Along the Tarot Path

I saw something this morning. I saw an answer, a good answer, to the question “What is evil?”

Whatever impedes the flow of emergence as it emerges, and whatever impedes the flow of return as it returns, will be perceived as evil.

The impedance would have to be more apparent than real, and the evil would have to be in the eye of the beholder. The beholder of evil could be the doer or anyone else. All that is necessary for evil to occur is for someone to observe it.

In the eyes of a predominantly emergent person (if there is or could be such a thing), any act of return could be viewed with either reverence or aversion.

To a predominantly returning person, emergence in various forms could be viewed with anything from joy to revulsion.

The relationship between pure emergence and pure return would probably be the predictable relationship of reverence to joy. Insofar as neither emergence nor return is ever pure, or at least rarely so, each is contaminated by a limited impulse and a limited vision.

A predilection for either direction that is simultaneously strong and limited probably is responsible for the perception of evil. The degree of evil perceived would then be a direct function of intensity and limit. The greater the intensity and the limitation, the greater the evil perceived. As either intensity or limitation diminished, the perceived evil would decrease.

— Wald Amberstone

Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot, Unmesha on August 10th, 2007