Aquarius: Egyptian Tarot Nuit XVII

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The Egyptian Tarot trump for the fifteenth path of Aquarius is Nuit XVII. The esoteric title is Daughter of the Firmament: Dweller between the Waters.

Egyptian Tarot Nuit XVIINuit is depicted here as bending over the Star Pentactys, a pyramid of fifteen stars.[1] In the lower section of the image is the ma’a Lion of Truth, Nuit’s power in the underworld typified by Leo, the opposite sign of the Zodiac to Aquarius.

The hieroglyphs of Nuit’s name are shown at the top of the card. The ‘pot’ determinative (nu) shows the nature of Nuit as the principle of containment in the cosmic sense, a body of stars. The hieroglyph for ‘sky’ or ‘space’ is symbolised by the heavens above. Space is analogous with the infinite, but is not in itself infinite; that is to say it is not measureless or eternal but is indefinite on the human scale. It is also important to understand that space is not, as some schools of thought have imagined, ‘nothingness’, void, emptiness or mere absence.[2]

Depicted on the lower left border of the card are the symbols of Saturn, the astrological ruler of Aquarius, and Uranus, infernal ruler of the Kerubic signs. Saturn is the principle of limitation and form while Uranus symbolises the breaking apart or overturning of order and tradition in the name of false ideals. To the right is Hé, ‘a window’, the letter of the path. The shape of the letter is that of a nomad’s tent, as with beth. The tent is shown from the side, with the aperture drawn open at the top for viewing. The letter Hé of Aquarius has the value of five. The window of ‘five’ is the star of man, the root of the five senses through which we perceive an appearance of Nuit as visible nature.

Nuit is esoterically associated with Sirius or Sothis, her star of manifestation. To be clear, Sirius is here a symbol and analogy for the supreme principle, the ‘unmoved mover’, by which things appear to come into existence by Its presence—and not by any action on the part of the principle, which does not act. Nothing in nature is separate, having its own cause as though self-contained. Our planet system and Zodiac is part of a vastly greater star system. Sopdet, the Egyptian name for Sirius, the ‘sun-behind-the-sun’, is also the name of the goddess that gives birth to the star of Venus. It has the literal meaning, ‘triangle’.[3] During the time of the solar conjunction or occultation of Sirius, the legend of Isis has it that she hides herself in the swamps of the northern Delta (‘triangle’) region to give birth to Horus. Originally, Set (as ‘seven’) was the only begotten son of Nuit. The pairing of Isis with Osiris was a relatively modern version of the legends of Isis that was better suited to the disposition of ancient Greek and Roman men than the original stellar myth—by ‘myth’ we refer to oral tradition, not something imagined.

Sirius TriangulationSirius forms a group of stars with Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis) and Procyon, called the ‘winter triangle’. This embraces much of the constellation of Monoceros, ‘Unicorn’. Four other stars, Pollux, Capella, Aldebaron and Rigel (left foot of Orion) form the ‘winter hexagon’. This establishes a geometric relationship between Sirius and Orion, which symbolises the heavenly Sah or Holy Spirit. Thus the Nephilim, sons of the Ancient Ones, are sometimes called the Children of Orion, identifying them with the primordial.[4] The geometry of the triangulation of Sirius with the hexagon, or hexagram by extension, automatically declares the Cube of Space, as can be seen by the diagram above.[5] This configuration involves seven stars in all, thus proportionately mirroring the seven bright stars of Ursa Major, the ‘axle of the universe’, rotating while always pointing to the Pole. That is in fact the esoteric meaning of aleph, which corresponds to the eleventh path and Tarot trump The Seer 0. Aleph is not, as has long been supposed, the ox that ploughs the field but is the ox that turns about the wheel or swastika of the stars.

Nuit: Daughter of the Firmament

The fifteenth path of Hé connects Chokmah, the sphere of the Zodiac, with Tiphereth, the sphere of the Sun. The path is called the Constituting Intelligence. It is called thus ‘because it constitutes the substance of creations in pure darkness’ (Westcott). Waite added that it is the same darkness mentioned in the book of Job 38: 9, ‘the cloud and the envelope thereof’. This cloud of ‘thick darkness’ mentioned in the book of Job is the covering of the sea, or the firmament, and is that which contains or holds it. It is therefore fitting that the Egyptian goddess of the night sky, Nuit, should be referred to the fifteenth path. There is also a certain correspondence with the Sanskrit prakriti or ‘substance’, from which the five envelopes or sheaths of being are produced. Each envelope is a covering or hiding of Atma, the Real. The five also relate to the ‘star’ of Nuit, which has five rays and forms the jivatma or creature soul, Tiphereth as the centre of the ego.

