the Opening of the key spread

I will give you a little bit of my history. My steppingstone to tarot was 20 years back when my eye fell upon the Qabalistic Tarot from Robert Wang. I got so enthusiastic that i dedicated myself wholly to the philosophy of the Golden Dawn, and purchased Israel Regardie's voluminous classic. Fired up by the perspective to see the divinelight, to get magic powers, to become clairvoyant, to become a great personality, I learned astrology, geomantics, tarot, painted the egyptian gods and order symbols, constructed the paraphernalia, taped and executed the rituals, read more books, like i was committing myself to an academical discipline. Alas, after several years, it had brought me little more than a skillful handiness, and the ability to be completely on my own.

So i took recourse to the internet in order to contact a real golden dawn order (around the year 2000). I got email correspondence with an adeptus exemptus 7=4, and after a few exchanges he proposed to visit me in Amsterdam, as he was staying in Norway for the moment. Though suspecting that he was looking for a cheap stay, i was delighted to be in the opportunity to meet such a high order member. We arranged to meet in the centre of the city, and i was quite nervous for the big event. When i saw him approaching he was a little different from what i had suspected. He seemed to be into body building, and his walk was rather macho. Worst of all, he was very insecure, and though he was pretty knowledgeable, talking about spirituality made him look even more hollow. He was not unsympathetic at all, but he lacked spirit. When we departed he gave me a thick book that he had written. When i came home i went flat out on bed of desperation, and vented my frustration to my girlfriend. My spiritual world had collapsed, and it felt like all those years of toil had been for nothing. I had a look into his book, and it was full of nonsense, and the foreword had even been written by the girlfriend of Israel Regardie. I pondered to quit with the western esoterical tradition, but changed my mind. Maybe Aleister Crowley was right to revolt against the golden dawn order of Mathers. I threw away my golden dawn decks (Wang, Cicero) and studied the book of Thoth and his tarot cards.

To make it short, Aleister Crowley has not been a concious choice to me, but something like a second hand spare tire. I have spent hours and hours on doing research on the man Crowley in the hope of finding out whether he was being genuine. I like his courage and rebellious attitude, that i can much identify with. His tarot cards radiate strength, beauty and reality, but i am not fond of whores, of cocaine, of machiavelli, of social darwinism, and of the one and only prophet of the new eon. I got very tired of myself, and didn't discard Crowley, but put him in the fridge. This has been 10 years ago. My spiritual life since then consists of practising the pentagram ritual once a week, doing chinese astrology, sanskrit, and hatha yoga, qigong, and zen.

Last month i felt the urge to get the book of Thoth from the bookshelve, and surf after the crowley tarot on the internet. Raven's tarot site gave me a huge stimulus, and so did http://www.youtube.com/user/princeofcups518/videos. I am sceptical about the free flow of Paul Hughes Barlow. Another site that is in my favourites is http://taroteon.com/about/. Though in my opinion he is also too liberatarian, the guy Douglas Gibb is refreshing, and at times relentlessly honest.

So after this exposé i think i deserve an answer to my questions.

a)Is Crowley really worth all the time and effort i put into his brainchild (how much is Thoth, and how much is baboon).

b)There is consensus among the authorities on the Thoth tarot that the OOTK spread is the real thing, and that originally there were no positional spreads. Book T is quite unclear about the matter of elemental dignities (maybe says something about the personality of Mathers), and people are phantasizing about their own procedure. What is the philosophy behind this free flow of approach. Does one make some agreement with the subconscious about divinatory "grammar"rules?

I would suggest reading Liber Θ and other material by James Eshelman and the College of Thelema.

I read that one, but it is an awful lot of information, and wonder what is the practical value for tarot in the light of the very liberal approach to reading cards in a string.

May I say I admire your dedication to your spiritual path. Well done! The thing about spiritual paths is they seem to change direction to lead you to what you need to know at the time.

I certainly can't give you the answers to all your questions but I have a few personal observations re Crowley and OOTK, princeofcups518 and Barlow.

For about 40 years, a friend of mine has been into the Thoth Deck, Crowley and the OTO. Other friends and acquaintances have also been involved to lesser degrees (so to speak). For those who have a discriminating mind and the urge to master their own will, imho, that path is not only useful but it's a lot of fun also to play in that playground. Personally, I have never wanted to submit to the hierarchy and I keep a grain of salt handy. I am aware that there are deeper mysteries that I may not access and others do but I feel I've learnt enough anyway for my uses.

