All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

The Magician: Mercury

PENDULUM DREAMS:

Part Four

DIVINITY ON TWO LEGS

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

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Who are we, who are we, who are we essentially
when the soiled veils of illusion drop away?
I am not my job, my car, my house, my clothes,
my furniture, or my bank account. I am a divine spark

in human form, a gleaming point in an awesome tapestry of light.
All the threads of energy in this living tapestry
are forms of light from one Source. I am not a doing
or what has been done to me. I am a being of light and love.

We are not our success or our losses. We are beings
of light and love. I am not my gender, my skin color,
my politics, or my resume. Oh, no, no, we are not that--
we are divine sparks on two legs.

I release suffering, trauma, upheaval and loss.
I release limiting thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.
With my mind I can release disease as easily
as I move my fingers and arms and legs.

Who are we, who are we, who are we essentially
when the soiled veils of suffering drop away?
We are radiant love shining on the cosmos
on an awesome tapestry of light. We are not our sickness

or our pain. We are beings of light and love.
We are not our mistakes or our heartaches. We are beings
of light and love. We are fires of spiritual love, divinity on two legs.
We are gleaming points in an awesome tapestry of light.

Tarot Cards with the Infinity Symbol

(Plus The Fool)

A GREAT SURPRISE

     In the film Cold Souls, Paul Giamatti plays an actor burdened by nameless anxieties who arranges to have his soul extracted by the “Soul Storage Company.” His soul resembles a chickpea. Unlike Giamatti’s character in the movie, for many years I remained 99.9% sure that I didn’t have a soul, extractable or otherwise.  My spiritual emergence occurred unexpectedly: I began meditating purely to relieve stress. I had no interest in ideas of God or the soul and no desire to have visions or to expand consciousness.

     I followed a suggestion in a book on meditation; after I began mentally purifying my chakras, I started having visions of spiritual symbols. One afternoon, after meditating for over an hour, I had a vision of a gray, horizontal figure-eight floating above my head. I could also clearly see the walls of my room, so I thought for a moment that I had opened my eyes. I blinked and the figure-eight disappeared. I had no idea what the vision signified, so I mused for a while and then forgot about it.  

     A few days later at a bookstore, I felt an uncharacteristic desire to buy a pack of Tarot cards. Normally I would hang out in the Literature section of the bookstore, but that day I browsed the New Age section and found a book on the Tarot and an attractive deck, the Universal Waite Tarot. As the cashier was ringing up the items, he confided that he had been thinking about "getting back into" the Tarot himself. Not knowing quite how to respond, I paused, and then suddenly the word "synchronicity" popped out of my mouth. I confess that I wasn't even sure what the word meant. The cashier smiled as he handed me my purchase, and I then drove to another store on a different errand. Before I got out of the car, I flipped through the book and stopped at a page that contained a striking photo of Carl Jung. I read the text below and discovered that Carl Jung had coined the term synchronicity to suggest how events in the external world can significantly mirror the symbolic world of the subconscious mind. In other words, events are not just connected by causality, but also by meaning.

     I then opened the pack of Tarot cards. The second card I encountered, called “The Magician,” contains an image of a man with a gray, horizontal figure-eight floating above his head. I flipped through the book to a description of "The Magician" and discovered that the gray figure-eight is known as a lemniscate and represents infinity as well as the knowledge of the infinitude within.

    No one could have been more amazed than I at that point. During meditation I had tuned to another dimension and had envisioned a symbol that a few days later surfaced in "real" life, and I soon discovered that the symbol system of the Tarot dovetails in every way with the mystical symbol system known as the Tree of Life. I had envisioned symbols from the Tarot and the Tree of Life before I had opened the Tarot deck, which now makes perfect sense: the Tree of Life is an expanded version of the primary chakra system, and by that time I had spent many hours in meditation mentally purifying the energy centers of my aura. My higher self, no longer blocked by veils of negativity, was communicating with my conscious mind through symbols that revealed spiritual principle. Through the symbols of the Tarot and the Tree of Life, I am now often keenly aware of the infinitude within, which has an extremely positive effect on me and everyone around me. Before that I was pessimistic, cynical, and generally a real chore to be around.
     I first envisioned a golden, equal-armed cross with an angel at each end. The second vision was of a golden plate and cup on a pure white tablecloth—floating in the cup a large pearl turned ceaselessly around and around. The pearl confused me, but one day I read the parable about the pearl of great price: the pearl represents soul consciousness, one part in Air (the conscious mind), the other in Water (the subconscious mind). The third vision consisted of a plain, golden crown. Since even at that time I was still an agnostic, my conscious mind took a long time to process what my higher self, which had been buried a long time in my subconscious mind, was trying to reveal to me.

