0. - The Fool
The village idiot lives out on the edge of the town.
He thrives on refuse thrown in the dump.
Children laugh at him & throw sticks & stones at him.
"I am what I am," says he. "And I see what I see."
I. - The Magician
The Alchemist lives way up high in his tower.
His single light can be seen burning late into the night.
He is searching for the Secret of the Philosopher's Stone.
He seeks Infinite Power, Infinite Knowledge, & Infinite Immortality.
He cackles in glee as he shakes the test tube.
II. - The High Priestess
The Seeress is up on a pedestal in an ancient time.
As she prophesizes what will be, they gather around & listen.
"They shall fly like birds," she predicts of a distant future.
"Their children shall see Visions of a Unified World."
"No disease shall be among them; they shall live forever."
"They shall leave the earth & go to the stars".
"They shall be as gods."
III. - The Empress
The Queen is pregnant.
She is sitting in her garden gazing at the butterflies taking nectar from the flowers.
She is female, but she wonders occasionally what it is like to be male.
She & the King have just made love in their private bedchambers a while ago, then parted to go their separate ways.
How bloated & tumescent was his throbbing sex as it penetrated her interior; how weak & flaccid it was as soon as he had his pleasure.
Men have all the power & fun in this world, she thinks in scorn.
Yet, as she feels the growing embryo within her, she realizes she has the greater power.
She has the power of life.
IV. - The Emperor
The King sits way up high on his throne, looking out over his wide kingdom.
"They hate me," he realizes sadly, as he considers his subjects.
"They envy the power I have; they want to overthrow me."
"Yet do I not protect them from the enemy?" thinks his majesty in profound bitterness.
"Do I not keep law & order among their ranks?"
"The ingrates; I ought to have them all hanged."
V. - The Pope
"You shall all go to Hell!" screams the preacher from his pulpit.
"You are all sinners!"
"You were born in sin; you shall die in sin!"
"Unless you return to the fold, ask the Lord for forgiveness, & mend your ways according to the Letter of the Law which is in the Good Book, you are surely damned!"
Someone is sitting in the back row, listening to all this, thinking what a con-artist he is.
VI. - The Lovers
The lovers lie embracing one another in the fields.
They have just made like the beasts therein.
But they have no shame.
The sun is warm & the flowers smell so sweet.
"I love you," says he.
"I love you, too," says she.
They see one another as each other really is.
But it won't last.
It never does.
VII. - The Conqueror
The Roman soldier hacks his way through the crowd, right & left.
They are Christians; the rebellion must be contained & thwarted, all for the sake of Caesar, who rules far & wide.
They are weak, he thinks in contempt.
See how they refuse to defend themselves.
"I want you to know," says one of the Christians, just before the blade strikes against his neck, "that no matter what you do, God still loves you."
The Roman soldier pauses.
Now, what, by Jupiter, did he mean by that? Then he goes on with the slaughter.
VIII. - Strength
He is angry & embittered at the way the world is treating him.
He has just been fired from his job today, after twenty years of faithful service.
He wants to strike out at someone.
They live in the poorhouse.
But she knows how to calm him.
She strokes him & makes love to him, until his anger & bitterness is all gone.
She knows how to deal with his animal nature.
IX. - The Hermit
The forest-dweller lives deep in the jungle.
Alone, he fasts & meditates & looks within.
He sees that all things are a part of himself.
He perceives the Unity of All Things.
He sees that he has discovered a profound truth.
He is not sure that any of the others will understand him.
But he must try; it is his duty to bear the Light, the Light of Consciousness.
It is in the Silence between the thoughts.
It is All There Is.
X. - The Wheel of Fortune
The sleazy huckster spins the ever-turning Wheel of Fortune.
He exhorts to all that pass by to gamble their lives & their souls for the Eternal Goal.
Sometimes you go up.
Sometimes you go down.
But if you're gonna get anywhere, you've gotta take the risk.
After all, that's what the Game of Evolution is all about.
Life is the Ultimate Gamble.
XI. - Justice
The prostitute does not turn anybody away.
She accepts within her all men of all sizes & shapes, of all persuasions, from all walks of life, rich & poor alike.
While they are within her, she looks into their souls.
She stares upward at the ceiling with her legs raised high.
Little do they know that their souls are on the scales.
XII. - The Hanged Man (Sacrifice)
"I am the Way & the Light & the Truth," spake the Master to his disciples, before He was led away to be crucified.
They beseeched Him not to go, but the Sacrifice must go on.
While they were nailing Him to the cross, He shook His head sadly.
Whenever He comes, they never seem to understand.
When will they finally be ready?
"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do," spake He.
He looks out over the aghast crowd & weeps.
Meanwhile, a scribe is taking all this down, wondering what He really means.
XIII. - Death
It is the time of the Plague.
