mutational alchemy tarot

Barleywine

I've been having some fun with this. Went looking for the geomantic correspondences on the court cards. I was expecting to see rows of dots but instead found what looks like the talismanic symbols _ aka telesmatic emblems - formed by joining the dots with lines. I happen to have Israel Regardie's Falcon Press "brick," The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic, so I took a look to see what I might learn. The various figures are included in the paper by G.H. Frater D.D. C. F. (Mathers) titled "Nature and Method of Formation of the Telesma;" as near as I can tell (some of the figures don't fully correspond), this is the alignment. I'm no expert on these symbols, so perhaps someone else will see what I miss.

King of Staves:
"The characters of Luna and Chasmodai taken from Via equals Cancer."

Queen of Staves:
"The characters of Sol and Sorath taken from Fortuna Major equals Leo."

Prince of Staves:
"The characters of Venus and Kedemel taken from Puella equals Libra."

Princess of Staves:
This one seems to fit - a bit loosely - under the umbrella statement "The characters of Caput Draconis . . ."

King of Blades:
. . . and this one seems to fit - a bit loosely - under the umbrella statement "The characters of Cauda Draconis . . ."

Queen of Blades:
"The characters of Mercury and Taphthartharath taken from Albus equals Gemini."

Prince of Blades:
"The characters of Venus and Kedemel taken from Amissio equals Taurus."

Princess of Blades:
"The characters of Mercury and Taphthartharath taken from Conjunctio equals Virgo."

King of Pentacles:
"The characters of Mars and Bartzabel taken from Puer equals Aries."

Queen of Pentacles:
"The characters of Saturn and Zazel taken from Tristitia equals Aquarius."

Prince of Pentacles:
"The characters of Saturn and Zazel taken from Carcer equals Capricorn."

Princess of Pentacles:
"The characters of Jupiter and Hismael taken from Acquisitio equals Sagittarius."

King of Alembics:
"The characters of Sol and Sorath taken from Fortuna Minor equals Leo."

Queen of Alembics:
"The characters of Luna and Chasmodai taken from Populus equals Cancer."

Prince of Alembics:
"The characters of Jupiter and Hismael taken from Laetitia equals Pisces."

Princess of Alembics:
"The characters of Mars and Bartzabel taken from Rubeus equals Scorpio."

This was a bit mind-bending since not all of these are the correspondences I might have anticipated from an elemental and astrological perspective, and they don't seem to all line up precisely with the segments of the zodiac assigned to each court card. But the GD source material included each symbol as part of a "chain" that may have had an entirely different purpose. (I could also be completely missing something :)). Anyway, interesting and instructive. Now I'm going to compare these observations to Crowley's descriptions of the court cards in the BoT.

ETA: I pulled out Francis King and Stephen Skinner's "Techniques of High Magic" and note that the "geomantic sigils" are closer to the designs on the cards than Mathers' seem to be.
 

Naomi Ningishzidda

The geomantic characters are binary, so they are binary tetragrams (a four line structure rather than the six line structures found in the I Ching)

Edit: that is why we were excited about them - there are exactly 16 binary tetragrams and exactly 16 Western geomantic characters. Amazing to think there might have been an understanding of binary code in the West back then.

I havn't looked at the telesmatic emblems in a long time but I remember reviewing the different styles over his shoulder.

You'll need to understand The Proximity Principal to get how they all fall out.

http://abrahadabra.com/the-proximity-principle/

As for The Tower, some decisions were aesthetic, but it has a lot of Water in the attributions and the blue tower looked good with the lightning. The fire is still there but it's blue flame, like the lightning. It was colored red, yellow and orange originally in the top part and we both mutually agreed to change it. The 26 rays are still yellow. Nobody can outdo Harris on her version so there was no point in trying to bother to hold to anything but the data from the hexagrams, pentagrammal structure and overall archetypes chosen by Crowley such as Hell's wyrm in both the above and the below and the 26.

The fire from Aries the Ram which is a fire sign is there, it's just blue.

Stars burn at different color frequences from red to yellow to blue to white, blue and white being a hotter fire than red and yellow.


Seems like everytime you dig something up I end up spending The Abrahadabra Institute's money on the internet Barleywine (haindl tarot)
 

EmpyreanKnight

Since I was rather successful in containing the collecting bug last year, I thought I can reward myself even a little by getting some decks I've been holding off on. The Mutational Alchemy is the very first deck I searched, and when I checked their store it was closed for maintenance. When I looked at their Facebook page, I was surprised to find out that the main creator mithros has just died.

https://m.facebook.com/MutationalAlchemy/

He has a gofundme link there for his grave and gravestone. RIP mithros.

BTW I think the creators were members in these forums? When their ebay store re-opens, I might get my deck, as I kinda remember that they ship to my country.
 

IHeartRescues

Soar high mithros (m1thr0s 729)

Yes, also looking forward to them re-opening the store when his funeral and headstone are taken care of. The MA deck is on my purchase plan for 2017 also.

So very sorry for your loss Naomi. I found this clip fm deviant art, hope it's ok to post here as a small tribute...

