A Royal Maze story for the 50th anniversary of John’s passing
For nine years and one hundred and six Sessions, the circle around John Starr Cooke had asked their questions of the board, and those in the know awaited the Great Event. Then, on a spring night in Bolinas, California, it came. This is the story of the last Session, drawn from the transcripts themselves.
Bolinas, California. April 12, 1969. The Session was numbered 106, and it carried the title TAKE A BREATH.
Much had changed since the first Carmel dictations of 1962. John (Legion) and Rosalind’s (Gayla) small book explaining the new Books of Tarot had been published (T: The New Tarot), and the fifty-six minor cards were nearing completion. John had flown up from Mexico with his friend Pablo for the visit. Given — who by now called himself Bill — had come up from Southern California. And among the three visitors that night was Dr Ralph Metzner, the psychologist who had written the introduction to T: The New Tarot. Seven in all gathered around the board: Legion, Given, Lorna, Gayla, and the three guests — Pablo, Ralph, and Rebekah.
They had circled this question before. In an earlier Session, Legion had cried out, “I would like to speak it right now!” — and WE had answered only, It shall not be this night. The Word had a season of its own, and no one could hurry it.
Legion asked.
“Is the Great Event imminent?”
“Yes,” WE answered.
Gayla pressed. “How imminent?”
And in that instant — before the pointer could even move to reply — a sudden wind whipped open the heavy door beside the group, and the night air came rushing into the room.
“Take a breath,” WE wrote. “It has taken place.”
The wind, as though summoned by the words themselves, billowed the curtains and sent dead leaves and rose petals swirling across the floor. It caught the newly printed Tarot cards spread out on the card table and scattered them helter-skelter over the yellow carpet. The seven sat motionless. Each of them felt it — the Presence that this wind proclaimed. For one eternal moment they waited, unquestioning, held outside of time itself, while the wind blew through the room and through them.
Then it was gone. The wind departed as suddenly as it had come, and a supreme quietness reigned.
Nobody spoke. What questions were left to ask? For nine years and a hundred and six Sessions they had waited on the Word — and the Word had not, in the end, been spoken by any human mouth. It had blown in on the wind.
The Great Event was not a thing to come. It had already come. Take a breath.
Fifty years after John’s own stepping-out, that supreme quietness still hums beneath everything the Royal Maze carries forward. The wind had blown in the WORD OF ONE.
ONE IS IN MOTION!
For more on the story of John Starr Cooke and the Book of T, check out Mark Walker’s YouTube series, The Time of Telling, at https://www.youtube.com/@TimeofTelling.