This is the result of a discussion Andre and I had. I am constantly amazed by the depth of understanding that Andre has in all things magical. But I often get the impression a lot of what he puts out in writing just gets missed, he is writing at such a depth and sometimes the material requires the reader to have significant experience, so I think many miss the utter gold that is in every one of Andres books, I think it is also missed that though seemingly separate they absolutely have a relationship with each other. So, we agreed that I would try and ask some challenging questions to clarify the goal of each Book allowing Andre to expand on the immense depth that is available in each title.
News: Andres latest book on the Elementals is coming soon. You can read about it and get a sneaky look inside here.
PAA: According to the author, why is it necessary to go beyond conventional magick and still keep the tradition, and what are the pitfalls of becoming a subculture instead of a discipline?
André: From the point of view of magic itself I believe enough has been given to keep the magician busy for more time than he or she has in one lifetime. In this regard, my books or other new books wouldn’t be needed. Are they easy to find, however? Certainly not. What most people find is a repetition of the same works in different suits, and as soon as they pierce the first layers of the veil and become competent in magic, a desert opens ahead, with no more guidance. I thought maybe I could fill in that gap for those who would find me by chance. You know, at least I’d be doing my duty. What makes interesting and exceptional works hard to find is that authors tend to follow what is traditional, but they also tend not to understand it. Conventional magic opens the gateways of the visionary Path, but it is conventionally encrypted, and when you notice someone is too scholarly and not creative at all you know they haven’t unlocked the secrets.
A good example of someone who has succeeded, just to show some contrast, is William Blake. To go beyond conventional magic is to go into it, and you cannot go into it if you cannot go beyond it. Thus, you go beyond it and it is in this very act that you also keep the tradition, because the tradition is a visionary one that talks directly to genius. Now, becoming a subculture instead of a discipline. Let’s go into that. I think the best example is probably Thelema. It is full of arrogant kids (some in their sixties) who are orally incontinent and think they represent something by trying to shock people or look superior.
They might have tried a couple of rituals, read something of what the gestures meant, and now they are few and secret and mastering the slaves while taking crap from their parents and living under their umbrella. But it’s okay, Aleister Crowley, the founder of Thelema as we know it, was a free man. It’s enough to like Crowley, act stupid and think that maybe Crowley was also stupid, and that ends all your trouble. Nah, Aleister Crowley devoted his whole life, in every detail, to his work. All these empty shells do is try to discourage genuine seekers. It’s a pit of envy and basic vileness that is the most horrifying tribute to Crowley I’ve ever seen or, worst, the most disgusting revivalism of Egyptian magic. But we are lucky because it isn’t a revivalism of anything, nor a tribute.
nA subculture that lacks discipline is just like dressing in clothes that look military, nobody in their right mind will validate you as part of the army or representing the army. Still, it is worse than this example makes it at first glance. We’d have to see the one dressing in a military look as deluded and thinking he is a general talking down on the soldiers. I love subcultures, I have an association dedicated to subcultures. I just don’t think Thelema as a subculture is a good idea or an idea that has worked. It is a total mess. The true community, however, is strong and it sets the wheels turning not only in Thelema but in a good part of the occult community. So, it must not be seen that I am referring to the community when I say subculture. The subculture has read some books and done drugs and once they even tried a ritual, now they are joker kings and queens. The community labors.
PAA: In what ways does the book ‘The Way of Abrahadabra’ combine intelligence, poetic sensibility, and animistic work to guide the practical magick of the solar path?
Andre: I usually see swift intelligence as gifted with poetic sensibility and poetic sensibility as necessarily touching Animism if it goes deep enough. We can say the intertwining of all three aspects is required for any one of the components to act in a healthy way, or even that an healthy individual, to exercise individuality in the most harmonious and capable manner, must be intelligent, sensible and respect and interact with the inner life of all things. Just like an individual has an intellect, a heart and a structural body, he or she has intelligence, sensibility and an animistic perception as the best qualities to fill those quantities. Individuality, in the true sense of the word, is beyond egoic boundaries and limitations, and it is the solar path. In other words, making use of the mentioned qualities clears the way for the solar path to manifest naturally and without further impediments. In the Way of Abrahadabra I give exercises that require these aspects to work, activate and get tuned among them.