The process of performing an OOTK is not clearly explained in TBOT or Liber Theta where some of the guidelines are expanded. So having looked at some of Barlow's videos it was clear that he was not following those guidelines very closely I could admire his skills as a reader and as a memoriser. princeofcups518 is also not following the published guidelines very closely but is also to be admired for his skills. Does it matter which way it's done? Probably not.

The way I'm doing it is also an interpretation. But I am composing stories about the top cards of the first 4 stacks and abandoning the reading if the significator is not in the stack I expect it to be re the question. I am composing 'stories' about the cards that are counted, then about the cards flanking those, then about the pairs either side of the significator and so on. Looking through the posts on Aeclectic Tarot there is clearly a rich diversity of reading styles from clairvoyant to book-learned recall of keywords. Who is to say that one shouldn't forge their own styles of doing things?

As a musician, I always aspired to be spontaneous, creative and original and I hear a lot of published music that goes way beyond my talent in those directions but as to what I play, and the way I play it, I do feel that I have my own style and that gives a sense of achievement and a little pride too I suppose. So I guess I'm saying that I personally favour a free-flow approach but I have had to learn some basics in order to exhibit some level of competency. I'm still learning but if I feel some aspect is of no use to me at the present time I ditch it possibly coming back to it later - keeping my options open.

The dignities, decans and faces are things I'm setting aside atm. That said I'm intrigued by the concept of a constellation being a predawn indicator of the time and am using my astronomy software to compile a table of the constellations and bright stars that are within 10 degrees of the Sun at sunrise by ecliptic longitude and or 10 degrees of altitude above the horizon. To work out what each of these 'decans' means is beyond my skills as they stand. I would probably have to interest a clairvoyant to help as other astrologers have done for Sabian symbols and the like. I won't accept the pronouncements of traditional astrologers, no matter how famous and proficient in their time, as the absolute truth about what the decans mean unless it really resonates with where I am right now. And that's about the same attitude I have to good ol Uncle Al.

I think it is helpful to "make some agreement with the subconscious about divinatory "grammar" rules?". For instance, what sort of agreement could be made about the cards that are counted in an OOTK? Could the significator be a fool and the next card a magician? Could the second card be a He and the 3rd a Vau? and so on. Setting the intention beforehand helps me in the interpretation but it's not for everyone. Could they, in some manner, relate to the order of the days of the week and their planetary rulers? Surely not, but maybe? Free flow is still an option.

All the best in love and light.

Well, what a pleasure it is to read posts here by people with their brain in gear and a dedicated attitude and WITHOUT some kind of chip on their shoulder.

Thakyou ... its been a long day and its late here so I am just posting a thanks and a quick comment to say a big on the bit of astrology rave there too ... I too are developing my own system. specific to psychology, astronomical positioning 'sideral', southern hemisphere, decan positions and make up via stella and asterism energy (via constellational and stella mythologies, Australian indigenous and otherwise.) etc etc blah blah.

I would not post about it in astrology forum though as in the past I found the bias and ignorance quiet incredible, eventually the moderator Minderwitz stuck up for me bit but then it was too late ... again, bigoted 'experts' who think they know everything and their way is IT (I even got told by a 'professional and very experienced astrologer who has lots of clients and people on the forum' who support him tell me that astrology had, never did and never will (!) anything to do with stars and refuted my idea that maybe signs were named after constellations as they had the same names and same order ... he said I was wrong as scorpio is named Scorpius as a constellation ... and people then come forwards and back them up.

Rant on ravenest! ... anyway maybe this can be a little island from the ignorant howling of derision and false accusation based on projection of securities onto another as a way of trying to get rid of them!

The moderator here seems quiet liberal ... I guess we will see ( and if I get modded for saying all that here. )

That's all folks!

zhan.thay said:

I think it is helpful to "make some agreement with the subconscious about divinatory "grammar" rules?". For instance, what sort of agreement could be made about the cards that are counted in an OOTK? Could the significator be a fool and the next card a magician? Could the second card be a He and the 3rd a Vau? and so on. Setting the intention beforehand helps me in the interpretation but it's not for everyone. Could they, in some manner, relate to the order of the days of the week and their planetary rulers? Surely not, but maybe? Free flow is still an option.

