Since the other thread about Lust and this one seem to be going on parallel lines, I'll answer both here. In the end, I get the feeling you're looking for an authority who will tell you if something is the real deal. I doubt you'll find that, here or elsewhere.
Modern Tarot readers tend to favor results above all else, whether a reading is correct or not. Meditation on Kabbalistic ideas, elemental imbalances and esoteric minutiae are left to a niche, and a very small one at that. The vast, overwhelming majority of readers use no system at all and rely solely on their own "intuition," which to me is free association. Ironically it was a certain GD alumnus who himself deplored this method of reading, yet singlehandedly ushered it into the mainstream, to the extent that trying to be faithful to his own methods is seen as "alternative." I am of course speaking of A.E. Waite.
The EDs are one reading method among many, and are probably not divinely inspired, not more correct than any other, and neither Mathers nor Crowley hold a monopoly over the way they are implemented, if at all. I've discussed the scientific aproach before, and the same holds true here. You won't find the answer in either examples or rules, no one will tell you there is one sure-fire way to read, but when the GD created a system, that is exactly what it was, and the key part of any system is consistency, and this is what the EDs (whatever counting method you use) are for. The goal is to not get in a situation in a reading where you say "looks like I won't get the job of my dreams, but using EDs I will, so I choose the better answer." While I see the value of the systematic method, I have received very accurate readings from people with no method, so there is that. The key is simply to choose one method, and to stick to it, not because an authority told you (there are no authorities) but because you discovered it works.
The same, incidentally, goes for Crowley and his visions. There is no proof whether he did or didn't have them, it is an article of ambiguous faith whether he did or didn't. Even if he did receive Liber AL from a supernatural being, that being still didn't give him the rules for elemental dignities. He did what any occultist does, took ideas from others, adapted them and brought them into the fold of his own theories. This doesn't mean they are right, it merely means they are consistent (and sometimes they aren't even that). The man you met in Amsterdam may have been a charlatan, true, but such people have always existed. The deciding factor in doing anything is in its efficacy. You yourself practice the LBRP. Why? Is it because some authority told you to do it, or because you discovered for yourself that it benifits you? If the former, then it very similar to the old religions based on fear and appeasing some amorphous and jealous deity,regardless of whether the adherant understands the reasoning or not (an example of this is that many Jews in the diaspora do not understand Hebrew, but still say the prayers, not knowing what it is they say, simply because they are "supposed to."). If the latter, then it is a whole other story.
yogiman said:
Now what confuses me, is that the golden dawn didn't look for a way to decide whether a card is well- or ill-dignified, though they did have a method to determine the validity of the reading by means of the significator.
But they did, it's what we've been talking about, the elemental dignities. Ever wondered why the Book of Thoth is so big, filled with information, meditations, attributions, analyses and everything Crowley could intellectually vomit, yet the section on actual divination is so small, the ED examples so few, and the actual reading (apart from the process) is dismissed as "tell a story using the cards?" In my opinion, this shows just how little importance he attributed to the divination part, whereas personal developement was gained by pondering the cards themselves. But then, however rigid a system you attempt to place on reading, and although you began with your dislike of ambiguity, it will always be somewhat ambiguous. Besides, well or ill dignified are in themselves ambiguous terms, it's all part of it.