PAA: Additionally, how is this work related to the upcoming book ‘The Path of IPSOS,’ and how does the digital music album fit into the overall project?
Andre: The Path of Ipsos is no longer an upcoming book, as it has been around in the light of day for a couple of years. The Way of Abrahadabra draws a path to Adepthood, but the Path of Ipsos is about experimentations that lead to the Adept’s expertise. In The Way of Abrahadabra the adept becomes a person who has to a considerable extent mastered the main fields of magic and mysticism, but in the Path of Ipsos (both volumes combined) all of it becomes very intuitive and I’d dare say as easy as breathing, because the Adept truly becomes a magical being.
The CD is called The Circles of NOX and connects to the final stage of The Way of Abrahadabra in which the Adept adopts the starry body and pierces the vacant realms to meet the primordial pulsions that stand between the ontological realms and conceptions previous to ontological existence. That is, these cosmic pulsions exist negatively, they exist by not existing, or they influence consciousness and energy by the vacant spaces in consciousness and energy. What the magical imagination of the adept creates when faced with this void is out of measurable proportion, and the music I created or sound waves and vibrations that I have set forward can help the adept by giving him some conceivable but yet formless (sound has no particular shape) background in which to project and identify the so-called negative light. It functions as a fishing net to use in these primordial seas. I have been creating sounds using magical technology and techniques for many years now and it was interesting to finally combine it with a proper book. The digital version of the CD can also be found here https://sombresoniks.bandcamp.com/album/circles-of-nox
PAA: What is the significance of uncovering the Tao of Abrahadabra, and how does the systematic practice of magick encrypted in its letters help unveil it?
Andre: To explain what uncovering the Dao of Abrahadabra means requires at least a very brief explanation of what the Dao is and what Abrahadabra is. The whole book aims at answering the question you just made; therefore, it must be understood that my answer in this interview will be extremely incomplete, but I will try to at least give a clear concept of what this idea might be. n
The Dao is the flow or natural order of the cosmos and of the individual and, most importantly, the way both the natural order of the cosmos and of the individual become one. Aleister Crowley gave it a western name, “True Will”, but it means no more and no less than the Dao. The formula he gave for this connection is Abrahadabra, a formula of 11 letters. In turn, Aleister Crowley considered the number 11, as expressed in Abrahadabra, to be the sum of 5 (five identical letters) with 6 (six diverse letters). 5 is the pentagram, the microcosm and the natural order of the individual, and 6 the hexagram, the macrocosm and the natural order of the cosmos. Via gematria the number is 418, which is 22 (the number of paths in the Tree of Life made of the Hebrew cosmic letters, and of the Major Arcana in the Tarot) multiplied by 19 (The Sun), it is the number of divine manifestation, the number of the solar path in its plenitude and its connection with Abraxas (Father Sun) becomes more or less obvious. 418 illustrates also the four elements combining into a quintessence by virtue of the eight, the eight symbolizing the balance of opposite forces in each of the four and therefore the force of redemption.
The Ancient Egyptian gods evoked by this formula are Amoun, Thoth, Isis, Horus and Osiris, and they, together, illustrate the central and unmolested essence of all cycles. ABR represents unity, polarity, and the matrix of time and space, while the remaining letters form two quadripolar magnets, conjunctions that symbolize love and light. Light generates the quality of living and love the quantity of life. Some of the things I mentioned are part of the theory in The Way of Abrahadabra, and other elements I teach through practical outcomes alone, but nothing is left out.
What becomes very clear in the book, intellectually speaking, is that the formula Abrahadabra contains what the west calls the Holy Spirit and the east calls Dao, and the manifestation of the unmanifest in the sensible being. Five magical tools are part of this formula: the Crown or magical cap (A), the Wand (B), the Cup (D), the Sword (H), and the Rosy Cross or Pentacle (R). The crown is the dominion of mind over the witnessed phenomena; the wand is self-consciousness; the cup is awareness of vacancy; the Sword unites individual and cosmic willpower; the rosy cross is the union of individual and cosmic consciousness.
