All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.
The Ace of Swords:
The Root of the Element of Air
THE ACE OF SWORDS
You stop to gaze at a hand holding a sword, topped by a crown, floating in air above a mountainside. Mr. Mellifluous chimes out, "The sword represents the awesome power of the conscious mind, which gradually becomes so aware of the nature of existence that it ultimately aligns itself with the underlying Universal consciousness. That is one reason why the element of Air has a dual significance, representing the discerning intellect as well as the spirit, which is associated with breath, the basis of life.
"The element of Air on one level represents the flow in the conscious mind of thoughts and emotions and desires. Thought-forms imbued with emotion or desire follow one another in ceaseless currents, unless one makes a conscious effort to still the flow. These thought-forms can manifest as profound harmony or result in great horror for entire ethnicities and races, as we have seen throughout human history.
"Even the notion of 'dropping into the void' in meditation is a thought-form, but if one stills the conscious mind long enough, the mind can perceive the unity of all consciousness.
"Moreover, other thought-forms--subconscious material including archetypal symbols--sometimes surface. The level of mind associated with the element of Water receives spiritual impulses and embodies them with archetypal form. Archetypal symbols appear in vision during meditation without desire attached to them, yet they can ripple out into one’s life through the astral plane into the physical realm and take on great emotional significance, revealing the interconnectedness of the different planes.
"Air, also associated with breath, the essence of life, symbolizes spirit in many traditions. Of course, everything is spirit manifested in one form or another, but Air represents the active, conscious currents of spirit, which we associate with awareness and intellect.
"Emotions, sometimes negative, and desires, sometimes extremely inappropriate, well up from the subconscious depths into consciousness, sometimes causing discord, and Swords, the suit of the Air element, reflects the conflict, which can tear through the thin fabric of rationality. Yet a sword can also swiftly cut through illusions, as well as through difficult problems, and so Air is associated with the critical intellect.
"A Hermetic axiom is 'Everything is mental energy,' so, in a sense, everything is an aspect of mind, including perceptions of the physical world, yet we perceive energy fields as separate objects because as a matter of survival from an early age we are trained to do so, but the fields that we label as objects are on a basic level connected with all the other fields of energy. Language, as a symbolic system, enables us, indeed requires us, to perceive fields of energy as separate from each other, so the cup is separate from the table, and the table from the floor, and the floor from the rest of the house, and the house from the rest of the cosmos. Because of this ability to separate and classify and analyze, the human intellect has been able to manipulate the environment to an amazingly high degree.
"As a species, humans tend to agree that particular fields of energy have specific meanings. The very moment that a field of energy 'means something' is the moment it becomes separate from other fields of energy, which can have the effect of separating the mind from the underlying unity of consciousness. The energy field holding the coffee becomes identified as a general type of object known as a cup. Then, other energy fields can be classified as containing a specific purpose.
"People, in a sense, have developed the tendency to 'collapse' the energies within the perceptible spectrum of energy into a collective reality with generally accepted meanings.
"What you perceive and what is really 'out there' is possibly quite different. Imagine, for a moment, gazing at a knife on a table. For you to perceive the knife, light waves, some of which become absorbed and some of which are scattered, must hit it. Some of these light waves cause chemical changes in your retina, which trigger cells in your optic nerve, which relay patterns of electrical charges into your brain, and there, the nerve messages are translated into an image of a knife on a table. Brain cells retain the image to create a memory that you can draw upon to compare to other energy fields. Words, which by themselves are simply arbitrary sounds or scrawls on paper, provide a meaning that the culture agrees upon. This tendency to create meaning continues as you apply abstract concepts to the image. The knife resembles the sword that symbolizes the intellect.
"Between what we perceive and how the brain transforms perception is an infinitesimal gap that quickly deepens into an abyss if you stop relying on your symbolic associations. On one level, this is an aspect of an experience related to Daath, the invisible sphere on the Tree of Life between the separate conscious mind and the experience of mystical unity. The moment that the mind no longer perceives a separation between energy fields is a moment when symbols no longer dominate the mind. A sense of nothingness or emptiness underlying action and form can accompany such a moment, but it can also be a moment filled with an overwhelming sense of the unity of all creation. This sense is slightly shocking to the psyche that is familiar mainly with the world of forms and symbols and so it rarely lasts long unless the mind, through spiritual practices, is able to extend it the experience of unity.
“'The mind slays reality, so one must slay the slayer' is an old adage, and the element of Air in one sense is the sword that slays the sense of unity underlying existence. Conversely, it is also the weapon that enables the mind to recognize the underlying unity of consciousness while also establishing and maintaining a reality that lends itself to survival in the physical dimension. Recognizing the 'emptiness' of action and form and their symbolic associations is also a spiritual aspect of Air, an element that is, after all, invisible, without form.
"Since the subtle natural forces that organize the cosmos are made of 'mind stuff,' and since our souls are also invisible but made of the same mind stuff, shamans and initiates throughout the ages have used a common method passed down through the mystery traditions that enables them to connect with subtle intelligences. Because of this astral mind stuff, humans are able to create a special kind of being, called an elemental, by fashioning in the imagination a form suitable for the normally free-flowing force to ensoul. Once a connection is made, the elemental can perform certain tasks within its limited nature for the shaman or magician. Another special type of elemental containing great power is known as a God or Archangel. These awesome intelligences will sometimes manifest within the mind in an appropriate astral form, pouring their force into the psyches of people and providing spiritual assistance, by neutralizing dark forces to create balance, for instance. That is why a Christ figure can inspire such passionate devotion for millions of people over thousands of years. The shaman, magician, or priest goes about his work by constructing a symbolic astral image and reaches out to the subtle intelligence through devotion, in prayer or sacrifice or ceremony, until the intelligence responds favorably with its presence or its "ray" of energy. Great healing and purification and exaltation of consciousness is possible through this connection.
"The intellect can hold two seemingly contradictory ideas about the mind: the imperative to treat manifested objects and life-forms as separate in order to survive as well as the underlying unity of consciousness--an understanding that is one basis of faith."
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