"Killing the Thoth Deck" -Mary Greer

[Teheuti]

Another question - Is Thelema for everyone? Will the millions who have bought and will buy the deck all aspire to Thelemic or even esoteric masterhood? Should they?

My response is no. A great many would be uninterested. Others would be particularly unsuited.

If not, what would be the best book for them of the books that are out there (if we were, for sake of discussion, to exclude the Book of Thoth as requiring too deep of a study to be much use—at least until their interest/suitability grew)?

The historians on the list think everyone who wants to read tarot should begin with Dummett (et al) or Kaplan's Encyclopedias at best or, at least, Huson, Place, O'Neill or Giles (or all of them). Others definitively state that one should memorize meanings for all the cards first (and then argue about which meanings). Still others say write down your first impression of the cards—before you look at any books. Still others think you should begin by memorizing Hebrew letters and the Tree, astrology and color and number symbolism.

What book would you suggest to one of the, perhaps, hundreds of thousands who are definitely going to buy and use the Thoth deck but are temperamentally not suited to esotericism (much less Thelema)?

This is similar to asking what book would you suggest for the person who wants to use a computer for one application or to get on the internet but doesn't want to learn how to program it? (For those of us who started with computers in the early '80s it was a real question in which it was believed by some that you shouldn't use a computer unless you could write programs from scratch and that Macs weren't really computers.)

 

[Teheuti]

BTW, some examples of Crowley's own tarot readings still exist. I don't have a copy of the published diaries but I'm sure one of you here must. In one of the editions are several readings followed by his comments. Could someone start a thread with these readings for study? They are very brief but we should be able to tease out his references.

 

[Scion]

In a sense, Teheuti...

But the thing is, if we are living in the world of the Thoth Tarot, by that I mean using it regularly and meditating on it and dwelling in it, seeing the world through its lens... then Thelema is not a view but THE view. All Art conveys something of its Creator, from the Universe on down. That is one of the core ideas of the Golden Dawn and all Qabalistic magick: contemplating the order of the Universe is a way of understanding its Creation and its Creator.

This deck is not a random collision of symbols anymore than a book is a random collision of the Alphabet ground out by infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters. Though many people would seem to wish it so, the Thoth Tarot isn't an accident.

Using the Thoth is a study of Thelema, in the same way that singing Mozart is a way of studying Mozart. Not everyone aspires to more than singing, but the music is a direct path the the mind of its creator. Any singer who's read Mozart or performed Mozart knows certain things about Mozart that cannot be expressed clearly. Musical gnosis. That said, there isn't a way to AVOID it. Is there a way to pay attention to something and NOT study it? Why would you try? Contemplation of nothingness starts with , uh, nothing. To pay attention to something is to consider its origins and its logic and its purpose and its possibilities. Isn't that the nature of attention thence study?

How could anyone be "insulted" to discover the very thing they are looking at?

Whatever the Crocodile and Lotus in the Thoth Fool may mean to anyone else, the the Crocodile and Lotus in this Fool are CROWLEY'S Crocodile and Lotus in Crowley's Fool: Crowley chose them as symbols, and (with Harris' gifted help) he placed them in context; he dictated their position, color, size, aspect, composition exactly as they are because he was expressing his worldview as coherently as possible. Crowley's understanding of Lotuses and Crocodiles was based on a LOT of study and experience, and so it behooves us to follow in his footsteps, but they are HIS footsteps and they tread his worldview. If anyone's understanding of the polysemic possibilities of crocodiles and lotuses can add to the understanding of his worldview, mazel tov. Nevertheless, since Crowley crafted these images (through Harris hands) all addenda are footnotes at best, and distractions at worst. Brainstorming all the possible meanings for Crocodiles and Lotuses doesn't actually illuminate anything other that Lotuses and Crocodiles in general... but NOT in specific and NOT in this deck.