They form a sequence, first the candidate becomes aware of the power of his perception, then of the power of his perception over his personality, which means the candidate becomes aware of his dominion over desire. When the candidate finally becomes aware of his dominion over perception itself, he is in the place of the vacant mind. Now the candidate not only is able to master his perception and desires, but in the vacant mind he taps into something beyond desire and even beyond perception, the innermost will. The candidate becomes the adept, through this cosmic and personal will he masters the fates. Free of them, the adept now harbors Divine Providence itself, the cosmos in movement. It is also important to understand that 418 is the sum of all integers between 13 and 31, all articulations between the spirit and the conjunction of mind, soul and body, in other words, the creative power of the divine.
PAA: Here is the next set of questions – in relation to The Inner Gateways of Lam: What is the Maatian gnosis and how does André Consciência act as a keyholder to it?
Andre: Ma’atian Gnosis is gnosis (spiritual knowledge) on the topic of Ma’at. Well, more exactly on the topic of the Aeon of Maat probably. The Aeon of Maat is currently about the future currents informing the present towards balance, truth and Justice, and the transplutonian influence on Earth (influence from the spheres beyond Pluto, outside our solar system) to keep it as brief as possible. The question regarding our solar system is usually not viewed correctly, what we consider transplutonian currents are often based on or entirely of the nature of Uranus or Neptune. Probably why it was said I’m a keyholder to Ma’atian Gnosis is connected with my two volumes of the Path of Ipsos and maybe some of my work in The Horus Maat Lodge. But I can not affirm or deny it. That is for others to tell, not me.
PAA: How does The Inner Gateways of LAM (Esoteric Pillars) differ from his previous work, Stellar Magic, and how does it stand on its own?
Andre: A guide to Stellar Magic was written before The Inner Gateways, but the latter got published much earlier. A Guide to Stellar Magic is in the process of getting published by Falcon Books Publishing, but it still has A Guide to The Elementals and A Guide to Sphere Quabbalah to be published before. These books were written a couple of years ago. The Inner Gateways and Stellar Magic are two completely different animals. They are not even of the same species. Stellar Magic explores magic in astrology throughout the ages, then in Franz Bardon, exposing many hidden keys, then in my own books, and finally exposing my own system of astrological magic. I was guided by one of the 360 Heads of the Zone Girdling the Earth all the way. The Inner Gateways of LAM is almost entirely mystical, it is a yogic book based on alien knowledge if we want to be honest. It tries to translate this knowledge into recognizable forms of yoga. You can read one or the other and there is no need to read both. Stellar Magic got me on the path to writing the Inner Gateways but that’s not the business of the reader. The Inner Gateways of LAM connects more strongly with the Path of Ipsos.
PAA: How does your initiation into the Vodun of Haiti and knowledge of Kashmir Shaivism influence this work?
Andre: Some in Haiti might feel offended that it is said I have been initiated in the Vodun of Haiti and that is understandable, for I have never been to Haiti and the animism of the land plays an important role. The same can be said of New Orleans in New Orleans Voodoo. However, I have been initiated by someone who was initiated by a Vodouisant of Haiti and there is, in this sense, a direct lineage between vodouisants that springs from Haiti. This influences the book as much as Michael Bertiaux and his Gnostic Voudon, for before having been initiated to the Vodun of Haiti I found Michael Bertiaux’s methods to be quite abstract. I suppose we think of the Lwa as quite alien but in Haiti the Lwa were very much tutelary figures of the land, connecting the land to the cosmos at large. Michael Bertiaux forms a system that bridges Masonic knowledge with Haitian Vodun and it aims at transplutonian magic.
