From PFC on these seven cards, as weekly application,
"Do all you can to perfect your grasp of this law.
Your exercise this week should be an attempt to see this law in operation. Begin by thinking of all the instances you can where cyclic or spiral activity is apparent. Then examine yourself. Think
back over your past life and note the cycles through which you have passed. Watch your moods, and you will discover that they have definite cycles. Think of your present activities, and try to picture their results in the future."
"This week try to practice SILENCE. Speak as little as you can, keep your emotions under control, and above all, try to make your thoughts quiet. Notice that this conserves energy for useful endeavors. Continue this practice, the rest of your life."
"This week begin the practice of reviewing your day's activities just before going to sleep. If you keep a diary, it provides an excellent method for reviewing your gains and failures. Your
attainments are just the stepping-stones in your progress toward Self-realization. Your failures are warnings as to what you must avoid in the future.
Never muse too long on your failures. Remember that what we call "sin" is literally nothing but missing the mark. Do not worry. Worry is concentration on the negative appearances of life. If
you can worry well and at length, then you possess the ability to concentrate. Change the polarity of your thoughts and emotions in your daily life. Impress your subconsciousness, before you fall
asleep, with the most positive images of good that you can fashion. Persist in this practice, and you will sow seeds that subconsciousness will build into a new and better bodily structure."
"For the Other Way and the Way of Return are one, and that One Way leads within, or from the surface to the center. This we shall see very plainly expressed by the last two Keys of the Tarot series, to be studied in the next four lessons.
The student will do well to take the hint given in this part of the lesson, and study the other Keys corresponding to faces of the cube in the same way. Note that because the human mind can never get behind the plane of causes, the eastern face of the cube, corresponding to Key 3, must be viewed from the west, so that the right side of Key 3 is to be interpreted as South-East, and the left side as North-East. Similarly, the lower face of the cube must be viewed from above, so that the right side of the Key will correspond to South-Below, and the left side of the Key to North-Below, with the upper part corresponding to East-Be-
low, and the lower part to West-Below.
North, again, is the place of the unknown, so that we cannot get behind that. Hence we look at Key 16 as if we were facing it from the south, which puts North-East on the right side of Key
16, and North-West on the left side.
The wise student will take these hints, but it should be understood that they are no more than hints. The complete exposition of the correlation of Tarot with the cube of space would require a great many volumes. We most certainly advise you to give some time to it, recording your findings in your occult diary; but we warn you also, at this stage of your work, against becoming too much preoccupied with this phase of Tarot study."
"This week, as you are looking at Key 7 and coloring it, bring again and again to your mind the thought that your personality is the actual vehicle and instrument for the expression of the
same limitless Will power that manifests itself throughout the entire universe as the power that marks out specific fields of concrete expression for the One Life. Remember that the number 7 is related to the idea expressed by the verb "to vow", and dedicate yourself to an ever-increasing measure of receptivity to the
influence flowing into your field of personal consciousness from the superconscious plane above. Frame this vow of dedication in a sentence that will express the idea as briefly and clearly as possible. And watch your habits of speech and thought, so that they may be brought into harmony with this dedication."
"The Empress, among the Tarot Keys, is the symbolic statement of the harmonious and constructive direction of mental imagery.
This will be more apparent next week, after you have considered the meaning of the various details of the symbolism. This week, as usual, we are concerned with impressing these details upon your mind as you color the Key. As heretofore, plan your work so as to complete the coloring on the last day of your week's study. Thus all week long you will be educating yourself through
pictorial symbolism, the natural language of subconsciousness, in what the great Inner School of adepts and wise men knows about the operation of creative imagination. Such visual educa-
tion is more valuable than any verbal interpretation, because it calls into actual operation the very powers which the symbols represent.
In your study period ponder this: The point where the working power of subconsciousness may be controlled is the point where thoughts take form as definite mental images.
A statement like "All is Good" is not a definite mental image.
Statements of truth do not work unless they are linked to specific images of the operation of the principles stated. These images must be concrete. They must prepare mind and body for action.
This is in no sense a denial of the importance and value of abstract statements of principle as helps to right understanding.
The point is that intellectual statements of truth must be supplemented by concrete imagery before the mighty forces of the inner life can be made to emerge as actual forms and conditions of the physical plane."
"Zeal, however, is not enough. Nor was any person ever liberated just because he had a flaming desire for freedom. The fiery force of the desire nature must be directed intelligently. To this the title of Key 14 refers. Temperance, here, is not restricted to the meaning now in common use, though it does, of course, include the thought of control over appetites and desires. It is to be understood in its ancient signification as "the act of tempering or mixing." The object of tempering is to impart strength.
This object is attained in the Great Work by the proper mixture of opposite forces, that is, by applying the Law of Equilibration.
This meaning is apparent on the surface of the symbolism in Key 14.
Consider that symbolism carefully as you color the Key this week. By this time, Tarot should begin to speak to you even before you have read the detailed analysis of its symbols. Remember, too, that no analysis can exhaust the meanings. What is written in these pages is intended to put you on the track of correct interpretation, but in every Key there is for you a special personal message, because in the age-long development of your personality to its present stage of growth, you have accumulated a store of experience. That treasure is below the surface of your
consciousness, but through psychological laws, which have been
utilized in the construction of Tarot, these Keys can evoke from subconscious depths just exactly what each student most needs
to know.
So write out, this week, what you feel Key 14 means for you.
Then compare your findings next week with the analysis of the symbols given in Lesson Thirty-two."
