Upside-down M solved [maybe]

Teheuti

I apologize for my earlier tantrum. I've spent the past 20 years working on precisely this material, which cannot be presented without someone actually taking a serious look at the material. It becomes frustrating because few are willing to read Waite, and you, Abrac are one of the few. Thus my frustration when I feel I am discounted out of hand. In the same light I don't mean to discount what you say because you seem to be on the same track.
So what is the significance of the Cup? In the Ace of Cups it represents the Eucahrist by all outward appearances; but the bread and wine are only veils, the truth lays hidden behind them. Behind the veil means the world within, that of the soul; so that which is behind the veil is that which is within. And what is it within which the bread and wine symbolize?

Waite: “It is recognised by the Catholic Church that the Eucharist is . . . the necessity of our spiritual life, awaiting that great day when our daily bread shall itself become the Eucharist, no longer that substitute provided in our material toil and under the offices of which we die. The body is communicated to the body that the Spirit may be imparted to the soul. . . . The high analogy in literature is the Supper at the Second Table in the poem of Robert de Borron. That was a spiritual repast, where there was neither eating nor drinking. For this reason the symbolic fish upon the table conveyed to the Warden the title of Rich Fisher, and it is in this sense--that is to say, for the same reason--that the saints become Fishers of Men.” HCHG.

BTW, note the fish around the neck of the King of Cups (Fisher King - and he who took his grandson (or was it nephew?) fishing (Page of Cups) in order to pass on the "mystery" and keeping of the Grail to him. In de Boron's story Joseph was unable to take the Grail all the way to its final resting place in England.)

the Mystic Marriage by a Eucharistic rite.
Definitely. In "The Book of the Holy Graal" Waite speaks of the "Eucharistic Life Divine:” the treasury of grace and power which fills them, permeates, overflows in the recipient’s heart.” (The Ace of Cups overflows.)

“The four Hallows are therefore the Cup, the Lance, the Sword and the Dish, Paten or Patella--these four, and the greatest of these is the Cup. As regards this Hallow-in-chief, of two things one: either the Graal Vessel contained the most sacred of all relics in Christendom, or it contained the Secret Mystery of the Eucharist.” HCHG.

It can be seen from this that as early as 1891 Waite viewed the inner significance of the Eucharist as a Mystic Marriage (communication with Deity), that is, the reuniting of soul with the Divine within (the Christ). On the Ace this is symbolized by the marriage of the wafer (spirit) with the cup (soul). But these are veils of the true marriage within.
Waite: “The thesis . . . is that God's immanence was declared at the time of the [Graal] literature, through all Christendom, by the Mystery of Faith and that the development of Eucharistic doctrine into that of transubstantiation was a peculiar recognition of the corporate union between Christ and His people. [i.e., a promise of union between God & man – a promise of life everlasting.] HCHG, p.26.

The Eucharistic Cup represents the doctrine of transubstantiation: “The words of the definition are: "The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are really contained under the species of bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar, the bread being transubstantiated into the Body and the Wine into the Blood. . . The thesis . . . is that God's immanence was declared at the time of the [Graal] literature, through all Christendom, by the Mystery of Faith and that the development of Eucharistic doctrine into that of transubstantiation was a peculiar recognition of the corporate union between Christ and His people. [i.e., a promise of union [the mystic marriage] between God & man – a promise of life everlasting.] HCHG.

Also, from Waite's Fellowship of the rosy Cross "Return in Light" ritual, 1924:

"The sacrament of the Eucharist is the sacrament of that reception, the significance of which is that the Spirit dwells within. And this is the Christ Spirit. The secret tradition hereof is a great memorial concerning a great experience. The macrocosm is the body of Christ, the microcosmic soul of man is in the image and likeness hereof; there is union between Christ in the macrocosm and Christ in the soul of Man."​
Wonderful quote. I propose that this is most relevant to the Major Arcana and the images of the Cup/Grail that appear in Trinick's drawings, but not yet manifested in the Minor Arcana - only promised - the rainbow in the 10 of Cups. The suit of Cups is about that promise (as told in the de Boron story) that exists within the tales of loss (in de Boron, Joseph of Arimathea never reaches the promised land, Glastonbury, the resting place of the Grail).