In so doing, he believes he is reconstructing a bridge to the spiritual heritage of Atlantean Magic, which I believe is a sort of pre-diluvian initiatic tradition that was passed on to ancient cultures up to today. The Vodun of Haiti as it stands was more important to me in practice than, say, the Gnostic Voudun Workbook by Michael Bertiaux in the se sense that through the means coming from Haitian tradition I could explore the topics and methods of Michael with direct tutelage from the Lwa. This informs a good deal of the system that came to be The Inner Gateways of LAM (Esoteric Pillars). Kashmir Shaivism, on the other hand, gave me an important sense of how to structure an ontological inner system that was so existential that it could tap into completely alien forms of perception, alien to our sense of the external world. In the end, exploring the alien is much about exploring what we are beyond all that we know. Kashmir Shaivism played a role Kabbalah could not, for our western kabbalah is too basic in the context of ontology and I needed a labyrinth that could dissolve the candidate into the greater picture. It must, however, be understood that I am but a beginner in both traditions: Haitian Vodun and Kashmir Shaivism. Still, they served as powerful tools to devise what I consider to be a powerful system.
PAA: What is the Grimoire of Zal by Sean Woodward, and how does it relate to André Consciência’s practices?
Andre: What is the Grimoire of Zal I think remains something of a mystery even after reading it and even practicing it. This is due to the mysterious nature of the Grimoire itself. In other words, it is not easy to explain and depends a lot, again, on the gnosis derived from the work. It starts with Sean Woodward venturing into New Orleans and making contact with the Lwa, then with Louis Martinié, a dear brother and elder at The Horus Maat Lodge, in which Sean also played an important role. Louis is known for the Bate Cabal and Black Moon Publishing as well as from his own books and as an archivist of very important occult documents. Many travel to him seeking these documents. He is also an international drummer and a priest in the New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple. Through Martinié, Sean finds a paper of The Equinox that is important to the unveiling of the rest of the book and that sets him on a quest to understand Zal. What Zal is, is a multitude of formulas and also an entity from distant worlds that travels to our own and teaches in the Tibetan Plateau at ancient times, connecting with many aspects of our root culture, including Ancient Egyptian Tradition, all the way to Bon-Po, etc. The Grimoire speaks of methods of magical and Mystical training to prepare us to connect with Zal and of methods of Zal himself. During the practice of this book I found essential information that needed some expression in The Inner Gateways of LAM. However, I am not to speak directly about it. Also, although Sean never mentions it, it should be interesting to point out that in Hebrew, Zal means “may his memory be a blessing”.
PAA: How do you provide blueprints for inner-space tech in his book, and what kind of dedication is required to integrate these practices into one’s life path?
Andre: These blue-prints for inner-space technology, as The Temple of Babalon-Choronzon called it, I like to call yogas. Yogas, in the sense that we bind our senses, inner or outer, to direct our perception to deeper inward regions. Which senses or faculties we bind and in which region, connection and order, dictates what is unlocked in turn, the way our inner programming or software goes in terms of our philosophy of life and of our inner realities. Much of the book works with what can be called consciousness transference and depth points and multi-tasking in these disciplines. The dedication to follow The Inner Gateways of LAM (Esoteric Pillars) to its ultimate level is extreme, and I doubt anyone will follow that has not gone through The Way of Abrahadabra and the Path of Ipsos in practice. Or, say, books like Initiation Into Hermetics by Franz Bardon. This is because to face the kind of dedication required in a relaxed and easy manner one has to be previously trained. If relaxation cannot happen and we cannot imagine the practices to be easy, we have already failed. The concepts in The Inner Gateways of LAM appear to be complex, the practices appear to be simple, but it is because of their simplicity that previous training is required to make them work, because they need one to fully dive in and train in depth.
PAA: In what ways does this book build upon the teachings of the Path of Ipsos and the Way of Abrahadabra?
Andre: The Inner Gateways of Lam builds upon The Way of Abrahadabra and The Path of IPSOS indirectly, meaning that one can simply acquire The Inner Gateways and start from there if the person feels up to it. However, The Way of Abrahadabra provides the necessary faculties and disciplines to face The Inner Gateways without discomfort, and if you add to it The Path of Ipsos, you will be at home. Particularly, The Path of Ipsos ends with practices regarding The Wordless Aeon and the Ancient Egyptian pantheon called the Ogdoad. It will be seen that these two topics make the cornerstone of The Inner Gateways of LAM, therefore I find the Path of Ipsos is quite important as an initiation that opens the way to the currents introduced in The Inner Gateways. The Inner Gateways also touches on some themes of A Guide to Stellar Magic (coming soon), and although I said they are animals of different species, the reader might find some pieces of the puzzle complete when reading A Guide to Stellar Magic.
nPAA: How do the yogic and mystical visualization techniques provided in the book help guide practitioners through the Choronzonic noise that is associated with the Way of Abrahadabra?
