Aeon418 said:
The symbols on the cards are meaningless and arbitrary shapes and colours, waiting for meaning and intention to placed upon them, or so Arrien claims.
I asked where Angie said this.
I was being sarcastic.
So, she never says this. Thank you.
But sarcasm or no, the point still stands because it is the overall theme of Arrien's book.
No wonder you are so upset. You have read something into this book that isn't there at all.
Angie's approach was based on Jung's theory of the collective unconscious and the meaningful repetition of archetypal images and themes across world-wide human cultures.
She writes: "The Tarot is a symbolic map of consciousness and an ancient book of wisdom that reveals to us visually and symbolically the creative ideas and states of consciousness that appear in multiple existence in all cultures. . . . At the time I was deeply influenced by Carl Jung's book
Man and His Symbols and began to see the mythological and psychological themes represented in the Tarot."
Of course, none of us have to like or believe Jung's theories, or even Angie's way of applying them. Angie's book is an approach based on, as she acknowledges, the work of Jung, Marie Louise von Franz, Joseph Campbell, Ralph Metzner, Mircea Eliade and Robert Bly.
If you remove Crowley's esotericism from the Thoth what are you left with? 78 pretty pictures that were "seemingly" assembled at random, without any conscious thought behind them. The reasoning behind the careful placement of each and every piece of symbolism has instantly vanished.
Thank you for making clear that this is your own view of what happens if you take away Crowley. If I believed that it would make me angry, too. However, this is the exact opposite of what Angie Arrien says in her book - which is that the symbols do have meaning beyond what Crowley wrote or intended.
I think a core problem here could be this major misunderstanding about Angie's intention in her book.
The trouble is that each card is trying to convey a set of ideas using the language of symbolism. If you throw that language out how do you know what it being said.
Both my and Angie's understanding of a symbol is very different from yours.
I go along with Joseph Campbell, who said: "When you are given a dogma telling precisely what kind of meaning you shall experience in a symbol, explaining what kind of effect it should have upon you, then you are in trouble. This symbol may not have the same meaning for you that it had for a council of Levantine bishops in the fourth century [or for Crowley]. . . . The individual's assent to a definition is not nearly as important as his or her having a spiritual experience by virtue of the influence of the symbol."
This is why it is important to learn the language of symbolism.
Which I don't believe to consist of fixed, dogmatic definitions.
Can you imagine the kind of negative reaction a fundamentalist Christian would have to many of the cards in the deck?
Yes, precisely because they have learned a specific language of symbolism--very close to the one Crowley knew well from growing up with in his own fundamentalist Christian family.
The multitude of symbols used in the Thoth is an encoded and highly concentrated language of symbol and colour . . . a clearly defined language
Then they are no longer symbols, but rather signs. Symbols have many possible referents. Signs have fixed meanings.
2)Arrien's insistence that Harris be acknowledge as the sole creator of the Thoth literally reeks of agenda.
Of course she had an agenda. Any writer who says they don't are probably lying.
Here are Angie's oh-so-damning words.
"I was most drawn, of all the decks available at the time, to the Thoth deck which was designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris. . . . I read Crowley's book that went with this deck and decided that its
esotericism in meaning hindered, rather than enhanced, the use of the visual portraitures that Lady Frieda Harris had executed. I instantly felt that a humanistic and universal explanation of these symbols was needed so that the value of Tarot could be used in modern times as a reflective mirror of internal guidance which could be externally applied. . . . I feel these visual symbols stand by themselves because of the artist's integrity and commitment to their being representative of something greater, 'God's Picture Book [quote from Harris].' It is Crowley's interpretation of these symbols, regardless of his reputation, with which I have issue; and it was this issue which led me to interpret these symbols from a cross-cultural and universal view honoring their visual execution." p. 13.
I understand this as saying that Angie took issue with there being a necessity for
esotericism in getting something out of the symbols. She believed that the Thoth deck symbols could be read in an other-than-esoteric way - specifically, as cross-cultural psychological symbols (archetypes from the collective unconscious). Her book merely offers this alternate perspective.
In essence she asked: What do these symbols tell us if we strip away the esotericism and look at them purely as symbols and archetypes from the collective unconscious reflecting myths and images that have appeared across many cultures?
I see it purely as an alternate reading of the deck—not as a demand that we discount Crowley—but, rather, asking what can be seen if we do ignore Crowley? Is there anything else? Do real 'true' symbols transcend a single, fixed definition?
As I see it, we might as ask, "If Crowley's book were lost (along with other esoteric texts), would future generations be able to find anything meaningful in these 78 images? Would this deck still offer something capable of guiding our thoughts and actions?
I see this as an eminently worthy intention, though not the only one to consider when learning the Thoth deck.
If we take away all references to the middle class and New Age, etc., what are we left with in your criticism?
The only way to kill the Thoth is to remove Crowley.
Would Crowley have wanted the deck to be no more than this? Or would he have wanted it to work again if dug up some day from a deeply buried time capsule with no explanatory work to go with it?
Perhaps these two different beliefs form the real dividing line. Did both Crowley and Harris infuse something into the Thoth deck that can/will transcend Crowley's own stated thoughts about it, or not?
Mary