Chokmah is the chakra of the Zodiac, as separate and distinct from the fixed stars, which are the domain of Kether and the North Pole of the universe. The Zodiac is the belt or girdle of Venus, the planetary symbol of Nuit in her manifestation as visible nature. Tiphereth, at the further end of this path, is the recipient for the spiritual influence or starry mezla that is transmitted from Chokmah.

The magical power of the fifteenth path is that of Astrology, as Aquarius is the sign of the heavens. This should not be confused with popular notions of astrology. Astrological ‘influence’ of the stars or planets does not mean that the stars as such actually cause events or behaviour. Nothing exists in complete isolation from all else. Every phenomenon is part of a continuum involving all possibilities. The starry heavens are a mirror of the perceptions and for all of life, as above so below. The psyche is reflective, and so are the planets—both literally (they reflect the light of the sun) and metaphorically, as symbols, celestial writing or hieroglyphs.

Notes

From the forthcoming book and Tarot deck.

1. The Pentactys extends the baseline four of the Pythagorean Tetractys by one, to five. It is the geometric symbol of Nuit and her company of heaven. By extension the letter and path of Nuit is ∑ (1–5) = 15. There are altogether 75 Nuit radiations of the Star (5 x 15). The pyramid and star together form the hieroglyph for Sirius, star of Set and the Isis (Aset) Foundation of Egypt.

2. Space is filled by the fifth element akasha, which permeates it. The refutation of heterodox schools of thought is given in Siddhāntabindu of Srimat Madhusūdana Sarasvati [University of Mysore 1981].

3. The heliacal rising of the binary star Sirius is constantly relative to the solar year, thus establishing the strong relation between terrestrial earth and Sirius. The rising of Sirius presently occurs on the 19th July, as measured from Cairo. In antiquity, the rising took place immediately prior to the summer solstice and heralded the onset of the Nile inundation. As viewed from England at the present time, the conjunction of Sirius with the Sun is for 70 days from July 3rd to August 11th.

4. The Nephilim are first mentioned in the book of Genesis, 6: 4. In the book of Numbers, 13, their descendants are called the ‘sons of Anak’. See Nu Hermetica, ‘The Nephalim and Sons of Anak’.

5. The triangle, hexagram and square spell ‘Occult Light’, Aur Muphala, 364, which is a name of Kether as ‘moonflower’. The days in a lunar year are 364, which is also a number of Set, the ‘breaker of the circle (of the year)’.

© Oliver St. John 2020 (revised 2024)

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Magick

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Magick and theurgy are usually descriptive of two quite different things but in either case there is no such thing as self-initiation. We can try to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps but the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Magical Theurgy comprises ritual directed towards God-Realisation—solipsism is therefore a considerable bar to meaningful progress.[1] There is no ‘monadic’ intelligence in reality. Isolationism is the curse of the modern age.

Magick: The Spell (detail)It is impossible to convey any sense of what magick is to the mind of the person who lacks the will to perceive it. To explain and rationalise magick in the hope that ‘men of science’ and other worthies might achieve illumination is a mission doomed to failure from the outset. Every idea the mind of man is able to conceive breaks down when subjected to analysis. The fact completely escapes those requiring proof of reality. Magick includes many traditional sciences, including but by no means limited to astrology, divination and the science of numbers. Magick embraces the life of the human soul. While the most superficial understanding of magick explains it as mere manipulation of phenomena, if used intelligently, combining knowledge of the true principles with the concentration of the mind afforded by yoga, magick can be used as a support to real and effective initiation.

The limitation, more or less severe, placed on the possibilities for real spiritual realisation by the systematic approach used in neo-spiritualism today means we had to revise our approach to the subject quite drastically. Since computers became the dominant force in the world for shaping the minds of men, the urge towards classification and tabulation has by now been taken to the extreme where systems analysts produce popular books about magick. Those who produce these—and there are very many of them—usually have university degrees they are proud of but no real knowledge whatsoever. Most of them are even atheists and among these, a degree in psychology is considered a ‘qualification’, whereas in fact that kind of mentality automatically disqualifies a person from any real initiation or spiritual realisation. These always emphasise a kind of artificial ‘psychism’, where visualisation techniques are used along with the ubiquitous auto-hypnotism. As a consequence we now have book-learned ‘adepts’ claiming high degrees of initiation and whose knowledge extends no further than the ordinary man in the street, though that does not it seems prevent them from pretending to teach and even initiate others, sometimes through the convenient means of internet video links and even social media—which is a kind of oxymoron as anything ‘social’ automatically discounts esotericism.