Waite: “The Eucharist is . . . a bond between the worlds . . . a link of union in the height and deep. The Spirit of Christ remains therein on every altar and in every soul which can receive the Spirit. So is God made man in Christ, and so the Word takes flesh through all the ages. There is Bethlehem in every Kingdom, country, shire and town. The world itself is Nazareth. Each man and woman in the body-part of them is Bethlehem’s stable. But the soul therein is seldom Mary, bearing Christ within. Hence is the Hidden Church from age to age in travail [as shown in the Minor suits], working towards that perfect day when Christ shall have been born of every soul, or when the soul shall know the Christ within, and the most blessed offices of Bread and Wine shall reach fulfillment [as shown in the Majors]. Then the soul—God-tinctured, God-transmuted, God-possess’d—shall need these signs no more. Till that great day the Hidden Church has sent out messengers with rumors of a noumenal [apprehended only in the mind] Eucharist . . . . But once through legend and through high romance the Secret Church sent out the Holy Graal [reference to the Robert de Boron story]." HCHG.

Here, in one statement, Waite mentions Mystery, Eucharist, Grail (bread/wafer & wine), glorious Virgin (Mary), and Holy Spirit (dove):

“I testify, therefore, that the true Mystery of the Eucharist resides in the assumption by the Divine Life of the veils of Bread and Wine, and that even as once in time and somewhere in the world that life assumed the veils of flesh and blood, which became the Body of the Lord, so here and now--daily on every worshipful and authorised altar over the wide, wide world--do those unspotted elements become again that sacred vehicle, so that he who communicates in the faith of spirit and of truth, receives that which is not less truly the Divine Body than the especial polarisation of elements which was born in Nazareth of the sacred and glorious Virgin. Moreover, I am very certain that the one Mystery was operated as if in the terms and valid forms of the other by the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the utter consecration of the elements. HCHG, p.29-30.

In the Magician card we see that consecration of the elements in process.

“The wisdom of the Graal is an Eucharistic wisdom, because the descent of an arch-natural Host takes place annually to renew the virtues thereof.” HCHG.
 

Teheuti

"The history of the Holy Graal becomes the soul's history, moving through a profound symbolism of inward being, wherein we follow as we can, but the vistas are prolonged for ever, and it well seems that there is neither a beginning to the story nor a descried ending.” Waite, HCHG.
 

Teheuti

Waite: "Now the mystery of faith in Christianity is above all things the Eucharist, in virtue of which the Divine Master is ever present in his church and is always communicated to the soul; but the Graal mystery is the declared pageant of the Eucharist which, in virtue of certain powers set forth under the veil of consecrating words, is in some way a higher mystery than that of the external church. . . . To understand the imputed distinction as (A) the Communication in the Eucharist of the whole knowledge of the universe, from Aleph to Tau; (B) the communication of the Living Christ in the dissolution of the veils of Bread and Wine; (C) the communication of the secret process by which the soul passes under divine guidance from the pageants of this world to heaven, the keynote being that the soul is taken when it asks into the great transcendence.

Fr “Mystic Aspects Of The Graal Legend” by Arthur Edward Waite, "The Occult Review", Vol. VI, No. 2; Aug., 1907 - a precursor to his Hidden Church of the Holy Graal.
 

Abrac

Ran across an interesting reference in Waite's autobiography:

"...I myself was like one who spoke in a dream, seeing most things upside down, as he saw who was suddenly endowed with sight." :)
 

parsival

Waite on the Eucharist

Quote from Waite's " Lamps of Western Mysticism " ( 1923 ) - Chapter " A Modern Daughter of Desire " on Saint Therese of Lisieux : " Her ( i.e. Therese's) first reception of the Eucharist was the great turning-point in her story. The event and that which it signified offer an aid to reflection that while many beautiful and sacramental signs communicate under their respective veils the same deep, mysterious and holy things , it remains certain that no mode practiced in external religions is so efficacious towards realisation of the Divine inwardly as the Eucharistic Rite of the Latin Church. "

It's worth remembering as well perhaps that the Eucharist is also called the Marriage Feast of the Lamb.
 

Abrac

Thanks for sharing that parsival. There's no question that for Waite the Eucharist symbolized the union of the soul with the Divine, a mystic marriage. It held a powerful magical quality that could facilitate that state when done in the right spirit.

