After discussing the contents of the Tarot, and what he thinks that means, Crowley briefly turns to a discussion of the origin of the cards. One should realize, as is the case with allegedly historical accounts of the cards made by any occultist, that historical accuracy, or being bound to the mundane world of facts and their likely implications, is not the object of the exercise. Instead, an occultist seeks to provide a mysterious, or more pertinently an ancient, matrix for his speculations. He knows that people expect occult ideas, no matter how rooted in some ethereal plane they may be, to have a real-word tradition that has preceded his own profession of them.
If, for example, Crowley had used his "origins" section to talk about the historical facts, which were pretty well known at his own time of writing BOT, that the occult dogma of Tarot had largely been created by two 18th-century French Freemasons, and not by 18th-century BC Egyptians, the credibility of his claim of "necessity" (which I talked about in A Fully-Packed Few Words) might have been obviously challenged in many people's minds. Yet, Crowley was seeking to gain respectability for his methods outside the tiny world of occultism. And he sought that respect by claiming to go about occult matters scientifically. So, he could not entirely ignore the historical part of his exposition. Let us say that his treatment of the historical facts was more artfully spun in defense of his essay than what most occultists manage.
Crowley starts with the popular occultist claim that the origins of Tarot are "very obscure". I would say if you searched for words aptly summarizing the occultist position of the history of Tarot, "unknown" and "obscure" would be the most beloved descriptions for the inconvenient facts. Once something is "very obscure", you have opened the door to alleging that any and all opinions about that origin may have some, or maybe equal, credibility. And that way you can appear to be paying homage to the methods of science (you appear to be "open-minded"), while remaining loyal to the aims of occultism's holy mysteria. This is an approach much used in a more vulgar (and highly profitable) way by people such as Erich von Däniken.
Having opened everyone's mind to the equality of authority that must attend to these questions of Tarot origins, Crowley uncritically reports that "some authorities" seek an origin for Tarot "back as far as the ancient Egyptian Mysteries". He does not report to us that these unnamed authorities who claim an ancient-Egyptian origin were crafting (or repeating) historical romance, and not history, when they authoritatively put Tarot cards, or their hieroglyphic equivalents, into the hands of ancients.
I think Crowley understood, since he had at least read the straightforward debunking of the Egyptian origins claim made by A. E. Waite in Pictorial Key to the Tarot (first published with the Waite deck in 1909), that the Egyptian basis was weak or purely mythical, since he notes the fact that people had for a time mistakenly called the Tarot a "Bohemian" deck, meaning "Egyptian", on account of their misunderstanding the "Asiatic", instead of ancient Engyptian, origin of Gypsies (who early Tarot occultists wrongly claimed had brought the first Tarot cards into Europe).
Crowley, having briefly stated the uncompelling historical situation of Tarot's origin, now sweeps away the history problem with typical occultist boldness : "There is here no need to enter into any discussion of these disputed points."
And why is that?
Because, Crowley claims, right below (heading the section "The Theory of the Correspondences of Tarot"): "Unimportant to the present purpose are tradition and authority."
One might at that point ask, then why even mention those things?
However Crowley, seeking to authorize what he just claimed, attempts to enlist Albert Einstein! to his cause, and claims, against any reasonable understanding of the scientific method, that Einstein's Theory of Relativity "does not rest on the fact that...it was confirmed." Well, scientifically, it certainly does rest on this fact, if one means by "rest" to "depend upon" a demonstrable relevance; since if the opposite had occurred, and Einstein's theory, when tested, had been shown to be incorrect, its claim as an accurate description of a fundamental reality of the universe would have been rejected.
Crowley, whenever he refers to science, is certainly not deferring to its real-world relevance and authority, but is using what he understands to be a popular perception of these as another potentially helpful meme. Unlike many pseudo-scientists, who misinterpret scientific ideas and findings solely to provide their unscientific notions with an authority the facts deny them, Crowley also seeks to employ science as another Qabalistic tool set (recall it exists in his Tarot at the Six of Swords), and considers the mundane workings of its theory-testing to be utterly irrelevant to his occult aim.