If we are living in Thoth-land, (and that means anyone using the Thoth, even looking at the Thoth), then Thelema isn't something you choose, it is the way things are. It is the worldview expressed by this particular work of art. If we are using the deck then we ARE studying Thelema, full stop. In the same way that when we walk through a temple we are participating in the liturgy and mythology of that faith. Any temple, any faith. Even with the most glancing attention, the very stones and decor are designed to convey a particular understanding of the universe. This is why the wacky Israelites were so opposed to depictions of the Divine and why acnient cultures stole statuary and razed temples in wars. Those ideas are communicated. That is why people travel, why they look at Art, why they TALK to each other. Because minds colliding produce the only sparks worth noting. The bourgeois idea that we can "shop" for culture or faith is tied with the idea that "all religions are one" or what I call the Baskin Robbin theory of Deity... which gives ride to stupid asssertions like "Set is the Egyptian Satan" or "Hades is the Greek name for Hell." Uh, yeah. The 12th century Christ and televangelists' Christ wouldn't be able to sit at a table together.

Only in post-mall-culture would people ever think of religion or metaphysics as something we choose. It's actually a weird position if you think about it. A good comparison would be medieval Christianity. If you were born in European cultures there wasn't a "choice" as to religion. Catholicism is named so because it was "catholic" that is to say, orthodox. Re- ligio means "bound back." CAN people actually alter their worldviews or merely expand them? Can people choose religion the way they choose socks? I'd say no, but then my definition of religion is probably not everyone's. But whatever it is that people think they are "choosing" when they shop for faith in a strip mall doesn't seem to be very rigorous: McChristianity, Scientology, Sitcom Zen, Silver Ravenwolf's Wicca in 20 minutes, Archangels for the masses. Sops to the credulous and lazy and inept.

The idea that people are blank slates that drift through an enormous market of cultural content picking and choosing at random is an invention of 20th century capitalism. Only in a world of consumers could anyone believe that ALL religions, ALL ideas, ALL possibilities are accessible and equivalent to everyone. People are not interchangeable any more than worldviews are. That is because it is a convenient fiction for selling things to people, but a lunacy when you are looking at active dynamic theology. Christians who like the art but hate all that cannibalism and crucifixion business. The kind of cultural tourism where Americans travel to China and complain about the food being inauthentic. People who defend their illusions and apathy with fire and sword.

It reminds me a bit of the dopey Fate vs. Free Will debate that flares into silly life every so often on the forum. People who don't do much reading like the word "Free" because of the way it's been branded by modern advertisiers, but on examination Free Will is actually a terrifying burden. Again, the near impossibility of stepping outside our own worldviews proves the lie. This is the reason that books ARE dangerous, that wars have been fought over art, that censorship is so appealing to fundamentalists. Ideas are infectious and immortal. They cannot be controlled.

And again again again I will say it and say it and say it because it seems so obvious to me. If you are studying a Golden Dawn deck then you are studying the Golden Dawn's view of the world. If you are using the Crowley-Harris Thoth then you are living inside Crowley's head, looking at the Universe through his eyes... however shallow or slight a grasp you may cultivate of that connection. Further study of writings ON the deck will sped up certain connections, but the connections are inevitable. Things as simple as the portrayal of women throughout, the dynamism of the Knights, the recurrence of certain shapes and colors. All these things cobble together a mosaic of Crowley's own devising. Only someone who did not use the Thoth could avoid Thelema. Only someone who did not use the Waite-Smith could avoid Waite's brand of mystical Christianity.

Computer programming is actually a perfect metaphor. Everyone who uses a computer is in effect studying "computers" as a topic, but how many people actually take the time to peel back the skin and look at the architecture of the software? How many people go further and actually create software? More people want a lovely GUI than a string of 1s and 0s. But the 1s and 0s are all there even if you only use your computer to surf the web and types tweets. All differing levels of expertise, of study... but ALL study of the topic at varying degrees of attention and effort.

Should everyone who studies the Thoth Tarot study Thelema? This is a nonsensical question; THEY ALREADY ARE! This is like asking if everyone who reads the Shakespeare should study Elizabethan theatre. Granted some people study things more casually and superficially and that is of course their right. But any object of attention is studied nonetheless, and if that object was created by Crowley then they ARE studying Crowley. How could they not? Why would they pretend it possible? The Thoth is NOT a tabula rasa. Who would ever claim it was?! It did not fall from the sky. The egomaniacal belief that our OWN perceptions are somehow unique and individual and devoid of influence seems like frantic solipsism (me-me-me!)... but everything we are and do is built on things that came before. Even Crowley, egomaniac that he was, insisted on study of his esoteric and intellectual forebears.

And this brings me back to one of my biggest questions...

