Drive: 'Solve et coagula' - dissolve and combine
Light: Balance and harmony, fulfillness, creation, peace
Shadow: Getting into extremes, splitting up and tearing apart
( source: corax.com/ )
Combination of forces. Realization. Action based on accurate calculations. Economy. Management. Success after elaborate maneuvers. Escape.
formerly called TEMPERANCE. The highest achievement of alchemy was the affecting of change, the transmuting of objects, qualities, colour and so on, into their opposites. Thus in this card the red lion has become white, the white eagle has become red. In the main figure, the black and white personages which were the Lovers in Card VI, are now interchanged and fused into an androgyne figure. This is the consummation of the Royal Marriage. The rainbow symbolizes another stage in the alchemical process by the aura of many-colored lights rising out of putrefaction. Putrefaction itself is shown by the raven perched on a skill on the cauldron. The consummation of the whole art of Alchemy is proclaimed in the glory with its inscription ‘VISITA INTERIORA TERRAE RECTIFICANDO INVENIES OCCULTEM LAPIDEM.’’ The counsel to visit the interior of the earth is a recapitulation (on a higher plane) of the first formula of the Work. The important word is RECTIFICANDO, it implies the right leading of the new living substance in the path of the True Will.
Temperance. Sagittarius. Samech. This is the second alchemical card, in which the Lovers are united in an androgyne figure, the Prince becoming white and the Princess black, the red lion white, the white eagle red and the cup is lighting the torch. There is a crucible engraved with a raven standing on a skull which holds the seething elements whose iridescent bubbles are reflected by the rainbow overhead. All these typify the destruction of two elements at the birth of a third. The inscription on the rainbow is the alchemical mandate “Visita interiora terrae rectificando invenies occultem lapidem.”
( source: Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot deck booklet )
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