One of the towering monastic figures of the twelfth century in Europe, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was the spiritual architect of Cîteaux’s renewal and the driving force behind the Cistercian expansion across the continent. His influence reached far beyond the cloister, as he became counsellor to popes and kings and shaped the ethos of knighthood…
The letter Tau (Τ) occupies the nineteenth place in the Greek alphabet and contains one of the most ancient seals of consecration in the sapiential tradition. From the prophets to the initiates, its cross-shaped form is a sign of election, boundary, and passage. In Ezekiel 9:4, the Lord commands the angel: “Go through the city,…
I have noticed the Knight of Cups appearing with persistence. The card has accompanied these past days of emotional tides, of sensations rising and falling in restless rhythm. Within the Kabbalistic structure, the Knight of Cups corresponds to Yetzirah within the Element of Water, the Air of Water, the imaginal world of feeling, the realm…
This is the first text I have written in the first person. In the The Mirror of Sienna, the voice usually comes from elsewhere, more distant, veiled, impersonal. I prefer the tone of the third person, which allows the symbol to breathe on its own, without the author weighing upon its body. But there are…
The Justice card as the work of Tikkun: Venus in Libra, path of Lamed between Geburah and Tifereth, restoring divine balance through learning and light. I. The Sign of Libra and the Breath of Equilibrium Libra opens one of the four gates of creation, as it is Air Cardinal, the first impulse of the mind…
After considering astrologically this Mercurial movement through Scorpio, the sign attached the eighth house of the zodiac, with all its aspects, we now turn to the divinatory art of the Tarot to interpret the meaning of this passage. The word divination comes from the Latin divinatio, derived from divinus, meaning “divine”, which itself originates from…
The King of Wands belongs to the primal court, where flame has no need of fuel, and the Word remains unbroken in its source. Around him the Seraphim burn with a purity no mortal vision can endure; circles of living fire, faces hidden, their song an eternal single act of praise. There the sceptre of…
Within the living architecture of the Hermetic cosmos, there exists a moment of sublime equilibrium, a fulcrum where the act of giving and receiving is a rite. The Six of Pentacles stands as the seal of this mystery: an image of the physical world transfigured by loving action. To understand this card is to understand…