If in fact someone doesn't want to study Thelema or the Golden Dawn then WHY are they using objects created for the express purpose of communicating those worldviews?! Why would someone who thinks magick is delusional horseshit and divination is a sort of "psychology in fancy dress" bother to use something lovingly, obsessively crafted to conver a Truth predicated on a magickal worldview? That's not to say that people who actively avoid deeper study AREN'T using Tarot, but rather that they are absorbing a deliberately skewed curriculum every time they shuffle. How could they not?! They are holding the curriculum in their hands, they are looking at snapshots of that worldview, they are tracing the way that worldview fits together. They are looking through somone else's eyes because that is the function of all Art, all Creations: to allow us to share experience with another consciousness.

The only way they could avoid it is by closing their eyes, which answers the question; They could only be insulted if they were willfully blind.

Scion

 

[gregory]

Thanks, Scion. I do think deliberate reinterpretation of something so carefully and precisely created is decidedly off - that was what I was trying to say, sort of.

But - study and reading CAN be different, and I would (have to ) defend anyone's right to READ WITH the Thoth deck using only the images.

I guess what is behind it from Uncle Al will get into their heads though - why else is it the ONLY deck that instantly told me someone was schizophrenic (and yes, the sitter confirmed that the person it was speaking about was indeed !!!!!!! )

 

[Scion]

That's my point, G...

How can you read the deck without studying it? Aren't you looking at the images, experiencing the ways the symbols fit together, noting the parallels and precision? Anyone who thinks they are reading with it and NOT studying Crowley must have a big blind spot. What are they looking at if not his worldview? How can they look at it, READ it, and not be affected by it?! Only by closing their eyes. Moreover, if they are NOT affected by it, what do they think they are reading?

Ditto Golden Dawn decks and people who don't like "hocus-pocus." The Golden Dawn was a Magickal order! How could anythign based on their work NOT be full of a magickal worldview. Studying any deck based on their system IS a study of Magick, howveer indirect, cursory, or unwilling.

The ideas want to get out. And they do.

 

[Ross G Caldwell]

The historians on the list think everyone who wants to read tarot should begin with Dummett (et al) or Kaplan's Encyclopedias at best or, at least, Huson, Place, O'Neill or Giles (or all of them).

That's not fair Mary! I've never said that. I certainly don't believe it.

I regularly direct people to your books and to Eden Gray's when they write me asking about how to read the Tarot. For Thoth, I recommend DuQuette and always add that The Book of Thoth is the ultimate goal for understanding it, but not necessarily for reading it. Reading is very different from understanding the system that created the object read.

I learned to disassociate from doctrinalism in 93-94, after meeting a "natural diviner" - he had never read anything about Tarot cards, but when I laid out a spread with the Thoth (the 15 card one from the Thoth LWB) he read it as if he had known it his whole life.

But he read everything - he was a natural, a born diviner. One of his methods was birds; another clocks, another overheard snippets of conversation.

I don't think that, with people like him, you need a lot of study to divine effectively.

P.S. - of course he wasn't always right - at least with regards to future predictions, but he was uncommonly successful -, and certainly I wouldn't have trusted his intellectual explanations of the cards - but that wasn't the point - he got somewhere deep very quickly, and revealed things by talking through the symbols.

 

[gregory]

That's my point, G...

How can you read the deck without studying it? Aren't you looking at the images, experiencing the ways the symbols fit together, noting the parallels and precision? Anyone who thinks they are reading with it and NOT studying Crowley must have a big blind spot. What are they looking at if not his worldview? How can they look at it, READ it, and not be affected by it?! Only by closing their eyes. Moreover, if they are NOT affected by it, what do they think they are reading?

Yes indeed - but when I read with the thing I read the CARDS - and yes something clearly gets through - I DON'T feel I "know the book stuff" AT ALL ! So - studying the CARDS THEMSELVES - does that count as study ? Could it count like "literary analysis from first principles" ?

But whatever is coming through bears no relation to Arrien or Ziegler (mercifully Wagner has so far escaped me...)

 

[Scion]

I don't see how it could be anything but study.

It's not as if you read the cards without seeing them, that you use them without rememberign them,that you never notice patterns within them. Reading them IS studying them. Crowley says this himself: the study a lifelong enterprise, living with them, letting the symbols saturate your consciousness...

Reading the Book of Thoth enhances and illuminates many of the choices, but reading the Book of Thoth without the cards would be a particularly empty exercise. It's that standing on the shoulders thing, if you JUST studied the cards you could eventually write the Book of Thoth yourself. In the same way that you can bang rocks together for a few thousand years and eventually invent the microwave oven.

