Zan and BC's Excellent Thoth Adventure: The High Priestess

Bat Chicken

I thought it was my turn to open a thread on the Adventure...

The High Priestess

To open, I am getting into the habit of posting my untutored observations before diving in to the BoT and other sources. So here is what struck me first:

The Magus' grid is back and it IS the veil and where he is in front of it, she is beneath or behind the veil. Where his was very angular and energetic, hers is softer and curves, or galactic swirls? are present.

On her head it appears to be a crown of the Moon - crown of Isis? She sits on a pedestal trapezoid in shape and at her feet a white camel, gems shaped similar to the Fool's and more fruit - grapes from the Fool? These objects (except her pedestal, of course) are in front of the veil, however, separated from her.

On her lap it looks like a fancy bow with a single arrow on her lap. This is intriguing in light of the Greenwood's "Breath of Life".

Her face is a bit haunting - detached and not exactly 'right' somehow. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but, suffice to say that I feel it bears some connection to her position above the Abyss.

On to the BoT... In spite of advice to the contrary, I read the BoT first. It makes more sense to me to begin with the most complex and simplify after!
 

Grigori

How did you go with the BoT BatChicken? Did anything change for you? The Priestess is more and more my favorite card recently. I named my phone Gimel, since it crosses the abyss and keeps me connected with the great beyond :laugh:
 

ravenest

Bat Chicken said:
On her head it appears to be a crown of the Moon - crown of Isis? ...

On her lap it looks like a fancy bow with a single arrow on her lap. This is intriguing in light of the Greenwood's "Breath of Life".
Click to expand...

Dianna the Huntress, her weapon is the bow, she is one of the many Moon "Goddesses".
 

Bat Chicken

Grigori said:
How did you go with the BoT BatChicken? Did anything change for you? The Priestess is more and more my favorite card recently. I named my phone Gimel, since it crosses the abyss and keeps me connected with the great beyond :laugh:
Click to expand...
Blown away, actually! :D
I am still processing what I have read and I'll say more later...
There was a camel 'kidnapped' from an area zoo a bit south of here today. Seriously!

I have taken a side trip and I am committing a few things to memory before I go any further.

ravenest said:
Dianna the Huntress, her weapon is the bow, she is one of the many Moon "Goddesses".
Click to expand...
Yes, I did eventually read that and the fact that the bow is also a three stringed harp - which I find so significant on many levels! :)

Again.. letting a few things simmer and I'll have more to say!
 

Bat Chicken

OK - I have to start something here - at least get some discussion going again.

I have spent a few hours re-reading all the stuff on the HP from Snuffin, DQ, Uncle Al and I even jumped into the QT (Wang). I re-read Nicky's thread (I am reading only one card at a time!) and the links attached to it and then several other links on set theory, projective geometry, etc.

Interestingly, all the stuff that had me rather transfixed during the 0=2 thing last Spring seemed to come around again. I was reminded how elegant it all is and the limits of reason, but I still had fun along the way. In spite of being an INTP and focusing so much on thought - I am enchanted with the Mystery that this very, perhaps even biblically Qabalistic HP is. Einstein's view of intuition as the 'gift' and reason, the 'servant' is apt...

This card is mindblowing. There are SO MANY ways to see what this card means. The card offers so much with each form having multiple interpretations depending on your world view and I think we each end up gravitating to one thing or another to find that meaning. Even if one knows one cannot ever know the destination, the journey was fun - so back into the geometry. :laugh:

Since my mind gravitates to the geometry, that is where I spent the most time and this initial post will start. The Goddesses are too much a personality metaphor for my comfort zone - in that I don't interpret personality as a metaphor as easily as some might who would prefer that path as an entry to the card. I see the Tree of Life more easily, at this point as geometry, than as a society of divine emanations. So I let my mind work with the ideas of projective geometry overnight.

And here's what kept repeating in my mind:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1

Through some line of connections during my study of shamanism, I began to relate creation to sound (I think it was during the Greenwood study - the Aces). In my preliminary searches on projective geometry (PG), I came across music and experimental electronic musicians using it to create soundscapes. One site (http://synthesist.net/music/2009/02/why-i-am-jonesing-for-m4l/) had an image of a 31 point and 31 line finite projective plane.(The line and point making it nature, of course, DUAL). This author's image reminded me of the Universe card . Anyway - my point is the vibrations of the harp are sound, the Word may be SOUND - energetic vibrations. I could wander off in to so many directions with this but within seconds I am out of my league. Think String theory. I know that in one of the links on Nicky's thread Plato goes down a similar road in relation to Platonic Solids (think the forms at the HP's feet): http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.geometry/unit6/unit6.html
It also got me to thinking how much the form of lambda looks like gimel... Or maybe that is just my overwrought mind!