As he plainly states in his summary on page 10 of BOT, "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."
So, clearly, the merits of which he speaks are not those of mundane science, but of Hermetic science—a higher, spiritually based, knowledge.
Crowley is telling us that even if Tarot was invented to play card games, by people demonstrably uninformed about and uninterested in Qabalah, this does not matter a bit, IF it can be shown that somehow a Qabalistic map of the universe was nevertheless imparted to Tarot in some way. In other words, whether intended or not by Tarot's human originators, at whatever point Tarot was liberated from the mundane ludicrous world, it now reveals "a deliberate attempt to represent, in pictorial form, the doctrines of the Qabalah". More than this, Crowley would argue that this deliberate attempt, particularly if unconsciously manifested, proves beyond all doubt the deliberator was a praeternatural entity, working through mundane matrices and unwitting minions, to provide evidence of its presence and intent to the initiated.
This notion of Tarot as a veiled revelatory "book" goes back to the beginnings of published occult dogma about the deck. The very name "Book of Thoth" originates in the idea the Tarot represented the leaves of an ancient Eyptian book of wisdom, perhaps the encyclopedia of the universe which was Thoth's book. Crowley's own occult experience was both inspired by this idea and led him to exploit it for his own purposes.
More on this and Crowley's evidence of a Qabalistic Tarot in the next post.
(jk)
Read Rhapsodies of the Bizarre
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Saturday, February 3, 2007
A Fully-Packed Few Words
When Aleister Crowley began writing BOT (I will use this abbreviation for The Book of Thoth), he was pushing seventy years of age, and was pushing the thin envelop of the time alloted to him in his life. Thus, with his energy dissipating, and his mind full of personal symbolic resonances for all the occult ideas he had absorbed and developed, he was bound rather like one of the Devil's imps, to worship concision in the writing of his tarotbook.
Now, the dictionary definition of "concision", that is being "concise", is to pack "a lot of information...in a few words". How exactly that paradox works in reality is not explained by Mr. D (dictionary, not Devil). Well, one thing about it, a twenty-year-old's understanding of "a few words" is likely to be much different than a seventy-year-old's. The concision in the mind of the older person, his ability to say what he means in a few words, and, as Mr. D also paradoxically puts it, to be "brief but comprehensive" is naturally going to escape the ready grasp of the younger person, who does not possess the great store of experience the older person attaches to the few words. And that is particularly an issue when we are talking about the information storage regarding magickal and qabalistic data that resided in the brain of Aleister Crowley at the end of his life. Many readers of BOT, being utterly unprepared for the deeply-linked ideas they will encounter in Crowley's book, decide his concision is nothing but laziness or a kind of swindle, forcing them to seek out his other writings to decipher his cryptic few words.
Let us examine the few words Crowley writes in his first paragraph , and see what if any concision is working there.
After informing us of a few structural details of the Tarot pack, and making an error of history (modern playing cards are not derived from Tarot, but Tarot is an adaptation of an early form of these), Crowley tells us this structure is itself fundamentally important:
At first sight one would suppose this arrangement to be arbitrary, but it is not.
Do you find that an extraordinary statement? Because you should, if you are getting the information intended in the few words.
Crowley admits that to all beginners the mundane explanation of the structure of a Tarot pack must seem quite arbitrary. In other words, it could have been sixty-seven or thirty-eight cards as well as seventy-eight, right? It's a pack of cards after all, and one which people used to play card games. That must be arbitrary, "based on whim" rather than "reason or a system", right?
But Crowley says "no", it is not arbitrary. So, if not that then a reasoned, systematic design must have been imparted to the Tarot, either in its inception or somewhere along the way of its development.
Crowley then expands upon his first few words on this notion, and tells us in fact that the structure of the Tarot pack is "necessitated"—"forced" or "compelled" by "the structure of the universe".
