THE MOON BECOMES THE REACTER
The Seeker sensed his way up a serpentine path to reach the goal – the fire. Consuming his fill of the heart’s flame in the cup of the Deliverer, the ancient man became young once more. But now, in order to be born anew, he had to face what he had long considered Death. And, having confronted the proferred skull and seen through the seeming, he could descend from the mountain top.
The path down the mountain is straight as a lance. The revelation by which he was delivered brings again a startling change to the Seeker. He finds himself a babe, – the reborn Self, – the Reacter, and all doors open to the keys he holds. One key opens the doors inward; the other key opens the doors outward. Yet the keys are exact duplicates; he can now pass inwards and outwards at will. Since there is no difference he doesn’t bother to understand why or how they open. Innocently, he simply knows them to open. He reacts.
The Reacter is not the Actor.
These words are the only significance accorded to the Book of the Reacter.
The Actor performs acts. The acts the Mind performs hypnotize the Mind further. They englamour and cast shadows across his sham stage. The Reacter is the awakened Self. He is as a new-born babe. He performs nothing. Reacting, he simply is. He follows his new-born feelings spontaneously. He is one with the flow of the Moon, whose light streams down the path behind him, and with the sun in front of him toward which he walks. He fights not, he worries not. He is not concerned with being either for or against anything. He steps into a New Kingdom of Being lightly.
The Hindus would say he had unwound the Skandhas by opening the doors, black and white, of the chain of reaction.
The arched doors are seven in number. They are black and white doors alternately. They are paired dualities, paired opposites. They represent not only the seven chakras symbolized by the Citadel and the seven circles in the Royal Maze, but also the seven planes or levels of metaphysical existence. They are related to the seven rays of sun coming from behind the cloud in the Renewer Book. The lock on each door is a gold triangle. The Reacter has unlocked the doors of all realms and can come and go at will.
This Book was previously titled the Moon. The Moon was pictured prominently and dripped blood. A dog and a wolf howled on either side of the card before two high walls or two towers. A lobster-like sea-creature at its base wrought the Moon’s liquid with tenacious feelers. The trump expressed a sense of terror and psychological despair. The Moon is still the influence shown in the Book of the Reacter, for after all the reaction is of the Moon; but the Reacter is not howling as a dog or wolf nor reaching out hungrily. He toddles down the Moon’s path, triumphantly waving the keys in his fists.
Having unlocked all the gates between himself and the Feeler standing at the entrance of the Royal Maze, he is free and reacts spontaneously to the Mother. He is as a Sun unto himself. He is not conscious that he shines, however.
What are the Reacter’s keys that he brandishes?
Their secret was contained in the Book of the Thinker – Error.
The Thinker had two chains locked to his head. He was tugged at by the chain of passion on the one hand and weighted down by the chain of compassion on the other. The Reacter’s two keys of gold can now unlock the Thinker’s agonizing duality. The heart was a key; passion another, but the Thinker could not unlock them. The keys are duplicate keys. But they are the same key: One. The Deliverer’s fire has burned away the mirage of personal love, whether carnal or spiritual. Both were One.
This baby is not the Mind, not the Actor. He experiences that which happens when one is entirely free of the Mind’s glamour. The Mind desires, and, through desire, hypnotizes the Self by artifice into believing it’s seeming projections are real. The Mind is that which makes pictures and then believes those pictures to be reality. When the Mind ceases projecting and performing “acts”, the act changes. All artifice has to meet its death to be renewed.
The Reacter, rejoicing and triumphant, advances forward.
Be it noted that this Book, and the four which follow, are of a different nature than those foregoing. For they have “arrived”. And the keys which the baby holds in his two hands as he steps forwards are not solely to open the gates behind him but the gates before him. They are “the keys of the Kingdom”.