Major Arcana and the Thelemic Holy Season

Always Wondering

Aeon418 said:
A verse to sum up the last two days.
Nuit becomes Zain for the chance of Vav. The pain of the former, makes the joy of the latter possible.

Very nice. I love the simplicity. It seems harder to grasp the very simple this high on the tree.

AW
 

Always Wondering

Heh
5
Path 15 Chokmah(Wisdom) to Tiphareth(Beauty)
Constituting Intelligence
Window
Aquarius the Waterbearer
The Star


The Fifteenth Path is the Constituting Intelligence, so called because it constitutes the substance of creation in pure darkness, and men have spoken of these contemplations; it is that darkness spoken of in scripture, Job xxxviii. 9, "and thick darkness a swaddling band for it."

Hey is a combination of Daleth and Yod. So window is an extension of door with Shin.

Case said:
The House is KETHER,
The Crown of Primal Will,
And the DOOR is BINAH,
The Gate of Understanding,
And as the thought of the door is from the building of the house,
So is the thought of the window from the fashioning of the door.
Hence those instructed in the Secret Wisdom declare
That CHESED, the Path of Beneficence,
Proceedeth from BINAH, the Gate of Understanding,
Even as the idea of the window
Proceedeth from the idea of the door.



Liber ARARITA 6 said:
0. Deeper and deeper into the mire of things! Farther and farther into the never-ending Expansion of the Abyss.
1. The great goddess that bendeth over the Universe is my mistress; I am the winged globe at her heart.
2. I contract ever as she ever expandeth;
3. At the end it is all one.
4. Our loves have brought to birth the Father and Creator of all things.
5. He hath established the elements; the aether, the air, the water, the earth, and the fire.
6. He hath established the wandering stars in their courses.
7. He hath ploughed with the seven stars of his Plough, that the Seven might move indeed, yet ever point to the unchanging One.
8. He hath established the Eight Belts, wherewith he hath girdled the globes.
9. He hath established the Trinity of Triads in all things, forcing fire into fire, and ordering all things in the Stable Abode of the Kings of Æ.
10. He hath established His rule in His kingdom.
11. Yet the Father also boweth unto the Power of the Star 418 and thereby
12. In his subtlety He expandeth it all into twelve rays of the Crown.
13. And these twelve rays are One.

This is a confusing path for me. Heh is feminine, yet almost instantly needs a “father”. It's easy to think of the switch, and see the confusion. As if these cards are linked as much as ATU III and ATU IV. Or XVII and III. I guess I could go on and on through the deck.

On first reading of Liber Aratita 6 all I could think of was No thing coming into Keither. It is logical think that Hey could be a reflection of this, just as ATU XVII is a reflection of Nuit in manifestation. I had to mentally put an apostrophe, as in He', as Crowley references it in The Book of Thoth to feel back on the right path.

Regardie says that Hey is the window in which we find the divine. Yet the darkness in the Yetzirah title and Job 36 has a bolted door. If I quiet those Egyptian Aquarius waves I would look up at the misty firmament, or inward past my monkey chatter, break the concentrated limits of Saturn, I would see myself. This idea isn't new.

Regardie also says that Hey is the path of ritual magic. This makes sense in a microcosmic reflection of this macrocosmic imagery. But the door is locked and here my proud waves stop. A clue to quiet the mind, I bet. But also a kind of hitting home that in all my desire to expand, all this uprightedness, I barely understood that thick swaddled darkness of a cosmic glass ceiling I keep bashing my head against is me. :laugh:

Case said:
If thou canst penetrate into the nature
Of the simplest thing,
There thou shalt find me.
This is the key to the mystery of the sacred letters.
Fix thy mind on the object set before thee by any letter,
And hold thy thought to meditate thereon.
Then shall the inner nature of that object
Be made known to thee,
And by this means shalt thou draw nigh
To some aspect of my being.

The value of 5
5 senses
5 human limbs, counting head
5 lumbar vertebrae in the human spine
Geb- pit, waterhole
edh- vapor, mist

AW
 

Aeon418

Always Wondering said:
This is a confusing path for me. Heh is feminine, yet almost instantly needs a “father”. It's easy to think of the switch, and see the confusion. As if these cards are linked as much as ATU III and ATU IV. Or XVII and III. I guess I could go on and on through the deck.
The Book of Thoth, p.203
The Ruach is centred in the Airy Sephirah, Tiphareth, who is the Son, the first-born of the Father, and the Sun, the first emanation of the creative Phallus. He derives directly from his mother Binah through the path of Zain, the sublime intuitive sense, so that he partakes absolutely of the nature of Neschamah. From his father, Chokmah, he is informed through the Path of He, the Great Mother, the Star, our Lady Nuit,* so that the creative impulse is communicated to him by all possibilities soever. Finally, from Kether, the supreme, descends directly upon him, through the Path of Gimel, the High Priestess, the triune light of Initiation. The Three-in-One, the Secret Mother in her polymorphous plenitude; these, these alone, hail him thrice blessed of the Supernals!