All must die, rich & poor alike, nobility & peasants alike, the faithful & sinners alike.
The bodies keep piling up & piling up.
The mangled, disfigured grave-digger grins toothlessly.
Business is really booming this year.
XIV. - Temperance (Harmony, Creativity, Synthesis)
The young girl runs barefoot along the summer stream.
The sun is rising behind the mountain.
She is so glad to be alive.
She points this way & a purple passion-flower appears.
She points that way & the multi-colored Bird of Paradise appears.
XV. - The Devil (Knowledge)
Two scientists are gazing into a bubble-chamber.
For a split-millisecond, particles appear out of nowhere, then just as quickly disappear.
"This is incredible!" remarks one scientist.
"It's as if something were literally coming out of nothing!"
"Well," concedes the other scientist, "I guess this proves that space isn't all as empty as we once thought it was."
XVI. - The Tower
It is midnight.
Like the light of a thousand suns, everything flares up.
A great wind bursts outward from the center & topples over all the buildings of the Great City as though they were merely children's toys.
Millions of megatons of energy are exploding, destroying in an instant the work of hundreds of years of construction.
The people on the topmost floor of the highest skyscraper were having a party.
They were high on cocaine, ripped on pot, soused out of their brains on alcohol, listening to loud rock music, & well into having an orgy.
They never knew what hit them.
XVII. - The Star
At thrice times the speed of light, they are whizzing through the hidden folds of space towards the star..
The star is a brilliant-blue one & has two lesser companions, one a dull-red, the other a medium-yellow.
They are sitting at the controls, blissed out, watching it come closer, setting the coordinates.
"Well, there she is at long last," says one. "Wow, what a beautiful star that is!"
"You know," says someone else: "This star here, Sirius, used to be called the 'Dogstar', by an ancient civilization of these people called 'Egyptians', who used to worship this very same star we are now approaching."
XVIII. - The Moon (Alienation, Desolation, Madness, Automation)
It is a city populated entirely by machines.
It is three o' clock in the morning on July 23, 2723.
The half-moon, a dead world like this one, is shining high above.
There are no wolves to howl at it this time.
They died out long ago.
The machines continue to work three shifts a day, doing amazing calculations, & churning out thousands & thousands of remarkable innovative products that other machines will automatically buy.
Human beings have been made obsolete hundreds of years ago.
They weren't efficient enough.
XIX. - The Sun (Innocence)
Two kids are playing in a sandbox, a boy-child & a girl-child.
Idly, as the day wears on, they build up elaborate sandcastles, then knock them down again.
The sun is blazing above at the zenith, giving out lots & lots of light, heat, & energy, as usual.
The boy-child asks a good question: "Say, I've been thinking about something: What do you suppose this whole thing is all about, anyway? Life, I mean."
The girl-child replies: "Oh, I don't know. I suppose we'll find out one way or another. To just be, I guess."
XX. - Resurrection
It is a new world.
Everybody lives with one another in perfect peace & harmony.
No one is afraid of one another anymore.
All problems are solved.
There is no more war.
There is no more hate.
There is no more death.
No one has to work anymore.
Now they can do whatever they want.
Everything is perfectly free.
There is plenty of everything for everybody.
People just sit around & mellow out.
It's just what everybody always wanted all along.
All they had to do was ask.
XXI. - The World (The Universe, All, & Everything)
The Seeker has been wandering for a long, long time now.
He is seeking for the Center of the Universe where it all began billions & billions of years ago.
He is a half-million years ago.
He is but a brain in a machine.
He is in suspended animation most of the time.
The ship wakes him up whenever there is something to see.
Alone, he entertains himself with reality-tapes.
He experiences all kinds of different worlds in all kinds of different bodies in all kinds of different lifetimes.
But he has seen it all.
Now he searches for the Ultimate Experience, to see what no mortal has ever seen before.
The coordinates are set for the Center of the Universe, the fabled OM-POINT, where all mind, energy, & matter comes from the Other Side.
At last, he is approaching his long-sought Goal.
There It is.
Thousands upon thousands of embryo galaxies are still being hurled outwards from the Center towards the Edge of the Universe.
How intense It is, how beautiful, how brilliant:
It was will worth waiting for.
The Seeker hears a strange, enchanting music; It is the Song of Creation.
He sets the ship at top speed now; he can't wait.
Like a moth plunging into the flame, the Seeker zooms right into the Center of It All.
As everything he once was disappears back into the nothingness where it all originally came from, he suddenly realizes:
Thus the Cosmic Mind Wakes Up to realize that It Alone has been all the various Actors & Actresses in the Show of Its Very Own Creation. It was all a Construct, yet It seemed so real at the time.
It was certainly fun, dramatic, & utterly engrossing while it lasted.
The Cosmic Mind proceeds to Dream another Universe.
The Cycle has no beginning. It has no end.