Yygdrasilian said:
I might draw a distinction between meaningful criticism and being told: you’re wrong - get over it, don’t use 7th grade math, you’re misguided & vaguely dopey, your methods are stupid & respectless, etc., etc..
I don't know how to respond to this without resorting to metadiscussion but I'm going to try...
Yyg, the trouble with your endless requests for meaningful criticism is that you ignore ANY and ALL criticism. I'd be better off offering notes on etiquette to a sociopath. The moment someone points to a flaw in your theory, a mistake in your facts, a leap of logic... you cease listening and commence bellowing. You don't want criticism at all. Your theory is
Alice in Wonderland logic stem to stern: verdict first, trial after. In truth, there is nothing to criticize. If someone disagrees with your theory (and I stress
your, as in, it is espoused only by you and not one other person seems to find the remotest shred of evidence or value in it), you ignore the criticism categorically and return to hinting and doublespeak.
For the record,
this is a thread about the role that Astrological symbols play in the utility of a Tarot, specifically the Thoth. You did not post about the topic. What you posted was (yet more) mindless baiting to try and hijack the conversation so you could expound further on a theory that has a single supporter - you - without any concrete evidence to support even the most cursory attention beyond what I characterized kindly as "7th grade" arithmetic games. Yes, I've watched your gematric twiddling, but as RLG and everyone else has observed... to "support" your theory you reach a series of pre-established figures known to you before you started. In school, they call that cheating. Nevertheless, your musings on the secret masters and orbital mysteries and the unwitting gnosis of Angeles Arrien do not belong in this thread.
Now, the reason you reject the criticism is because you cling doggedly to an outmoded style of esoteric inquiry that doesn't stand up to scrutiny: a nineteenth century syncretic pre-Anthropology that has vanished as a method of study; it is, to put it lightly, "vaguely dopey" because it ignores advances in research methods and sources, and the way that subjects are studied by legitimate scholars. It is not enough to say, "It is important because I say so," unless you are in fact important.
Yygdrasilian said:
The blinds and defenses used by initiates of the Western Tradition confound traditional scholarship by utilizing the logic of cipher and riddle, guarding secrets in cryptic emblems, complemented by oral tradition.
NEWSFLASH: there
isn't one monolithic Western Tradition that sent initiates skulking across Europe to proselytize. The ooga-booga mystery school of the ancients just isn't an accurate historical picture. Every Mystery cult and secret society WASN'T secretly the same as every other.
Everything ISN'T equal to everything else. That is actually the hem of your 19th century preconceptions showing again. Historians though that way a century ago, and made asses of themselves thereby. And the idea of arguing for occult blinds to explain away gaps in a theory went out of fashion about 130 years ago. Speculation is NOT equal to fact, and sometimes speculation betrays more ignorance than imagination. Also, for the record, there is no
one QBLH... there are literally infinite approaches because it was "from mouth to ear!" Most damaging to your theory, hermetic Qabalah was not equated with the Golden Dawn model until very recently. And secret masters didn't need to communicate "cryptic" orbital mysteries: precession of the equinoxes and the spherical earth were written about openly. Research into the "mysteries of ancient astronomy" and the evolution of astrology have seen massive progress in the past 3 decades. We have hard physical evidence of
Hellenistic mechanical computing used to determine planetary position. Oh, and serious academics stopped trying to figure out the calendar date of Yeshua ben Notsri's birth in the
nineteenth century, because the attempt would be literally stupid:
that isn't how religions or mythology work. But all of that is tangential and didn't belong in this thread until you dragged the dead horse in.
Now again, the topic of the thread is whether we should or shouldn't be able to read with cards comprised solely of astrological symbols... whether depictions are even necessary to produce a Tarot.
