Sirius and the Mystical Tarot by Peter J Morris
From the Ancient Egyptians through to Freemasonry the worship of the star Sirius has influenced the esoteric beliefs of the most important esoteric writers of any age. I reveal how Sirius has been encoded into the Major Arcana of the Mystical Tarot.
About the Tarot
As any Tarot student will tell you the Tarot deck of 78 cards is split into three separate parts.
These are referred to as the Major Arcana, Court Cards and Minor Arcana.
In many ways each of the three parts are completely different in the way that they function but in the main they interconnect through a sophisticated astrological and numerological links which combine to reveal a unique understanding of universal wisdom.
In this sense each of the Tarot cards can be seen as 'gateways' to other realms of consciousness - doorways that swing two ways to connect student with the Universe thereby uniting Microcosm to Macrocosm and enabling a good Tarot reader to see both backwards and forwards in time and space.
The Major Arcana
From an esoteric point of view it is generally accepted that the Major Arcana is of greater interest to the occult student. Whilst these 21 cards are lesser in number than their Minor Arcana companions they are said to express more universal principles than their inferior cousins.
The Star
From the point of view of Sirian research it is Major Arcana card number 17 which is the most interesting of all the tarot cards.
This card is commonly called 'The Star' and begins an important tri-card sequence that includes Arcanas 17,18 and 19.
As we have already noted the two cards that follow 'THE STAR' are connected to cosmic bodies - 'THE MOON' - which represents our Moon - the Earths' brightest planetoid or planetary satellite and 'THE SUN', which is our brightest planetary body (although of course technically it is a star) the Moon).
Thus it follows that 'THE STAR' has to represent the brightest star in the heavens which, of course, has always been the Dog Star Sirius.
In astrological terms 'THE STAR' refers to the zodiacal period of Aquarius and as such it perhaps the key focus to the present age.
The Aquarian Age is now unfolding in front of us and despite the present turmoil in the world there are emerging signs of a new world. Many occultists believe that this change and evolutional progression is being driven, or initiated, from Sirius and that eventually the Dog Star will emerge as significant an impulse in the Aquarian Age as it was to the Ancient Egyptians during the Age of Leo.
This is summed-up by occultist Kenneth Grant who states that 'THE STAR is the Key to the Aeon of Horus as it represents Sirius, the Star of Isis, the Mother of Horus, who is the son of this god, and the sun or father of our solar system'. For the uninitiated the Aeon of Horus is a Thelemic principle which identifies a period of human evolution that closely relates to the more commonly known Aquarian Age.
The Fool
Whilst it is fairly easy to identify Arcana 17 - 'THE STAR' as representative of the Dog Star Sirius there is a secondary principle within the Tarot which I believe is key in revealing the Stellar significance of the whole Tarot Deck.
The card in question is very significant. It the very first Arcana in the sequence and is titled 'THE FOOL'.
In itself this card is an enigma being that it is actually numbered 0, and not 1 as one would expect in the opening to a numerical sequence. By itself this suggests that the original developers of the Tarot cards considered it to be singularly important and one, perhaps, to be seen outside of the context of the larger Major Arcana cards.
From a visual point of view it is most interesting to find that the figure in 'THE FOOL' arcana is accompanied by a dog. Tarot students have identified this animal as simply being symbolic of the unconscious. I do not believe this to be the case.
Instead I believe that the animal is representative as a companion to the androgynous figure about to step off the cliff. In the background of the card is a stellar body. I believe that between them they firmly indicate that the impulse behind this card is the Dog Star, namely our good friend Sirius.
However there are other clues to the true nature of this card. Firstly the numerical value ascribed to it, namely the Zero, is not in itself a denominator of value but is symbolic of the circle as a symbol.
Throughout history the circle has been used to represent wholeness, completeness and totality. In religion it can be seen to represent God, or the Godhead. It is that power or influence that pervades and encompasses all. Is there any connection between God and Sirius - the Dog Star? Well, many occultists believe so.
The mystic Bennett once recorded that he believed that his great master and guru Gurdieff had deliberately hidden deeper meanings within his book 'Beelzebubs Tales' so as to 'bury the bone deeper'. When questioned as to what he meant by his students Gurdieff simply replied that 'it is not the bones but the dog you have to find'.
Some commentators have noted that the word 'God' is actually a reversal of the word 'Dog' as indeed did did the magician Aleister Crowley who was well-known for his verse 'Is a God to live in a dog?' (Liber AL Ch. II v19').
The single most underlying key concept to 'THE FOOL' is the word 'source'. 'THE FOOL' emerges from this 'source', or 'point of initial impulse', and as such has not yet developed enough conscious awareness to recognize the dangers of stepping off the cliff. This is an occult metaphor that is often found at the center of the Sirian Mysteries.
The Dogon, for example, a supposedly 'undeveloped ' African Tribe were firmly of the belief that all things emerge from Sirius. Throughout the philosophies of the ancient world the Dog Star, via our Sun, is in fact actually widely venerated as the point through which the Universe expresses itself to mankind . It is the place from which we are born and the location to which we travel when we die.
From Sirius we gain knowledge, insight and develop spiritually. These beliefs all identify the 'Source' or Godhead as being Sirius. And what of the astrological significance of 'THE FOOL'? That in itself is interesting. In 'THE STAR' we identified the Arcana as having close connections not only with Sirius but also with the emerging Aquarian Age. The constellation that represents this is, quite naturally, Aquarius, but as any astrologer will tell you the ruling planet of Aquarius is in fact Uranus. It is the planet that represents the spirit of Freedom. Interestingly it is also the planetary association of THE FOOL which firmly connects the two Arcana and the Sirian impulse that underpins them.
References
- The Rider-Waite Tarot - A. E. Waite, Rider, 1909
- Outside the Circles of Time - Kenneth Grant, Starfire, 2008
- The Magical revival - Kenneth Grant, Muller, 1972
- Liber AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law) - Aleister Crowley, 1904
- Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson - G. I. Gurdieff, 1950