Andre: I am unsure if The Way of Abrahadabra can be truly associated with “Choronzonic noise”, an eloquent expression used by the High Priest Bob-Ra-Inanna to describe The Inner Gateways of LAM. The exact sentence states that the practitioner is guided through dense fields of Choronzonic noise that ooze out of the eggshell once cracked. This egg that is cracked he seems to be stating is the egg-regore of cultus arising from LAM, the praeterhuman intelligence that has been communicating streams of esoteric knowledge to the West (and East, under a different guise) and that I find to be a supercomputer in the sense that it expands and develops our neurocircuits. Having that in mind, how do the yogic and mystical visualization practices in the book help guide practitioners through the emissions bursting from the opening in this egg? Simply put, they will have the practitioner build circuits that operate with sufficient similarity to LAM, so that LAM itself or himself can construct the remaining pathways.
PAA: What is the connection between the esoteric supercomputer known as LAM and the Way of Abraadraba?
nAndre: The connection is in the formula of Abrahadabra. Abrahadabra is considered to be the word of the Aeon by Aleister Crowley. This word first appears in The Book of the Law in 1904, the central text of Thelema. Crowley was in Cairo, Egypt, and performing an evocation. Jupiter was in Leo and Saturn in Aquarius, the signs of a new age. The Book of the Law or Liber Al vel Legis was a work of automatic writing dictated by a being named Aiwass. On one of its pages, there is a trace that trespasses several lines and exactly eleven letters. If you sum these letters in Hebrew gematria you get the number of the cosmic letter ShT, which is the letter of the Central Sun as Seth is the Secret Sun. If one removes all duplicate letters, 93 is the result, which is the number of Thelema (purity of will), Agape (universal love) and of Aiwass or Aiwaz.
However, although Crowley did not know it and most do not know it still, this Indo-European expression means forever and always, which contradicts the impression that we are speaking of a specific or limited time in the limited history of mankind. We are approaching an eternal principle. So, this is quite a crossroad, beyond the Ancient Egyptian pantheon we have seen before evoked by Abrahadabra, we have Set, who is veiled, like the fire is veiled by the light. However, how do we get to the bottom? Through LAM. LAM appears first in an exhibition by Aleister Crowley and then the painting is published in his commentary to The Voice of Silence by Blavatsky. LAM is the Tibetan word for Way and for Path. It was intentional that The Way of Abrahadabra, The Path of Ipsos and The Inner Gateways of LAM all include the Tao or Dao, which means Way, Path, etc. The priests of Ancient Egypt used the word LAM as a title for the gods, meaning He who Goeth, and the Buddhists, Treader of the Path. Aiwass is a LAM, or, as an instructor, one among the LAMs, for LAM is the inner teacher and the secret form of consciousness who is the babe in the egg of the void. He creates as he speaks (the Aramaic translation of abrahadabra), that is, he speaks not words but brings forth existence and action, he goes forth as the God of Silence and the Child Horus. Interesting that the Child defeats Set after Set removes one eye from him, and more interesting even is that Horus gets Seth pregnant by tricking Seth into eating his sperm.
I am sure many readers are lost by now, however what this means is that Seth, who is the central fire hidden by the light can only be unveiled to Horus when he blinds Horus in one eye, that is, he can only be unveiled through nondualism. But once nondualism sets in, Seth is no more as there is nothing secret or veiled nor a secret or veiled Sun, all that remains of Seth is the natural order of all things, the Dao, the one who goes forth effortlessly. In terms of planetary magic and according to Ancient Egypt, the Earth has its solar return when the Sun enters Leo, and at this time the Central Sun is also indicated, it is Sirius.
