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Next, in the later stages of the development of the cards, I had the support of
a home-made pack, and on a number of occasions I got the cards themselves to arbitrate
on issues which I was unable to resolve. For example, I submitted many proposals
of words to the cards before getting a green light with the word ‘Swayesse’. Finally,
synchronous events played a part – where something which popped up in the outer
world influenced an element of the pack. For instance, I was sitting outside at
a café table in a place which had a special importance for me, feeling an elusive
but persistent unease about the card ‘Deathless Love’. Suddenly, a rubbish (garbage)
truck came charging past, practically at my feet. The result was the consignment
of ’Deathless Love’ to the rubbish bin, and a lengthy odyssey which finally led
me outside the consensual English language entirely, to ‘Swayesse.’
Again, there were moments during the time in which I worked on the Ring when I was
not in an ‘ordinary’ state of mind. From that place, I had insights that I no longer
have access to. Even if I were able to return there, I would not choose to do so,
because the work is now in another phase which involves a ‘hero’-type engagement
with the physical world, rather than a ‘seer’-type connection with the psychic one.
About the Ring, many questions can be asked whose answers are simply not available
to me, locked away in that former ‘state of mind’. If I started trying to list the
sources of the Ring, not only would I be destroying the magic of mystery, but those
revelations would have a kind of trompe l’œuil effect, creating a fake clarity.
And then there is the matter of questions and answers.
Our culture seems to rely
to an extraordinary extent upon giving the right answers to questions – we spend
our lives studying on courses where a successful outcome is measured by our ability
to give correct answers. The focus on answers is, essentially, the hallmark of the
totalitarian mentality, as it fosters and rewards conformity: ‘show us that you
have learnt what we wanted you to learn.’ The horizons of humanity, by contrast,
can be widened only by new questions.
This is so hard to express, because it flies in the face of all our conditioning:
if you have questions about the cards, you can seek to release the tension thus
created, by going in pursuit of the answers; or you can travel the ‘ley lines’ of
that tension and climb up through an ascending series of questions, each more potent
than the last. Questions liberate, answers imprison. |
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