“SUMMARY OF THE QUESTIONS HITHERTO DISCUSSED” [AND BEGGED]

On page ten of BOT, Crowley sums up the points he alleges to have made so far in the book. It is not quite a masterpiece, but it is certainly an exercise in begging the question(s):

1. The origin of the Tarot is quite irrelevant, even if it were certain, It must stand or fall as a system on its own merits.

Repeatedly, Crowley begs the question of Tarot’s origin (and more particularly the relevance of Tarot history to his theory), saying it is obscure: “The origin of this pack of cards is very obscure”—and disputed: “There is here no need to enter into any discussion of these disputed points”. Common minds often fall for the trick Crowley employs here, of suggesting disputed points (especially about obscure matters) are battlefields of equally valid opinion, and so of dubious value in establishing something relevant and true. This perception is even more popularly held in our time, when “debate” is understood to be a contest to see who can scream his point the loudest and most abusively. Yet, the question of what Tarot was, what it was originally designed to be, and how it came to be what it did by the 1940s, hovers over Crowley’s entire argument and “theory” of Tarot.

This is amply demonstrated by his next assertion:

2. [Tarot] is beyond doubt a deliberate attempt to represent, in pictorial form, the doctrines of the Qabalah.

Perhaps so. But the question Crowley begs is when exactly did this deliberate attempt begin? He implies the structure and the symbolism of Tarot have been Qabalistic since the beginning of their recorded existence. For example: “But the Tarot certainly existed, in what may be called the classical form, as early as the fourteenth century”. This classical form was allegedly recognizable as Qabalistic right from that time, needing only an initiated viewer to see it that way. Crowley says that came in the person of Eliphas Lévi who “seems to have understood that the Tarot was actually a pictorial form of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, which is the basis of the whole Qabalah”.

Crowley of course fails to mention to us, having dismissed the value of studying Tarot history, that Lévi was mainly initiated into an extant literary tradition which asserted the Qabalistic nature of Tarot, a tradition that was established in 1781, by two French Freemasons. Their essays introduced the ideas that Lévi and Crowley, and other occultists, have since developed about Tarot and its supposedly deep but obscure Qabalistic heritage.

Crowley, hoping to get the reader very much invested in a questionable tree so as to avoid consideration and discussion of the question-begging forest, now tries the “Wheel of Fortune” argument:

3. The evidence for this is very much like the evidence brought forward by a person doing a crossword puzzle. He knows from the "Across" clues that his word is "SCRUN blank H"; so it is certain, beyond error, that the blank must be a "C".

Here Crowley’s error (and attempted trick) in argument is to beg an erroneous analogy between the evidence offered and the answer it implies in his word puzzle, and that offered and implied by Tarot’s Qabalistic evidence.

In fact, it is quite reasonable to say that there is no puzzle at all regarding the origin of Tarot’s Qabalistic nature, which means the correct analogy would be to say the word should be spelled out in full—SCRUNCH—which is precisely what Crowley is doing with a lot of the relevant evidence. This is an important point—Crowley himself is making, and is in need of, the “C” to go missing. He needs there to be both mystery to attract us, which would not be as likely if the mundane facts were considered, and some kind of blank to be miraculously filled in, by Aiwass of course.

4. These attributions are in one sense a conventional, symbolic map; such could be invented by some person or persons of great artistic imagination and ingenuity combined with almost unthinkably great scholarship and philosophical clarity.

Now, here Crowley prepares a kind of argument much loved by people such as Erich von Däniken, where a great achievement or artifact is claimed to be so stupendous that it is beyond the ability and intelligence of even the most gifted human beings to have created. This idea has been repeatedly tested; for example respecting von Däniken’s claim that ancient astronauts must have built the Egyptian pyramids because it was too daunting a task for primitive humans to accomplish on their own; and found to be nonsense, or worse racist nonsense.

Of course, Crowley is here talking specifically about the correspondences of the Qabalistic Tarot Key, and he admits that, up to a point, a human genius could have accomplished a certain level of it. But, it is important to Crowley's purpose, proving his link to the Secret Chiefs, that he dismiss once and for all the idea that mere humans could have made this most brilliant Qabalistic instrument, the Tarot. Therefore, the Jews have got to go. Qabalah, after all, and Tarot's illumination of it, must be preserved as a great Mystery.

Therefore, in BOT, Crowley dismisses the idea that Jews could have invented or originated Kabbalah. As he says: “To explain [Kabbalah] at all, one has to postulate in the obscure past a fantastic assembly of learned rabbins, who solemnly calculated all sorts of combinations of letters and numbers, and created the Hebrew language on this series of manipulations.” Crowley of course rejects his own strawman at that point, telling us the “facts of history”, which have suddenly become relevant to him, could never support it. But from this he concludes the Jews could not therefore have invented Kabbalah.

