Turning Things Around: The Inner Tarot Revolution Week 27
Finding Grace Under Fire
It’s been a productive and revealing week, though not one without its share of challenges. My studies have progressed and in a very short time, I’ve made some quantum leaps in my understanding of certain things. The insights have largely come from making progress in my study of Temple of Set Vol. II, a book I have found it difficult to confront for a multitude of reasons, some of which I will save for discussing in the context of my Shadow card because the themes line up nicely. One way or another, however, it all basically comes down to different reasons for that same nagging specter that has been a recurring theme in my work and my life: Self-doubt, which once more takes center stage in the interplay of this week’s Sun and Shadow cards.
Much of it stems from a recognition that I am not the person I once was; I had much more confidence in myself as well as a greater ability to maintain progress in my study and practice back in 2012, when I first performed the self-Initiatory working (“The VSigil Working”) that I discuss in the post Ten Years Gone. Of course, I now have the benefit of hindsight to see the setbacks I’ve suffered as being direct effects of said working in that the challenges I have faced have been exactly what I needed in order to grow along the lines I needed to grow in order to succeed in my work. It is easy to forget that Initiation isn’t easy and that oftentimes, our greatest teachers are the situations that involve deep suffering, struggle, and adversity. In this sense, I can say the VSigil working was…”devastatingly effective.” I am increasingly satisfied with the position in which I find myself today, and I need to remind myself that I got here through the suffering I’ve endured.
That being said, in the year or two following the VSigil working, I found myself entangled in a situation that was deeply disempowering and downright traumatizing. In turn, it took me several years to finally extricate myself from it. By the end, I had been through the wringer—thoroughly buffeted about and thrown into circumstances of exile, scandal, and isolation—a set of conditions that prepared me for the spiritual version of the same when I began my journey across the Abyss in 2020. My very nervous system is not what it used to be, and tasks that I found simple and straightforward in 2012 were soon linked by context with some of the traumatic things I went through, such that merely picking up certain books and doing certain work is now inherently triggering for me.
I have to fight through the triggers to make any progress at all, and this has meant that doing lots of healing work that is not directly related to my esoteric work at all has been important. I’ve been hard on myself, but the truth is that the fact that I’ve made the kind of progress that I have on the esoteric front amidst all the trauma responses is really something to be proud of.
At any rate, this means the timing of my coming into contact with The Aeon of Set and the writings of Temple of Set Initiates has been unfortunate in some regards, because it’s largely as a result of the difficulties I’ve faced that I am now a pretty bad example of the stereotypical, self-sovereign Black Magician that current tends to idealize, and being keenly aware of this disconnect has been one of my deepest inner obstacles when it comes to engaging with such material and doing those aspects of my work that connect to and depend upon it.
However, what we want and what we truly need are often two different things.
The story of my coming into possession of the book Temple of Set Vol. II is interesting and a bit embarrassing.
In the 3-year period during which my initial application to join Temple of Set was put on hiatus by the Executive Director, I thirsted to read The Book of Coming Forth By Night because I knew—I just knew—that it was connected with the work I’m here to do. At some point I fell under the impression (which I could have sworn I read somewhere) that the contents of The Book of Coming Forth By Night are only entrusted to those who have successfully gained full membership (meaning that they have passed from Setian I°, a “probationary period” of sorts, to Adept II°) to Temple of Set; for all I know, that may have been true at some point and the policy changed at a later point. Anyhow, I caused myself a lot of unnecessary trouble by making certain decisions based on that belief, while the entire time, The Book of Coming Forth By Night was available for anyone to read by purchasing a copy of The Temple of Set Vol. II.
During this same period, I had befriended a person who had themselves recently gained admission to the Temple as a I° member, had learned something about their practice that led me to believe (incorrectly, it turns out) that it would involve activities prohibited in the Temple, and spilled the beans to another member in such a way that this person ended up being expelled from the Temple. I feel bad about it now (especially in light of some of my changing attitudes about the Temple itself), but at the time, I was sure I was doing the right thing. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, this person remained my friend…and in the wake of the trouble I had caused in my belief that I needed to become a Temple Adept to read The Book of Coming Forth By Night, this person responded with an act of generosity I would never have expected: They ordered me a copy of the book from Amazon so I could better educate myself and make progress in my Work.
