The Tarot

[version]

My first real exposure to it was, predictably, the stuff in Gravity's Rainbow with him doing readings for various characters;

The King of Cups, crowning his hopes, is the fair intellectual-king.

If you’re wondering where he’s gone, look among the successful academics, the Presidential advisers, the token intellectuals who sit on boards of directors. He is almost surely there. Look high, not low.

His future card, the card of what will come, is The World.

Of 77 cards that could have come up, Weissmann is “covered,” that is his present condition is set forth, by The Tower. It is a puzzling card, and everybody has a different story on it. It shows a bolt of lightning striking a tall phallic structure, and two figures, one wearing a crown, falling from it. Some read ejaculation, and leave it at that. Others see a Gnostic or Cathar symbol for the Church of Rome, and this is generalized to mean any System which cannot tolerate heresy: a system which, by its nature, must sooner or later fall. We know by now that it is also the Rocket.

Members of the Order of the Golden Dawn believe The Tower represents victory over splendor, and avenging force. As Goebbels, beyond all his professional verbalizing, believed in the Rocket as an avenger.

On the Kabbalist Tree of Life, the path of The Tower connects the sephira Netzach, victory, with Hod, glory or splendor. Hence the Golden Dawn interpretation. Netzach is fiery and emotional, Hod is watery and logical. On the body of God, these two Sephiroth are the thighs, the pillars of the Temple, resolving together in Yesod, the sex and excretory organs.

But each of the Sephiroth is also haunted by its proper demons or Qlippoth. Netzach by the Ghorab Tzerek, the Ravens of Death, and Hod by the Samael, the Poison of God. No one has asked the demons at either level, but there may be just the wee vulnerability here to a sensation of falling, the kind of very steep and out-of-scale fall we find in dreams, a falling more through space than among objects. Though the different Qlippoth can only work each his own sort of evil, activity on the path of The Tower, from Netzach to Hod, seems to’ve resulted in the emergence of a new kind of demon (what, a dialectical Tarot? Yes indeedyfoax! A-and if you don’t think there are Marxist-Leninist magicians around, well you better think again!). The Ravens of Death have now tasted of the Poison of God… but in doses small enough not to sicken but to bring on, like the Amanita muscaria, a very peculiar state of mind…. They have no official name, but they are the Rocket’s guardian demons.

 

[sus]

I'm still waiting on my Crowley companion book to arrive... until then can't quite unlock the secrets. Don't like reading PDF, when I'm in tarot zone the whole point is not being on screens, makes me nauseous looking at a phone in that situation

 

[version]

"Though the different Qlippoth can only work each his own sort of evil, activity on the path of The Tower, from Netzach to Hod, seems to’ve resulted in the emergence of a new kind of demon (what, a dialectical Tarot? Yes indeedyfoax! A-and if you don’t think there are Marxist-Leninist magicians around, well you better think again!)."

Do we have any Marxist-Leninist magicians around here? John, maybe?

 

[IdleRich]

You are wrong

I reckon it will have as many magical effects as any other deck.

 

[IdleRich]

I dont want it gifted but I think price gauging zaps magical energy

That's what the guy in the shop said too.

 

[IdleRich]

I sometimes feel it's too recent an invention for me to take seriously, similar to Scientology, but then that would imply the only factor in the legitimacy of a religion or belief system is time and I don't think that's quite right, although it clearly is a factor as the further away we get from something, the more mystery there is around it which plays into the requirement of faith.

I was thinking about this to myself the other day.

And of course, if something is more ancient and mystical and all that then it does have more mystery and it is hallowed by age in a way that Scientology and Mormonism are not. But more that I do feel that religion ought to be old in some sense... it's slightly hard to generalise but, say, Christianity, it not only claims to be true, the truth whatever, it also claims to have always been the truth. The old testament tells us how the world began and... well, all the stuff that is in it, the Jesus stuff became relevant when he was born. But the first bit was always true, the world was always made that way, the blueprint it lays out for living is THE blueprint and it always will be and it always has been... so we need to have access to it pretty early.

So Scientology and Mormonism (which feel like the two biggest "recent" religions off the top of my head) feel kinda unsatisfactory becuase how were we supposed to get along before they came along? The eternal truths which gave rise to them have always been there yet only now(ish) does humanity get to learn of them? That doesn't seem fair. Same for the Bible really I suppose - although cos it's so old it doesn't feel that way - how were people supposed to manage before it came along? Given that failure to dedicate ones entire life to honouring God and making precisely the right sacrifices to him at the right time and avoiding touching women on their periods plus never eating shellfish and so on and so forth condemns one to being thrown naked into the great pit where there will be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth for all eternity, that left the entirety of humanity in a bit of a bind until the bible came along and informed them of that didn't it?