Many Christian occultists, and Crowley here was certainly writing from a Christian-occult literary tradition, rejected the notion that Jews had invented Kabbalah; because the system seemed too perfect, too linked to some obscure ancient wisdom, for the “Christ-killing” race to have figured it out. Instead, Western occultism adopted the idea that Jews borrowed or stole Kabbalah from an even more ancient people, the Egyptians. This is precisely the Tarot dogma established in the essays of Court de Gébelin and the Comte de Mellet in 1781. And Crowley is following in that Egyptomaniacal tradition.

Having rejected, or begged off, the scholarship and philosophical clarity of the Jews, Crowley moves in for the spiritual kill:

5. Such persons, however eminent we may suppose them to have been, are not quite capable of making a system so abstruse [i.e., obscure, once again] in its entirety without the assistance of superiors whose mental processes were, or are, pertaining to a higher Dimension.

So, let us be clear here. Crowley, by adding that little “or are” bit, is clearly saying that Aiwass is of the very same class of spiritual superiors responsible for creating Kabbalah/Qabalah in the first place. In order to make this seem like something more than the preposterous claims of a con artist, or the ravings of a lunatic, Crowley has first to beg the question of the impossibly abstruse nature of Qabalah, so impossible that no humans, and certainly no Jews, could have invented it. Only creatures of “a higher Dimension” could have intervened to assist in the making of such a divinely-inspired artifact.

And isn’t it fortunate he just happened to choose Aleister Crowley to converse with?

But, as we have seen, there may have been other, more mundane, more traditionally occult, explanations. Certainly the latter do not require quite so much beggary, or bigotry.

Now, at this point in the proceedings, any educated reader of BOT could not be blamed for tossing the work into the fire, as it seems to be merely an euchering mockery of scholarship and (un)common sense. But, as in so much occultist writing, that is the traditional point of departure, one certainly well understood by Crowley, for finally writing something useful and interesting. In other words, the veils of cautionary tales, of reason, and certainly of certainty, are intended to stop most readers from going on.

And it is precisely at this point, having made an excellent case for thinking occult Tarot, and especially Crowley’s version of it, to be utterly valueless, that AC finally offers a credible and interesting justification for what he and other occultists have done to the game of Tarot. It comes at the end of the summary, indeed backs the intervening page of occult symbols (page 11), on page 12 (“He departed, went forth”).

One might take, by way of an analogy, the game of chess. Chess has developed from very simple beginnings. It was a mimic battle for tired warriors; but the subtleties of the modern game—which have now, thanks to Richard Reti, gone quite beyond calculation into the world of aesthetic creation—were latent in the original design.

Isn’t that all Crowley needed to say to the skeptics? The “subtleties...were latent in the original design.” Of course the skeptics would reply: But the subtleties of chess, however latent, are still used for playing a game, not demonstrating higher Dimensions or Intelligences.

But Crowley is prepared to deal with the random, evolutionary, heretics:

It is of course possible to argue that these subtleties have arisen in the course of the development of the game...One can argue that it is merely by chance that modern chess was latent in the original game.

Yes, one could argue that if, unlike parsimonious Aleister, the foolish controversialist wanted to make the most absurdly wild conjecture based on boring old likelihood, and in all ignorance of things like—uhm—oh, the theory of inspiration:

The theory of inspiration is really very much simpler, and it accounts for the facts without violation of the law of parsimony.

Of course it is one thing to argue that chess’s subtleties were latently laid by game designers unconsciously linked into the great cosmic chess archetype, which is questionable enough; and quite another to argue that the Secret Chiefs inspired the creators of Tarot, which is what Crowley is arguing, and what he wishes us to think is still happening with his Tzaddi-Heh switch.

Nevertheless, in spite of this, as so many commentators about Tarot have seen and discussed for over two centuries, it is interesting to see how easily the old gaming deck can be Qabalistically tricked out. There does seem to be a latent Qabalism in Tarot. Whether that latency is a product of archetypal or spiritual inspiration, or is just an interesting and inspirational coincidence is a question that will not be definitively settled simply because no matter what Tarot may have once been or once was intended to be, it is certainly a book of Qabalistic symbolism today.

And, despite what certain, dreary, cardgame historians have to say, Tarot has benefitted greatly from its Qabalistic development, becoming a fruitful aesthetic medium for many kinds of artists as a consequence. If Aleister Crowley had only exploited this quality of Tarot’s Qabalism, he might still have created an interesting Tarot deck. But because he required Tarot to do service in his Great Work of Thelema, he transformed it from a gaming deck, and from a quaint occult pastiche, into a true work of Art.

On that point, I will somewhat gratefully dispense with (some of) the mean-spirited skepticism I have so far employed in this examination, and prepare myself and you, reckless readers, for our trip in the next entry down the rabbit hole of Crowley's "Holy Qabalah".

(jk)