In the book The Dragon Tarot: The Inner Circle and The Triangle, there is a passage about how the conjurer may attune to a card via the art of dreaming. It reads like this:
To further attune his or her subconscious to chosen cards, the conjurer is to write that card a poem and burn it, covering the card with the ashes. Then he places the card under the bed and worships it before sleep, offering it coins wet with honey. Minor Arcana are to be worked upon for ten days, and the conjurer is always to write his or her dreams in the hour of waking. Major arcana have to be worked upon for twenty one days.
In this blog post, I have decided to share my work with the card The Infinite (Infinito).
Here is what the book has to say about this card:
The card of the Infinite depicts a serpent-dragon forming three times the symbol of infinity and looking up to a gryphon. The gryphon stands inside a unicursal hexagram and the unicursal hexagram is inside a circle. At the bottom, we find the number 08.
Symbolism
The serpent-dragon coils around itself forming three eights, or three infinity symbols. With the card of the Moon we have learned a feeling of endless expansion, the highest aspect of the formative world in all three planes of mind, soul and body. The serpent keeps fixed to a state of endless expansion by gazing and moving in the direction of the symbols above it and what they represent in the card. The circle is the spiritual realm, the unicursal hexagram is the unity of will and the gryphon, being both lion and eagle, symbolizes the master of fire and air. This card is the integration of the formative world in the archetypal world, and the adjustment of the Sun.
Active Quality: Dominion over life
Passive Quality: Faith
Initiation: The conjurer is to study and learn all there is to know about the unicursal hexagram, its qualities, how to draw it in the air and to what effects.
Invocation: The conjurer is to breathe in the fire element through the whole body, when it feels like the conjurer is going to explode, he or she breathes into it the quality of willpower. The fluids compressed are conjured into his head until it becomes as a red sun radiating the force and unity of will. Then the conjuror breathes in the air, imbues it with the quality of endless expansion, and compresses it into the chest until the heart becomes as the ever expanding rose of blue petals.
Evocation: Let the conjuror project in a single impulse both fluids outward, into the shape of the gryphon. Then, let him or her interact. In the end, he or she is to dissolve the form into the realization of a wish.
Towards the end of the book there is also a section named Ceremonial Evocation to the Cosmic Geniuses of the Major Arcana. In it, there is a table of correspondences. The section about The Infinite arcana reads:
The Infinite (infinito)
Realm: Formative
Region beyond the Mirror: Mercury
Sphere: Hod
Fluid: The Orange Light of Divine Splendour
Objects: orange candles/orange bulbs, mercury, the unicursal hexagram
Appearance: A Gryphon
Divine Mission: To watch over the mental region of the earth zone
Familiars: Snakes, the spirits of the Sun, judges and lawyers
In the Suggested Bibliography, for this card we get Liber 777 by Aleister Crowley.
Dream Attunement for "The Infinite (Infinito)" Card
Upon performing the method mentioned earlier, I decided to write an axiom of sorts derived from each of the twenty one dreams appertaining the nature of the active and passive qualities of the card.
- One who is bound to faith, has no faith.
- One who is bound to domination, has no dominion.
- Freedom is the quintessence of faith.
- Freedom is dominion over life.
- Where excess of ambition abides, faith is abscent.
- The fool mistakes fear for faith.
- Faith is structured upon balance.
- The path of balance is not the path of tolerance, for wisdom tolerates intolerance not.
- Nor is it the path of fury, for faith avenges nothing, and out of nothing does it grow.
- It is action in repose, for it knows but knows not the weight of knowing.
- Patience it is not, for patience endures while faith secures.
- It denies the redemptive trinity, where a third object frees the two, in favor of eternal duality, where a power rules over the other and by another is ruled.
- Obedience is the enemy of faith, and can easily take on its appearence.
- Faith grows independent and self-sufficient through an act of disobedience.
- Obedience makes dominion a puppet of itself.
- Dominion requires faith as an act of rebellion against dominion.
- While dominion over life grows on faith, it survives on love.
- Faith depends on a dream. A dream, too, depends on love.
- To the doubtful, doubt is the opposer of faith.
- To the faithful, faith has no opposition.
- Faith is the dominion of self-awareness. All else is illusion.
If you wish to conduct this experiment yourself, you have to build the card as instructed in the book, section Using the Cards.
The Preparation of the Cards
The conjurer is to cut out the dragon cards (blades) and paste them to equal sized pieces of white poster board. He or she will eventually glue the black cards on proportional rectangles of white poster board cards carefully cut from sheets of poster board.
Then a piece of thin laminate tin or copper is cut into rectangles the same size as the dragon cards.
He or she prepares a fluid condenser or liquid mixture made in equal parts of: angelica, sage, lime-tree flowers, cucumber skin, melon seed, acacia blossoms or leaves, chamomile flowers, lily flowers, leaves or roots, cinnamon flowers or bark, leaves of nettle, leaves of mentha peppermint, poplar leaves, leaves or flowers of sweet violet, osier leaves or bark, and green or dry tobacco. To it, the conjurer must add his semen or her monthly blood.
The conjurer dips the white cards in the fluid condenser and lets them dry. Later he or she then glues the dragon cards on the front of the dried white poster board and the tin or copper cut pieces on the back, (tin and copper being metal and mineral fluid condensers by right.)
The Charging of the Cards
The conjuror will perform the evocations of each card but, instead of dissolving the condensations or plasmifications, or having them inhabit a magical weapon or empower a magical effect, he or she compresses them into the cards. After their vivification, he or she is then to concentrate upon them the quality of willpower, intellect, feeling, consciousness and sensory or, for major arcana, the active and passive qualities. At this point, he or she fixes on the cards the powers described in their symbolism, animating the different aspects of the image with their proper spirit.
The cards should be recharged from season to season of the year, or whenever the conjurer feels that they are losing vitality. If the conjurer looks loosely upon the cards in the dark, they should present a certain glow.