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Thanks for your warm reply.
There should be a limit to agreements with the subconscious, because otherwise we would be able to get reliable responses to yes/no questions. In that case lie detectors would be history, and we would get a decent world.
I have studied Mather's examples for elemental dignities, and have deduced a system out of them. There is still one thing that is really unclear to me, but extremely relevant, namely: when is a card ill-dignified, something that is in particular relevant in relation to the trumps, as the minor arcana cards are mainly decided by their keyword. But in the face of the case that liers have full sway in this world, i hardly dare to put a rule on it.

Is laying down the cards one by one more convenient (though less showy) than spreading the cards out? How do you do it?

yogiman said:

Is laying down the cards one by one more convenient (though less showy) than spreading the cards out? How do you do it?

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Sorry, I don't know who you're asking.

With a Celtic Cross I will lay the cards one by one. With a Voyager Whole Self Mandala there are arcs of cards from which one card is selected and turned over. For OOTK 1st Op I followed the instructions as per Liber Theta. You can see the sample I posted in your 'significator' thread.

So there are different strokes for different folks. Some spreads have specific instructions but it is the personal choice how the reader actually decides to do it and there are innumerable factors that may influence them to do it one way at a certain time and change their way a different time. Back to 'free form'.

Some like to lay all the cards in a spread face down and then turn them over one by one.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, not all people who have grades hold the secret to enlightenment; they're people just like anyone else. I wouldn't be so discouraged by the man you met. Besides, I work out and study the GD, "healthy body, healthy spirit," etc. I also watch cartoons, I shop, I play video games, I'm normal.

As to your questions, I'll start with the second. There actually were positional spreads before, but they were rarer than today. I think there was a thread somewhere here about pre-GD positional spreads, I'll try to find it later. Anyway, they existed as part of the fortune-telling traditions 400 years before the GD.

However, I am confused by your post, as you seem to be both advocating the method of free association and sticking to the rules... The practical value of Liber Θ is in that it is a short compendium of (almost) all that is Golden Dawn Tarot. Of course, anyone can make up whatever they want on the fly, and more power to them, but that's lacking in challenge, and there are other reasons why I dislike the "intuitive" approach. Anyway, one doesn't have to go all the way to either extreme, especially as as the source material itself can be incomplete at times, forcing the adept to improvise. This doesn't mean the material is flawed; Mathers' instructions may be sketchy, but Eshelman and the College of Thelema are no lesser authorities on these matters. Perhaps even more, since they (i.e., everyone) have had over a hundred years to both analyze what was done, recognize flaws and inconsistencies and perhaps even adapt them to modern times. Even "eternal secrets" need to be updated, and often are (as is the case in the Abramelin, for example).

As to agreements with the subconscious, I would in this case quote Crowley himself, who was an adherent of the motto "the method of science; the aim of religion." In other words, everything (well, almost) that is presented in the material is there because it has been tried and found to work. Doing magickal work is much like science, and one must always be conscious of whether something is working or not. If something in the OOTK hinders your own development, there's no point in banging your head against the wall, just modify it in an intelligent way that makes sense to you, and fits in with the other doctrines. This is essentially what occultists have been doing since forever, it is what the GD itself was built on (and fabrications, forgeries, intellectual and cultural misappropriation... well, let's not go there).

As to Crowley and the Thoth... wow... that's a biggie. I've owned it for about ten years (it was bought out of spite... long story) and have studied it for about two, and it still sends my heart pitter-pat every time I look at it. It is the entire Western Mystery Tradition in one beautiful package, and merely as a study tool it is invaluable. You study the Thoth, you ultimately know it all, including GD decks. It is the real deal, you can't get better than that in Tarot, not in scope, or vision, or sweep, grandeur, artwork, the way it all fits together into a seamless map of the spiritual universe... well, let's just say I am fairly fond of it, and leave it at that.

As to Crowley himself, that's a story unto itself. I don't approve of everything he did, and I certainly don't agree with everything he said. However, nothing in the his writings intimates that I must (on the contrary, independent thought is encouraged when studying the Thoth).

Great response! Little bit unsuspected, but better late than never. Thanks a lot.

About my disappointed with the golden dawn man, it was clear that he was financially motivated. I think this is a big and often occurring pitfall.