[*Footnote: How strikingly this fact confirms the counterchange of IV and XVII, above fully expounded: as a link between Chokmah and Tiphareth, the Emperor would have no great significance, and this exquisite doctrine of the Three Mothers would be lost.]
Always Wondering said:
The value of 5
5 senses
5 human limbs, counting head
5 lumbar vertebrae in the human spine
Geb- pit, waterhole
edh- vapor, mist
AL I:60... The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red.

1. The great goddess that bendeth over the Universe is my mistress; I am the winged globe at her heart.
 

Always Wondering

Aeon418 said:
The Book of Thoth, p.203

I think I am starting to see. A Triune Goddess.

Aeon418 said:
AL I:60... The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red.

1. The great goddess that bendeth over the Universe is my mistress; I am the winged globe at her heart.

I've gotten in the habbit of thinking of Hadit as a winged globe. Thanks for the reminder.

AW
 

Always Wondering

Daleth
4
Path 14 Chokmah to Binah
Illuminating Intelligence
Door
Venus
The Empress


The Fourteenth Path is the Illuminating Intelligence, and is so called because it is itself that CHASHMAL which is the founder of the concealed and fundamental ideas of holiness and of their stages of preparation.

Chashmal is scintillating light.

The only way I can conceive this is to think of the spermatozoon again. The stages of preparation as conception and birth where a new structure of DNA, the basis of all form. Except the DNA are thought-germs, mental images, thus bringing in imagination, and consciousness. Does that make sense?
This is the path where logic and intuition meet. Much seems to be made out of the fact that it is hidden. I guess because it's above the abyss. Lots of hints of secret arcane goodies.
Case said:
Consider well, O Israel,
The knowledge of me which thou hast
In the sacred letters.
For with them, even as it is written,
Hath the universe been created.

Crowley said:
Ours is the elevenfold reading of the Elevenfold word.
These seven letters together make seven diverse words; each word is divine, and seven sentences are hidden therein.

All I could make out of this was Abrahadabra?
Perhaps the seven letters are the seven double letters?

It's almost as if the Wisdom Alphabet was created on this path.

At any rate it's going to take me more than 1 day to get a grip on this one.

AW
 

Always Wondering

I look forward to leaning and understanding more about Daleth, and the Wisdom Alphabet as I have only had a taste, and it had me at Tzaddi. :laugh: But I have decided to stick with my plan and continue on.

Gimel
3
Path 13 Kether to Tiphareth
Uniting or Conductive Intelligence
Camel
Moon
High Priestess

The Thirteenth Path is named the Uniting Intelligence and is so called because it is itself the essence of Glory. It is the Consummation of the Truth of individual spiritual things.

Gimel is the longest path on the tree of life. It also crosses the abyss. I have become pretty familiar with the idea of union, but I haven't much thought of conduction. This path is also in exact balance in the middle pillar.

Conduction is the transfer of energy by a medium without bulk movement of the medium itself
1:45 The Perfect and the Perfect are are one Perfect, and not two, nay, are none!


Case points out that the idea of conductive is closely related to a Camel. I hadn't thought of the moon as the ship of the skies before either. Neither had I thought of the survival technique of killing a camel to consume the water. Perhaps this is what Crowley means, by “as they go they spill water”.

The Moon indicates the dark of night and intuition. As I have recently been rethinking intuition this looking to be a contemplative day for me. The planet title Peace and Strife makes sense to me, but to be honest, I think I have idolized the Priestess, holding her above the more seemingly BoL Chap. 3 qualities. It starts at division, in 1:29 and spelled out in 1:50.

ATU II represents possibility in its second stage without any beginning of consummation. The Priestess is wholly feminine and virginal. She is the veil that hides Spirit, with incomparable dazzling brilliance. As I have been discovering, Gimel, Daleth and Hey are three forums composing a Triune Goddess. So the secret in 1: 57, doesn't seem strange or out of place anymore.