Magick and its Governance

For all this mania for selling delusion to the masses—who already accept the most fantastic lies from governments, corporations and ‘official’ science—we now place much greater emphasis on theoretical knowledge, by which is meant traditional cosmology and ontology, and the practice of yoga, than at any time before. According to René Guénon,

Of all preliminary means, theoretical knowledge alone is absolutely indispensible, and that later, when one passes to actual realisation, it is concentration that matters most and that leads to it in the most immediate way, for it is directly bound up with knowledge.[2]

We have always, right from the veriest beginning, insisted that one works from the highest principle. While that is no certain guarantee that heedless fools will not come unstuck, the Hermetic axiom ‘As above and so below’ has far greater import than is afforded it by today’s postmodern ‘experts’.[3] Magick, if not torn wholly asunder from its governing principles in the natural and supernatural order, can be very efficacious as a support to the path of true knowledge, and in the times we now live we need all the assistance we can get.

Practice of Magick

It is seldom realised that many rituals in our older works are fully adaptable to different needs, and that their use can sometimes go much further than the necessarily brief descriptions afforded by such a book.[4] The ‘Ritual for Psychic Self Defence’ provides an example of a ritual where the practical operations can go further than as is implied by the titles and brief description given in the textbook.[5] Cases of actual psychic attack, where the antagonist intentionally takes their malice to the Hermetic level, are rare. While there might be many persons in the world today who would indeed use magical means to harm others, given the availability of the rituals and methods in the public domain, few would be prepared to go to the painstaking lengths necessary. It is well indeed that few persons now have the expertise and knowledge necessary, even if that kind of knowledge is relatively ordinary. Anyone that had real knowledge would never consider such a thing. It is more likely that such an attack would be unintentional, arising from anger or some other affliction.

It must also be said that whatever the real source of  a psychic attack, there must be a sympathetic response from the victim, who is more alike the attacker than they care to admit in so far as they have retained harmful mental impressions that lead to what are called kléshas in Sanskrit, ‘harmful afflictions’.[6] Thus, in understanding the ritual of Psychic Self Defence, it becomes apparent that whether a cause is seen as external or internal, there is a need to loosen the bonds of attachment to harmful sense impressions that, when retained (through the faculties such as memory), amount to serious obstructions to the goal of yoga. The Ritual of Psychic Self Defence can be taken further than that, as we have indicated, but to explain that we need first to refer to the way the ritual is constructed:

The ritual begins as do most rituals with a general opening of the temple that orders the sphere of the practitioner as according to cosmological principles. Every Zelator has a ritually consecrated dagger to symbolise the whole realm of Air, and this is then used to perform a thorough purification of that realm in the name of its various hierarchical names and powers, making the appropriate pentagrams and so forth around the place of work.

It should be mentioned that the ‘realm of Air’ corresponds in this Hermetic schema particularly to Yesod, the ninth sephira called the Foundation in Qabalah. However, the etherial designation is really inclusive of the whole domain of the individual ruach or mind-intelligence.

There then follows a general purification (by holy water) and consecration (by incense perfume) of the person and the place, in all four quarters. Following purification, the element is re-invoked and an Egyptian deity is called in to assist in linking the elemental sphere with higher and divine forces, as well as to place a seal upon the sphere of the practitioner to strengthen it against all malefic influences. Even this very brief overview should be enough to show that the ritual is far more than being about ‘getting rid of’ things, or even of nullifying some external aggression. The deity Anubis is heard to say here,

I stand between the invisible and the visible.

But more than that, as Guardian of the Threshold he crosses the bridge from the unmanifest to the manifest and so is able to return the way he came:

My mother is darkness and my father the night: thus do I come forth, bearing the Ineffable Light!

Anyone that has passed through the Neophyte ritual will recollect from this that Anubis guards the temple outside with a sword and also appears within the circle, as the bearer of the Lamp of Light by which the Candidate is conducted around the new world in which they have entered.[6]

Such a ritual as has here been described also corresponds to traditional magick lore, involving a ‘moving of the air’, or ‘changing of the winds’. We think that enough has been said here regarding the adaptability of rituals.

Notes

1. Our book Magical Theurgy—Rituals of the Tarot combines magick with theurgy.
2. ‘Conclusions’, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines.
3. Indeed, one of the latter went so far as to reverse the axiom to imply that the higher could be magically forced to change in accordance with the low and very ordinary intentions of the magician. That is a typically ‘satanic’ inversion of the natural order and while it could certainly effect results in the sphere of the practitioner, such results, owing to the inversion, could only increase ignorance and delusion still further.
4. For example Ritual Magick—Initiation of the Star and Snake.
5. Ritual Magick [ibid].
6. See Part Two of Thunder Perect Gnosis, which includes a study of the Vedantic science of the mind. In particular, ‘Yoga of the Mind’.
7. See The Phoenix and other Stellar Rites of Initiation.

The illustration is from the painting The Spell, by William Fettes Douglas (1822–1891), which is held at the National Galleries, Scotland. The full painting can be viewed here.

© Oliver St. John 2023, 2024
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