July 23-25, 2014; Seven of Disks
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FAILURE
(Previously called “Success Unfulfilled”)
Seven of DisksMeditation Pattern: Place Atu XXI, The Universe, and Atu V, The Hierophant, side-by-side, with the 7 of Disks above them.
Traditional Description: A white rose branch. Seven Disks arranged like the geomantic figure Rubeus (which is attributed to the Scorpionic aspect of Mars):
o o
o
o o
o o
There are only five buds, which overhang, but do not touch, the five uppermost Disks. Above and below are the Decanate symbols, Saturn and Taurus respectively.Netzach of Earth: Success only through labor, patience, and care. Unprofitable speculations and employments; little gain for much labor.
Saturn/Taurus: Blight. Inertia. Promises of success unfulfilled (shown, as it were, by the fact that the rosebuds do not come to anything). Loss of apparently promising fortune; loss of one’s labor. Hopes deceived and crushed; restrictions or inhibitions impede worldly advancement. Disappointment, misery, slavery, necessity, and baseness. Sometimes it denotes slight and isolated gains with no fruits resulting therefrom, and of no further account, though seeming to promise well. Yet can be persevering, enduring, methodical, economical.
Venus + Saturn: Disappointment, emotional loss, unhappiness, loss of motivation or energy; sober, realistic, economical, faithful, determined; but emotionally withdrawn, unsatisfied, hardened.
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-Why failure? Impossibility to manifest the higher, sublime aspects of Netzach into physical reality of Assiah? Or pehaps the problem is in the tendency to rigidity of forms & patterns in the natural flow of energy of our affectional life.
- Card colors associate of NOX
- Tau + Vau: the crucified one! (nailed to the cross)
Need to understand the desires of the flesh, without condemnation, without addiction; to accept own bio-emotional being with all its characteristics. - Who looks for value only in material phenomena (that perceptible by the senses), inevitably experiences failure. Own loyalty (virtue of Netzach) has to be directed to the Highest, to HGA.
- Two correspondent major Arcanae give instruction for the initiated:
this is how the Voice is crystallized: always with incompleteness, with a “necessary flaw”; and the “failure” is there to teach! - To find the sacred in the profane = ultimately, to transform everything into Sacred, to experience the physical Universe as a crystallized form of Divine substance (that which encompasses both LVX and NOX into its nature). This is internal individual experience, it can not be explained or “shown” to others; there’s the paradox of being totally connected and separated at the same time.
- In divination:
rotten fruits; greed; selfishness; rigidity of form in expressing own feelings and the feelings themselves vanish behind a mask, an empty shell (shallow courtesy, etc.); formality in relationships; effort and hard work for a particular desired goal; success through persistence (but for a sour reward?).
- Failure, Fehlschlag, from latin fallire or fallere – associate of incompleteness, inadequacy.
- Essential lesson of the card is:
Listen to the Voice of Adonai (Vau) as it speaks specifically through your body (Tau), through its suffering as well as its pleasure; do not become attached to these phenomena; with your emotional attention, follow the Voice, observe how it refracts and reflects in all of these various experiences while does not become divided, but is still One.
- Not one particular physical temple can completely epitomize&incarnate the Transcendent, yet the Mystery is that It is always-here, virtually everything manifests it!
- The initiate of Netzach existentially (not merely intellectually) deals with this paradox of Love – his/her Angel permeates every atom of his/her being, but yet the human capacities yearn for Adonai as something Most-Distant, transcendent to own mind and body, the ultimate Other.