Is there a reason why we need more than pure symbols to read effectively? The topic is NOT the all-systems-are-one nonsense and certainly not your fictional "ciphertext." Above, you made a highly speculative comment, which I identified as such. Tarot is NOT equal to Astrology which is NOT equal to Qabalah. In my opinion, saying that betrays both a deep misunderstanding and a shallow grasp of those disciplines. None of these topics are monolithic and seamless and simplistic; their histories cover thousands and thousands of years and miles... How COULD they be uniform? What manner of investigation could lead you to such a indefensible position? Why would anyone who had gotten further than a dictionary entry think they are?! For that matter, they didn't spring up fully formed in a vacuum and they are rife with contradictions and factions, all of them. If your fictional Western Mystery tradition
could have existed as you imagine it, they did a pretty crappy job! Opinion aside, suggesting that isn't just misleading, it is
wrong. The statement, not you. I don't know you; I can't judge you, but I can judge your statement and I will: Misguided. Dopey. Silly. Bizarre. Wrong.
Apparently this is a basic rule of conversation of which you remain unaware:
It is irresponsible to present speculation as fact. For you to repeat and repeat and repeat the same invented "evidence" without permiting even basic criticism, for you to repeat and repeat and repeat the same juvenile numerical and constellated Dan-Brown style "proof" ALL OVER this forum without once allowing any kind substantive discussion of the vast, gaping, ragged holes in your "theory," without once participating in a discussion that you don't steer towards proclaiming said theory, is (again to put it kindly) "misguided." That isn't personal or insulting, that is a neutral, factual observation. Yours is a pattern of behavior that beggars patience and belief.
Yygdrasilian said:
You don’t like my results... Fine. Solve the ciphertext and come up with your own interpretation - lots of people have.
Again, NOT the topic of this thread: Astrological symbol in Tarot. This is another hijack attempt. The discussion of astrological symbols might superficially SEEM to be tangentially connected to a discussion of the unified tradition of astrology and Qabalah and Tarot, but let's call it like it is: only if we all want to discuss your theory. And as you might have noticed: most people don't, the vast majority don't, in fact I can't think of anyone who has discussed your theory for longer than 3 days without giving up in impatient disgust.
Here's the thing, and I don't know how to say this any other way: There is no "ciphertext" outside of your own theorizing. It (along with the name you gave it) is a fabrication of your own devising. You have no "results" to be liked or disliked by anyone. No one has any interest in "solving" anything because your theory is smoke and cobwebs. You cannot point to a single other hard source to support your theory. If there is a single human on the planet who has knowingly contributed to, even agreed with, your theory, I have never heard you mention them or seen a single concrete example. Not just now but EVER! In all these thousands of years that people have been looking at the Sky to find magic, or thinking about the Creation of the World by Words, or even playing a trick-taking game with allegorical cards and turning it into divination... exactly ZERO people have written or spoken along these lines. Not even uber-fluffwit Angeles Arrien, who unknowingly provided material you felt was worth coopting. Through all the
millenia, there isn't a single person you can point to in support; no scholars with access to the sources-ideas-grants under publish-or-perish pressure... no wacky esoteric whiz-kids or charlatans looking to bilk the punters or hardcore necromancers... No novelists, no painters, no theologians, no librarians... NO ONE. The thing is, Yyg, if everyone with whom you discuss your theory finds fault with it, if not a single piece of evidence exists that isn't a "blind" or a "puzzle" or a "code" to which only
you have the key, then maybe (
*gasp*), just maybe, you are, as you say above:
Wrong.
But whether you are or not:
it is not the topic of this thread. I genuinely hope the mods don't clip this because somewhere, someone has to speak up. I can't figure out how to phrase this discussion in a way that makes it germane because NOTHING you are saying is germane to the topic of Symbols and the role they play in a readable Tarot, except that your above statement and the subsequent complaint/defense needs to be addressed objectively, as RLG has above me. When people stumble across this thread later, it is important that groundless speculations don't float like amputated limbs to mislead the innocent, the eager, and the doomed merely because the people reading the twaddle are simply too bored to post a rebuttal.
This isn't an attack. It isn't personal. It is in fact,
disrespectful for you to insist that every conversation revolve around your idiosyncratic, unsupported, intellectually empty obsessions, especially when the moment someone is actually foolish enough to enter the discussion, you will admit neither your errors nor their logic. But you keep talking to yourself in tangential circles and shouting for everyone to come watch you doing it. Instead I, like most people, have no choice but to click IGNORE, which means you have achieved the exact opposite of your intention: to get someone to give audience to a speculative one-man band with one song and no instruments.
And for the record: that IS stupid.