Where the Magus seems to play with the PG, the HP would almost seem to be weaving it. The forms at her feet are just that - forms which are the basis for everything below - forms being seeds, flowers and crystals. The crystals making the light more complex... Spirit into matter through the Door (daleth) that is the Empress.

Nicky's thread discussing the Virgin made me think of a Qabalist interpretation of the Virgin Mary - Kether through her to Tiphareth - the Son/Sun (Did everyone all enjoy the Solstice/Christmas??)

Hadit/Nuit/Horus?

Perhaps someone can correct me here, but in the book of Law Khabs is Nuit (the light or the veil?) and Khu is the forms?

It is interesting to me that the foundation of this geometry is set theory (mathematics of the infinite (the presence of the lemniscate?**)). Three names include aleph(Fool), beth (Magus) and gimel (HP). Where the first two involve the cardinals and their powers, gimel sets are the mapping of them. Now my understanding of this is terribly limited, and I am not enough of an authority on it to comment - but just think of the implications!

This last point may only be my imagination running wild, but, the 5 camel prints - might they be the 5 equations that define the plane curves of the HP's veil?

OK - I have opened a lot of doors here and probably not said even near enough. And I haven't even begun to touch on specifics on the forms, elements and anything Wang said (because I need to read that again) or discussed the pillars. Nor have I said much about the HP as a path to initiation and the Abyss. This card is just nuts! I might be here a while.... :)

**from The Free Dictionary:
lemniscate [ˈlɛmnɪskɪt]
n
(Mathematics) a closed plane curve consisting of two symmetrical loops meeting at a node. Equation: (x2 + y2)2 = a2(x2 - y2), where a is the greatest distance from the curve to the origin. The symbol for infinity (∞) is an example
Click to expand...
 

Bat Chicken

Silence...
Forgive me in advance if I said something stupid... LOL! It's been a while! :D

More reading and more posting tomorrow....
 

Grigori

Bat Chicken said:
Perhaps someone can correct me here, but in the book of Law Khabs is Nuit (the light or the veil?) and Khu is the forms?
Click to expand...

hmm, not sure about that. Nuit is the all/none, contained within are the individuals, khu their "spirit" and khabs the star/centre of their spirit. Hadit is the centre of the khabs and all the Hadits together make up Nuit. Maybe I'm having a little brain implosion though :laugh:

I would think that Hadit is the thing behind the veil, maybe you could look at the veil as the khu, and Nuit as the whole shebang?

Also reminds me of:
2. The unveiling of the company of heaven
Click to expand...

This last point may only be my imagination running wild, but, the 5 camel prints - might they be the 5 equations that define the plane curves of the HP's veil?
Click to expand...

Can you see 5 camel prints on the card or is that from the text?

Five camel prints is V.V.V.V.V, which was a magical motto of Crowley's when he reach Master of the Temple (Binah, i.e. crossed the abyss). Gunther argues that the name was in honor of another V.V.V.V.V who is the Thelemic Messiah, who helps us across the abyss. I like your idea also, nifty :)
 

Bat Chicken

Grigori said:
hmm, not sure about that. Nuit is the all/none, contained within are the individuals, khu their "spirit" and khabs the star/centre of their spirit. Hadit is the centre of the khabs and all the Hadits together make up Nuit. Maybe I'm having a little brain implosion though :laugh:

I would think that Hadit is the thing behind the veil, maybe you could look at the veil as the khu, and Nuit as the whole shebang?
Click to expand...
Yes, thank you! I think I have been confusing myself. Hadit is like the point and Nuit the expansion. The point and circle from earlier discussions. The two examples I have been reading - the point or seed which bears its own limits and its expansion; then the infinite point and the curves that make up space. I think I will have to sort this out in my head a little more!

Grigori said:
Can you see 5 camel prints on the card or is that from the text?
Click to expand...
From the text.... :)

Grigori said:
Five camel prints is V.V.V.V.V, which was a magical motto of Crowley's when he reach Master of the Temple (Binah, i.e. crossed the abyss). Gunther argues that the name was in honor of another V.V.V.V.V who is the Thelemic Messiah, who helps us across the abyss. I like your idea also, nifty :)
Click to expand...
Thanks! :D Gunther I have not read...

I am currently re-reading Genesis Ch 1. I am possibly seeing what I want to see, but, wow, does it seem qabalistic. Going to do a search on genesis and qabala. I read somewhere that genesis in particular was code, but I assumed that was just gematria...

I enjoyed the idea from Wang that the HP is memory - access to Jung's Collective Unconscious. It gives the simple meaning I started with when I first picked up Tarot of the HP being intuition unimaginable depth.
 

Bat Chicken

Thanks! That came up in my search too. The Gnostic Movement and Samael Aun Weor. Curious!

OK - It's after 2 am and I need to go to bed! More tomorrow night... :)
 
The Book of the Law Study Group 3.2 The Book of The Law Study Group 3.4