The Tarot and Qabalah In Human Evolution (Excerpt)

“Consciousness” may be said to be one pole of a single reality, and, as we use it, the term “consciousness” means “Spirit.”  The term “energy” designates the “working power.”  All forms and objects in the world around us are particular expressions of this working power which is the only reality behind what is usually called “matter.”  By acting upon itself, the Life-power causes all forms of force to come into being and produces all varieties of structure.

When the Life-power works through the cells of your liver, those cells secrete bile or make sugar. When it works through your muscles, they contract and the process of contraction causes many complex chemical and electrical changes. When the same power operates through your brain cells, and other centers of your nervous system, the result is the manifestation of certain states of consciousness and the expression of the powers of human personality connected with those mental states.

Biologists agree that it has taken millions of years to bring the human organism to its present state of development, and that this process is by no means at an end. A great brain specialist, Dr. Frederick Tilney, says that in ages to come man will develop brain centers which will enable him to exercise powers we cannot even dream of now.

Many things Dr. Tilney expects to occur in the distant future have already occurred again and again. In every generation have lived men and women who were able to exercise unusual mental and physical powers. They live today. Their unusual command over themselves,their influence on their fellow-men, and their extra-ordinary control of the forces of nature was, and is, the result of a higher order of brain development than that of most persons.

Furthermore, there is in existence an elaborate system of practices incorporated in the Tarot and Qabalah, which have been worked out by these unusual men and women. The object of Tarot and Qabalah training is to modify the human body that any one who will do the work may exercise powers like those manifested by the persons to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of this system of training.

The physical transformations effected by this work are partly chemical and partly structural. That is to say, the object of some of these practices is to bring about changes in the composition of the blood, the lymph, and the glandular secretions. Other phases of the work are designed to alter the constitution of groups of cells in the brain and in the nervous system.