27/04/2015

Foreword|FreeHermeticChristianStudyCenterwww.fhab.org

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Foreword | Free HermeticChristian Study Center

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(From Meditations on the Tarot, Verlag Anton Hain,

Meisenheim am Glan 1972, Translated into English from the
German rendering by Gertrud von Hippel.)
These meditations on the Major Arcana of the Tarot are letters
addressed to the unknown friend. Anyone who is prepared to read
them all and then out of the experience of a meditative study of
them will have come to know what Christian Hermeticism is
about, can consider himself recipient of these letters. He will
know too, that the author of these letters will have divulged more
about himself in the letters than he could have done in any other
way. He will have got to know the author himself better through
these letters than he could have done from any other source.
These letters are written in French because in France a literature
concerned with the Tarot has existed since the 18th century to
this day, i.e. the second half of the 20th century a phenomenon
one does not find anywhere else. Similarly there exists in France
an ongoing hermetic tradition and it lives on persistently that
comprises the spirit of free research as well as devotion to the
written record and living tradition. The contents of these letters
will therefore incarnate into this tradition, - i.e. become an
organic part of it as well as render a contribution to it.
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Foreword|FreeHermeticChristianStudyCenterwww.fhab.org

As these letters are appointed to serve as support and

contribution to the Hermetic tradition, whose origins trail away
in historic distances that have long since become legendary as the
epoch of Hermes Trismegistos, they are a tangible enunciation of
the age old stream of Thought, Endeavour and Revelation.
Their aim is not only to let the tradition revive in the 20th
century, but also and preeminently - to let the reader, or rather
the unknown friend, dive into this stream, - be it for a time, be it
forever. Therefore the many quotations of modern and ancient
authors that you will find in these letters do neither serve literary
purposes nor purposes of erudition. They are invocations of the
masters of the tradition to be present with their impulses giving
impetus to the striving and clarity of thought in the stream of
meditative thought presented in these 22 letters on the Major
Arcana of the Tarot. Fundamentally they are 22 spiritual
exercises through which you, dear unknown friend, may
submerge yourself in the stream of the living tradition and so
enter the Community of Spirits that have served it and continue
to serve it.
The quotations in question merely serve the purpose of letting
this community stand out the more strongly. For the members of
the chain of the tradition are not merely thoughts and
endeavours, they are above all the living beings who thought
these thoughts and made these endeavours. The being of the
tradition is no mere teaching. It is rather a community of spirits
from age to age.
Nothing remains to be said in this foreword to the meditationletters on the Tarot, because all other questions concerning them
will find their answer in the letters themselves.

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Foreword|FreeHermeticChristianStudyCenterwww.fhab.org

Your friend greets you, dear unknown friend, from

beyond the grave.

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