It was a humbling moment in more than one way, and my possession of the book ever since has served me many similar lessons.
So that’s been one layer of inner resistance to my picking up and studying the book: The shame I feel due to the set of events that put it in my hands to begin with. However, there have been a few more:
As already mentioned, there was the freshly-traumatized state in which I found myself in the wake of the bad situation I alluded to above, along with the fact that I used old, deficient means to cope with it (I started drinking like a sailor); so on my first few attempts to read the book, I could barely cut my way through its first chapter, The Sphinx and the Chimaera, and I soon realized I could do very little with the book before clearing my head (getting sober, for one, but also sufficiently addressing my trauma to clear the brain fog and learn to weather the triggers caused by dealing with such material). To explain this better, the “situation” I had gotten myself into was a marriage to a Priestess who had a habit of acting to sabotage any progress I had begun to make in my Work as it relates to the Aeon of Set, simply because, as a Priestess of the Aeon of Isis and a dilettante of the Aeon of Osiris, she felt threatened by anything from the Aeons of Horus or Set that challenged her own self-image. This went from orchestrating all kinds of strife meant to alienate me from the occult community in which she had made herself a fixture, all the way to physical attacks such as a beating with a heavy copper pipe she had consecrated to the Goddess Aphrodite. I don’t raise this all for the sake of resurrecting the drama surrounding it, but simply to illustrate that I’m not exaggerating when I say I have trauma responses related to this work. At any rate, I needed to do a lot of work to clear such obstacles before even thinking to dive deeply into this book.
Another layer involves faculties of mine that are difficult to substantiate and that I think many who adopt the guise of “Black Magician” might scoff at: All my life, there are certain things I have just “known,” without any concrete means of doing so. Among these things, I include:
The name of Ilyas. Ilyas was to me what Aiwass was to Aleister Crowley, and I had never heard or read the name before Ilyas himself communicated it to me. It turned out to be the English transliteration of the Arabic form of the name “Elias,” also known as “Elijah,” and study of that Biblical prophet has yielded a great deal of symbolic meaning that has come to shape my path.
The Word of Hermekate itself, which again, I had not read before it came into my mind.
Basically, I don’t really know for certain how, but I just knew the book contained certain information that I needed, but that I also wouldn’t be equipped to properly understand or deal with until the time was right…and this is something I have had to sort of feel my way through. Among the things I “just knew” I would find in the book are, frankly, some bones that need picking; and I have needed to do the preliminary healing that I’ve done so that I can feel confident enough in myself to pick them.
The last layer, as I said, I will deal with in the section on this week’s Shadow card.
So yes, it’s been somewhat slow-going, but I’m finally at a place where I can plow through the book and gather up all the vital information it holds for me. I’ve already made some discoveries that have me all fired up, and finding the patience to finish the book before I act on them has been a trial of my Will (but also a heartening sign that I’m getting back to the stability and firmness as a practicing magician that I had in the days of the VSigil Working). Suffice to say, I have a lot to write about and I am excited to do so. My next few posts outside of this tarot series are already taking shape in my mind.
It’s a bit of a catch-22: In some respects, my path would have been much easier if I had just shut up, sat down, and read through this book years ago, because I’ve operated on a lot of assumptions that would have been cleared up had I done so, and my ideas might have evolved more quickly in light of the information I am absorbing.
On the other hand, this “late reading” of the book is proving encouraging to me in other respects, because what I am finding is actually helping to support and flesh out ideas I have arrived at via my own personal gnosis…and it’s kind of better this way because honestly, it’s a real trip seeing this stuff printed in hard copy that I’ve arrived at first on my own. I’ve looked foolish in the past due to my ignorance, but appearing foolish isn’t a problem for a wise man who fully understands the limits of his own knowledge; and the confidence I am gaining by having “put the cart before the horse” in such a way is proving crucial in the other half of what I have to do here:
Challenge much of what I’m reading, and effectively call “bullshit” on it.
Let’s do cards.
