All love emotions are expansive, all emotions of hatred are restrictive. Hope and faith are of the nature of love and expand the soul, while fear and doubt and despair are of the nature of hate and contract our souls, making us feel uneasy, and unhappy. The snake stands for contraction, for tightness and indrawing; while men fight and quarrel with one another they always resemble more or less the old snake, each drawing to its side, anxious for self-preservation. Freedom from the snake's anguish can only be had by ceasing from the snake's ways, and learning to obey the law of love, the first dictate of which is self-sacrifice. W. W. ATKINSON

Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning Thomas Troward Chapter 1 — The Creation  Chapter 2 — The Fall Chapter 3 — Israel  Chapter 4 — The Mission of Moses Chapter 5 — The Mission of Jesus  Chapter 6 — The Building of the Temple  Chapter 7 — The Sacred Name  Chapter 8 — The Devil  Chapter 9 — The Law of Liberty  Chapter 10 — The Teaching of Jesus  Chapter 11 — The Forgiveness of Sin  Chapter 12 — Forgiveness, Healing, and the Other World  Chapter 13 — The Divine Giving

Mysteries of John Charles Fillmore

Symbolism of the Tarot Peter D. Ouspensky Now, if we imagine twenty-one cards  disposed in the shape of a triangle, seven cards on each side, a point in the centre of the triangle represented by the zero card, and a square round the triangle  (the square consisting of fifty-six cards, fourteen on each side), we shall have a representation of the relation between God, Man and the Universe, or the relation between the world of ideas,  the consciousness of man and the physical world. The triangle is God (the Trinity) or the world of ideas, or the noumenal world. The point is man's soul. The square is the visible, physical or phenomenal world. Potentially, the point is equal to the square, which means that all the visible world is contained in man's consciousness,  is created in man's soul. And the soul itself is a point having no dimension in the world of the spirit, symbolized by the triangle. It is clear that such an idea could not have originated with ignorant people and clear also  that the Tarot is something more than a pack of playing or fortune-telling cards.

The Power of Silence   Horatio W. Dresser