You did! And it is.
I was just clarifying the original point.
Aeon418 said:
But then the wind changed. Suddenly we learn that the cards already speak for themselves. And the only way they can do that is if they have been designed that way in the first place. So this begs the question: how can you consult someone else's design plans when they had no input in the original design process. You can't. (Unless you're willing to give up the notion that the cards speak for themselves and require no explanation.)
So what is this thread about, now that the original chair it was sitting on has been kicked out from under it.
Indeed.
Actually this thread is ultimately a comment on
Teheuti's blog entry which was her last word in an argument about a criticism of a book written by one of her teachers. To wit... a rebuttal of a rebuttal to a rebuttal of a crappy book.
Back in
that old Arrien thread, the thing that was never explained... the thing that no one could ever offer was a single example of the ways that Arrien's approach offered utiity or wisdom. Once Teheuti had given up on defending Arrien, things sputtered to an inconclusion. (
Arrien is a professor. Arrien is a "shaman." Arrien is nice. Arrien knows some smart people.) The trouble was, that beyond defending Arrien personally there isn't much sense in defending her book or her approach. Teheuti was defending a shaggy dog, more for emotional than logical reasons. It seems the only defense possible was to situate the
Tarot Handbook not as a BOOK but as a MODE of approach. A Free-to-be-you-and-me masterclass on Arrien's brand new "repurposed" Crowley-scoured Thoth deck. So... Arrien got a LOT of things wrong, but
gosh she sure does make folks feel free to "do what feels right" with the Thoth, which is "God's Picturebook," dontcha know. Why
Arrien's mistakes are better than anyone
else's own mistakes has never been explained (not in all these thousands and thousands of words), but Arrien is really-really-really cool so apparently her book deserves defense, however feeble and impossible. (
Don't we all know cool people who've written shitty books? I certainly do.)
As you say Aeon, if Crowley's cards speak for themselves (which is the core argument of people who study cards without their author's companion texts), then anyone listening will find their way to Crowley's ideas, by hook or crook. His ideas (and Harris' slavish interpretation of same under his strict tutelage) are there in every pigment, point, and position. As I said earlier, if we took Arrien's advice and ignored all the books (including
Arrien, please note) our "personal" experience of the Thoth will be our experience of Crowley as best we can manage it.
Still, the song HAS changed midverse, because Arrien's book is literally a book which exists to tell you to ignore books. It exists to prove itself unnecessary. The Blog entry from which this thread takes its title was about Teheuti's feeling that fundamentalists were crying heresy. The fact is, no one was crying heresy in that long ago thread. No one in either of these threads suggested you HAD to read Crowley-and-only-Crowley. But rather that reading Arrien was foolish, for BALES of reasons. And since even she had to admit the considerable flaws in Arrien's "enthusiastic" twaddle the only argument left was to claim that Arrien was a kind of intellectual freedom fighter, battling the hegemony of cruel Thelemites who want to keep the Thoth locked up.
Except no one has tried to lock the Thoth up. No one has said SHOULD or MUST about Crowley's writings or anything else. Several people have suggested those writings might be helpful, that perhaps Crowley knew something about the deck he created. Call me crazy.
Nevada felt personally attacked because the spectre of SHOULD hovered over this thread, even though it never appeared.
Greer's Blog KILLING THE THOTH said:
It saddens me that the fears and anger provoked by Angeles Arrien’s book indicate a deep mistrust that the Thoth deck can survive the common touch of the “masses,” or that it has any worth whatsoever outside of Crowley’s text. It is felt that the mistakes and misconceptions in Arrien’s book (of which there admittedly are many) could create a devastating sense of betrayal in those who eventually find out that Crowley intended something different. This supposedly-fearful juxtaposition, however, led me to a much deeper appreciation of Crowley, while Angie encouraged independence and freedom in how I work with the deck and its symbols (not a good thing to those who see Crowley as the absolute and only fundament).
Outside of this "KILLING THE THOTH" blog,
where has anyone suggested that innocents approaching the Thoth somehow dirty it?! Or worse somehow "kill" it!?! Nowhere! That is a misleading fabrication coined outside of our forum discussion, in a private, protected venue in which debate would have seemed rude. No. At every point, Arrien's wretched, empty book was the concern, a fact which that blog entry carefully ignored by refiguring her text as a
mode of approach rather than a source of real, reliable information. All the cries of "heresy" and "fundamentalism" in these threads and on the aforementioned blog entry are shadowboxing; no one else has asserted either. The anxiety was not about the masses "damaging" the Thoth, but ARRIEN damaging people's understanding. That
exact concern was discussed at great pains in around a hundred thousand words of criticism and discussion, which that blog entry took great pains to misrepresent as fundamentalist shrieks of heresy... (n.b. away from the very people who were supposed to be shrieking).
