gregory
It's a Moebius stripDebra said:
"Killing the Thoth Deck" -Mary Greer
Scion
The Thoth deck doesn't EXIST without CRowley. Authenticity has nothing to do with it. He can be kicked to the side or denied or hidden or ignored, but he's there on every card.Debra said:
He is the song being sung, the speech being given. The moment you are discussing the Thoth you are discussing his ideas and his worldview. He's right there in the middle of things, front and center. Unless you're talking about some other deck that isn't the Thoth, it's his microphone, his voice, and his words.Debra said:
No. The only looping portion is Teheuti defending Arrien's timeworn "Jungian" approach and everyone else saying Arrien's book sucks.Debra said:
On the other hand, the rest of the thread seems to be a pretty cool look at the discipline necessary to learn a deck. And the way that creators participate in the afterlife of their creations. Also the great danger of ignoring sources and content and interpenetration between artists and their art. And the ways New Age publishing seeks to bastardize real content for easy absorption by knucklewits. And differing ways the Thoth affects people as they study it.
Teheuti
So what is a symbol? How does it operate? Is it a shorthand representation for a particular idea that is not meant to be understood in any other way? Is a symbol only what the person who selected that image meant it to mean? For instance, if an author says that he meant a drinking glass to indicate clarity, then would others be wrong if they thought it symbolized the evidence of alcoholism in the story-line (of which the author may have been totally unaware)?
Aeon418
It is? Well lets go through that same quote sentence by sentence and see if we can spot the problem.Teheuti said:
I can't see you objecting to that one. You have insisted from the start that Arrien's method was a different way to approach the Thoth.Aeon418 said:
Are you now saying it is required reading?Aeon418 said:
But you did focus on that one little humour filled sentence and use it as a justification for omitting the Book of Thoth.Aeon418 said:
Aha! Got it. It must be my OTT sense of humour at the end. Sorry about that.Aeon418 said:
Teheuti
No. I don't require anyone to read anything!Aeon418 said:
As a Tarot teacher I try to make suggestions particular to a person's needs or stage in their development based on what I've observed as working well for similar others. I try to approach authors and their works from the point of view of finding the value in what they have produced. Unfortunately some people assume that if I find something of value in Angie's work that it impugns Crowley. I don't see it that way at all.
Nevada
When you put it this way I agree, yes.Scion said:
Sophie
That's a great question.Teheuti said:
My own answer to it is that if an author is purposefully intending a meaning, and purposefully excluding another meaning, for any symbol used in a deck, then his own meaning, plus any meaning he has not excluded, belong to the symbol. The meaning he has excluded also belongs to the symbol - but like a negative. The example of the pelican and self-sacrifice (excluded) on the Empress is a case in point. It's impossible, if you have ANY knowledge of European symbolism, to see a pelican and not think of self-sacrifice: but Crowley deliberately wants you to look beyond, and to turn that symbol on its head. Instead of self-sacrifice, he is offering your True Will, the realisation of what a mother, by her very nature, wills: and therefore not an act to be praised as a martyrdom, but rather accepted as the expression of her higher self.
So you look at the pelican, you see the self-sacrifice: then you look at it again through new eyes - you see the pelican feeding her children her own blood because it's an expression of her True Will: freely chosen and embraced, an act that doesn't create a debt, but belongs wholly to her.
(and by the way, if any of you have met those mothers with martyr syndromes, you will be grateful to Crowley to give you an alternative view. One of these martyr-mums might be your querent one day - think how you might help her get over this self-sacrifice syndrome, with the help of Crowley!)
To that, you might add some meanings for that pelican that Crowley might not have included or excluded - and that, in the middle of a reading, might be entirely appropriate. That will be your call as a reader.
Nevada
It is, and I'm enjoying the ride now. When I was on the upside down loop, though, yikes.gregory said:It's a Moebius strip
Teheuti
I am curious if Crowley believed that the symbols of Tarot should be able to convey their essential meaning without a text. A lot of magic is about the power of symbols to work their own magic.Aeon418 said:
Teheuti
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