TRUMP 6 - THE LOVERS
We come now to a critically pivotal card in the Tarot, and we come to a idea which is absolutely essential in the history of western thought--that being the fall of Adam and Eve from grace in the Garden of Eden.
This is one of the most misunderstood parts of the Bible, and tragically so. All of the previous cards represent powers and energies, different aspects of God. This is the first card where we actually see human beings. If the Tarot cards are representing the different days or moments of creation, card #6 is day 6 when God creates human beings, Adam and Eve. It also represents the fall. None of the other cards represent actual people, they are shown as people, but they are symbols or attempts to indicate things in a anthropomorphic way.
In card #6, the imagery is actually very simple, very plain, and very obvious. Adam and Eve stand in the Garden in front of two trees. Behind Eve, is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Behind Adam is the Tree of Life. Behind them stands the angel. The angel was sent by God to guard the pathway so that Adam and Eve might not be able to gain access back to the Tree of Life, until they had overcome the knowledge of good and evil. You'll find this account in the book of Genesis, chapters 2 and 3. I will recount it for you. Because for Christianity, the account of Adam and Eve, as it is currently understood, leads to many misunderstandings which have resulted in a pollution of the entire gospel of Christ. You will find this discussion in much greater detail in my writing, "In the Garden."
We have seen that everything is good. Throughout the first chapter of Genesis, everything that God makes, God says is good, good, very good. The trees, the stars, the birds, everything is good. God then says that Adam and Eve have dominion. They can go and rule the world. We have seen that power of the Emperor. What remains is God's commandment. He told Adam and Eve that they may eat from every tree in the Garden, except from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. From the day that they eat it, they shall die. Why did God command them not to eat from this tree?
That simple question has led to a whole host of grievous errors in Christianity, because we do not understand the answer. The answer most commonly given is that it was a test. God made Adam and Eve free, endowed them with free will, and therefore needed to test their obedience. He tested them, they failed. Their failure was disobedience. That disobedience incited God's wrath. God, in order to strike out at them with retribution, caused Eve to have great child birth pains, caused Adam to toil by the sweat of his brow, and cast them out of his holy paradise.
None of the previous is actually true. It is a grotesque misunderstanding of the nature of God. God is the High Priestess; God is the Empress; God is the Magician; God is love; and the only reality that there is, is God. Everything that God made is good. When God ordered Adam and Eve not to eat from this tree, he was not testing them. He was not giving them a childish little exam that he knew they would fail. He was actually warning them--warning them that this tree could hurt them, because in the day that they eat it, they will die. Not that he would kill them, but that they would die. The tree was poison. The tree would hurt them. When they ate from the tree, the poison entered their system, and God sent them to the hospital. That hospital is the world as we know it. Then he began working on the antidotes so that mankind might be healed.
What was the tree and how could it hurt them? This is another one of the profound and deep esoteric mysteries contained in the cards and contained in the Bible. The tree had a specific name. It wasn't any tree. It was "the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." Adam and Eve did not eat an apple. That’s a common misunderstanding. We think that it was any kind of tree at all; therefore, it might as well have been an apple tree. This is not even close to the truth. This was not a apple tree. This was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
We’ve touch upon the key elements of knowledge--rationality and intellect. We have also seen that the world is good. Over and over and over, it is emphasized that all is good. It is all come from God. It is all an outpouring from God, and it is all very, very, good. It could not possibly be otherwise. What then is the knowledge of good and evil?
This much is clear: in order for Adam and Eve to know good, all they had to do was know the world. Open their eyes, open their hearts, open their minds and everything that there was, was good. Therefore, they could know goodness automatically and naturally. To know evil, they would have to know something which did not exist. The entire physical and non-physical universe was and is good. From the fish in the sea to the highest heavens, everything in their universe was and is good. It was up to them to know that in order to know evil, they would have to gain consciousness of something which did not exist. It is significant that after they partook from the tree, they had the eyes of their mind open, and they knew that they were naked. They were naked before, and they are shown quite clearly in this card to be naked, without shame and without horror.
As soon as they knew good and evil, they became aware not only of what they were, the natural state of their bodies which they knew before, but of what they were not. They were not protected. They were not clothed. Nakedness is the natural state of all beings. As they knew evil, as their minds focused upon what was not, they began to dwell as a separate self-existent ego. Me and not me. The glorious oneness of the creation and their part in it was fractured and split into two. Me and not me is the foundation of ego, and it is the splitting of the holy oneness of God's creation into separate tiny warring factions.
So God encounters Adam and Eve and says, "Where are you. Why are you hiding?" And Adam says, "I heard the sound of Thee in the Garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself." I, I, I, I, me, mine. Adam and Eve had ceased to live in the flowing oneness of the Empress. They had ceased to flow in the glorious oneness of the Emperor. They had become divorced from the revelation of the Hierophant, who is there only to communicate the goodness and grace of God.
They turned from all of that to focus upon themselves, their nakedness and their small, fallen pathetic ego.
In short, the original sin is not disobedience. The original sin is ego. The ego came through the disobedience. The disobedience was instrumental, but it was not the essence of the sin.
When a young child reaches for a hot stove, he is disobeying his parents, but that disobedience is secondary to the threat of the impending harm to the child. In exactly the same way, God's warning was meant to try and help them, but unfortunately they were not able to listen to that voice. We fall; we enter the world of sin and selfishness and ego. That is the original sin.
What then was God to do? Adam and Eve have a poison in them, and God must now get an antidote. We will see that antidote in a few cards from now. However, up until that time what happens? God casts Adam and Eve out of the Garden, not as retribution and not even as punishment, but as protection.
If, in the ego state, Adam and Eve are able to partake from the Tree of Life and live forever, then the smallness and the hurt and the pain and the ugliness which the ego state brings about, would be anointed with the holy grail of eternity, and we would never ever be able to transcend our egos. This would be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions.
Therefore, God barred the way to the Tree of Life The eternal Tree of Life is still there. That is the tree that we see behind Adam--the holy tree, on which there are symbolically 12 branches. Since the number 12 is so familiar to us, we need not reiterate it.
The Tree of Life still exists. It is real. That Tree of Life is our destiny. It is none other than God. For as we have seen, life is the breath of God. The wages of sin is death, not of the sinner but of the sin. The ego state must be transcended in order to return to the Tree of Life. So the angel stands guard, watches and protects as God prepares a pathway for us to return.
On the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we see the serpent. The serpent has been reinterpreted in Christian circles and over the course of time as being Satan. In its truest, purest original form, that is not true. The serpent did not mean Satan to the people who wrote the Bible, because Satan had not been invented or discovered yet. We will discuss this more in a few cards.
The serpent represents the power at the base of the spine--the sexual urge. This is not in any way to say that sexuality is evil, but rather the power at the base of the spine moves out away from the creator and turns to worship the creation. This is the pathway of the fall. The power at the base of the spine can be harnessed, and there are exercises and practices which seek to harness that energy and enable that serpent power to rise up and be used as a force for salvation and enlightenment. But more commonly, that serpent power flows out and down and away. That is the tendency to look not at the oneness, but look at the many--to seek not that which is unified, but that which separates. As Adam and Eve lived in their harmonious oneness with God in the universe, they left that oneness and moved to their own multiplicity--many people each with their own agenda--many egos, many problems, many fights. All of the enmity, strife, war, pain and suffering which we have on this planet are a result of the incurring of the ego state--the knowledge of good and evil, focusing upon what does not exist, rather than upon what does exist. You cannot have any anxiety over what is. You only have anxiety over what might be. Jealousy is a desire for things which you do not have. Lies are a statement of what is not. Meditate upon this, for there is great power here.
