted stars of confusion. The bird on the bush however, is depicted to show the Aumakua as a spirit watching helplessly.
Below the STAR we see THE MOON, and again we see repeated the symbolizing of the disaster coming from failure to work in harmony with the Aumakua. The crab is said to walk backward as often as forward, and speaks loudly of false starts and retreats at the very beginning of the path of progress. The dog and wolf bay at the moon and accomplish nothing. They can represent the Aunihipili following the guidance of animal instinct, or can be the mates (as the side towers, two in number, would also suggest) lacking knowledge of the Aumakua, symbolized as waiting with closed eyes on the face of the moon, unable to take its normal part in the three-self life. The story is thrice repeated in these six contrasting cards. We cannot miss or mistake the teaching given here. Nor can we avoid the conclusion that the Huna lore gives us, in its basics, the nearest explanation to be had of the symbology.
The Trinity of Egypt and of later Christianity approaches the thing we come to see in this Seventh Degree initiation, but falls far short, not recognizing the full implication of the three parts of man or their purposes. In the lore of India, the Triune Gods and triune man come down to us in a state so confused that the simple and direct knowledge is all but lost. The part played by the sexes is almost unrecognized, and sex is considered one of the barriers to progress instead of the splendid driving force of creation which draws the parted halves of the man closer and closer together in preparation for the final glory of union and completion. In the Indian teachings the many and rewarding pleasures of normal life and growth have been lost to sight. The teaching is that all physical life is painful and bad and a part of the unreal maya or delusion. It is to be avoided at all costs and nothing is so important as the avoidance of living and the escape from reincarnation. Everything is a sin unless it helps escape from life. It is a teaching which seems to argue that the Creator of the Universe was not a fraction as wise as men. The rose given to mankind so that its beauty and fragrance might be enjoyed, is just one more snare to make the unhappy human turn his eyes away from the vast, empty and almost meaningless goal of escape and of absorption back into the body of God.
THE EMPEROR and DEATH card pair at the top and on the opposite side of the illustration sheet which we are using at the moment, can be studied for a moment, and then we will have examined all the symbolical meanings of the Major Taro Cards and the hidden meanings the contrasts bring out. The EMPEROR gives us in symbols the very top of accomplishment. The man is old and wise and armed and most powerful of all. There is little still to be gained by him. In his hand he has the scepter of union — the united male and female, BUT he is not able to take the final step to become a Aumakua. In the DEATH card we see the earthly power and possessions canceled by the necessity of death. Reincarnation is suggested but there is no mistaking the symbol of the sun rising at the end of the distant path, nor the male and female of the towers indicating the mates who must finish the journey together to reach the sun, to reach the graduation stage between incarnations when the selves step up a grade and the Auhane pair enter the Aumakua level.
On the banner of the figure of DEATH appears the symbol of the five pointed mystery which may have once been the star made by overlaying three triangles, the “five pointed star” of the three selves of Huna. Waite has suggested a Rose Cross origin of the emblem, with the rose in the center here, but the cross is missing and is replaced by five pine cones to make the five points which tell us what we need to know. The church dignitary and the simple child fall before the figure of Death at the end of each round of incarnation, but in the end [when] the truth symbolized by the design on the banner becomes known, then the graduation upward is possible, NOT while in the body, but when out of it.
Thus finishes the Polynesian Rite of the Seventh Degree. The cards are gathered up, the tapa cloth folded and the ritual of the closing of the Lodge observed. Cigbo, the doorkeeper, is fast asleep, so is tucked, box and all under O.H.C’s arm and taken home.
MFL