Of course, for that to be true, and for Crowley to know it to be so, he would have to be knowledgeable of oh—the structure of the universe, which would make him the most knowledgeable human being who has ever lived. For even today, with physics in an alleged "golden age", we do not know with deep understanding the structure of the universe. We know a lot about forces and phenomena, but not enough to claim we could pattern an accurate representation of it in a pack of playing cards. And how much less likely would it be that a non-scientist writing more than sixty years ago would be able to do this?
But, maybe the universe Crowley speaks about is not entirely or merely material, or the one which concerns physicists. Maybe it is a deeper and broader idea than that. Crowley in fact uses a few more words to specify what he means to say:
The Tarot's structure, he claims, is necessitated by "the Solar System, as symbolized by the Holy Qabalah". And with those few words, Crowley has succinctly revealed everything you need to know about occult Tarot, and about his ideas concerning it—well, except that his ideas do take some unusual twists and turns that will require more than a few words of elaboration. But in fact, making clear from the start that the fundamental necessity in understanding occult Tarot is to grasp the assumption that it is patterned on a Qabalistic mapping of the local, human, portion of the universe, is the most important example of his use of concision in the book.
Yet, how many readers skim over these concise opening lines, noting Crowley's promise to explain them "in due course", and never really consider the implications of what they have just read? Of course, many readers will not even know or understand what it means to say the Tarot pack is structured on a Qabalistic map of the Solar System. What is the Holy Qabalah, for example? How does it tell us anything useful about our solar system, or about Tarot? If you have asked those questions, instead of getting irritated, as many do, at perceiving yet another layer of instruction to be engaged and mastered, you should feel a sense of gratitude to Crowley for putting things so simply and clearly and comprehensively—i.e., so concisely, in his first few words.
And, the key to getting BOT is to understand how the old magus was habitually doing this throughout the book, making it in fact a kind of legend, concisely explaining the (literally) cartographic symbols Harris had painted.
Tomorrow: The Origin of the Tarot—as Crowley sees it
(jk)
*******************
Read jk's Tarot FAQ
Rhapsodies of the Bizarre
Now, the dictionary definition of "concision", that is being "concise", is to pack "a lot of information...in a few words". How exactly that paradox works in reality is not explained by Mr. D (dictionary, not Devil). Well, one thing about it, a twenty-year-old's understanding of "a few words" is likely to be much different than a seventy-year-old's. The concision in the mind of the older person, his ability to say what he means in a few words, and, as Mr. D also paradoxically puts it, to be "brief but comprehensive" is naturally going to escape the ready grasp of the younger person, who does not possess the great store of experience the older person attaches to the few words. And that is particularly an issue when we are talking about the information storage regarding magickal and qabalistic data that resided in the brain of Aleister Crowley at the end of his life. Many readers of BOT, being utterly unprepared for the deeply-linked ideas they will encounter in Crowley's book, decide his concision is nothing but laziness or a kind of swindle, forcing them to seek out his other writings to decipher his cryptic few words.
Let us examine the few words Crowley writes in his first paragraph , and see what if any concision is working there.
After informing us of a few structural details of the Tarot pack, and making an error of history (modern playing cards are not derived from Tarot, but Tarot is an adaptation of an early form of these), Crowley tells us this structure is itself fundamentally important:
At first sight one would suppose this arrangement to be arbitrary, but it is not.
Do you find that an extraordinary statement? Because you should, if you are getting the information intended in the few words.
Crowley admits that to all beginners the mundane explanation of the structure of a Tarot pack must seem quite arbitrary. In other words, it could have been sixty-seven or thirty-eight cards as well as seventy-eight, right? It's a pack of cards after all, and one which people used to play card games. That must be arbitrary, "based on whim" rather than "reason or a system", right?
But Crowley says "no", it is not arbitrary. So, if not that then a reasoned, systematic design must have been imparted to the Tarot, either in its inception or somewhere along the way of its development.
