Confused over not connecting with Thoth

ravenest

Great posts Michael and smw. Thank you for that.

It's interesting to realise, and at the same important for us to remind ourselves that Christianity had mystic and gnostic origins, which is linked to Tarot, Magick and Divination. These are shadowy, and almost forgotten past of them by public.

Yes ! Also pre 1600 it was quiet hermetic and neoplatonic. It held the hermetica as near scripture and concurred with the concept of a 'perennial philosophy ' ... until the 'Causabon incident ' . 'Magic' and religion (Christianity) and 'science' were all 'coherent'.

But they are still here and everywhere around us, affecting large parts on our psychology, consciousness and daily lives, it seems.

Exactly ! Even if we have passed beyond that social and / or religious programming individually, we may find ourselves immersed in a society that has not.

To this end (and many others) Crowley constructed the first 3 degrees of his OTO initiations. Many things are enacted in ceremony, the subjects of lectures, study and practices recommended .... a corpus of knowledge and comprehension .... to be informed towards the end of the third one, that in a way this is 'old school and defunct' and is based on the old 'Dying God ' formular, a concept based on the Sun going around the earth and passing into the underworld to be reborn.

he specifically states (in the ceremony ) that we need to learn this as we are immersed still in its culture and psychology ... so we need to understand it.

Then he goes on to state the next obvious stage : now, we know that the earth actually turns on its axis , at night, it is our location on earth that has turned away from the Sun and lies on the shadow side. Now the 'dying God' never dies, its just our perception, and viewpoint. The he encourages us , by our own faculties, to discern how this changes what we have learnt and what this implies .... and then the series of initiations take on this new 'flavour' and concepts ... and the 'fun' really starts ! :)

Although this discussion might sound off topic from the OP, good knowledge on these areas of Tarot i.e. the origin and philosophy of it, enable us to move one step closer to understanding and connecting to Tarot decks, be it Thoth, RWS or TdM.

Agreed ! And the Thoth deck ... essentially is NOT 'old school' its about a whole new era of understanding and basing 'magick' upon that ..... and psychology.

" The method of science with the aim of religion" - 'Scientific Illuminism' meets anarchical spiritual reformation :) .
 

ravenest

I am interested to learn about the Gnositics as well. There were study group meet ups locally, but now closed for next season (autumn).

I think all of them (whatever sectors of the religion and the Magickal Orders) are aiming at the same goal - Reuniting with God. Their methods of approach (prayers, meditation, rituals, yogas ... etc) may be different. Different people may find some methods more effective than others.

Gnostic can mean ' direct communication " , meaning you can have your own experience with the divine and do not need to do it through priests or intervention .

It can also be a depressive anti life position, where this world is seen as bad, removed from heaven and get back there as soon as you can. Some even taught sex was bad as increased life and human suffering . Unfortunately, this meant any specific gnostic cult would have died out in one generation :D so they had to make 'adjustments' , like sex was okay only in marriage and for the purpose of making more gnostic cultists.

They are termed 'black school' .... white, yellow and red school is much more to my liking ..... anything but that 'black magic' thanks !


(plus you get to contact 'divinity' and appreciate and enjoy the life you (after all) must have chosen for yourself to experience and learn about . :) )

http://hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/mwt_06.html
 

Barleywine

Then he goes on to state the next obvious stage : now, we know that the earth actually turns on its axis , at night, it is our location on earth that has turned away from the Sun and lies on the shadow side. Now the 'dying God' never dies, its just our perception, and viewpoint. The he encourages us , by our own faculties, to discern how this changes what we have learnt and what this implies .... and then the series of initiations take on this new 'flavour' and concepts ... and the 'fun' really starts ! :)

Just for the sake of completeness and possibly precision, I always thought the "dying god" perception had a lot to do with the tilting of the Northern Hemisphere away from the ecliptic, and the apparent "death" of the Sun in the South during Winter, followed by its miraculous "resurrection" at the onset of Spring. As Santos Bonacci was always fond of saying, all relgions that postulate a god's death and rebirth are fundamentally solar worship. I do recognize that the Egyptians apparently portrayed the sacred scarab as carrying the solar disk into the Underworld and back into the world of the living on a daily basis, as shown in the Thoth Moon card: a "mini-death" compared to the seasonal excursion of the Sun.
 

ravenest

I think it represents both and the 'ancients' seem to have made the same analogy -

Sun summer noon day : Moon winter midnight night etc.

It is certainly the case in biodynamics where astrological culmination is similar to summer solstice.

Crowley also indicates in the 'knowledge lecture' to consider the axial tilt and 'Solar journey' (the Earth around the Sun )

The same when we talk about a star (or planet ) 'rising' , eg. Sirius rising can mean 'rising with the Sun (heliacal) or its path through the sky is 'rising' ( towards the celestial equator ) ... it's PATH will culminate and then descend until (depending on the observer's latitude) Sirius is below the horizon all the time, for a certain length of time of the year , then begin to rise again.
 

ravenest

Also; "As Santos Bonacci was always fond of saying, all religions that postulate a god's death and rebirth are fundamentally solar worship. "

I would add also they indicate those society's connections to agricultural as well.