 

[woops]

I was thinking about this to myself the other day.

And of course, if something is more ancient and mystical and all that then it does have more mystery and it is hallowed by age in a way that Scientology and Mormonism are not. But more that I do feel that religion ought to be old in some sense... it's slightly hard to generalise but, say, Christianity, it not only claims to be true, the truth whatever, it also claims to have always been the truth. The old testament tells us how the world began and... well, all the stuff that is in it, the Jesus stuff became relevant when he was born. But the first bit was always true, the world was always made that way, the blueprint it lays out for living is THE blueprint and it always will be and it always has been... so we need to have access to it pretty early.

So Scientology and Mormonism (which feel like the two biggest "recent" religions off the top of my head) feel kinda unsatisfactory becuase how were we supposed to get along before they came along? The eternal truths which gave rise to them have always been there yet only now(ish) does humanity get to learn of them? That doesn't seem fair. Same for the Bible really I suppose - although cos it's so old it doesn't feel that way - how were people supposed to manage before it came along? Given that failure to dedicate ones entire life to honouring God and making precisely the right sacrifices to him at the right time and avoiding touching women on their periods plus never eating shellfish and so on and so forth condemns one to being thrown naked into the great pit where there will be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth for all eternity, that left the entirety of humanity in a bit of a bind until the bible came along and informed them of that didn't it?

this is why dante included a special chilled out area of hell (or maybe purgatory) for those who lived before the Truth was available to mankind.

 

[woops]

Limbo

 

[IdleRich]

I thought it was only a few hundred years old.

I'm pretty sure that they didn't have playing cards in anciet Egypt. As far as I know, cards are relatively recent so using cards to do it can't be that old. On the other hand, presumably the cards are just one way of reaching the truth so the Tarot - the ancient bullshit that the cards seek to access - could be a lot older. I guess.

 

[william_kent]

I don't think age matters - no one is going to knock Sikhism for not being ancient, but Scientology is a tax dodge created by a hack sci-fi author / con man ( check out the yacht and wife theft Hubbard did on Jack parsons and the Pasadena Agape Lodge of the O.T.O) , and Mormonism is just a joke - "oh, I found these golden tablets but they dematerialised immediately after I transcribed them"

 

[version]

Jack Parsons is a bizarre figure. Another California weirdo.

 

[woops]

it's not L. Ron's fault that he made his discoveries less than 100 years ago thereby singlehandedly changing the destiny of mankind

 

[william_kent]

or alternatively, Hubbard "borrowed" ideas from the O.T.O

 

[woops]

if i were a prophet of this stature i wouldn't be pleased to have people asking me where i was 3,000 years ago

 

[william_kent]

Jack Parsons is a bizarre figure. Another California weirdo.

a pioneer of space travel

 

[woops]

a pioneer of space travel

he blew himself up with his rocket experiments didn't he

 

[william_kent]

occupational hazard - or Moonchild ritual gone horribly wrong?

 

[woops]

occupational hazard - or Moonchild ritual gone horribly wrong?

they're the same thing if you're jack parsons. re OTO i read the whole wikipedia entry on aleister crowley the other night, didn't know that he was f***ed on smack and coke for a lot of his life

 

[IdleRich]

yes but you can get them for 2 bucks a pack. youre basically buying trash which is very magical.

We can't escape this way of thinking, I suppose that it's human nature to believe that expensive things are inttinsically better, even when it comes to reglion and spirituality and suchlike, EVEN when God or Buddha explicitly says that that's not how it works - when Jesus says that a craapy wooden chapel on a hill somewhere is just as holy as the most grandiose cathedral, all the priests and bishops and whatever bow their heads in agreement while making expressions at each other to imply "Crazy old uncle Jesus is as it again, just smile and nod and as soon as he fucks off back to heaven we can go back to selling Indulgences and forgiveness of sins so I can finally get that sold gold Ferrari I've been after for months".

 

[william_kent]

they're the same thing if you're jack parsons. re OTO i read the whole wikipedia entry on aleister crowley the other night, didn't know that he was f***ed on smack and coke for a lot of his life

it was to relieve his "asthma"