AmounrA said:
Tarotica, "Occult Tarot was never intended to be accessible to the masses and their own connections. One can waste much time cultivating personal feelings about the meanings of occult Tarot symbolism. That is no substitute for actually learning the meanings of that symbolism"-
AmounrA "This is a new aeon, the eaon of Do what thou wilt, cultivating personal feelings are as welcome in this universe as watching out for giant white rabbits. The images can be expanded and brought to life in the Imagination ( 1-magi-nation) Once the sub-conscious gets invovled whose to say its personal?"
In your effort to oppose what I said you have nicely illustrated the point I was making, which is that ignorance of dogma can lead you, based upon mere feelings about what things SHOULD say, to make the wrong conclusions about what things do in fact say. You quote Aleister Crowley for example: "Do what thou wilt", but you do so in support of the claim that it refers somehow to cultivating personal feelings in preference to or outright rejection of learning dogma, or in this particular case the intentions of the person who crafted the phrase "Do what thou wilt" for use with his religion of Thelema.
Aleister Crowley was quite explicit in pointing out that "Do what thou wilt" certainly doesn't mean "Do what you like" or "Do what FEELS good". He would have especially not meant it to indicate that the doing should be broken away from a base of rigorous instruction in the ways and means of properly doing things. More than this, the meaning of the phrase may not in fact be a declaration of personal independence from external obligations at all, since if you read the "thou" as a reference to an other, which Crowley hinted was a correct way of reading it, and indeed to a holy other, or a god, than what the phrase really means is that one should do as his god obliges him to do. That is, it is a vow of service, not a declaration of independence. And it is one made very much in the Christian tradition, by the way, as Jesus says much the same thing to God just before being captured and executed.
To turn that potentially profound idea into "watching out for giant white rabbits" is more than a little questionable. Of course you have the freedom to watch for the rabbits, but that's just the point---blind freedom is like a gun which can as likely be pointed at you as at your target. It is a dangerous thing. On my Mysteria page I have the following Crowley quotation: "It has always been fatal when somebody finds out too much too suddenly." Why should this be so? Because without the preparation of much training, in dogma as well as in life experience, the truth is actually something most people cannot handle or even survive.
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"Theory and practice uninformed by dogma is benighted daydreaming."
Dogma for Dogmas sake.
How does your comment follow from (or reasonably comment upon) what I wrote?
Be specific.
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The journey can be swamped , and be turned into a quest for Knowledge.
The journey may be a quest for Knowledge, or knowledge. What's wrong with that? And in certain parts of one's life a quest for knowledge can be an essential part of being able to move forward, or at all. Just because you feel like that's unfair or restricting doesn't matter. The facts of life don't change just because you don't like them. For example, you can pray to all the gods you want and yet you will still die. There is nothing you can do about that fact. You can wish that, without dogmatic training, you could get onto a jet and fly it. Yet, even if all you wish to do is guide the thing into a building, so you're not much interested in learning how to land or even surviving the flight, you still have to take flying lessons.
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Perhaps likened to the 'false god, daath, the real fools crown.
I think only the people who have worn that crown can honestly say whether it is false or not.
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Universe is not rational, and there comes a point where everything you believe becomes a joke.
What point would that be with respect to the ideas of Thoth Tarot?
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What is wrong with day-dreaming? What is wrong with day-dreaming your own dreams and ideas?
If you would substitute that for learning, there is much potentially wrong and very dangerous about it. Just daydreaming and wishing you knew something when in fact you don't, doesn't make you knowledgeable. It just makes you delusional.
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I spoke to a blue star queen from Andromeda last night, and she told me she loves me, and wants me to go to merlins cave with her soon- who cares if its benighted day-dreaming
I'm sure nobody cares. But that's the point. If nobody cares then why even mention it? In Tarot forums many people relate their ignorant personal feelings about Tarot because they imagine that somebody else should actually care to hear about them. That is presumptuous, to say the least. Tarot is often claimed as just another newage healing agent, and in many ways 12-step rituals have been dumped onto Tarot in that respect. So people often feel, assuming that nobody could possible know THE truth about Tarot (even in part), that all opinions, even their own benighted ones, should be shared and welcome. But that feeling people often have is about what they ignorantly choose to do with Tarot and to project onto it and is not concerned with what Tarot is about, symbolically or traditionally. Thus a person who truly desires to learn Tarot should THINK first and feel good about it second.