Going back to Mary's blog entry that started all this; it was a personal reaction to the Angeles Arrien thread, but in that thread no one ever said that anyone HAD to read the Book of Thoth, just that steering people away from it was a bizarre and counterproductive enterprise... especially if undertaken as a sort of balm to delicate-types who were nervous about Crowley's general spookiness or complexity. The Thoth Tarot is just as spooky and complex as the book which accompanies it and the Beast who created it. Trying to scrub away the "icky" parts is just a mass-market, me-generation, quasi-Orientalist impulse... wanting the exotic made safe, the perilous made anodyne.

As we are told in the Handbook introduction, Arrien just LOVED the beautiful cards, but Crowley got in the way of her own insipid musings... Resenting the creator didn't stop her from coopting the creation: a little like the KKK using a mosque for a rally. So naturally Crowley was the villain, and sweet Lady Harris was the "real" author of the deck, all ample evidence to the contrary.

The vicious irony is that Arrien's argument devours itself: if we actually were lazy or gullible enough to follow Arrien to the letter in our study of the Thoth, if we just ignore Crowley and experience the cards for ourselves and study them in "multicultural" context with enough depth and breadth we will eventually arrive at Crowley's worldview because they are NOT "God's Picturebook" but CROWLEY'S. In the same way that studying Hamlet for long enough reveals many things about Shakespeare's sense of the world, monarchy, love, revenge, family, murder, justics, metaphysics, spirits, sport. Reading the play, performing the play, seeing the play, Shakespeare's worldview becomes clearer and clearer. How could it be otherwise when we are living in his head, seeing through his eyes, feeling with his heart, walking in his shoes?

With enough time, the creator's sense makes itself known in any work of Art. And there are as many ways to study something as there are minds to study it, but they are not equal or equivalent, the minds or the methods. I'm happy to ride a bike without inventing the wheel. I study history so that I don't repeat it. I learned to speak because grunting and pointing is inefficient, and STILL I cannot always say what I mean. Which is why I keep studying, everything, as much as I can. Not just in books, but in the world, in experience, in interaction. When people ask for advice about study, I generally try to offer suggestions based on my own experience, which is all anyone can do.

Bang enough rocks and the microwave will appear. Good luck says me. Those folks can invite me over to dinner, sometime after the Sun cools.

 

[Sophie]

Not everyone needs Thelema, just as not everyone needs the God of the Bible. But if you read the Bible, you can't take Jehovah out of it, even if you're a Hindu or a Wiccan or an atheist. And if you read the Book of Thoth deck, you can't take Hermetic philosophy and Thelema out of it, even if you are not a Thelemite or a Hermeticist.

It's pretty simple, really, and it doesn't mean that if you work with the Thoth engaging with its magickal and thelemic elements, you become a magickian - far less a Thelemite - any more than a Hindu reading the Bible automatically becomes a Christian or a Jew.


I work with the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola. I find them very profound and they help me on my path. Yet I am a Pagan Witch, not a Catholic. Or here's another example: there are millions of people in the world who do yoga and intone OM, sincerely and with an open heart, without becoming Hindus. But if they are serious (because yoga isn't a gymnastic) they will engage with the esoteric Hindu elements of yoga, sufficiently to be able to penetrate and apply the discipline. It doesn't mean you'll suddenly see them turning up at your local Ganesh Temple.

So if people can do it with yoga - and learn the relevant sanskrit words and read the Baghavad Gita, and meditate regularly, do their asanas while concentrating on the relevant chakra - why then can't they do it with the Thoth? What's so controversial about it? I really don't understand what the fuss is all about.

 

[Ross G Caldwell]

Scion, I'd say that a reading is not an explanation of the cards, and sometimes it is barely even a reaction to the pictures on them - it is a relationship between two people, or, sometimes, two parts of yourself (if you can get there).

Divination is not studying, divination is not intellectual understanding; it uses whatever it encounters as a jumping-off point for a sort of controlled intuitive reverie. It doesn't matter if the symbol means or is meant to mean the complete opposite of what the diviner feels it means - all that matters is the moment of the divination and that the question is answered.

P.S. writing a book that tries to explain the symbols, on the other hand, does indeed require some knowledge and study to be taken seriously.