"Herein is the hypostatic [essential] union of the Soul with God, and the peace of the mind, the peace of the heart, with the peace of chastened will, are among the qualities of such a condition. In this is our sanctification, in this our salvation, in this the source of all our coming glory, as of the whole scale of our beatitude. It is the first revelation of the hidden life, and it is within the reach of any one who learns to do all things well. But to reach it there is the absolute necessity that we must never sin, and must act in all thing’s under the law of beauty. In this gentle sphere of hallowed and hallowing illusion where God in His love has environed us [i.e. the phenomenal world], the most appropriate type and symbol of this State of Union is a loving and recollected participation, performed reasonably, in the Eucharistic rite."—Azoth, or, The Star in the East, p. 200​

This just one of many examples where Waite cites the Eucharist as the key ingredient in spiritual attainment, on the material plane at least. When Waite says "union of the Soul with God" above, I understand this as union of the Soul with the Christ within. Waite sometimes uses the terms God, Soul and Spirit rather loosely; but the context from which the above quote comes is speaking of the union of Soul and Spirit [the Divine or Christ within]. And the Union of which the Eucharist is a symbol is the mystic marriage of Soul and Spirit. The higher Union which is actually Union with God is described as Entrancement or Oneness.
 

Abrac

I've been thinking a lot about this and it seems to me in all likelihood the "W" doesn't stand for water. None of the other Aces have any suggestion at all as to their elemental correspondence, so to label the Ace of Cups seems very unlikely. Besides that there's water everywhere; labeling it would be redundant and unnecessary. At least that's my thinking.

In the Golden Dawn Ace, the spray from the fountain creates an M shape. Book-T mentions the Supernal Mother [or Matrona]; the shape of the spray into an M seems like more than a coincidence, especially when her letter (Heh) is superimposed on it. If you reverse the card you have a W. Waite's reversal on his Ace serves two purposes. It conceals the M and at the same time it shows it as it really is when reflected from above.

I'm back to thinking the W may not mean anything. After all it's not a W but a reversed M. Waite may have just thought people could think whatever they wanted about the W. Those with eyes to see would eventually figure out it's an M not a W.

I can see a slight possibility how M might be for Mercury, the planet assigned to Hod, the grade of water. But if this is the case I can find no satisfactory reason why it would be reversed. In the GD card I can see how M could possibly be for Mem, Hebrew for water. But in Waite's, Matrona reflected from above seems more likely, since it's reversed. :)
 

Abrac

I ran across a quite interesting reference in The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn by Pat and Chris Zelewski. In their description of the Ace of Cups is this quote from Mathers:

"The Ace of Cups is of Egyptian origin, which can be more easily seen in the Spanish Tarot. The figure, like an M placed over the Cup is all that remains of the Egyptian twin Serpents which originally decorated the cup below it. The M in this instance is not inverted (which is the old method of association) but placed above the Cup, and it represents the Waters of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis. The old inverted M symbol shows the impurity of the quintessence has been contaminated by matter, but placed above the Cup it is a symbol of power which receives and modifies."​

There's a footnote to this that reads:

"This quote, which we found appended to some Whare Ra Temple Tarot notes, is almost identical with the Mathers description of the cards from his small booklet on the subject. The difference here is the inclusion of an additional explanation of why the M is placed where it is."​

Sure enough, if you go to Mathers' 1888 The Tarot you find the same thing:

"The Ace of Cups is of Egyptian origin, which can be more easily seen in the Spanish Tarot. The figure, like an inverted M on its front, is all that remains of the Egyptian twin Serpents which originally decorated it. It represents the Waters of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis. It is the Symbol of the Power which receives and modifies."​

I have no idea what Spanish Tarot Mathers is talking about, but apparently he thought the M was originally part of a double serpent design on the cup. He clearly says in the first quote that the M represents the Waters of Creation of Genesis.

I'm shocked I'm finally getting the straight dope! :) This is obviously where Waite got his reversed M. The Aces correspond to Kether but they also correspond to the four lower Sephiroth; the Ace of Cups corresponds to Hod, directly below Binah on the left-hand pillar. In the FRC, Hod represents the lower Eden and Binah the Supernal Eden. Waite's reversal of the M would seem to symbolize the Supernal waters reflected into the lower Eden. Hod also represents Eden in the GD but I'm not that familiar with the finer points of it. Mathers says the inverted M "Shows the impurity of the quintessence has been contaminated by matter," but apparently Waite looked at the same thing and saw another possibility.

The Ace of Cups in the Classic Golden Dawn Tarot has picked up on the same idea. Whether it was from Waite or somewhere else I don't know.

Classic GD Tarot Ace
 

Richard

In the Golden Dawn Temple Tarot, Nick Farrell has restored the twin serpents to the Ace of Cups.
 

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