Top/Sun Card
There are a few cards in the Thoth tarot where applying a strict interpretation based on the Qabalistic formulae of Liber 777 results in what I consider to be “drastic” and unnecessarily dreary perspectives that have me scratching my head and asking, “Why you gotta be so negative?” This is one of them. From DuQuette’s analysis in Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot:
The background of the Seven of Wands is deep purple, but, other than that, this card is a near carbon copy of the Six of Wands. A crude seventh wand, more like a club, overshadows the other six and delivers a sobering message: “The four Sevens are not capable of bringing any comfort; each one represents the degeneration of the element. Its utmost weakness is exposed in any case.”
p. 219
And I get it, this card is all about conflict no matter how you cut it, and this is reflected in every version of the tarot that I’ve ever seen. However, the statement from Crowley that DuQuette quoted (taken from p. 79 of The Book of Thoth) regarding “comfort” seems to completely overlook how comfortable Mars is with the prospect of throwing down. Mars loves conflict. And besides: While it may be brutal and require a heavy dose of this card’s namesake—”Valour”—whenever this card appears upright, it signifies for the querent a battle that they will eventually win if they stick to their guns and see it through.
This is signified by the traditional illustration by Pamela Colman Smith (happy belated birthday!) which shows a man standing atop a hill, fighting off his aggressors; the conflict will be heated, but he’s literally got the uphill advantage.
This resonates strongly with the relative position in which I find myself. As I’ve stressed more than once here at Dark Twins, I’ve got my work cut out for me, but I have finally arrived at a point where I can actually see the cuts. I’ve already got my basic game plan for how to approach the problems involved in developing the Word of Hermekate and carving out its rightful place among the other Aeonic Words. I now know enough to proceed, and this includes a pretty decent understanding of the things I still don’t know; that is, I’ve got a solid reading list to help me fill in the gaps in my knowledge, and I am sure what I find there will inspire new branches of inquiry and give me still more leads to follow. I will find not only long-awaited answers, but also better questions to ask.
One of the elements that has been missing has been full acceptance of the reality that any true Magus must be a warrior of sorts, because along with the new ideas and paradigms that their Word introduces also come challenges to entrenched dogmas that many if not most people in existing paradigms have found reliable and have thus come to lean on. This is a part of human nature that unfortunately shows up everywhere, even in schools of thought that are renowned for the ways in which they themselves have challenged previous dogmas. In fact, it’s ironic, but the more “cutting edge” a school is in this sense, the greater the blind spots that are likely to develop in the field of vision of those who are drawn into it. I have had to deal with this obstacle even within myself: Some of the ideas in The Temple of Set I and II are so bold and revolutionary that it did not occur to me at first to even think of challenging them; Michael Aquino was willing to think outside the box in ways that I couldn’t imagine before encountering his work, and when we encounter thinkers like that, it’s easy to assume they are simply more far-seeing in all ways than oneself; “He sees a lot of things I couldn’t see, so his vision must simply be clearer.” We forget that no matter how brilliant a person may be, we are all human and thus, while we might have a revolutionary vision in one context, we also all have tunnel vision in other areas.
I have an entire post planned that is based on this very idea that another aspect of the grade of Magus is that in certain ways, each Magus is also blinded by their own Word; it’s hard for them to see past it. This is the whole reason that a new Word involves the kind of “battle” shown in the 7 of Wands: In order to establish a new paradigm, the Magus must address these discrepancies between their Word and the other Words that have served to define the existing paradigm. The reality is that just because all Magi have in common the faculty of seeing certain numinous things that many people can’t see directly, the Magus still can’t escape the fact that their vision is still unavoidably colored by their subjective perspective, which is ultimately relative and limited. It is impossible to peer into the numinous and behold the realm of spirit without peering through the Self. In a way, this is the very essence of the gift the Magus brings: The unique aspects of their Word are the very thing they bring to the table, but it’s also precisely the thing that keeps any Word from serving as a completely pure vessel for one’s message. Thus, among other Magi, it’s not necessarily that one sees better than previous Magi: It’s simply that one sees differently from them. A new Word isn’t necessarily an “improvement” on previous Words, it isn’t inherently “better;” it just tends to be more suited to the current situation because let’s face it, the world marches on and circumstances are continually shifting. I have to stop myself here to stay within the scope of this post, because as I said, I’ve got an entire essay devoted to this topic brewing.