Now, Sirius is Isis, the universe in itself and its power of gestation and materialization, the egg womb of Horus, and as a cosmic womb, she includes Sirius A (Horus) and Sirius B (Seth), because nondualism can only be explained by dualistic complementary elements and reconciliation of opposites. ISIS is the secret formula I give in the Way of Abrahadabra to solve its ultimate secret and the formula of the Rosy Cross. It is also one of the most touched subjects in The Inner Gateways of LAM and I’d dare say it is likewise the key that solves its puzzle in the end. It is obvious to me the supercomputer itself is at play in these books. The Inner Gateways of LAM is the Child that comes to avenge any conflicting ideas left in The Way of Abrahadabra and The Path of Ipsos and yet, the three are computings of the same machine.
PAA: How does André Consciência’s inner temple architecture of unique circuits help practitioners know and become LAM, and how does this relate to the Way of Abrahadabra?
Andre: A very brief answer would be: by teaching the practitioner to create as he or she speaks. That is the actual meaning of Abrahadabra, and in The Inner Gateways of LAM it comes to a final conclusion with the 24 hearts in the crown of LAM. These 24 hearts coincide with the 24 tatwas and the adept is taught to arrange them as a magical grammar. It should not be forgotten, however, that in the sequence, there is a book between The Way of Abrahadabra and The Inner Gateways of LAM, that book is The Path of Ipsos and between its two volumes constitutes around 500 pages.
PAA: How do the complex efforts and intense dedication required to integrate the practices in the book into one’s life path align with the teachings of the Path of Ipsos and the Way of Abrahadabra?
Andre: The Way of Abrahadabra is already a herculean effort, but it is well sequenced I would say, so that the efforts give fruits and this encourages the practitioner to continue. The Path of IPSOS is the playground in which all that was learned in The Way of Abrahadabra will be put into practice in the wildest ways. When one gets to The Inner Gateways, if starting from the previous volumes, the intensity, creativity and depth that has been gained will fortify all teachings. What seems to be impossible to someone without previous training will just put a smile on the face of the trained Adept.
PAA: Now we can move on to The Dragon Tarot. What inspired the creation of “The Dragon Tarot: The Inner Circle and The Triangle”?
Andre: I was co-directing a surrealist and dadaist play with Manuel Almeida e Sousa, the author of that same play whose name was Intraquilidade, meaning something like restlessness. It was a solo show in which the actress Eunice Correia stood alone on the stage, and me and Manuel were the directors and technicians, he with the light, I with sound.
The idea of the tarot guided the acts and scenes in the play and I and Manuel found ourselves talking about freemasonry and the tarot in general. He had several decks published in his own underground publishing house and association Mandragora, and said he saw some ugly Tarot selling at one of our major international mainstream stores and thought: why not sell outside the country (Portugal)? But he felt it needed a book that would make his new Tarot into a system of initiation and magical and mystical operations. But, at once, he didn’t know how to write in English and he felt he was too old to have the patience to create the system. The deck cards were The Dragon Tarot as you can see in the book, based on a Portuguese traditional deck that had dragons as figures, created in the time of the discoveries when the Portuguese culture and the eastern culture started mingling, both with their dragon traditions. Dragons have been an interest of mine since my early teenage years. In my childhood I had visions or memories that used European Dragons to transmit their power and quality, and in my early teenage years I started contacting a being of light that adopted the shape of a Chinese Dragon.
Yes, I am strange like that hah. But, I was still not about to get my hands dirty with more work when I was already quite busy. That is when Manuel told me that he had stopped making readings ten years ago or so. Why? I asked. He told me that he was very good with readings and once he foretold the client would die that day. That day, the client, a friend of his, got into an accident and died. He felt appalled and traumatized and stopped reading the Tarot, although he continued to create Tarot decks as an artist. This shone a light on me. Yes… Tarot is a potent thing and its use is already a magical operation. Generally, Tarot readers do not understand this. I told Manuel that I would write him that book if he accepted and devised that system. I started right away.
PAA: How does the book describe the process of selecting cards in this tarot deck?
Andre: The reader self-initiates into every card, intellectually, emotionally and physically. When the reader casts the cards, he already knows them from the inside out, he has to have the intelligence to choose the right cards to conjure in himself the qualities that will conjoin into the desired future. The cards are not chosen randomly. When he is quite good at this, he can start conjuring for others.
PAA: What is the role of the conjurer in the creation of the Dragon Tarot deck?
