Matt, I'm so glad I could send a little light to your day, and I'm touched by your reading of my early experience. I feel like my life has been an abundance of such events, but that one is among the most precious. For a magical meditator, I'd wager you have a good many of your own such stories. (In fact, I have to believe most posting here do, as well.)
I like your interpretation of Crowley's motivations, though if they're correct, he failed. No one would call him a Christ figure, but dude's been deified up the wazoo. He was the world's first international death metal rockstar, and more than 70 years after his death, he still has groupies.
I grew up in a strict, conservative Christian world myself; most of my family were Southern Baptists. They exiled me early on the basis of my failure to conform, so for a long time I was angry at the religion of my childhood, but today I consider all of it, its broken parts and its shadows, beautiful and worthy of my love, if not my membership.
I treasure religious artifacts of all kinds, so your former collection of bibles seems like a potent tarot display to me. I'll spare you the rabbit hole I just tripped into regarding the Major Arcana and the characters/stories of the Old Testament. But hey! I'd love to hear your reading recommendations on Cabalistic tarot, if you have any.
Matt and Vestralux, you're both much needed sources of intellect combined with gifted sensitivities and a potent boost of alchemical elixir for this group.
V, reading about the two cards was so powerful, I couldn't comment at the time. Just needed to take it in, stare into the layers of all of our lives and the deep mysteries that unite us.
You've obviously been through a long journey of strength and courage to get where you are here.
I love rabbit holes and would love to hear correlations between major arcana and biblical figures.
Bet you'll find a way to fit it in here one way or another. It's all so interconnected and will jumpstart thinking for many who continue to struggle with the polarities of enlightenment.
And Matt, your obviously part of the fellowship of the cards, if you will, with incredible depths for research, as well. The interplays of the discussions here are fantastic and will bring so much energy to our group as well as being a huge source of fun for our hard working leader, Jeanne!
The rest of us don't even have to understand tarot to benefit from the interplay of this discussion!
Matt, I printed off all 100 pages of that first link you shared. Didn't understand most of it, been too long since I studied all of those ancient charts, signs, symbols etc. knowing there was hidden meaning but not knowing how to bring it forth.
Now, i just speed read it or pass my hands over it taking it in as needed ?
Quite wonderful and incredibly interesting!
Vestralux, I love your story about finding the cards in the sand. You are so guided! It really is the most powerful Tarot story I've ever heard!
Once I came into the room and my little bichon puppy had grabbed my Osho Zen deck off the table and pulled a few cards and dropped them on the rug. I picked them up. They had little bite marks on them. One was called Innocence, one Loneliness, and the third was called Celebration. It was a message to me that I needed to play with her more. That she is an innocent child who wants to play! I will never forget how I saw her at that moment. We are empty nested so it's not the same life for her as it was for our previous dog who we got when the kids were 5 and 6. That little dog always had a playmates.
So I went out and got a kitten. They are now best friends and have amazing times together. For anyone who is interested in watching something adorable, here's a video of them together -- https://vimeo.com/219540053
I also see cards in my imagination when I'm giving readings. I'll be reading someone and cards will appear in my mind. I even see cards from decks I barely read - mostly from Rider Waite, which I don't normally read. It's magical and wonderful!
VestraLux, I think you're absolutely right regarding Crowley. One of my favorite parables is from the Principia Discordia (warning: contains offensive language). I feel this one sort of applies doubly to him.
My religious journey was an interesting one. I wasn't raised in a particularly religious household by any stretch but made the personal decision to convert to Catholicism when I was around 17. I was rather strict with it and I allowed it to define me and how I viewed the world. I had a very hardcore traditionalist conservative outlook on the world. Around my mid-20s, something inside me rebelled HARD against all of that and I found myself investigating ideas and groups I had previously considered forbidden. I can't at all imagine what it must have been like to be raised in a super-religious household and am personally very happy I never had to deal with that.
I still admittedly consider myself at the very beginning of my journey with all of this and am a bit hesitant to make study recommendations. I feel my knowledge is very much at a surface level. I've studied and learned a few things here and there but what I know is dwarfed in comparison to what one learns intuitively and through experience, knowledge you all seem to have in abundance... I'm great at putting on the appearance that I know a few things but I'm mostly just here to learn from all of you :) . The best source I've come across for studying the esoteric side of the Tarot is the Builders of the Adytum correspondence course (which I'm working through right now and which is why I keep bringing up the B.O.T.A. deck). It's $18 a month but very laid back and low-pressure... I only have to pay when I want the next set of lessons and they never bother me when I go months at a time without renewing. I'm getting ready to start the part of the lessons where I get to color my own deck and am pretty excited about that.
And frankly, I'm with Michele -- I'd love to hear your insights into the Major Arcana and the major figures of the Old Testament!
Michele, I'm flattered to have contributed what I can but I really am in awe of all of your abilities, especially Jeanne's. I'm glad you found Liber 777 useful. I also study programming and computer-related stuff but I've learned something from that which I believe applies here: memorization of the details is far less important than the sort of familiarity with them that gives you the means to look them up when you need them. Most programmers live on Google and I think a good library is far more valuable to an occultist than a good memory!
Jeanne, I absolutely loved the video of your little ones playing! I think it's amazing how intuitive animals can be and the creativity it allows them to show when they need to communicate their needs at times. They really are in touch with a part of the Universe that we as humans seem to have to work to attune ourselves to...