Crowley then expands upon his first few words on this notion, and tells us in fact that the structure of the Tarot pack is "necessitated"—"forced" or "compelled" by "the structure of the universe".
Of course, for that to be true, and for Crowley to know it to be so, he would have to be knowledgeable of oh—the structure of the universe, which would make him the most knowledgeable human being who has ever lived. For even today, with physics in an alleged "golden age", we do not know with deep understanding the structure of the universe. We know a lot about forces and phenomena, but not enough to claim we could pattern an accurate representation of it in a pack of playing cards. And how much less likely would it be that a non-scientist writing more than sixty years ago would be able to do this?
But, maybe the universe Crowley speaks about is not entirely or merely material, or the one which concerns physicists. Maybe it is a deeper and broader idea than that. Crowley in fact uses a few more words to specify what he means to say:
The Tarot's structure, he claims, is necessitated by "the Solar System, as symbolized by the Holy Qabalah". And with those few words, Crowley has succinctly revealed everything you need to know about occult Tarot, and about his ideas concerning it—well, except that his ideas do take some unusual twists and turns that will require more than a few words of elaboration. But in fact, making clear from the start that the fundamental necessity in understanding occult Tarot is to grasp the assumption that it is patterned on a Qabalistic mapping of the local, human, portion of the universe, is the most important example of his use of concision in the book.
Yet, how many readers skim over these concise opening lines, noting Crowley's promise to explain them "in due course", and never really consider the implications of what they have just read? Of course, many readers will not even know or understand what it means to say the Tarot pack is structured on a Qabalistic map of the Solar System. What is the Holy Qabalah, for example? How does it tell us anything useful about our solar system, or about Tarot? If you have asked those questions, instead of getting irritated, as many do, at perceiving yet another layer of instruction to be engaged and mastered, you should feel a sense of gratitude to Crowley for putting things so simply and clearly and comprehensively—i.e., so concisely, in his first few words.
And, the key to getting BOT is to understand how the old magus was habitually doing this throughout the book, making it in fact a kind of legend, concisely explaining the (literally) cartographic symbols Harris had painted.
Tomorrow: The Origin of the Tarot—as Crowley sees it
(jk)
*******************
Read jk's Tarot FAQ
Rhapsodies of the Bizarre
Friday, February 2, 2007
Blogging To A Thoth Book
Tomorrow I will begin an exploration of Aleister Crowley's Tarot book The Book of Thoth. When this exploration is over, on December 1, 2007, I will publish a book, title yet to be determined, which will be just what the title of this blog says: a concise reader's guide to one of AC's most important books.
Why am I blogging about it? For one thing, since the guide is intended to be concise, I will be coming up with a great deal more material than I will put into the book. So, as a preview of what the best of the those bits will be, I will include some (not all) of these along with secondary and tertiary matters most would find misplaced in a concise guide.
And why is the guide going to be concise, instead of gargantuanly comprehensive? Well, first off, if I felt like writing that gargantuan work, I would have done it by now. One could write, or I could write anyway, ten books about "Book of Thoth", but only a few scholars or (oc)cultists would be interested in spending the time to read them. For the people still interested in understanding what Crowley was doing with Thoth, but who would like that explanation in as plain of language as one can use when speaking of deeply occult, and so complicated and convoluted, ideas, I will try to serve up an offering of Thoth pearls that will both satisfy a beginner's curiosity, but still lure on those who want something deeper.
Crowley's work was an ongoing, ever-developing commentary upon his own life as lived according to his understanding of occult principles. He poured out his life in pursuit of accomplishing things most people would have considered utter nonsense, or at best the mutterings and putterings of an irrelevant eccentric. Sadly, Crowley always imagined that he and his religion were going to bring on a popular deluge of revolutionary change. Unfortunately, as with so many things Crowley attempted, there were people better equipped and far more motivated than he to become successful revolutionaries. Aleister might bring himself out into the street to observe and to cantankerously critique the grumbling, unwashed, masses, but he wasn't about to put himself out to lead them in any kind of real, dangerous, fight for freedoms he wasn't convinced they merited.
