On Finitude

The soul of man finds itself in fetters

“But the reflection of the understanding seized hold of philosophy. [It is] an understanding that abstracts and therefore separates, that remains fixed in its separations. Turned against reason, this understanding behaves in the manner of ordinary common sense, giving credence to the latter’s view that truth rests on sensuous reality, that thoughts are only thoughts, that is, that only sense perception gives filling and reality to them; that reason, in so far as it abides in and for itself, generates only mental figments. In this self-renunciation of reason, the concept of truth is lost, is restricted to the knowledge of mere subjective truth, of mere appearances, of only something to which the nature of the fact does not correspond; knowledge has lapsed into opinion.”

Hegel - SL, p25

In Hegel’s philosophy, a sharp distinction is drawn between what he calls “the Understanding” (Verstand), and “Reason” (Vernunft). The understanding is essentially synonymous with the empirical worldview — a common-sensical approach to the world which cannot properly be called a metaphysical system, rather it is the knitting together of sensory information into a loose fabric, draped over a set of mechanistic assumptions whose logical certainty could easily be mistaken for a concrete basis. The understanding is the category where the currently hegemonic scientism finds itself, the assumptions it employs being that nothing can be verified except by checking it against what the senses report — “I'll believe that when I see it” — that nothing could be more than its surface appearances, that all there is is essentially the micro-movements of atoms colliding into eachother. The understanding takes a system to be true only insofar as it provides results it deems favourable. This worldview is where we get ideas along the line of “maybe something is only true if the majority of people agree on it.”

A large part of the neurosis inherent to this is the foundational belief that there is no truth beyond this bashing of atoms into eachother, that we cannot know anything beyond our senses. To the understanding it is a point of ridicule to believe in anything, to it this is just the arbitrary acceptance of one set of axioms over another — such is the nature of it's fractured relation to truth. The understanding believes itself to be the most critical, and by it's metric this criticality makes it the most true — if it hurts it must be more realistic.

The Hegelian turn is to point out that we have actually failed to be properly critical, that we have created a platform from which we can interrogate and destroy anything else, without investigating the basis upon which we stand. For this reason, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit — his initiatic journey whose purpose is to educate natural consciousness to the standpoint of speculative philosophy — begins with sense certainty, and traverses the states and assumptions that arise (among which is the understanding), showing that each assumption contains within it it's own refutation. Initiation is essentially the refutation of all assumptions, to the point where you are ready to begin philosophy, with utter presuppositionlessness.

Reason, as opposed to the understanding, isn't interested in creating fun new systems, systems which provide practical benefit, nor systems which service common sense and our preconceptions — reason proceeds passively, it finds the actual system which all of these systems thoughtlessly rely upon; the categories of thought and being. The true psychological schism of the understanding is the absolute belief that it is the highest, most transcendent point, that there is nothing beyond it — in it's own ignorance it will drown.

It is often thought that the devil is this grand, sinful figure, the greatest evil imaginable — to the atheist the devil is simply a spook, an ill informed mythical figure that simply exists to scare people into believing that morality isn't utterly relative. More accurately though, the devil is best thought of as ignorance, the ignorance that takes finitude to be all that there is, the ignorance of the understanding.

What follows here is the demonstration of the Hermetic art of Tarot as an intuitive hermeneutic to open the door to speculative philosophy, in presenting this so we also lay the groundwork for the connection of speculative philosophy to mysticism. Philosophy is the comprehension of the absolute through reason, while religion and art are the absoulute represented to intuitive consciousness. It's symbols and rituals tease at something deeper, pulling threads in the waters of the unconscious, pulling us toward the Absolute. It must be stated that most difficulties in interpreting religious scripture come from reading it in the limited, literalist, materialist way that the understanding is wont to do.

To understand The Devil (finitude as absolute), we must minimally begin with key 6: The Lovers.

The symbol in the lower right of the key is the Hebrew letter ז; “Zain”. It means “sword” and carries with it the meaning of division, as in the old meaning of the phrase “to sex”, and “to gender”, which is why we see two figures representing the masculine and feminine, here shown as divided. The important thing to note here, is what is being divided. We see the angel above who appears androgynous, not in the sense of both masculine and feminine, but neither, in truth the angel is utterly the beyond of division, of gender and seperatedness. Above the angel is the sun, which symbolises the Absolute, Parmenides’ pure being, God. The angel comes from God, and has the power of God shining down upon them. In the Absolute, there are no divisions; it is utter self-sameness. Recall here the words of the Apostle Paul:

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Galations 3:28

Key 6 therefore essentially shows the division of God into the dualities of the empirical world — here only the duality of the masculine and feminine are shown, but it should be taken as the emergence of the dialectical structure which constitutes reality as it appears to us: mind/body, ego/unconscious, substance/form, and so on. A paradoxical feature that emerges here is that these dualities are made by God. This divisive power is what Hegel means with the term “negation”, which could be properly symbolised by the sword. An important truth is revealed here when Hegel demonstrates that negation is what provides determination (Bestimmtheit), this is why Dasein (determinate being, not to be confused with Hedegger's terminology) follows from the antithesis of being and nothing in the Science of Logic — Dasein is being with a negation in it and so determined being.

“And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.”

Genesis 1:4-5 (my emphasis)

This seperation and naming is the creation of the universe — and not in a literal way that would seek to compete with the big bang, but in the sense that here we see the creation and the naming of the categories of thought which constitute all reality. In this sense the creation story doesn’t represent something antithetical to modern science, but instead is actually the foundation of modern science. By this I mean that modern science relies on the categories of thought and being, it is an activity of thought that reveals to us laws of the natural world.