For now, however, the above thoughts answer the question: Just who or what am I “fighting” here? I’m fighting any and all challenges to my Word that stem from the tendency of all human beings to enshrine the teachings of other Magi. And why is it a “fight” at all? Don’t ask me, because I’m not the one starting the fight. If I could do this without such a conflict, I would, but once more: It’s simply the nature of the territory. It’s simply what happens when another Magus Comes into Being; it’s inherent in the way other people tend to respond to them. The true Magus isn’t doing what they do out of a desire to simply jockey for status or to dominate others; the Magus is just trying to share what they see because what the Magus sees is generally something the world needs to take new steps. However, in the fact that a new Word typically challenges the more relative or context-specific aspects of previous Words, those who adhere to other Words tend to react against the new message. It has already begun for me, and I’m quite happy with how I rose to the challenge. All of this is illustrated beautifully in my favorite instance of the 7 of Wands: The one from Tarot Apokalypsis depicting Moses:
Due to the realities facing the Magus in light of the utterance of their Word, the energies of the 7 of Wands are unavoidable and critical to the Word’s success. As Crowley stated:
The army has been thrown into disorder; if victory is to be won, it will be by dint of individual valour—a “soldier’s battle.”
The Book of Thoth
p. 193
As such, I much prefer the outlook on this card cast by Gerd Ziegler in Tarot, Mirror of the Soul: Handbook for the Aleister Crowley Tarot:
The Seven of Wands expresses an intensification of the conditions represented in the two previous cards. The valour expressed here is an outgrowth of your personal experience. It has arisen through your ability to learn from past experience. If you apply these lessons, you will be able to take further risks with greater awareness.
Compromises are out of the question now: They would require a denial of your own inner reality. It is time for you to stand your ground, and to remain true to your energies unconditionally!
pp. 109-110
And in order to do just that, I need to get right with the hard but important lessons of this week’s Shadow Card.
Shadow Card
Man, is this card heavy, especially in this position and lined up with this week’s Sun Card. Talk about baggage. Fully embracing the perspective of the 7 of Wands will require me to lift the Hierophant up out of my Shadow. In this section, along with the usual commentary from authors about the Thoth tarot that I add, I will explore some of the reasons it’s stuck there.
I’ve had kind of a love/hate relationship with the material surrounding the Word of Xeper, one of the primary Words with which the Word of Hermekate interacts and contends. Ultimately, the same is true of The Temple of Set, the school that arose as a result of the Word of Xeper. As I’ve mentioned repeatedly, the minute I learned about the Temple and the very concept of a Word, it put my own experiences into immediate context in such a way that I soon realized I had a Word of my own and it was “Hermekate.” It did not take long to begin seeing that things probably weren’t going to end up going the way I wanted them to, that I probably wasn’t a good fit for the Temple, and that I would end up prosecuting my Word without the support of any existing school.
One reason I knew this deep down inside was because that’s pretty much the hallmark of a Word, historically speaking.
Another thing I realized early on, but which it took me much longer to come to accept, was this: I never really needed The Temple, either. The truth is that this entire time, I’ve already been much more competent and capable of stepping into my role as a Magus than I realized, and the most important thing was for me to realize and accept that. Put simply, there are certain Initiatory lines along which I was already way ahead of the game. I began suspecting, long before I actually accepted it, that I was seeing territory and doing work traditionally reserved for the upper grades of the Temple long before I even submitted my application, and that the problems caused by this have probably had just as much to say for why I couldn’t get my foot in the door as other factors. Simply put, I don’t think the Temple even knows what to do with new applicants who are already doing upper-grade Work on their own terms, because of the particular approach the Temple takes to training Initiates and the specific modes in which the Temple engages in the work of the upper grades. They would much rather take new members who aren’t as far along in their Initiatory work so that by the time they do reach upper-grade states of consciousness, they will also have certain habits of thought and activity developed in such a way that they’ll be able to mesh better with the the Work as the Temple does it. In other words, this means that it was never really a matter of my being “not good enough.” I would just have been an oddball, and my presence in the school would have upset too many of their apple carts (especially since my Word contradicts some of their basic assumptions about how this Work should be done). After reading as much as I finally have in Temple of Set, I now know this to be true. I roll my eyes several times each time I sit down with that book, especially considering how long I had spent thinking I was “deficient” compared to them.
The reason I had such a hard time seeing that clearly and believing in it was because there is plenty that I have to learn from the way they do things, and I always recognized that, too. Another reason I had a hard time seeing my true worth was, ironically, also one of the deeper, hidden reasons I felt so strongly that I needed to get in and be accepted, and it fits very well with The Hierophant:
Daddy issues.