Pythagoras's Revenge by m1thr0s
Digital Art / Vector / Abstract©2012-2017 m1thr0s
so...most of my work is about a *knowledge and conversation* that I find myself wanting to share with others in whatever modest way I can...the underpinning content is almost always vastly superior to my limited rendering skills. The number 729 was a huge theme with Pythagoras, called the Number of the Sun, Number of the Republic and assorted other things. There exists in ancient China a system of hexagrams similar to the I Ching but with a 3rd force tossed into the mix which yields exactly 729 ( or 9³) hexagrams. The significance of this goes far beyond what I can adequately express here but amounts to a *hidden code* of life itself. It's on the rise of late and promises to stun the living crap out of modern science when it hits! :)

SCIENCE AND MAGICK: www.abrahadabra.com

ART PRINTS: www.ningishzidda.com
 

devilkitty

Oh, my. Very sad to hear of m1thr0s' passing, if a bit late. (The Fanged Terror doesn't "do" Facebook...)

Makes the lovely little Saturn talisman they sent along as a surprise when I ordered my extra two packs all the more special.

And how, may I ask, did they know that Saturn sits conjunct Sun right on my Ascendant?
:bugeyed:
The mind boggles.
 

Laura Borealis

That's sad news. So sorry for your loss, Izi :(
 

IHeartRescues

Looks like the MA Tarot is finally back in their store! Can't wait to start digging into the online updated book as well.
 

mitsuraki

I just got mine in the mail today! I'm super excited to start going through it and the online book!!!
 

Laiste

Truth be told, I think there is no "one good beginner deck" but there is this "one weird trick"

Just memorize the Sephiroth, their properties, and the four classical Hermetic elements - you can read a deck of Bicycle playing cards if you do that off the top of your head. You'll also have a new appreciation for the small cards.

http://imgur.com/a/BZlDy

This takes my interest, where, from what source can I learn this? Are there good books or other material about this you can recommend?

Thank you very much!
 

Naomi Ningishzidda

Hm, thanks guys. As for the Sephiroth, well...uhhhhhh....

You know, I just learned them from charts online. There's so much bad information out there nowadays, compared to when I was learning though. And now searching for Sephiroth just gets you pictures of a silver-haired devil. Lots of charts under Kabbalah, Sephiroth, but none of them really seem to be of a very high quality. I guess this is why people go into the A.'.A.'. and GD.

In books, there's all kinds of nonsense, people trying to merge East and West without respecting logic. And then even better, we have things getting translated and presented out of classical Jewish Kabbalah that turns the Golden Dawn and co. right out on their heads, as far as cosmology goes, at least with some things. The holy-cow of the single Sephiroth for example. One look at Lurianic Kabbala, now available in the West in English, is enough to make the Western schools look pretty ignorant in some areas.

So the question of how to learn the Sephiroth is surprisingly, not something I can answer off the top of my head, and I havn't trudged that far in writing The Abrahadabra Institute curriculum or the books to be able to offer you anything very useful. I could write a guide myself, but it would take me a few weeks as I am very busy at the moment. But I would like to post a new article for the tarot anyways.

None of the books I have on hand cover it, well, except 777 to some extent.

I spent a while looking around at some books that might show some promise, but when I found something good, there would be a glaring error, like calling Da'ath a Sephirab for example. (It's very important to regard it as a non-sephiroth)

This is why an updated curriculum is essential, now the authors are all just monopolizing on what is popular to talk about with whatever crop of 20 somethings have been produced by the market of Choronzon. They're compacting the errors over and over again. Well I had enough of that with Sitchin and Sumerian literature. This damage can last for generations, it's very irresponsible.

I just looked at 777 and it's still very good for Sephiroth. It's also in the public domain, you should be able to find a copy easily. If not, I have an e-version somewhere for searching purposes (I also own four copies of different editions) There's nothing like being introduced to the Sephirab individually by a master magician from what I can see out there. But barring that, Crowley still has the best material overall. He did steal from the best.

Then you'll want a copy of Tarot of the Egyptians, which is also in the public domain so you can get it for free. Here Aleister refers to Two of Wands, for example, as "Chokmah in the Suite of Fire". Well he is saying that because it's the second Sephira and it's a small card with the numeric value of 2. So if I pulled a 2 of Clubs, I would immediately think about what I know about Fire, and Chokmah. Easy, that's creative force that needs something to fuel it, and the Father. In a deck of playing cards, red cards are female, black cards are male.

With all of that being said, I still don't have an adequate source for you to learn the Sephiroth that will truly bring you to an understanding of how awesome and interesting they are. I've been looking for hours, not a single chart or essay meets with my approval for being able to recommend it.

I need to write a synopsis of each of the Sephiroth anyways, so I'll do it. I might post it. For now you can look at this Sephiroth spread I made, it doesn't get into great depth about the Sephiroth themselves but the information was crosschecked by m1thr0s so it is very accurate.

http://abrahadabra.com/the-mutational-alchemy-tarot-sephiroth-spread/