One interesting correlation is that Egyptian Old Kingdom seems focused on star movements, their Middle Kingdom on Lunar cycles and New Kingdom on Solar ones .

Osiris is often said to be an 'agricultural God'.
 

Barleywine

Also; "As Santos Bonacci was always fond of saying, all religions that postulate a god's death and rebirth are fundamentally solar worship. "

I would add also they indicate those society's connections to agricultural as well.

One interesting correlation is that Egyptian Old Kingdom seems focused on star movements, their Middle Kingdom on Lunar cycles and New Kingdom on Solar ones .

Osiris is often said to be an 'agricultural God'.

Yes, the perception of solar death (or at least dire injury) would have been complete with the dying back of most plant life in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, where the majority of the prominent Western religions originated (not sure how it played out in the Southern Hemisphere, or the equatorial tropics).

Thanks for the clarification, Brother Crow (or if you prefer, Raven)! (Yes, I did go look up Corvus, but I had my well-founded suspicions before I did.)
 

foolMoon

Haven't read about Gnostics as such yet, but I had rough ideas about them from conversations of other people in the meet ups a few year ago.

Again, it is all about reuniting and getting to know God, who is unknowable and silent in real world.

Some people go to church and try to meet with God through mass and prayers, some do by meditation, reading and studying their bibles.

Gnostics try to do it by performing ancient rituals and ceremonial magick. Here one may ask, hey what's that got to do with Thoth Tarot?

When a Tarot reader is spiritually enlightened and communicating with God, the Tarot reading becomes divination aided by God, rather than trivial pass time affair.
 

ravenest

Yes, the perception of solar death (or at least dire injury) would have been complete with the dying back of most plant life in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, where the majority of the prominent Western religions originated (not sure how it played out in the Southern Hemisphere, or the equatorial tropics).

Yes, and in places like Egypt .... what was 'winter' ? The main agricultural pattern was the rising and lowering of the Nile .... set to Sirius' heliacal rising. in places where winter was more evident .... to the extent that one's survival depended on good preparations, the yearly cycle would have been much more important - and also gave birth to the idea of 'halloween' / Samhain ; divination was needed ( hence known to be a good time for divination ) , the ancestors appealed to ( hence 'ancestor night' / feast of the dead ) - both factors leading to the idea of 'the veil' being thinnest at that time of the year. They needed to know how much of the herd to cull to have food to make it through winter - too harsh winter, and not enough 'fat meat' and supplies could mean starvation, overkill and a mild winter would effect stock numbers for next springs breeding numbers and tribal prosperity.

meanwhile, in Egypt, they were raking in up to 4 crop cycles a year !

[ The more I study ancient civilisations and culture ( patterns, cycles, seasons , rise and fall ), the more it is revealed that most of these things fluctuated or were caused by climate and climate change ....... and now , in present day .... food for thought ! ]

Thanks for the clarification, Brother Crow (or if you prefer, Raven)! (Yes, I did go look up Corvus, but I had my well-founded suspicions before I did.)

What ! .... a Crow ! A noisy prattling crow ? ! ? !

I will have you know, good sir, a mere crow is below the dignity of a raven !

Are you familiar with the constellation of Corvus ? Perhaps you should read my 'life's story ' ?

at ..... < hang on , gotta find it >



....... http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=206257&highlight=Gift
 

Barleywine

Are you familiar with the constellation of Corvus ? Perhaps you should read my 'life's story ' ?

at ..... < hang on , gotta find it >



....... http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=206257&highlight=Gift

Well, that was certainly an experience! Looks like that Raven needed shutting up as much as the prattling Crow. No wonder Apollo booted him skyward. Seriously, though, the Raven is one of my favorite birds, along with the Great Horned Owl, the Red-tailed Hawk, the Great Blue Heron and the Pileated Woodpecker. Smart and long-lived. We see all of them here in the New Hampshire woods, but there are far too many crows and too few ravens.
 

smw

It can also be a depressive anti life position, where this world is seen as bad, removed from heaven and get back there as soon as you can. Some even taught sex was bad as increased life and human suffering . Unfortunately, this meant any specific gnostic cult would have died out in one generation :D so they had to make 'adjustments' , like sex was okay only in marriage and for the purpose of making more gnostic cultists.

They are termed 'black school' .... white, yellow and red school is much more to my liking ..... anything but that 'black magic' thanks !

why is that black magic?

I just had a look at the Confessions link (as I read it) Crowley associates Buddha with the Black School and that is not to be confused with black Magick/Sorcery? :confused: he also mentions that if you don't have the wisdom you won't know which is the better or even whether all three schools are one..... and then that the Black school is pure scepticism :confused:

Crowley said:
The Black School of Magick, which must by no means be confused with the School of Black Magick or Sorcery, which latter is a perversion of the White tradition, is distinguished fundamentally from the Yellow School in that it considers the Universe not as neutral, but as definitely a curse. Its primary theorem is the "First Noble Truth" of the Buddha—"Everything is Sorrow."


* This doctrine of the Three Schools is of extreme interest. Roughly, it may be said that the White is the Pure Mystic, whose attitude to God is one of reverence. The Yellow School conceals the Mysteries indeed, but examines them as it goes along. The Black School is that of pure Scepticism.


http://hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/mwt_07.html

eta the whole thing looks complicated...