"Killing the Thoth Deck" -Mary Greer

Aeon418

Sophie said:
Someone serious who engages with the material from various perspectives, who takes time to return to the sources, who is gifted with great Imagination - and who is an inspired and inspiring writer.

A Master of the Temple 8=3 would be able to divine the true significance of the deck, without the problem of ego distortion.

Aeon418

Teheuti said:
I assume from this that you see all of tarot since its inception in a similar light—lesser works that weaken the original intention.

I didn't say that. You're putting words in my mouth.

Teheuti

Aeon418 said:
I didn't say that. You're putting words in my mouth.

Sorry - I thought you were responding to these questions:

Would that mean all our modern associations for the cards and development of the tarot were meaningless and wrong? How much would that matter? What harm would we have been doing to ourselves and to tarot?

Were you referring instead to the question in my blog post?

If Crowley’s book were lost (along with all other esoteric texts), would future generations be able to reconstitute and find anything meaningful in these 78 images?

If so, is your answer that the best we could hope for would be Angie Arrien's book? And, since you feel her book is so bad, that without Crowley's texts and sources we might as well throw out the deck as worthless? I'm just asking for a little clarity, please, as I did misunderstand you.

Aeon418

Teheuti said:
Were you referring instead to the question in my blog post?

No.

Teheuti said:
If so, is your answer that the best we could hope for would be Angie Arrien's book?

I have already given my answer. For the sake of clarity I will repeat it.

8=3

This is also the answer to the pun in the biographical note.

Teheuti

BTW, I can understand that to a Thelemite the Thoth deck represents a whole world and riches that most people will never be able to imagine. However, the deck is widely sold (without the OTO insisting that the book accompany it) to the general public.

It seems to me that, like any work of art, it now has an existence different from that which was planned by its parent. The parent can complain but the work now makes its own way in the world, establishing new relationships that the earlier generation may deem harmful. Whether right or wrong - it is a reality of life.

I don't think that everyone attracted to and wanting to use the deck is ready for Thelema, nor would it be healthy for everyone to try to follow that path. Sometimes it's good to have alternatives. Those who are Thelemic material will probably go directly to the Book of Thoth and start devouring it. At least, that's what I've observed since 1969 when the book first appeared.

Teheuti

Aeon418 said:
No.

I have already given my answer. For the sake of clarity I will repeat it.

8=3

This is also the answer to the pun in the biographical note.

So someone with no esoteric works to learn from (which was part of my question) could use the deck correctly once they've achieved 8=3. I'm sure you're right. Thank you.

Aeon418

Teheuti said:
So someone with no esoteric works to learn from (which was part of my question) could use the deck correctly once they've achieved 8=3. I'm sure you're right. Thank you.

Not just use, but divine the significance of it without the ego getting in the way and projecting it's own desires.

But what about the rest of us who aren't at that level of initiation? Are we supposed to sit around and wait for a Master to magically appear and point us in the right direction when personal desire is pulling us the other way? A book written by the Master could serve that purpose though.

(And the book, just like the Tarot, is only True up to 7=4.)

The pun in the biographical is an in-house joke between a 8=3 and a Magus 9=2.

In the beginning doth the Magus speak Truth, and send forth Illusion and Falsehood to enslave the soul. Yet therein is the Mystery of Redemption.

Sophie

Aeon418 said:
A Master of the Temple 8=3 would be able to divine the true significance of the deck, without the problem of ego distortion.

And presumably, one of these might live at any time, they didn't wait for Crowley to come along: and in the future, were Crowley's works ever to disappear (like so many works of Antiquity did), such a Master would probably not start off as a Master... the deck, then, might serve this person along the path to initiation and mastery? And short of mastery, person might still be initiated inter alia by profound contemplation of the deck?

I am thinking that someone who is the cross of an Eliade, a Blake, a Blavatsky and a Crowley might write a good book without knowledge of Crowley's writings.

Aeon418

Sophie said:
And presumably, one of these might live at any time, they didn't wait for Crowley to come along:

Any number Masters may be incarnated at any one time. But the Word/Logos they Understand/Binah is uttered by the Magus/Chokmah of the Aeon. The Master receives the Word and tends his garden of disciples in accordance with it.

The Logos is not particular to Crowley or the system he developed around it. Rather he was a conduit for it. Other Magi-conduits and Masters may arrise throughout the Aeon, and their systems of teaching may on the surface appear quite diverse and different. But the current running through them will be the Word of the Aeon.

Aeon418

There's something very funny about this thread. We've talked about Tarot and how ego and personal desire can bend interpretation to it's own ends. And yet this whole thread is based on a Tarot card, of sorts, made up of seven words.

It's purusal may be omitted with advantage.

An in-joke between two Third Order Initiates that has been made to mean...... anything you want it to.