ravenest
Great posts Michael and smw. Thank you for that.
It's interesting to realise, and at the same important for us to remind ourselves that Christianity had mystic and gnostic origins, which is linked to Tarot, Magick and Divination. These are shadowy, and almost forgotten past of them by public.
Yes ! Also pre 1600 it was quiet hermetic and neoplatonic. It held the hermetica as near scripture and concurred with the concept of a 'perennial philosophy ' ... until the 'Causabon incident ' . 'Magic' and religion (Christianity) and 'science' were all 'coherent'.
But they are still here and everywhere around us, affecting large parts on our psychology, consciousness and daily lives, it seems.
Exactly ! Even if we have passed beyond that social and / or religious programming individually, we may find ourselves immersed in a society that has not.
To this end (and many others) Crowley constructed the first 3 degrees of his OTO initiations. Many things are enacted in ceremony, the subjects of lectures, study and practices recommended .... a corpus of knowledge and comprehension .... to be informed towards the end of the third one, that in a way this is 'old school and defunct' and is based on the old 'Dying God ' formular, a concept based on the Sun going around the earth and passing into the underworld to be reborn.
he specifically states (in the ceremony ) that we need to learn this as we are immersed still in its culture and psychology ... so we need to understand it.
Then he goes on to state the next obvious stage : now, we know that the earth actually turns on its axis , at night, it is our location on earth that has turned away from the Sun and lies on the shadow side. Now the 'dying God' never dies, its just our perception, and viewpoint. The he encourages us , by our own faculties, to discern how this changes what we have learnt and what this implies .... and then the series of initiations take on this new 'flavour' and concepts ... and the 'fun' really starts !
Although this discussion might sound off topic from the OP, good knowledge on these areas of Tarot i.e. the origin and philosophy of it, enable us to move one step closer to understanding and connecting to Tarot decks, be it Thoth, RWS or TdM.
Agreed ! And the Thoth deck ... essentially is NOT 'old school' its about a whole new era of understanding and basing 'magick' upon that ..... and psychology.
" The method of science with the aim of religion" - 'Scientific Illuminism' meets anarchical spiritual reformation .