The cards are imbued with fluid condensers and with elementaries that are based on the symbolism of the cards. To make them into that is the work of the conjurer, who has already gone through all the initiations.
PAA: Can you describe the significance of the use of menstrual blood or semen in the creation of the deck?
Andre: Semen and menstrual blood are the royal bodily fluids so to speak. The semen is similar to gold in alchemy and blood stands right behind it, yet the menstrual blood is not only blood but a blood that has been fertilized and is astrally rich. They are fluid condensers in which the conjuror can lodge his elementaries and keep them bound to himself.
PAA: How does the book suggest that the Dragon Tarot can be used as a magickal instrument?
Andre: When I was in my late teenage years they created this game called Magic The Gathering (I heard it developed or regressed into Pokemon). The idea is that the cards are beings and powers you conjure to face an opponent (the other player). Each card does its thing and has its specialty. It seemed revolutionary at the time, yet the game is only reproducing what the tarot cards and other oracles are supposed to do since times immemorial if we are speaking of arcane subjects. The conjuror is initiated into the mysteries of the cards, creates the elementary, and further on, he learns to conjure cosmic entities through the cards that are not his own creation but natural or spiritual entities. When he casts the cards, he is playing with all of this.
PAA: Can you explain the symbolism and meaning behind the images used in the Dragon Tarot deck?
Andre: I think I cannot describe the symbolism of the cards here, it would require at least as many pages as there are cards. But rest assured the symbolism of each card is well explored in the book theoretically, and practically by how we can unblock the powers of the symbols that are present. What I can tell is that Manuel Almeida Sousa is a true Adept and one with eyes to see will witness it in the cards. I was lucky enough to work with Manuel’s most hermetic deck. In old times, many adepts did not write occult books, which would easily get them persecuted. They made specific pentacles and built images instead that encoded esoteric knowledge. In so doing, they proved to have a better understanding than most occult authors of literature, for to teach the mysteries in images one has to have an understanding of them that is not only theoretical but intuitive and visionary: it requires true experience. Manuel is an Adept of that skill.
PAA: How does the book suggest that the use of the Dragon Tarot can lead to personal and universal transformation?
Andre: It can lead to personal transformation in that the personality becomes more universal by unblocking itself and expanding. Each card, before anything else, contains life and personality transformations that are required in order to move on. Every card, then, has psychological work attached to it. Each card also has a mystical practice and a magical practice associated. These must be mastered before any casting takes place.
PAA: What is the significance of the Tree of Life in the Dragon Tarot?
Andre: The Tarot cards describe, through the major arcana, the paths between the spheres in the tree of life, that is: they create the neurocircuits if we want scientific terminology, that allows the spheres to operate in one’s own microcosm. In turn, this will allow the magician the required preparation to work with the spheres in the macrocosm. The cards, in the minor arcana, also contain the spheres of the tree of life in each of the four elements: the whole structure of elemental knowledge, perception, and action. Then, working with the Tarot, I tried to make sure of that, is the most complete way of initiation.
PAA: How does the Dragon Tarot differ from other tarot decks?
Andre: The cards explore a dragon tradition that is transversal. That is, they capture the mythopoetic and magical meaning of dragons throughout almost all cultures. The minor arcana have a slightly different system than the majority of decks. It was a system that was unique to Portugal and that started later being adopted by Japan, Java, Indonesia, and Brazil.
PAA: How does the book address potential concerns or criticisms of using the Dragon Tarot in divination or spiritual practice?
Andre: By highlighting the power of the cards to the one reading them and also to the client. Casting the cards is forcefully causing changes to occur. This magic is in line with the magic of Mars and must never be left to chance. Tarot means Route of Wisdom, and the cards must be handled by the wise alone.
PAA: How does this book link to or connect to the author’s previous and subsequent work?
André: This book stands on its own. However, people coming from my other books will arrive at it quite prepared. Most importantly, anyone that goes through all steps in The Dragon Tarot will be prepared for all my other books, no matter how advanced. The Way of Abrahadabra, Through the Soul Mirror to the Sphere of the Sun, and the Dragon Tarot are books that take the reader from a beginner stage to full adepthood.