As I mentioned there, I’m a disappointment to my father, and the reason I focused on was my academic performance and the way my father considered me an “underachiever,” which clashes with one of the qualities the Temple, as a very openly elitist organization, is looking for: High achievement. They want not only people who are smart, but smart people who are getting shit done. They’ve got a mission, after all. I have another post planned to explore this aspect of the Temple’s elitism and their stated reasons for it, because it’s another thing that is intimately tied with the Word of Hermekate.
However, my blockage runs even deeper than that. It has to do with some of the lines along which my father was such a high achiever, and some of the other overlap between my father and the Temple’s culture:
My father was once in seminary to become a priest.
Given the man I’ve grown to know, the reasons are somewhat hard for me to even see. He was well past all of that by the time I was born. He got his academic credentials in business, but among his favorite subjects were physics and chemistry. Advanced stuff. My dad’s a math nerd, and I was never very good at math. This means that in terms of personal worldviews, he is vehemently atheistic and even anti-religious. He applauds people like Richard Dawkins. I remember his response when I was younger and dared to tell him that my friend had been teaching me magic(k)…like, real magic(k), not the stage stuff: His reaction was violent.
Like many fathers, my dad wanted me to follow in his footsteps, or even to exceed him, but along the same lines he followed. His disgust of me came from the fact that I never really caught on well with math and “the hard sciences.” I was always more of an idealist, and I know that my more “spiritual” interests frankly disgusted him. He simply couldn’t hide it, especially since, for all his advanced rational knowledge, he was completely emotionally illiterate. He was ashamed of those aspects of me, and I have always been keenly aware of it.
The Temple culture reflects a lot of that. It’s a bit odd to me, since one of the main differences between Michael Aquino, its founder, and Anton LaVey, his former mentor, was that Aquino also held that Set is a real, actual entity, which means he made certain allowances for the validity of the metaphysical; but still, he tended to prefer grounding things rationally and scientifically. The culture he developed and encouraged in the Temple reflects that: From what I’ve seen, the Temple’s most “successful” members are also “nerdy” people with a solid taste for hard academia and a low tolerance for less grounded spiritual speculation, to the extent that the latter is eagerly mocked.
It’s easy to see that, aside from the ways in which I thought the Temple might help me develop my Word, the major draw for me was emotional. I had a father who drove me hard and wanted me to be more rational; the man had me dressed up in a Harvard University sweatshirt by the time I was two years old. Then, I found the Temple of Set, which somewhat brands itself as “The Harvard of Initiatory Schools” (not entirely without merit), filled with people who not only remind me of my father but who also do occult shit—and, for sure, psychological transference occurred: I’ve been estranged from my father for years now, but if I could gain acceptance from the Temple, it would be like a way of finally “proving myself” to my father; if he could never accept me, then maybe they would, and maybe then I would feel “valid.”
But as much as I wanted that, it never would have worked like I wanted it to. I don’t think getting in would have actually solved that problem. Instead, I would only be driven to keep pushing harder and harder for more recognition, because no one else could give me what I had been looking for. I needed to give that acceptance to myself.
This attachment based on an unhealed childhood wound kept me from clearly seeing what I needed to see—something that is essential to the Word of Hermekate:
The Temple’s attitudes surrounding elitism and achievement are downright shitty, petty, and every bit as narrow-minded as my father was. That environment would simply have been toxic to me. Lastly, when it comes to the Left Hand Path: Anyone who needs inclusion in such an elite circle to feel good about themselves is missing the point of the LHP entirely, but the unfortunate reality is that any time a school cultivates that sort of image, they are bound to attract people who only want the brownie points that come with it. This is a subject for another planned post entirely, but although I suspect that’s actually something the Temple Priesthood has factored into its approach, it’s also a recipe for disaster that may just be completely counterproductive given some of the Temple’s goals. I have a deep suspicion they have shot themselves in the foot and that the Word of Hermekate is a direct response to this. I have felt this way for a long time, but have long been aware that such a belief could be nothing more than a phantasm born of the very wounds under discussion here: Nothing but projection. I am writing this now because I’ve done enough reflection and study to remain convinced that there’s something to it.
Speaking of which, this brings me to the other main reason I keep The Hierophant in my Shadow:
The recognition of my own limitations as contrasted with the sheer responsibility carried by anyone embodying the archetype of The Hierophant.