It may be counter-claimed that thought is only possible insofar as it emerges from material and thus, implicitly, it is limited in scope by its being material. This view must be shown the hilarity of its predicament: this is thought looking back and placing a concept within thought prior to itself, claiming then that this concent is it's ground. This ground, it reasons, must be the limit of the scope of thought, since it constitutes it — this is the self-renunciation of reason which Hegel refers to.

Some further analysis on key 6 which is not here helpful to our goal is that the feminine figure is seen with a tree to her right which bears 5 fruit, representing the 5 senses, the tree also has a serpent coiled around it, so the tree clearly represents that of the garden of Eden. It’s important to note that the serpent doesn’t necessarily represent evil, but actually power, strength — recall the incredible strength of Samson granted when the “Spirit rushed upon him”. The reason for the serpent appearing on the side of the feminine figure is that traditionally the feminine has been associated with spiritual abilities, with the power to dip into the unconscious realm and cultivate the power found within — we see further evidence of this in key 8, strength, which shows a feminine figure taming the lion.

Following The Lovers is key 7, The Chariot. The Hebrew letter here is ח (“Cheth”), meaning “fence”. This key is an elaboration on the dividing power we see in key 6. A fence marks out where your property ends, yet also the fence is what makes your property a property.

“Something is what it is only within its limit and due to its limit. Hence one must not regard the limit as something that is merely external to existence; rather it permeates existence as a whole.”

Hegel - EL p189

The Chariot essentially represents the Ego, the part of us that is seen as individual and particular, separated and other from everything else. The Ego is this “I”, and to it everything is the nicht-Ich (not I) — to borrow from Fichte’s terminology. What this means may require some explanation: to be what you are requires that you aren’t something else, i.e. you are named John, not Alfie, you work as a mechanic, not a librarian, you have 2 sisters, not 3, and so on. In just this sense, the Chariot is the realisation of the discriminatory power of the sword of the previous key to provide determination.

The charioteer is surrounded by his chariot, fenced in, wearing armour, with a city behind him — all around the symbols of structure are seen, building, separating, dividing, classifying. But also symbolised is unity: there are two faces on the man’s shoulders, one angry, one at peace, his body being the unity of the two. Two sphinxes share the same expressions, they look utterly distinct, yet are united in pulling the chariot forward. The synthesis in all this key is human agency, it is the bringing together of a divided world, the “unity of opposites”. This gives further elaboration to how this key represents the Ego, for the Ego isn’t simply differentiation, it isn’t simply what it’s not, the Ego is also the bringing together of all the disparate elements of the psyche that seem irreconcilable into a whole movement.

The crown of the charioteer has 3 pentagrams visible on it; the pentagram is the symbol of man’s power (a point on the star for each limb) as can be seen below:

The power of man is the synthesis which man embodies — the union of opposites. It is of the utmost importance, though, that we note the relation of The Chariot to God. The pentagram here is oriented upwards, its head is an arrow pointing up to the heavens, just so is the power of man oriented in this image, The Chariot here shows the power of man working with reverence to the Infinite, with reverence to God — what this means in particular will come out when we reach key 15, but for now we can simply state that though key 7 represents building, human creation, and synthesis, the essence and substance of all is God. [Make this sound more meaningful, quote from PH]

Finally, The Devil. This terrifying figure is the inversion of keys 6 and 7, where the pentagram was pointed up (towards God) in 7, it is now inverted, as if to suggest that man’s power is itself absolute. Where the figures in key 6 were free and wholly human, the figures here are chained up, half animal, half humans. The Hebrew letter here is ע, “Ayin”, meaing “eye”, and “outward appearance”, since what is demonstrated here is what happens when we are possessed only with outward appearance, and so this key wholly embodies “the understanding” which Hegel decries.

This key is the other side of the discrimination and classification of the sword, and the synthesis and building of the fence — it is what happens when the division and synthesis which make up the finite world of appearances are taken as absolute, it is what happens when we take man to actually be God. [I think I have to define God earlier in the article to make this all make sense]

But the devil is also a source of power, the same as the serpent, the devil shows us here that this power, which is used to build cities, to serve God, can just as easily be used to serve only man, to decry God, to be possessed only with earthly pleasure. It is important to note that the devil here doesn’t embody some terrible evil we should live in fear of, but instead it embodies ignorance; simple, uncritical sense-certainty. This is the true meaning of devil worship, it is the state of ignorance where one uncritically takes finitude and external appearances to be the whole truth.

The true opposite of key 15 is really key 4: The Emperor. His letter is ח — “Heh”, meaning window, clear sight, true insight, as opposed to the Ayin of the devil, the merely external appearances. He is sitting atop a cubic stone, where he is poised, relaxed, free. In contrast to this cube is the rectangle in key 15, to which the two figures are chained — the cube represents all reality, the Absolute Concept, while the rectangle that the devil is perched atop is only half of that reality. One half of truly seeing, then, is the appearances of the world, but the other half, reason, is what provides appearances their truth. After blindness some can have their vision restored, but even after this they still have to learn how to really see. Some never do in cases of Agnosia where they can’t recognise objects or shapes. True sight then, isn’t merely accepting appearances, it is the operation of reason, to make the senses make sense.

The emperor is synonymous with Hegel's Reason (Vernunft), he sees beyond the petty dualisms of reality, he rests atop a true view of all reality (the cube), he wields power in his hand and coordinates all things below the sun.