Jeanne, i found your video a month ago and just loved it. I didn't mention or link to it for just in case privacy of your home though I must confess those beautiful glimpses were as lovely as the little darlings were cute.
As far as the card directing, all of our discussions on panpyschism are only proved by the absolute unconditional love and magic of our beloved pets!
Another topic on this multi-faceted forum that many of us relate to!
Michele, thank you for your lovely words! It's nice to feel so welcome.
And I'm equally moved (still kind of taking it in) that others here are experiencing my story of finding those two little cards just as meaningful. It feels like being seen and affirmed, which is the very energy the experience offered to me so long ago. I was crying on that riverside in the awareness of how very on-my-own I was, and had been, but the cards emerged, as if from the earth itself, as though a wise teacher had caught me sleeping and snapped me to attention—not with fingers, but thunder.
There was a feeling of tender and absolute compassion, but also humor. And a sense of total presence.
Jeanne, thank you too. And I loved this story of your Bichon puppy! Our animals are definitely wise, helping spirits (the healing they can offer is incredible), so it doesn't surprise me at all that a way was made for yours to communicate her needs to you—and in a way that you're especially well equipped to receive. That video is the sweetest.
Matt, it charms me that you're familiar with the Principia Discordia. The hidden koan realized in this particular fable makes me laugh outright (as much at myself as at the "serious young man" described in it). And I gotta agree: its a fine Crowlean allegory.
I'm also touched by your humility. It's true, though, that any devoted student (whether of occult or any other kind of wisdom) will always see their deficits in mastery, because there's no end to knowledge. Recognizing how much we don't know is a legit sign of wisdom, in my book.
I'm perhaps a little intense about reading Hero's Journey architecture in all the things, but something I keep seeing—certainly in my own experience, but also externally—is that the information we acquire during our earliest and most obsessional studies on the esoteric path always has a way of revealing itself experientially down the line. And never more so than when we've hit that long dark night of the soul in our particular life story.
Maybe we've lost our faith or our path for a while when BAM, something happens and it suddenly occurs to us that we've been l-i-v-i-n-g a saga which has advanced and complexified what may previously only have been a cognitive understanding of (and glint of familiarity with) the mystical insights we longed to know.
But now, we have traveled from Fool to World more than once, and realize their significance in every cell.
We've awoken to the "consciousness of bondage" revealed by The Devil—i.e., recognized the Maya or Matrix that is much of our shared 'reality,' namely consumer culture but much more. But more importantly, we've also come around to the most difficult place in the story—the true depths of the Underworld—in which the Hero must stand facing a mirror into the made-Self. And when we have looked, we've seen the Devil's face in our own.
The need to integrate the shadow is, I believe, the most significant lesson the drama of our lives, or our tarot decks, has to reveal.
Whew! *laughing at myself*
I have no idea whether anyone has created a tarot based on biblical figures/stories, but I have to believe somebody has. Just think of the imagery—and the rich hidden meaning—in a story like Jonah's and his whale.
I don't use reversals (I try to keep my cards going the same direction and they don't tend to show up), but I do see each card in both its higher and lower polarities, and feel that the one intended for a particular reading intuitively makes itself known. ...Any other syntesthetes here? I'd be very curious to hear the ways we're experiencing color and other qualities in our readings and how these inform our interpretations.
To me, the highest polarity of the Hierophant is a beautiful golden-white energy, and it has a particular geometry that's hard to describe, maybe like a dodecahedron with a seat inside it. This seat feels representative of the role of higher law or authority, which should never be conflated with the individual occupying it. In this polarity, the Hierophant represents an institution—religious, governmental, etc.—in its healthiest form: as a collaborative body, a resonant system. In its lowest polarity, there's an intricate geometric latticework, burdened and heavy in feeling and broken or hidden in places. It's colored with rust red, concrete gray, and brown-to-black toned energies, but with a gold encrusted mask concealing the seat position. At this polarity, the Hierophant represents the darkest shadows seen in our institutions when they (we) are corrupt and underdeveloped, which is to say running on a service-to-self orientation—from the abuses of the Catholic Church, to the imperialistic, militaristic, greed-ravaged forces of modern governments.
So, where the Old Testament is the Hero's Journey, the Pharisees, or the face of Pontius Pilot representing Rome, make a nice image for the Hierophant's lower polarity. And wow, the kings! Solomon vs. Herod (or Nebuchadnezzar). And of course there are the women: Rachel/Leah, and on and on. Where the World appears, I easily see Sophia (shout out to any Gnostics reading this) or the Nazarene himself. Christ brings that particular story to completion, and represents the window to a new Hero's Journey altogether, not just a new "testament."
I suppose I'm realizing my interest in what might be described as an evolutionary model for tarot (which of course tarot is inherently) where our cultural myths can be reimagined with these polarities in mind. The High Hierophant does not come into being (at least not in this dimension) without first moving through many versions of itself as the Low.
Speechless at so many intriguing thoughts and wisdom packed into one post.
Embarrassed at so many words packed into one post.
VestraLux,
There’s so much I want to say in response to what you posted, but all I’ll say for now is, “Wow.”
So much Light in your post. Your forum name was well chosen. :)
Thank you, Matt. That warms me.
I chose the screen name to mean your light, or the light I see in you, so there you are.