STRENGTH BECOMES THE DELIVERER
The Deliverer is at hand.
Who or what is the Deliverer?
“The Deliverer is not the woman nor is he”, it was written, referring to the woman extending her hands into the vat of fire and the young man drinking the cup of fire. “The flame is”.
Fire is the Deliverer. Fire was seen at the top of the mountain-top in the Seeker Book. In this Book, we have reached the mountain-top. The cauldron is the mountain upon which it stands. The calm waters of the ocean is the water through which the Seeker passed before he climbed the trail up the mountain. In the previous Books, the Seeker has passed through several gates or “chakras”. The heart center, on the Tree of the Citadel, is symbolized by a torch. A torch is also found in the quarter of the Maze Book denoting fire. The Deliverer is related to the heart chakra.
But what is this fire?
Fire is death. Fire is that which burns all matter, leaving only ash. Fire is that which purifies. Fire is Shiva. Therefore it may be said that fire is pure spirit. To drink a cup of fire is painful. The fire enters the young man’s vitals: it consumes him.
The significance of the Deliverer Book is: That which is to come to Each. Deliverance is to come. It is to come through the fire. But this fire is not the fire of earth. It is electric fire. It is the fire of spirit.
Previously, the Seeker passed through the water in order to climb the path. Now, at the mountain-top, he must drink the fire. The water was baptism. The fire is initiation. Through the baptism of water in the tides of the Feeler he entered into the Maze; through the cup of fire drawn from the ignited torch of the heart he is delivered from it.
Initiation into Spirit is a further initiation than the initiation into Life, and is a further step than entering upon the path. It is what is termed higher consciousness. It is the heart that is consumed and purified here. The flame of the heart has risen to great height in and through the experience of the previous Books – or through the steps upon the way. It has already been purified. But the paradox is that love itself must be sacrificed before one can rise to the next sphere or level. The blood of the heart must go, to be replaced by pure flame – or the electric fire of spirit. Attachment and devotion must yield to higher law if one would find liberation. The cup of fire which the Seeker, now a young man, drinks is the same cup of light, over-turned, seen at the upper left-hand corner of the Virgin Book. The cup, which poured down light, is drunk; and when drunk, the ancient Seeker grows young.
Above the head of the lion is the symbol of eternal life, written in fiery serpents.
The eternal fire is beyond the fire of the heart although it is the fire of the heart that enables one to partake of it. No one who has not followed the path of the heart can find the fire. For the fire is the result of love.
In the former deck, the Book of the Deliverer was Strength. A young woman was effortlessly closing the jaws of a lion. The present Book in the Book of T resembles a family portrait or a new version of the Adam and Eve story. The lion, which lay sleeping at the foot of the Actor, has been awakened, and stands behind the woman – formerly seen as the Feeler, the Prime Mover. The old Emperor and Empress are represented here. They were the lions that upheld the Royal Maze. Now, facing in the same direction, they regard the fire and may be regarded as a single unit. The man, Adam, is drinking the fire, but the woman, as Eve, is not the one who offered it to him. He filled his own cup. The snake appears, but not as the tempter. The snake, golden and upright, with a forked tongue, blue, is speaking the Word. His word is of wisdom. He is the serpent that appeared on the Tree of the Citadel at the ajna or brow chakra, his head pointed toward the crown. Now his tongue speaks the Word that penetrates the membrane separating the brow chakra from the crown chakra.
Deliverance from and through the Maze, which is Life, is spoken of here. The guardians of the Maze have changed their positions. Instead of upholding the Maze – Life or Destiny – they regard solely the flaming jewel at its center, the crown chakra. Like the figures of the man and woman in Unity, they face in the same direction. They are now a single being. Mind and feeling are no longer separated. Or, to say it another way, the Mind as Actor has been superseded by the risen royal lion whose action proceeds from within, from real feeling, which is the One in Motion.
The serpent rises from a box. This is the square which was super-imposed upon the seven spheres of consciousness of the Maze Book. The square is the building stone. It is structure and form. It is the basis of all materialization.
The risen, upright serpent is kundalini. It was related, originally, to the sex center – which, however, is not a true center, but rather a square surrounding a flaming jewel.
Kundalini risen to the brow chakra is wisdom.
His blue tongue is flame – for flame is blue.
Deliverance is that which is to come to each.
To drink the cup of fire is pure agony.
Jesus said in the Garden, “O my father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me” … before he mounted the Cross, the symbolic T of initiation.
Yet the Seeker must drink this cup if he would attain eternal life.