I have discovered Liber CVI today. If that is any indication of where my contemplations took me. I really like it. Seems like a mini version of BoL.

Value of 3

The third path Binah
The number of alchemical element.
The number of Mother Letters
The number of chapters in Liber AL vel Legis

AW
 

Always Wondering

Beth
2
Path 12 Kether to Binah
Intelligence of Transparency
House
The Magus

Path 12 Kether to Binah
Nu! the hiding of Hadit.

The Twelfth Path is the Intelligence of Transparency, because it is that species of Magnificence, called CHAZCHAZIT, which is named the place whence issues the vision of those seeing in apparitions. (That is, the prophecies by seers in a vision.)
It is the revelation of the divine self as it emerges.

Case
Wherever this power acteth,
Whether in low forms or in high,
I only am its source,
And I the Knower.

BoL 2:26
I am the secret serpent coiled about to spring: in my coiling there is joy. If I lift up my head, I and my Nuit are one. If I droop down mine head and shoot forth venom, then is rapture of the earth, and I and the earth are one.


Beth means house.
BoL 2:2
Come! All ye, and learn the secret that hath no yet been revealed. I, Hadit, am the complement of Nu, my bride, I am not extended, and Khabs is the name of my House.

Also location.
BoL 2:3
In the sphere I am everywhere the center, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found.

Mercury is the planet of life and death.
BoL 2:6
I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star. I am Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death.

The Magus
BoL 2:7
I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. “Come unto me” is a foolish word: for it is I that go.


Liber CVI chap. 2
LISTEN AGAIN to thine own voice within thee. Is not Hadit the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star? Is not He Life, and the giver of Life? And is not therefore the knowledge of Him the knowledge of Death? For it hath been shown unto thee in many other places how Death and Love be twins. Now art thou the hunter, and Death rideth beside thee with his horse and spear as thou chasest thy Will through the forests of Eternity, whose trees are the hair of Nuit thy mistress! Thrill with the joy of life and death! Know, hunter mighty and swift, the quarry turns to bay! Thou hast but to make one sharp thrust, and thou hast won. The Virgin of Eternity lies supine at thy mercy, and thou art Pan! Thy death shall be the seal of the promise of our agelong love. Hast thou not striven to the inmost in thee? Death is the crown of all. Harden! Hold up thyself! Lift thine head! breathe not so deep--die!

CHAZCHAZIT seems interesting. I could find no other definition. I keep trying to make Hadit out of Hazit but could find nothing to back it up.

AW
 

Always Wondering

The Universe today and Liber LXV Chapter One tonight.

The earth is ripe for vintage; let us eat of her grapes, and be drunken thereon.

I love this.

Intoxicate the inmost, O my lover, not the outermost!

But this seems very practical on many level. :laugh:

AW
 

Always Wondering

Today is Shin, The Aeon. And Chapter four of Liber LXV. I've been thinking of this card quite a bit lately. I think Case sums it up pretty well in The Book of Tolkens.

Triple is my flame in manifestation,
And one in essence.
Three tongues of Fire,
Three manifesting Words,
And One Being whence all come forth.
One Archetypal world,
One creative letter.
And three worlds derived therefrom.
Such is the manifestation of the sacred Fire.

My God! Let Thy secret fang pierce to the marrow of the little secret bone that I have kept against the Day of Vengeance of Hoor-Ra. Let Kheph-Ra sound his sharded drone! let the jackals of Day and Night howl in the wilderness of Time! let the Towers of the Universe totter, and the guardians hasten away! For my Lord hath revealed Himself as a mighty serpent, and my heart is the blood of His body.

I think this is beautiful, though I only understand about half of it. I don't get the secret bone kept against the Day of Vengeance part.

AW
 

Always Wondering

Resh, The Sun

Eshleman has made available a copy of Liber VII with commentary just in time for the holy season. Maybe I already had it but I lost all my links with my old computer.

http://www.thelema.org/publications/

I am liking Chapter Four this year.

34.In the boat of Ra did I travel, but I never found upon the visible Universe any being like unto Thee!
35.Thou wast like a winged white horse, and I raced Thee through eternity against the Lord of the Gods.
36.So still we race!
37.Thou wast like a flake of snow falling in the pine-clad woods.
38.In a moment Thou wast lost in a wilderness of the like and the unlike.
39.But I beheld the beautiful God at the back of the blizzard—and Thou wast He!

I'm still at the flake of snow stage, so I particulary have the urge to walk through some pine-clad woods today. Though a rain drop might have to surfice. :laugh:

AW