   By my early forties, I had experienced enough treachery and deceit to make anyone cynical for several lifetimes. I did not have any reason to feel hopeful about the human condition. I was pessimistic to the point of despair—if I had fallen asleep during meditation, my subconscious mind was more likely to manufacture nightmares than glowing, golden symbols. During my meditations, however, I was totally awake, but in a state of consciousness that I had never experienced before. My conscious mind in the visionary state tapped into a realm that transcended my limited personality, presenting symbols of what to me at the time was an inscrutable optimism about our essence, what many over the centuries have labeled the “soul.” The golden symbols reveal the harmony, abundance, and magnificence of the human spirit.

Four of Cups

     I realized that we are all divine after mentally emptying trash for many hours from my crown chakra. When I was finished, I envisioned a brilliant white flower with numerous petals. I believed at first that it was a rose, but a voice in my head clearly stated, “Lotus.” I went online and discovered that the thousand-petaled lotus is a symbol associated with the crown chakra. Besides helping us survive in this challenging physical realm, the chakras also connect us to other spiritual dimensions, the crown chakra being the main point of connection with the Source of all creation.

   My spiritual emergence revealed that each one of us is a being of light and love, divinity on two legs--in an awesome tapestry of light. The Tree of Life, which contains thirty-two paths of enlightenment, reveals the archetypal energies of both the personal and Universal energy fields. The goal of the mystic who works within the system of the Qabalah is to "build the Tree of Life in the aura," in other words, to awaken the archetypal energies within the personal energy field in order to complete the Great Work: Union with God. 

   The Tarot corresponds with the Tree of Life in every conceivable way, The Magician representing Path 12 on the Tree, for instance. The thousand-petaled lotus is associated with Path 1, the Crown of Creation. The equilateral cross appears in several positions on the Tree; my research revealed that my vision of the equilateral cross with angels at each end symbolically represents two essential occult rituals, one for banishing and one for invoking, the indistinct angels actually representing the great Archangels of the Elements. I, of course, began performing the rituals, awkwardly at first, but I nevertheless ended up invoking the Archangel Raphael and found myself in a thought bubble of such amazing complexity and experienced such a profound sense of eternity that I felt like an amoeba in comparison to the awesome "Healer of God." As I was falling asleep the next evening, I was shaken so violently that I thought I was going to die. No one else was in the room. Then I was nudged hard four times in the ribs as I was again falling asleep. Again, no one else was in the room, at least no entity that I could see.

   Amber and I continued to meet about once a week at Starbucks, and she seemed to believe everything I told her, no matter how bizarre. She confided that spiritual development is a matter of being open not just to the light but to the darkness. She also claimed that a lot of people work really hard on their "get into heaven plan" while also trying really, really hard not to be aware of the spiritual dimension because of all of the weird shit. She said the soul knows the truth, which is often difficult to accept or understand; the truth will set you free and also get your name placed on a lot of shit lists....

   I found out years after I grew up that my father during the time of my hallucination was working for the defense department. I, of course, couldn’t help but ask the pendulum if my parents had dosed me with hallucinogens when I was a young child. The pendulum answered yes. Then I asked the pendulum if my parents had been conducting some kind of government experiment on me. My intuition was again correct: yes. Amber believed me. Bran mentioned once that the government over the years has leveraged parents to experiment on adopted children.
   Not long after my traumatic hallucination, my family moved to a house in Walnut Creek. For the first time, I had my own room. Before then, I had slept with my brother in a queen-sized bed. The first three nights in our new home, I felt terrified, not only because I was sleeping alone for the first time but also because each of those first three nights, a few minutes after my parents had tucked me in, a brilliant light beamed through my window, and men in white space suits moved through the walls toward me. Each of those first three nights, I leapt out of bed thinking I might escape but then blacked out just before they reached me—at the moment of my greatest terror. After each intrusion, I woke up in my bed the next morning, refreshed, ready for a new day.
   I asked the pendulum if aliens had abducted me during those first three nights at the new house. The answer: yes. I then asked if aliens and the government had been experimenting on me. Again, yes. I am a reasonable man, not prone to believing in conspiracy theories straight out of The X-files, so the pendulum’s responses were more than a little disconcerting. Down through the years, I have often wondered how anyone could walk through walls, which is one aspect of the experience that for me has always cast doubt on the credibility of my memory. Amber suggested that I ask Bran about it at the next Illumination Meditation meeting. He explained that aliens can shift vibrational frequencies so that they can move through physical objects. Snapping his fingers, he also claimed that aliens can make people black out in less than a second. Bran suggested that the government was probably experimenting on me with alien technology, no doubt while aliens supervised. He even admitted that aliens have abducted him on more than one occasion, but he didn’t provide any details.