Ultimately, he ended up talking, meaningfully taking, to very few people. His dense library of works is muddled over by a small crew of researchers and zealots, but as his books stand now, they will never reach even a small minority of people. Ultimately, Crowley was born to be, and died in the poverty and obscurity of being, an occultist. The only notice he got at the end of his life was for being a caricature of evil, a devilish piñata whacked about for a few final days by the tabloid press that loved to hate him.
But, as with A. E. Waite, Crowley left an artifact that ended up attracting considerable attention—a Tarot deck. The "Thoth" Tarot, and its illustrations of his view of the occult factors and equations of what he called the New Aeon, or New Age, combined with his book explaining his cards, became the most popular work Crowley ever did. Of course it was a work that he accomplished with the considerable aid of his friend and student, Frieda Harris, one of the few people who remained loyal and reliable to him right to the end.
For five years they toiled to craft seventy-eight mnemonic portraits of Crowley's Qabalistic mind. He poured out his ideas, and she poured out the watercolors, making many drafts to achieve the effects we have come to appreciate as the finest occult Tarot ever produced. Harris knew right from the inception of the project that her work was also his work, and that, no matter what reception her cards were going to have in the public, they were pictures of a particular person's mind, and so could not be justly or meaningfully divorced from what that person had to say about them. Therefore, Frieda begged Aleister, who was old and ailing, to set himself to make one more stone in his great work. She frankly told him it was so important that she didn't much care if she killed him to get it out of him. And so Crowley wrote the guide to his Tarot deck, The Book of Thoth, publishing it in a limited run of 200 copies in 1944.
Crowley made a real effort at simplifying his ideas in this brief book. The problem was that his ideas are not so simple, and he was constantly shorthanding his presentation by referencing his other works, leaving many readers feeling they had been had—the bastard won't tell us what's up unless we get his other books—and leaving most readers feeling baffled by the deep and personal esoterica. Just what the hell was Crowley talking about? But the cards, the beautiful and sometimes terrifying cards, suggested that whatever he was talking about might just be really interesting IF you could figure it out.
So much has been said about the inadequacies of The Book of Thoth as a beginner's book that a number of people have in the past written Thoth guidebooks, or their own personal takes of what Crowley may have meant. They range in presumption from things like Angeles Arrien's anti-Crowley A Tarot Handbook to Lon Milo DuQuette's silly Crowley whitewash, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot, a work that claims to be "The Rosetta Stone of the Thoth Tarot", but which reads more like the Blarney Stone. I plan to include in this blog reviews of all the other alleged guides to the Thoth deck. And yes, how self-serving will it be for me to bash them now, while I am preparing to better and bury them. But I have bashed them before now as well, so it is nothing nefarious, or at least not insincere, on my part to do it now.
Anyway, I think that is enough for tonight. I will begin this exercise tomorrow, with Part I, page 3.
If you want to ask a question, make a comment, or make a discussion, go ahead. I don't know how much time I will have to join in any discussion, since I am researching and writing this book, and trying to get some things done at jktarot.com too, but I will attempt to answer your questions.
See you tomorrow.
(jk)
*******************
Read jk's Tarot FAQ
Rhapsodies of the Bizarre
Why am I blogging about it? For one thing, since the guide is intended to be concise, I will be coming up with a great deal more material than I will put into the book. So, as a preview of what the best of the those bits will be, I will include some (not all) of these along with secondary and tertiary matters most would find misplaced in a concise guide.
And why is the guide going to be concise, instead of gargantuanly comprehensive? Well, first off, if I felt like writing that gargantuan work, I would have done it by now. One could write, or I could write anyway, ten books about "Book of Thoth", but only a few scholars or (oc)cultists would be interested in spending the time to read them. For the people still interested in understanding what Crowley was doing with Thoth, but who would like that explanation in as plain of language as one can use when speaking of deeply occult, and so complicated and convoluted, ideas, I will try to serve up an offering of Thoth pearls that will both satisfy a beginner's curiosity, but still lure on those who want something deeper.
