Temperance and incarnation?

Nemia

Living and working with Druze and having Druze friends, I find that very interesting. The Druze are very secretive about their beliefs and won't tell others much about it. But everybody knows they believe in reincarnation.

I'm not sure about the connection to Temperance though. The Druze parable is about acknowledging that the soul can find a new home in another body. The vessels are the body, the liquid is the soul. The soul doesn't change when it reincarnates in a new body.

In Temperance, the situation is different and the symbols work differently. In the (link to forum removed by Moderator) traditional emblem, water is diluted with wine, and water enriched with wine. Both change their character.

In the tarot, it's one liquid that changes while travelling against the laws of nature from one vessel to the other.

So yes, if we see this liquid as the soul, it travels, and it also changes. As far as I know, in the Druze religion, the belief is that the soul remains unchanged.

But it's certainly very interesting. I find the Druze culture fascinating.
 

JylliM

Thanks for your response Nemia. I guess what I'm saying is that MAYBE the image on Temperance isn't really depicting what you describe at all. There's nothing in the picture to tell us what, if anything, is in the lower vessel, just as we don't actually know that it's water being poured. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but hey, I'm curious! :)
 

JylliM

Nemia, I just realised you linked to a thread about Temperance. I'm out and on my phone, so will read it when I get home.
 

JylliM

Living and working with Druze and having Druze friends, I find that very interesting. The Druze are very secretive about their beliefs and won't tell others much about it. But everybody knows they believe in reincarnation.

I'm not sure about the connection to Temperance though. The Druze parable is about acknowledging that the soul can find a new home in another body. The vessels are the body, the liquid is the soul. The soul doesn't change when it reincarnates in a new body.

In Temperance, the situation is different and the symbols work differently. In the (link to forum removed by Moderator) traditional emblem, water is diluted with wine, and water enriched with wine. Both change their character.

In the tarot, it's one liquid that changes while travelling against the laws of nature from one vessel to the other.

So yes, if we see this liquid as the soul, it travels, and it also changes. As far as I know, in the Druze religion, the belief is that the soul remains unchanged.

But it's certainly very interesting. I find the Druze culture fascinating.

Hi Nemia, I've finally had time to read through the first few pages of the thread you linked. It's fascinating! Thankyou for taking the time to point me to it. So this imagery does go back a very long way indeed. I did find interesting the reference in one of those posts to wine being the a giver of life (can't remember the exact phrasing) - it makes the position after Death nicely satisfying and logical!
 

Abrac

I was reading along in Decker & Dummett's A History of Occult Tarots and ran across something unexpected. A book by one Woldemar von Uxkull was published in Munich in 1922 entitled Die Einweihung im alten Ägypten nach dem Buch Thoth (Initiation in Ancient Egypt in accordance with the Book of Thoth). They give a summary of each of the majors from the book, Temperance is called Wiederverkörperung, or Reincarnation. So apparently someone has thought of this. Here's a pic. :)

http://s19.postimg.org/6pi0m8znn/Reincarnation.jpg
 

Abrac

I found a copy of the book online. It's in German but with Google Translate I was able to translate a couple portions of it.

First paragraph:

"On the fourteenth day the chief priest thus said: Life spurts out of death; rebirth follows upon dying, as the sunrise comes after sunset. That is why picture XIV, the rebirth is next to picture XIII, death. Picture XIII, the submerging sun, the dying—picture XIV, the re-enactment, the beginning of new life. The wheel of life is always turning."

Paragraph three:

"Similarly, picture IX shows us the journey of man through one life here in the visible world, so Picture XIV shows us the long series of our earthly existences with the ever-recurring reincarnations of the human spirit, after the rest in the heavenly home . His return to earthly life, into a material body, is the pouring of water, the spirit, from one vessel into another."