STILL-STILL-STILL at no point has anyone offered a
single word aboput the ways Arrien's
Handbook offers utility or insight not found elsewhere. Even the much-vaunted method of approach credited to her is something she borrowed from other people who expressed it more cogently and clearly. Whatever Arrien's value as "encouragement" for people too nervous to look at the Thoth for themselves, it comes ("admittedly") in a swamp of mistakes and sentiment and psychobabble which pointedly reject Crowley while deigning to coopt the man's deck.
Arrien may be annoyed by it, but Crowley's deck IS a text by Crowley! Duh.
The trouble is, Arrien's book is MUCH less interesting than the questions it's raised here. When people ask about it and are warned away that should be enough. The "do whatever, slop together" Jung-lite mode of study that Arrien supposedly offers to liberate people has been better expressed and more thoughtfully explained elsewhere.
The difficulty is that Arrien's book is more of a snapshot of a moment in New Age plagiarism, aka "repurposing" ancient symbols for E-Z consumption. Remember: Arrien loved the pretty pictures but didn't like Mean old uncle Al. So she decided these "ancient symbols" were given to her by God. Free-free-free of creator or intent. Crowley had nothing to do with them, only
Harris did because she was a woman, and therefore instantly superior and selfless and sentimental. Again, a snapshot of a moment in New Age evolution: when every female statue is a goddess, when "9 million witches" were burned by the Church.
We now know that those claims are ludicrous because research and prudence has shown them so. Arrien's Me-me-me-generation self-help workbook is a
cenotaph on a mode of pop-culture strip-mall esoterica: Blum's fabricated Runes; Shamans in subdivisions; Top-40 QBLH. Like charts by flat-earth theorists and Ussher proving Genesis began on 23 October 4004 BC, they are charming and ridiculous and fundamentally misguided... certainly not something you'd recommend to anyone seeking serious answers.
Aeon418 said:
This thread is based on Teheuti's assertion that Angeles Arrien's book was a different but equally valid approach to the Thoth Tarot. The Book of Thoth was not required reading. To support this view Teheuti seized upon one little sentence in the Book of Thoth and gleefully declared it to be some kind of exemption clause. Good bye Crowley. Hello Arrien. And they all lived happily ever after.
Even with the chair kicked out from under that emotional, misleading blog entry, even with seeming impossibility of Arrien's defense, I think this thread is actually about the
rigor necessary to approach magickal decks directly. Nevada has read and sidestepped Crowley in working with the Thoth. The focus and determination to plumb the Thoth has led her to Jung, which has been helpful, and at times misleading. Rigor is the thing that opens the lock. By the same token, at some point each of us is opening our own Thoth and so each of us will approach it for ourselves in our own time, context, and ability. Apparently, Arrien did the same thing back in the 1970s, with largely poor results and the gall to present her mistakes as a
Handbook.
By the same token, there are things in the deck which are completely Crowley; idiosyncratic symbols, reversals of interpretation, even personal metaphysics. Ignoring those things is impossible if you are looking at the deck; misunderstanding them is very likely without taking pains to follow the bones under the muscle under the skin. Crowley is there on every card, and everyone does as they Will. That's not to say anyone who pointedly ignores Crowley is a dilettante, but rather that they've put themselves on a hard road. They're STILL ingesting Crowley in a pretty indirect and complex fashion: as symbols interpreted and rendered by Harris in 78 paintings. If anything you could make a case for those people being braver because they have set themselves a terrible task. Maybe reading the
Book of Thoth makes me lazy because I need Crowley's help to make sense of his work. Maybe the Gnosis afforded by contemplating the cards directly leads to a different understanding. I'll never know, but then neither would Crowley. We all bring our own knowledge with us to the party.
I think Crowley would have loved the attempts by clumsy sentimentalist authors like Arrien and Wagner and Ziegler to clean him up and exorcise him from his own work. Fluffy wiccans have tried the same thing with modern Witchcraft, which was almost entirely
scripted by Crowley. He loved taking the piss. The
Book of Thoth IS a "hindrance" to people who just want to look at the pretty pictures. For anyone who actually believes that it was "
dashed off by Aleister Crowley, without help from parents," it seems likely "
its perusal may be omitted with advantage" because they are obviously
not paying much attention. Taking sarcasm as gospel is a mark of somehting, but I couldn't say exactly
what in polite company.
So maybe this thread is about rescuing Crowley from his Arrienesque role as a "hindrance" to his deck for anyone who has interest in actually paying attention to the Thoth Tarot... and also a reminder that he has been there in the cards all along, laughing behind his cuff at the silly New Agers who tried to pull a pastel veil over him.
