V

Sins and Virtues: Wisdom

In the essay Sins and Virtues, I organize a collection of sins and virtues upon a numerological grid with a spine of contrast between the extreme of Sins and the between moderation of Virtues:

This essay will focus on the Virtue of Wisdom, which, through a process of elimination, made it onto the aforementioned chart. Keep in mind though, that these essays are not meant to be the last word on virtues, I leave that up to the philosophers among us who have already written volumes and volumes of wisdom concerning these ideas. Instead, these essays are only meant to show how these concepts fit, within the parameters of the theoretical model of existence being put forth everywhere on this site. If the other ideas put forth elsewhere on this site have not already been read and understood, they probably should be, before reading any of these Virtue essays.

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Wisdom

In the Sins and Virtues chart, Wisdom is placed with the number 9, the number of The Hermit in most tarot decks. As mentioned in the essay on Prudence, when people consider prudence to be synonymous with wisdom, they are occasionally inclined to change the title of The Hermit to that of Prudence, so that this fourth of Cardinal Virtues is represented along with the other three of Fortitude, Justice and Temperance. But what is wisdom really? And does it make any more sense for a 9 to represent wisdom, when viewed in the manner presented here, as one half of a positive/negative pair, or one quarter of a four part spectrum of possibilities along a spine of opposites?

In addition to the vertical spectrum of possibilities illustrated with the Sins and Virtues chart, each number also has an equidistant partner across the midpoint of the number line. Across from Wisdom is Awareness. As a more directly related partner to the idea of Wisdom, I might have also chosen the word Intelligence. I use Awareness because it seemed to fit better with the other ideas being presented vertically at the number 1. But certainly, people who are aware are the ones most likely to exhibit elevated levels of intelligence. But intelligence and wisdom are nothing without a body of knowledge to inform and transform our form... within and without.

Knowledge is information. And by information I mean... that which IN-FORMS us... or that which forms our insides, our minds. We are informed by that which we experience. What we experience is filtered through the perceptual capabilities of our awareness, or intelligence, to inform us in ways that alter and/or add to our body of knowledge. Below is a chart describing how we might map out this process, and come to view Intelligence and Wisdom as partners in a cause and effect path from experience to understanding.

Our body of knowledge is built, brick by brick, by acquired facts - or what pass for facts in our time. A body of knowledge, once built, becomes a source of truth - or what passes for truth in our time. Fact and Truth are relative, and dependent upon context or an established reference frame from which to make judgments about relative statements. With a change in context, there is a change in experience. With a new experience comes a new fact. With a new fact comes a new truth. Facts become fact by way of belief. Truth becomes truth by way of faith. The amount of reason put forth to establish belief in a fact can vary greatly (see Imagine a Reason to Believe elsewhere on this site). The stronger our belief in facts, the greater our faith in having captured some truth. Whether someone exclaims "that's a fact" or pronounces "that's what I believe" makes no difference, these are the building blocks of our body of knowledge.

Once a body of knowledge has been built, or even as it is being built, it is the job of Wisdom to put that knowledge to good use in the service of better understanding our form, inside and out. Like its equidistant partner, intelligence, wisdom is a perceptual capacity that filters, except that instead of filtering experience, wisdom filters knowledge. Thus, whereas intelligence IN-forms us, wisdom TRANS-forms us, by turning knowledge, gained through experience, into understanding. Intelligence learns. Wisdom teaches. Experience can be literal encounters with an external reality, or ephemeral encounters with an internal reality. Whatever we solidify as a fact or belief will become a part of knowledge, to be used by wisdom in transforming our understanding of our Self, inside and out.

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The Function of Knowledge

Knowledge is Fact-Belief augmented to Truth-Faith. Fact-Belief and Truth-Faith represent the substance, or guts, of our body of knowledge. In this way, the mapping of the path from Intelligence filtering Experience into Knowledge, to Wisdom filtering Knowledge into Understanding resembles the same path as the Significant Signature of Nature described elsewhere on this site. Thus, Fact-Belief and Truth-Faith become the 4/6 metaphorical guts of our body, while InFormation and TransFormation become the 3/7 metaphorical skin of our body - its form. Intelligence and Wisdom are then the 2/8 metaphorical intake and exhaust valves of our Cosmic Engine, through which flow the 1/9 metaphorical fuel of Experience, which is exhausted back out as Understanding, and thereby contributes to the extent of our sphere of influence, or personal reference frame.

Experience passes through us, or is consumed by us. It makes no difference, all is relative (see Bead on String idea elsewhere on this site). People talk about having a thirst for knowledge. Such is the idea here, that experience - of whatever kind - is drawn in, or consumed... and like digested food, converted into vitamin-rich knowledge, to be used by our faculties of wisdom toward understanding the Self. So... even though we are only talking about the influence of two numbers - or tarot cards - the relationship between them can be described in such a way as to resemble a complete number line. In this way we see how the form of the Significant Signature of Nature described elsewhere on this site, is in fact fractal! Technically all equidistant numbers could be described in this fractal, number line within a number line way, although in some cases finding adequate vocabulary can be challenging. At least here it was possible to demonstrate this amazing form.

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What's Wrong?

The chart above uses the same pattern seen in the number line as a whole, to describe the relationship between two isolated numbers of that number line. In this way we demonstrate the fractal nature of this important pattern. But whereas the chart above resembled a full number line in its description of just two numbers, we must also observe the positive nature of the path of Intelligence to Wisdom, and in doing so not be so neglectful as to miss the equal potential for the existence of a more negative path, between the sins of Ingorance and Confusion.

When Experience InForms us, we acquire the relative Facts of Knowledge. But what happens when we are mis-informed? When our Ignorance fails to filter experience properly, we acquire Fiction, not Fact, which leads to the Fabrication of fallacy, not Knowledge, which builds to Lies, not Truth, which the sin of Confusion turns into chaos and MisUnderstanding, rather than order and Understanding.

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Icons of Tarot

Just about everyone agrees that The Magician and The Hermit represent aspects of a thinking mind engaged in thought. Some will even differentiate the two by associating words like intelligence with The Magician and wisdom with The Hermit. I agree. The Magician is clever and learns fast. The Hermit is circumspect and teaches with prudence. By viewing the Major Trumps of tarot as two rows of 9, this equidistant relationship becomes ever more clear. And, likewise, where the reluctance of many to view the second 9 cards of the Major Trumps as a deteriorate progression of ideas, The Numerical Tarot uses these cards to illustrate the negative path between the sins of Ingorance and Confusion. On this path, The Wheel of a traditional deck represents the Happenstance of fate or random acts upon our psyche. The Hanged Man represents the mis-InFormed - or mal-formed - condition that results from the ignorant filtering of Happenstance. Death then, represents the weakness of foundation that results from putting stock into Fiction-Delusion rather than Fact-Belief. The Devil represents a deterioration to Lies-Denial rather than Truth-Faith. The Tower represents the disasters that follow from such a path, where the sin of Confusion results in the Mis-Understanding, chaos or even death of the Moon card.

The continuity of a negative path is much more evident within The Numerical Tarot deck, where all the icons from 10 thru 18 are illustrated in their most life threatening, sinful aspects.