Crowley's work was an ongoing, ever-developing commentary upon his own life as lived according to his understanding of occult principles. He poured out his life in pursuit of accomplishing things most people would have considered utter nonsense, or at best the mutterings and putterings of an irrelevant eccentric. Sadly, Crowley always imagined that he and his religion were going to bring on a popular deluge of revolutionary change. Unfortunately, as with so many things Crowley attempted, there were people better equipped and far more motivated than he to become successful revolutionaries. Aleister might bring himself out into the street to observe and to cantankerously critique the grumbling, unwashed, masses, but he wasn't about to put himself out to lead them in any kind of real, dangerous, fight for freedoms he wasn't convinced they merited.
Ultimately, he ended up talking, meaningfully taking, to very few people. His dense library of works is muddled over by a small crew of researchers and zealots, but as his books stand now, they will never reach even a small minority of people. Ultimately, Crowley was born to be, and died in the poverty and obscurity of being, an occultist. The only notice he got at the end of his life was for being a caricature of evil, a devilish piñata whacked about for a few final days by the tabloid press that loved to hate him.
But, as with A. E. Waite, Crowley left an artifact that ended up attracting considerable attention—a Tarot deck. The "Thoth" Tarot, and its illustrations of his view of the occult factors and equations of what he called the New Aeon, or New Age, combined with his book explaining his cards, became the most popular work Crowley ever did. Of course it was a work that he accomplished with the considerable aid of his friend and student, Frieda Harris, one of the few people who remained loyal and reliable to him right to the end.
For five years they toiled to craft seventy-eight mnemonic portraits of Crowley's Qabalistic mind. He poured out his ideas, and she poured out the watercolors, making many drafts to achieve the effects we have come to appreciate as the finest occult Tarot ever produced. Harris knew right from the inception of the project that her work was also his work, and that, no matter what reception her cards were going to have in the public, they were pictures of a particular person's mind, and so could not be justly or meaningfully divorced from what that person had to say about them. Therefore, Frieda begged Aleister, who was old and ailing, to set himself to make one more stone in his great work. She frankly told him it was so important that she didn't much care if she killed him to get it out of him. And so Crowley wrote the guide to his Tarot deck, The Book of Thoth, publishing it in a limited run of 200 copies in 1944.
Crowley made a real effort at simplifying his ideas in this brief book. The problem was that his ideas are not so simple, and he was constantly shorthanding his presentation by referencing his other works, leaving many readers feeling they had been had—the bastard won't tell us what's up unless we get his other books—and leaving most readers feeling baffled by the deep and personal esoterica. Just what the hell was Crowley talking about? But the cards, the beautiful and sometimes terrifying cards, suggested that whatever he was talking about might just be really interesting IF you could figure it out.
So much has been said about the inadequacies of The Book of Thoth as a beginner's book that a number of people have in the past written Thoth guidebooks, or their own personal takes of what Crowley may have meant. They range in presumption from things like Angeles Arrien's anti-Crowley A Tarot Handbook to Lon Milo DuQuette's silly Crowley whitewash, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot, a work that claims to be "The Rosetta Stone of the Thoth Tarot", but which reads more like the Blarney Stone. I plan to include in this blog reviews of all the other alleged guides to the Thoth deck. And yes, how self-serving will it be for me to bash them now, while I am preparing to better and bury them. But I have bashed them before now as well, so it is nothing nefarious, or at least not insincere, on my part to do it now.
Anyway, I think that is enough for tonight. I will begin this exercise tomorrow, with Part I, page 3.
If you want to ask a question, make a comment, or make a discussion, go ahead. I don't know how much time I will have to join in any discussion, since I am researching and writing this book, and trying to get some things done at jktarot.com too, but I will attempt to answer your questions.
See you tomorrow.
(jk)
*******************
Read jk's Tarot FAQ
Rhapsodies of the Bizarre
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