The Divine Servants (Josephine Maccarthy)

[dron]

This is about the meaning of a tarot card, yet josephine explains through direct experience,
the role of those beings and what they are...

The Divine Servants are what some cultures
would call angels. They are beings that are
an expression of Divine Universal will, and
their job is to maintain the order of fate, of
Divine will, and its expression in the physical
world. For the magician, this card’s meaning
is about angelic beings. I use the term Divine
Servants for the card as the concept of angels
has degenerated so much both in religion since
around 300 BC, and as a consequence, in magic.

These beings are non-emotional, which means they are not vulnerable to
the emotional manipulation of humans: their function is simply to ensure that
something happens or does not happen. This can be very difficult for some people to
understand if they have grown up in a Christianised culture where an angel is seen as
someone who loves you no matter what. Tangling up emotion with necessary action
is something that a magician needs to be very wary of, if it creeps into their narrative:
such misunderstanding can destroy what could be a strong working relationship
with these beings.

The Divine Servants card is specific to the angelic beings that work within the
patterns of fate and power, which today in magic we view as the ‘higher order’ of
angels. These beings do not work closely with humans, nor do they present to
us in any form we would recognize as the typical Christian angel with two white
wings, a nice white frock, and a kindly face. Rather, these beings can be terrifying
to encounter; some can appear in vision to us in a vaguely human form, or in a form
that is almost beyond our comprehension. They can sometimes appear as geometric
shapes, or spinning wheels, or as structures. They are functional beings that do a
specific job and are often unaware of us as individual human beings…just as we are
often unaware of quite how many bugs we inadvertently crush as we walk through
a forest.

The closer to humanity an angel is in its role or mode of action, the more
humanlike it can appear in a vision or dream. The further away from humanity it is,
the more it takes on a strange and more complex appearance in vision. All of these
appearances are simple visual vocabularies that let we humans comprehend what we
are looking at: we see an interface, not the actual being itself.

We magicians cross paths with these beings far more often than the average
human would, and it is important for us to be able to recognize and work with
them, regardless of what we call them or how we label them.

A Divine Servant is a being that is involved in the upkeeping of creation, stasis,
or destruction. It is not a being that relates to the natural features of the world
(like a deity of the wind or a mountain); rather it is a being that interfaces between
the Universal Divine powers of creation and destruction, and the physical world
of nature as well as the inner worlds. These beings are traditionally called servants,
messengers, and thrones (upholders) because their actions uphold a fate pattern, and
because when necessary, they do indeed communicate with the living in order to
ensure a fated event happens or does not happen, or that through their messages,
humanity evolves or devolves according to the pattern being upheld.
They are powers that can ‘become’ part of a sacred or inner structure: thresholds,
gates, doorways, doors, walls, and altars.

As a magician, your tradition or system will have some form of visual and ritual
interface for working with these beings. However, just remember that the dogmatic
information around these beings (names, hours, functions, presentations, etc.) is
often the result of generations of theory and dogma, not practice. A magician often
has to unlearn a great deal before they can truly start to learn from direct experience.

[happyrain]

Hi Dron, earlier this year a friend did tarot for me and drew the magician.

Very cool, thank you!