MasterJm
Virgo...
Hermit: Rays of Light
Virgo...
Barleywine
Okay then ... default options;
1. It's a mystery. (An old Lodge Master once said thats the answer you give when a new person asks a new and difficult question)
2. Its synthetic projective geometry.
3. (Getting really desperate now ) It requires thelemic 'chanelling' ....
[ Several Thothforumites sigh; ... "Not that Shoggoth again!" ]
I vote for #2, as in "artistic license" (although The Hermit would probably be a more aesthetically pleasing figure without them). Personally, I wouldn't read more into them than can be surmised from the elements of the card itself and the BoT passage. Seems to me Crowley's commentary touched on anything in the imagery he found to be worthy of note, even if he was only saying it is a "mystery" or a "dogma." IMO, the pertinent reference to light here is "Concealed within Mercury is a light which pervades all parts of the Universe equally." This elaborates upon the previous statement "For he is . . . the fluidic essence of Light, which is the life of the Universe." That "all-pervasiveness," then, implies that there is no other external source from which those apparently random rays could have come (unless they are "not of the nature of Mercury," but Crowley is silent on that point). Perhaps they are "reflected light" from the lamp, bouncing around within the confines of the Universe?
Aeon418
Maybe the lamp is not the source of the light, but rather the place where it is concentrated. Are the five rays from the Pyramid/Supernals(?) being projected downward into the lamp.
The 5 rays may indicate the sending forth of V.V.V.V.V. (Turn the card upside down to see the five V's.
)Maybe the rays correspond to the five paths that cross the Abyss?
Barleywine
Get a good translation of the Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing) and read it with an open mind. It's short and sweet. The Tao is probably the model for the Force in Star Wars. I consider myself a Taoist (among other less reputable things).
Just as the "obeah" and the "wanga" could be the twin roots of the name Obi-Wan?
Hmm . . . ?
Barleywine
Maybe the lamp is not the source of the light, but rather the place where it is concentrated. Are the five rays from the Pyramid/Supernals(?) being projected downward into the lamp.
The 5 rays may indicate the sending forth of V.V.V.V.V. (Turn the card upside down to see the five V's.
Maybe the rays correspond to the five paths that cross the Abyss?
Good point, I already had a few disconnected thoughts along those lines from my earlier studies of this card. My original thought was that the triangle was the Supernal triad. The Sun in the lamp would then be Tiphareth with the rays from Kether, Chokmah and Binah converging on it (as well as departing from it). The diagonal ray expanding from left to right would not obviously be the path of The Hermit, but it might have something to do with the statement that it is Binah "in whom he gestates." It is entering and leaving the frame of the picture primarily for compositional balance. The web of rays almost looks like a highly abstracted and stylized representation of the Tree of Life without all its appendages.
