Arcanum I: The Magician

The tenet of the essential unity of all that exists precedes every act of knowledge, and every act of knowledge presupposes the tenet of the unity of the world.

The ideal — or ultimate aim — of all philosophy and all science is TRUTH. But "truth" has no other meaning than that of the reduction of the plurality of phenomena to an essential unity — of facts to laws, of laws to principles, of principles to essence or being. All search for truth — mystical, gnostic, philosophical and scientific — postulates its existence, i.e. the fundamental unity of the multiplicity of phenomena in the world. Without this unity nothing would be knowable. How could one proceed from the known to the unknown — and this is indeed the method of progress in knowledge — if the unknown had nothing to do with the known? If the unknown had no relationship with the known and was absolutely and essentially a stranger to it? When we say that the world is knowable, i.e. that knowledge as such exists, we state through this fact itself the tenet of the essential unity of the world or its knowability. We declare that the world is not a mosaic, where a plurality of worlds which are essentially strangers to one another are fitted together,

but that it is an organism — all of whose parts are governed by the same principle, revealing it and allowing reduction to it.

The relationship of everything and of all beings is the conditio sine qua non of their knowability. The open recognition of the relationship of all things and beings has engendered an exactly corresponding method of knowledge. It is the method generally known under the title THE METHOD OF ANALOGY; its role and its import in so-called "occult" science has been illumined in an admirable way by Papus in his Traite elementaire de science occulte (Paris, 1888 pp. 28ff).

Analogy is not a tenet or postulate — the essential unity of the world is this — but is the first and principal method (the aleph of the alphabet of methods) whose use facilitates the advance of knowledge. It is the first conclusion drawn from the tenet of universal unity. Since at the root of the diversity of phenomena their unity is found, in such a way that they are at one and the same time different and one, they are neither identical nor heterogeneous but are analogous in so far as they manifest their essential kinship. The traditional formula setting forth the method of analogy is well known. It is the second verse of the Emerald Table (Tabula Smaragdina) of Hermes Trismegistus:

Quod superius est sicut quod inferius. el quod inferius est sicut quod est superius, ad perpetranda miracula rei unius. That which is above is like to that which is below and that which is below is like to that which is above, to accomplish the miracles of (the) one thing. (Tabula Smaragdina, 2; trsl. R. Steele and D. W. Singer, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine xxi, 1928. p. 42).

This is the classic formula of analogy for all that exists in space, above and below, the formula of analogy applied in time would be:

Quodfuit est sicut quod erit. et quod erit est sicut quod fuit. ad perpetranda miracula aeternitatis. That which was is as that which will be. and that which will be is as that which was, to accomplish the miracles of eternity. 

The formula of analogy applied in space is the basis of typological symbolism, that is, of symbols expressing correspondences between prototypes above and their manifestations below; the formula of analogy applied in time is the basis of mythological symbolism, that is, of symbols expressing correspondences between archetypes in the past and their manifestations in the present. Thus the Magician is a typological symbol; he reveals to us the prototype of the MAN OF SPIRIT. Whilst the Biblical accounts of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and if you wish, also, the schisme d'lrschou of Saint-Yves dAlveydre (cf. Mission desjuifs, vol. ii. Paris, 1956, pp. 191ff.) are, on the other hand, myths; they reveal the archetypes which manifest themselves endlessly in history and in each individual biography - they are mythological symbols pertaining to the domain of time. These two categories of symbolism, based on analogy, constitute through their mutual relationship a cross:

above

past                                                                 future (mythology) TIME

below

(typology) SPACE

Here is something written on myth (i.e. on the symbolism of time, or history, according to our definition) by Hans Leisegang, the author of a classic book on gnosis:

Every myth expresses, in a form narrated for a particular case, an eternal idea, which will be intuitively recognised by he who re-experiences the content of the myth. (Hans Leisegang, Die Gnosis, Leipzig. 1924, p. 51) 

And this is what Marc Haven says concerning typological symbols in the chapter on symbolism in his posthumous book Le Tarot:

Our sensations, symbolising external movement, do not resemble them (i.e. the phenomena) any more than the undulations of sand in the desert resemble the wind which raises it up into sand dunes, or any more than the ebb and flow of the sea resembles the combined movements of the sun and moon. They are symbols of it...The opinion of Kant, Hamilton and Spencer, which reduces inner movements to simple symbols of a hidden reality is truer and more rational (than naive realism — author's note). Science ought to resign itself to being only a symbolism conscious of itself. But the symbolic has quite another significance: the "science of sciences" as it was called by the ancients (cf. Decourcelle, Traite des symboles , Paris. 1806), the universal and divine language, which proclaims and proves the hierarchy of forms from the archetypal world down to the material world and the relationships which unite them; it is, in a word, the living and tangible proof of the kinship of beings. (Marc Haven Le Tarot, Lyons, 1937, pp. 19-20, 24) 

Above, therefore, two definitions —of symbols of time or of myths, and of that of space or of the correspondence of worlds "from the archetypal world down to the material world"—are formulated, the one by a German savant (Hans Leisegang) at Leipzig in 1924 and the other by a French Hermeticist (Marc Haven) at Lyons in 1906. which express exactly the ideas of the two types of symbolism (mythological and typological) which we are setting forward here. The Emerald Table only alludes to typological symbolism or space —analogy between that which is "above" and that which is "below". This is why it is necessary to add to it, by extension, the corresponding formula pertaining to mythological symbolism or time, which we find, for example, in the book of Genesis of Moses.

