Bruce Michael
Well-Known Member
Valentin Tomberg in his Meditations on the Tarot has some wise words to say on this subject:
"Amongst esotericists, occultists and magicians there are many- be it openly or secretly- who aspire to the ideal of the superman. In the meantime, they often pose as masters or high-priests worthy of the acclaim of the future superman. They are, at the same time, singularly in agreement in that they raise God far, very far, to the heights of Absolute Abstraction so that he
does not discomfort them by his too-concrete presence, and in order that they have room for themselves to be able to develop their own greatness without the rival grandeur of the Divine to discomfort them. They build their individual towers of Babel which fall, as a rule, according to the law of all towers of Babel, and experience, sooner or later, a salutary fall, as is the teaching of the sixteenth Card of the Tarot. They do not fall from a real height into a real abyss; it is only from an imaginary height that they fall and they fall only to the ground, i.e. they learn the lesson that we human beings of today have all learned or have still to learn.
The worship of the idol of power conceived of as the superman, above all when one identifies oneself with it, is relatively inoffensive - being, fundamentally, infantile. But this is not so with the other category of power worshippers, namely those who project this ideal onto God himself.
Their faith in God depends on the power of God; if God was powerless, they would not believe in him. It is they who teach that God has created souls predestined to eternal damnation and others predestined to salvation; it is they who make God responsible forth entire history of the human race, including all its atrocities. God, they say, "chastises" his disobedient children by means of wars, revolutions, tyrannies and other similar things. How could it be otherwise? God is almighty, therefore all that happens is only able to happen through his action or with his consent.
The idol of power has such a hold on some human minds that they prefer God who is a mixture of good and evil, provided that he is powerful, to a God of love who governs only by the intrinsic authority of the Divine - by truth, beauty and goodness - i.e. they prefer a God who is actually almighty to the crucified God."
"Amongst esotericists, occultists and magicians there are many- be it openly or secretly- who aspire to the ideal of the superman. In the meantime, they often pose as masters or high-priests worthy of the acclaim of the future superman. They are, at the same time, singularly in agreement in that they raise God far, very far, to the heights of Absolute Abstraction so that he
does not discomfort them by his too-concrete presence, and in order that they have room for themselves to be able to develop their own greatness without the rival grandeur of the Divine to discomfort them. They build their individual towers of Babel which fall, as a rule, according to the law of all towers of Babel, and experience, sooner or later, a salutary fall, as is the teaching of the sixteenth Card of the Tarot. They do not fall from a real height into a real abyss; it is only from an imaginary height that they fall and they fall only to the ground, i.e. they learn the lesson that we human beings of today have all learned or have still to learn.
The worship of the idol of power conceived of as the superman, above all when one identifies oneself with it, is relatively inoffensive - being, fundamentally, infantile. But this is not so with the other category of power worshippers, namely those who project this ideal onto God himself.
Their faith in God depends on the power of God; if God was powerless, they would not believe in him. It is they who teach that God has created souls predestined to eternal damnation and others predestined to salvation; it is they who make God responsible forth entire history of the human race, including all its atrocities. God, they say, "chastises" his disobedient children by means of wars, revolutions, tyrannies and other similar things. How could it be otherwise? God is almighty, therefore all that happens is only able to happen through his action or with his consent.
The idol of power has such a hold on some human minds that they prefer God who is a mixture of good and evil, provided that he is powerful, to a God of love who governs only by the intrinsic authority of the Divine - by truth, beauty and goodness - i.e. they prefer a God who is actually almighty to the crucified God."