The Hierophant, in short, is a spiritual teacher, and this means The Hierophant is responsible for those he teaches. Thus, painfully aware of my own blind spots, I have kept myself in check for quite a long time on the supposition that I’m not quite ready to assume such a role. Given the state of the world and simple human nature, I am sure that were I completely and utterly confident in myself, I could go whole-hog and set up a YouTube channel, get a Patreon, market myself as a spiritual teacher, and find plenty of followers. There are millions of people out there looking for that, and I can certainly talk the talk.
But can I walk the walk?
Would it responsible for me to do that?
I haven’t been so sure, and it’s one of the reasons I have so consistently gotten in my own way by doing things like deleting my blogs when they start to pick up steam, or cutting off connections with people when I start making enough friends. Just because I could potentially gain a following doesn’t mean I’m properly prepared to teach well, especially in the most important of all ways: Teaching by example. If I’m gonna do it, I need to do it right.
These are important and noble considerations; however, there’s something else to keep in mind: Many of those considerations are attached to older, outmoded forms of The Hierophant such as the one emanating from the Aeon of Osiris, where The Hierophant catered to something more akin to a subservient “flock:”
However, DuQuette reminds us in Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot that in this day and age, we’re doing things a bit differently:
This card is so rich in traditional and Thelemic symbolism that it is difficult to know where to begin. One thing is immediately obvious—this is not your Aeon-of-Osiris Pope. The whole card is presented as the shrine of the Hierophant of the Aeon of Horus, and this guy has some sex appeal.
Instead of the pale, humorless features of a delicate prelate officiating at some demure worship service, we are thrilled by the bold, confident image of a Babylonian priest-king—an initiator in every sense of the word. He’s not humbly served by docile acolytes like the Osirian Hierophant; instead he is actively supported in his work by the sword-bearing Scarlet Woman, the embodiment of heavenly Venus who rules Taurus. “Let the woman be girt with a sword before me,” The Book of The Law commands. “This woman,” Crowley states, “represents Venus as she now is in this new aeon; no longer the mere vehicle of her male counterpart, but armed and militant.”
pp. 109-110
Yeah…that’s more like it.
Ziegler adds, in Tarot: Mirror of the Soul: Handbook for the Aleister Crowley Tarot:
The Hierophant has united all these elements in himself and has brought them to full expression. He is the Awakened One, the Fulfilled, the Enlightened. He is a true spiritual master, who acts as the intermediary between the human and the divine. He is the spirit made flesh (bull), or the final stage of human development in which the human is united with the godly.
p. 24
The stage of Initiation represented by this card is the attainment of “The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel,” which by now—all doubts aside, from the unfounded ones stemming from personal insecurity to the necessary ones born of due diligence—I’ve long since reached. Lately, my path has been one of engaging in said Knowledge and Conversation, leaning into the doubt, but taking tentative chances here and there in making firm steps as advised by my Daemon. I have not regretted one of these steps yet. It’s time to start trusting them.
I’m bound to make some mistakes and it’s been a good thing that I’ve tried to be more careful about that—especially given the unstable and intoxicated state of mind that once prevailed, as I explored in the opening of this post—but it’s beginning to come into focus that no one is perfect. My work to come is going to interrogate Magi who came before me, including what I consider to be their missteps; likewise, I can’t expect to be entirely bulletproof myself. Like I said in the section above about the 7 of Wands, that’s just part of the territory; it’s all in the game. With that being said, my upcoming work—including the two upcoming posts I’ve made mention of in this one—will begin to reflect the uplifting of this trump from my Shadow and my taking up of the 7 of Wands.
Again, from Ziegler:
His head is surrounded by five rose petals, symbolic of love in its purest, most perfect form. This is the love which can see the other, and give what is really needed at that moment. It may not always be something the other wants or wishes. A true master does not fulfill the disciple’s wishes. Truth is a provocation which can shake us out of the heavy sweet sleep of unconsciousness. Only those who are free of self-seeking motivation can wield the truth in this way, like Jesus whipping the money-lenders out of the temple.
p. 25
With the personal obstacles from my past now addressed and the light of truth cast upon this Shadow, I can set aside the “self-seeking motivation” that once bound me to a path not meant for me. This in turn will allow me to clearly “wield the truth,” and do what I’ve got to do.