The distinction of these two forms of symbolism is not entirely devoid of practical import; it is owing to their confusion that many errors of interpretation of ancient sources, including the Bible, must be attributed. Thus, for example, certain authors take the Biblical account of Cain and Abel as a typological symbol. They want to see in it symbols of "centrifugal and centripetal forces" etc. However, the story of Cain and Abel is a myth, i.e. it expresses, in a form narrated for a particular case, an "eternal" idea. Consequently, it refers to time, to history, and not to space and its structure. It shows us how brothers can become mortal enemies through the very fact that they worship the same God in the same way. The source of religious wars is revealed here; and it is not the difference in dogma nor that of cult or ritual which is the cause, but uniquely the pretension to equality or, if one prefers, the negation of hierarchy. Here also is the world's first revolution — the archetype (Goethe's Urphanomen) of all revolutions which have taken place and which will take place in the future of humanity. For the cause of all wars and revolutions — in a word, of all violence — is always the same: the negation of hier-archy. This cause is found already, germinally, at such a lofty level as that of the communal act of worship of the same God by two brothers — this is the staggering revelation of the story of Cain and Abel. And as murders, wars and revolutions continue, the story of Cain and Abel remains ever valid and relevant. Being always valid and relevant throughout the passage of centuries, this is a myth and, moreover, a myth of the first order.

The use of analogy is not limited, however, to the "accursed sciences" — magic, astrology and alchemy — and to speculative mysticism. It is, truth to tell, universal. For neither philosophy, nor theology, nor science itself can do without it. Here is the role that analogy plays in the logic which is the basis of philosophy and the sciences:

(1) The procedure of classification of objects on the basis of their resemblance is the first step on the way of research by the inductive method. It presupposes the analogy of objects to be classified. (2) Analogy (argument by analogy) can constitute the basis of hypotheses. Thus the famous "nebular hypothesis" of Laplace was due to the analogy that he observed in the direction of the circular movement of the planets around the sun, the movement of satellites around the planets, and the rotation of the planets about their axes. He concluded therefore, from the analogy manifesting itself in these movements, their common origin. (3) As J. Maynard Keynes says in his A Treatise on Probability: "Scientific method, indeed, is mainly devoted to discovering means of so heightening the known analogy that we may dispense as far as possible with the methods of pure induction." (J. Maynard Keynes, A Treatise on Probability, London, 1921, P- 241).

Now "pure induction" is founded on simple enumeration and is essentially only conclusion based on the experience of given statistics. Thus one could say: "As John is a man and is dead, and as Peter is a man and is dead, and as Michael is a man and is dead, therefore man is mortal." The force of this argument depends on number or on the quantity of facts known through experience. The method of analogy, on the other hand, adds the qualitative element, i.e. that which is of intrinsic importance, to the quantitative. Here is an example of an argument by analogy: "Andrew is formed from matter, energy and consciousness. As matter does not disappear with his death, but only changes its form, and as energy does not disappear but only modifies the mode of its activity, Andrew's consciousness, also, cannot simply disappear, but must merely change its form and mode (or plane) of activity. Therefore Andrew is immortal." This latter argument is founded on the formula of Hermes Trismegistus: that which is below (matter) (energy) is as that which is above (consciousness). Now, if there exists a law of conservation of matter and energy (although matter transforms itself into energy and vice-versa), there must necessarily exist also a law of conservation of consciousness, or immortality. The ideal of science, according to Keynes, is to find the means to elaborate the scope of known analogy so far as to be able to do without the hypothetical method of pure induction, i.e. to transform the scientific method into pure analogy, based on pure experience, without the hypothetical elements immanent in pure induction. It is by virtue of the method of analogy that science makes discoveries passing from the known to the unknown, formulates fruitful hypotheses, and pursues a methodical, directing aim. Analogy is its beginning and its end, its alpha and its omega. In that which concerns speculative philosophy or metaphysics, the same role is reserved there for analogy. All conclusions of a metaphysical nature are based only on the analogy of man, Nature and the intelligible or metaphysical world.

Thus the two principal authorities of the most methodical and most disciplined philosophy — mediaeval Scholastic philosophy — St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventura (of whom one represents Aristotelianism and the other Platonism in Christian philosophy) not only make use of analogy but also assign it a very important theoretical role in their doctrines themselves. St. Thomas advances the doctrine oianalogia ends, the analogy of being, which is the principal key to his philosophy. St. Bonaventura, in his doctrine of signatura rerum, interprets the entire visible world as the symbol of the invisible world. For him, the visible world is only another Holy Scripture, another revelation alongside that which is contained in the Holy Scripture properly said:

Et sic patet quod to/us mundus est sicut unum speculum plenum luminibus praesentantibus divinam sapientiam, et sicut carbo effundenslucem. And it thus appears that the entire world is like a single mirror full of lights presenting the divine wisdom, or as charcoal emitting light. (Bonaventura, Collationes in Hexaemeron ii, 27)

Meditations on the Tarot, LETTER I THE MAGICIAN, by Anonymous