Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
Tarot Key Meditation
Take a single Major Arcana ‘Key’ as a focus for sustained contemplation — observing and (in B.O.T.A. practice) hand-colouring its image — so its symbols and the spiritual principle they encode are deliberately impressed upon the subconscious.
Tarot Key meditation: Take one Key. Observe it in fixed order, naming every figure, colour, number and symbol. Read its principle (letter, number, idea), then return to the image. Colour the uncoloured Key slowly by hand — the colouring is the meditation. Contemplate it, close the eyes and let it reappear inwardly, note what arises, recall it before sleep. Stay with one Key for a week or two. Depth over coverage.
What it is
Paul Foster Case (1884-1954), founder of the Builders of the Adytum (B.O.T.A.), taught that each of the 22 Major Arcana — which he called the “Keys” — is a precisely constructed picture-symbol of a cosmic principle, and that the central work of the aspirant is to take one Key at a time as the focus of meditation until its meaning is built into one’s own mind.
This is the core method of his whole system. Two moves define it: first, sustained, orderly observation of the Key’s every detail; second, in B.O.T.A.’s signature practice, colouring the black-and-white Key by hand as a slow, meditative act.
Case was adamant that students must obtain the deck uncoloured and colour it themselves, because the labour of attention is the point. For Case “making the TAROT KEYS a part of yourself is one of the most practical secrets of all occultism. the necessary foundation for all advanced Tarot practice.” Read plainly, it is a disciplined image-contemplation that uses focused attention (and the hands) to impress a chosen symbol and its principle deep into the subconscious.
The Method
A faithful working sequence drawn from Case and B.O.T.A. instruction:
- Take one Key only. Choose a single Major Arcana Key and stay with it for a week or two before moving on — depth, not coverage.
- Observe in fixed order. Look at the Key systematically — Case has the student go over the card in a set sequence (top to bottom, right to left), naming each figure, colour, number and symbol in turn, so attention is thorough rather than wandering. “The attention you must give impresses their patterns upon the cells of your brain — builds the details of the designs into your consciousness.”
- Read and re-read the principle. Study Case’s text for that Key — its Hebrew letter, number, and the idea it embodies — then return to the image holding that meaning.
- Colour the Key by hand (the B.O.T.A. step). Working from the prescribed colour scales, slowly colour the uncoloured Key. The unhurried manual act is itself the meditation: it forces prolonged, loving attention on every detail and binds the symbol to you personally.
- Contemplate, then let it settle. With the (coloured) Key before you, rest attention on it quietly; close the eyes and let the image reappear inwardly; allow associations and feelings to surface without forcing.
- Note impressions. Record any feelings, images or insights that arise — the Atlas is where the meaning consolidates.
- Carry it into sleep / daily recall. Case encourages making the Keys “a part of yourself”: recall the image during the day and before sleep so the subconscious keeps working on it. (Sourcing note: a faithful synthesis of Case’s meditation-on-the-Keys instruction and B.O.T.A.’s colour-your-own-deck practice; exact colour attributions and weekly schedules are set out in the B.O.T.A. lessons.)
Source & Lineage
Case set out the method in The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages (1947) and across the B.O.T.A. correspondence lessons he wrote from the 1920s on; the B.O.T.A. deck (drawn with Jessie Burns Parke) was deliberately issued uncoloured for the colouring practice.
Case drew on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Tarot-Qabalah symbolism (the Major Arcana mapped to the 22 paths of the Tree of Life and the Hebrew letters), refining it into a graded self-study course.
The work descends through B.O.T.A. (continued by Ann Davies) and influenced later Tarot-as-meditation teachers. → (Paul Foster Case node, case paul foster); related lineage: Golden Dawn, Gareth Knight, Dion Fortune.
Common refinements
Skimming many Keys. The method is one Key, deeply, over time — racing through the deck defeats it.
- Passive glancing. Power is in active, ordered observation — name every detail; don’t just gaze.
- Buying a pre-coloured deck / rushing the colouring. Case insists on colouring it yourself, slowly; the labour is the meditation, not a chore to skip.
- No record. Write down impressions; that is where insight consolidates.
- Forcing meaning. Observe and let associations rise; strained interpretation blocks the receptive phase.