To get that particular flower to open a little more, it may be helpful to turn to another enigma: the tarot. First, please set aside any notion of fortune-telling. I suggest that the Major Arcana reveal a hidden symbolic coherence of great purity that has more to do with order than chance. About fifteen years ago I became interested in the tarot when I was studying the rise of monasticism in Europe for a historical novel I never actually wrote. I came to realize that the tarot is much more than a deck of fortune-telling cards; it is a sort philosophical machine that presents its ideas in the form of pictures rather than words.
The story it tells is an interesting one: The face cards of the tarot — the Major Arcana — can be arranged in such a manner that they work as signposts toward spiritual evolution. Card twenty-one, the final card in this arrangement, is called the World. There is in this card as deep a representation of the spirit and force of the triad as exists on earth: It consists of the four beasts of the Sphinx, one at each corner, surrounding an enigmatic and powerful figure who stands within a wreath.
This figure's genitals are hidden by a cloth; it has breasts and also the suggestion of a male form. It is intended, I think, to represent a potential in all human beings. In the hands are carried tools from the table of the card of the Magician, most specifically, his wand. The figure may represent humankind transformed, the beast reborn, man or woman, half human and half god.
Out of communion there emerges transformation. The strong body, the brave heart, and the intelligence of a human being.
What is the true aim of mind? Does it seek knowledge only for the sake of constructing the intricate pleasures and poisons of technology, or just to know, or is there another dancer in the shadows?
The mind can bring understanding to body and heart. It can direct the body toward healthy ways and the heart toward the balm of insight.
Then, when a being comes into harmony, body, mind, and heart reconciled, there is a chance to look up from the plodding and the toil, and there to encounter the whole tremendous ecstasy that made the phoebes scream in the morning light.
It is then that the struggling worm turns from clay into fire and the soul takes wing, sweeping out of time and chance, going higher and higher, daring like the eagle the relentless, revealing fire of the sun.
In all of us there is an unaddressed urgency which we cannot really name, which seems to lie at the heart of our hope for ourselves. It is the flight of the eagle that we seek, the walk of the monk down the nirvana road, the faith of the old priest whose mass in his humble little church last Sunday was really said between the worlds of body and soul.
We go from the endless battle of duality to the harmony of the triad, and then to the mystery of the eagle. Each of us is potentially a transfigure being, the friend of God, the Phoenix gliding free.
Are the visitors asking us to form a triad with them? Is that the purpose of all the triangular and pyramidal imagery? Maybe, but there may be another truth here. Maybe I have located these symbols in the visitor material simply because they are so central to my own life. My whole soul and breath are devoted to the groping toward transformation. Maybe it is inevitable that I would extract relevant material from any enigma that I encounter.
And yet, I cannot think that Betty Andreasson chose to present the fiery drama of the risen eagle with such force in her testimony entirely on her own.
Life is expressed in Christian cosmology as having emerged from the unity of the Trinity.
And this is nothing mystical, it is very simply true: We could not exist without all three of the dimensions that sustain us. Solids depend on breadth, depth, and height, and we cannot construct a perceptual reality sufficiently reflective of all potential with fewer dimensions.
The advantage of three dimensions is that they allow parallel movement through space and time, which is essential to experience.
Everybody is afraid of giving up themselves and just being. The fire behind the eagle felt so hot that it terrified Betty Andreasson, for it was the fire that consumes the self. It was the apocalypse of the soul.
Our agony is to stand before the utter blackness of the unknown with full knowledge that there is something there, and it is alive, and if one is to remain on the path of inner search, one must trust it even though it may very certainly be dangerous. Strength is needed to endure the fire; courage to enter it, intelligence to come out alive.
There has ever been in the life of man this idea of the triad as the primary force of growth.
The Sphinx is a very old construction, and the sacred graphic known as the Kali yantra or Primordial Image in the Indian Tantras may be older still. This ancient symbol, a triangle with the bindu, or spark of life, at the center, is associated with the Trip Goddess who rules past, present, and future (length, breadth, and depth), and the trimesters of pregnancy, and the three seasons of life: childhood, maturity, and age.
Out in my woods the hemlocks are sighing with the long breath of the night.
Three Ways was one name of the Roman goddess Hecate, whose three-faced image at crossroads traditionally received offerings of cake, fruit, and money. Money is still offered at one of her ancient shrines, the Trevi Fountain, and the traditional idea of being blessed by throwing three coins in the fountain has persisted into our era.
The Irish god Trefuilngid is the patron of the trefoil, or three leaf, the shamrock.
Trefuilngid is known as the Triple Bearer of the Triple Key, which is the same appellation given Shiva, Astarte, and Ishtar, three ancient manifestations of the Triune Goddess. Of course, the shamrock is also the symbol of St. Patrick. Among the ancient Arabs the trefoil was called the shamrakh, which was a symbol of the male trident of fertility. Did the Irish once know the Arabs? What dark seas flowed before we learned how to write our history down, and what triumphs have been swallowed by their waters?
In the Greek alphabet the fourth letter, delta, is the symbol of the Holy Door, and among the Egyptians the triangle was the symbol of Men-Nefer, the very ancient goddess of the mother city Memphis, as identified in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The object of the worship of the Yantra is to attain unity with the Mother of the Universe in Her forms as Mind, Life, and Matter ... preparator to Yoga union with Her as She is in herself as Pure Consciousness.
To the Gnostics of the later Roman Empire, the triangle signified creative intellect, the balancing coolness of mind, the persistent reconciliation that proceeds in the souls of the ones who seek Christ within.
Among the ancient Sumerians Ishtar was the Triune Goddess, as among modern Christians the Trinity is the central figure of the creative force, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The Way to Christ is lit by the Star of Bethlehem, as also the word Ishtar means "Star."
Babylonian scriptures call Ishtar the Light of the World, Opener of the Womb, Leader of Armies, Lawgiver, Forgiver of Sins. It is from the legend of Ishtar that the story of the descent into the underworld enters so many of man's traditions: The giver of life overcomes the taker of life, and rebirth emerges.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo traveled the bath of transformation, and were not consumed in its fires. They symbolically sat astride the shoulders of the eagle, as did the medicine men of Native America, the shamans of the Siberian plains, the witches of old Europe when the ice king strode half the continent.
Transformation: Among the Apache, when someone was called in his heart to be a shaman, it meant that he had to go into the world of the dead, he had to dare the fire. The Apache would find a cliff and jump off. If he lived, he became a man of medicine. If he died, he died.