There are several symbols for Tifareeth, many of them the cross, for the cross typically has two root connections:
- Connection to sacrifice
- Connection to the Sun
We’ve talked about how the planetary aspect of Tifareth is the sun, that is is at the core of the tree as the sun is to the solar system, etc, so this second aspect should be pretty clear (ask for more if it’s not!).
The statement that sacrifice is one of the mysteries of Tifareth is but a statement. Have you explored yet that feeling about Tifareth? That sensation of sacrifice? What does that mean to you (sacrifice, that is)? What types of relationship does it describe and affect?
Yet this is not a lesson about crosses and their relatively obvious association with Tifareth, this is on the truncated pyramid and the lamen.
Lamen
The lamen is an amulet, typically connected with the sun (though not necessarily so), worn in the centre of the chest, over the heart (centre of our body). It can be a store house of energy, a statement of the essence of the wearer in symbolic form, a representation of the wearer’s connection to the Source, the Crown, to Kether.
Truncated Pyramind
If we were to look at the tree as a pyramid instead of a tree, beginning from the wide bottom base, all the Things, of Malkuth and heading to the pure clear, point of Kether, we would see the progression up the tree as a narrowing of the pyramid. As the unnecessary and the separation of things gets stripped away, as we create more conjunction and connection between aspects of ourselves and of the tree, the pyramid narrows, until, at the very top, we have become so pure, so unified within ourselves that we unify with the singularity that is the Allness.
If were to look at the tree this way, then we are about halfway up the pyramid, so the pyramid would not yet be at a point, it would be truncated. Making it, perhaps, an altar for our ego in order for us to continue to reach up.