Crowley is Day and EAK (yes, I said that)

Today, in a Facebook discussion, I said that Aleister Crowley was the Christian Day and E.A. Koetting of his day (lawsuit happy, insulting, drug-using glory hound who insisted that the world rotated around his revelations and teachings). Now, I realize that this was an unfair comparison; but damn it, I could not come up with a better one to illustrate how Crowley acted in his lifetime.

And now for some memes...

Would Crowley do Miley? Maybe if she sounded like a goat.

Mandatory Koetting joke with that age old question. 

Sorry, this Christian Day meme always makes me laugh. 

Now to be fair, I do think that two of these three would be interesting to have a drink with. The third one, well, I am fortunate that I never have to worry about running into him.

And speaking of people I won't drink with: Why did I not include [name redacted]? Because no one knows who the fuck he is! I was trying to illustrate why Crowley was so scandalous in his lifetime--not make him roll over in his grave--and a complete unknown (outside of those circles) does not serve the purpose of the joke, even if he does like to claim that he is more famous than Crowley. Remember any joke you have to explain does not work (with the exceptation of Eddie Izzard, who is great at making jokes that need explaination work).

And this concludes today's edition of "Yes, I fucking said that." Tune in tomorrow when I go on to makes jokes about how Cthulhu would make a better President than anyone currently running.

QoW A Crowley in the Woodpile

Question of the week: If one's lineage goes through Aleister Crowley,* are you somehow less of an initiate because of it? If so, why? If not, why not?

*Or whoever your favorite villian is (Pat Zalewski, Nick Farrell, Robert Zink, David Griffin, Chic Cicero, Israel Regardie, or that bloke in Denver Colorado).

Aleister Crowley’s Geomantic Mnemonic Rhyme

Caput Draconis: Strong and fierce
Of whorls---which Acquisitio beginning keeps spinning.
Puer’s a boy, with all a boy’s endeavour;
Puella’s rather good but not too clever.
Fortuna Minor means a lucky touch;
Fortuna Major more, maybe too much.
Via means change, apart from Querent’s action.
Populus, settling down, with satisfaction.
Rubeus always gives a nasty jar,
And Carcer tends to keep you where you are.
Conjunctio brings about completion; Albus
Is whiter than the walls once built by Balbus.
Tristitia lags, with heavy antic motion:
Laetitia is like the laughing ocean.
Amissio: love come, and goods diminish.
Cauda Draconis means---a sticky finish.

How to cope without your favorite Tarot deck

Late last night (or was it really early this morning), I was reading posts on a Golden Dawn Forum. Other people count sheep when they can not sleep; I browse for occult ideas.

One of the posts mentioned the (Lady) Frieda Harris/Aleister Crowley Thoth deck (English editions) was apparently out of print, and commanding high prices on the internet. This was news to me. Going over to Amazon and Google, I quickly learned that the poster was right. (English language) Thoth decks are going for a hundred dollars a pop at the moment.

For myself, this is not a big concern. I lean towards cards that do not overwhelm a client; I prefer using short explainations about the symbolism of Tarot, and the Thoth deck is a deep one. I own one for study purposes, but it is not used as heavily as other decks in my collection.

(All the professional and most of the semi-professional Tarot readers I know have several decks that they read with. Someday, I will blog about the reasons for this behavior.)

So in my case, I imagine that the deck will be back in print before I need to replace mine. But for some students and readers, they would like to be able to replace their decks right now without having to spend a hundred dollars or more.

(One of the basic economic rules of occultism is that out of print books and Tarot decks fetch outrageous prices. Even the most useless occult book or Tarot deck will cost you a hundred dollars or more. A high price on an out of print occult book or Tarot deck is no indication of the item's actual merit.)

Or at least, I presume that it will be back in print within the next couple of years.

(There are both economic and copyright issues that could complicate the situation, delaying a reissue of the deck for longer than I am estimating.)

So how does one cope with the unavailability of one's favorite Tarot deck?

One can simply do without it. This is what the poster has been doing. This may or may not be acceptable depending upon one's personal preferences. Especially if one does not have a strong link with a different variation of the Tarot.

Most modern occult students today (or at least the younger ones) do not realize how spoiled we are today; we have an overwhelming wealth of books and Tarot decks. We have choices in what to buy when we need (or simply want) a new Tarot deck or book.

This has not always been true. Even thirty years ago when I was a teenager edging into the occult and wicca, my choices were much more limited. And when my aunt entered the field a couple of decades earlier, the choices were just a couple of Tarot decks (and they had to be imported).

As for the Thoth deck itself, it was twenty-five years after it was designed by Harris and Crowley before it was actually issued. That is 1969 for those who are reading this instead of counting sheep.

Going back in time, the members of the original Order of the Golden Dawn had two choices when it came to the Tarot deck that they used. They could either paint their own, or they could buy a Tarot deck imported from Italy or France.

Substition or doing without is a long tradition among occult students, especially the initiated.

In the case of the Thoth deck, one might be able to obtain one printed in a different language. Maybe.

If your beloved Tarot deck is not too tattered, one can attempt to repair it. Or at least, attempt to prevent further damage. I remember one of the members of Hathoor Temple had a deck of cards that were laminated. It is hardly ideal, but one can understand the thought behind it.

Making your own Tarot deck is still an option today. In some cases, you might not even need art skills, just access to a good printer, a boatload of ink, some glue and cardstock. For those who are attempted to experiment doing it with the Thoth deck, one should note that I have encountered an entire set of jpegs of the Thoth deck on the internet.

The set of jpegs is also useful for the ultimate initiated answer of dealing with the unavailability of a Tarot deck.

I mentioned earlier that I lean towards using a simple (non-initiate) Tarot deck when I am doing readings for others. (Except of course, for members of our tradition, who get the full song and dance.) What I did not mention was the fact that the cards I lay on the table are not neccessarily the cards I see when I am doing the reading.

One of the things that we do as initiates in the esoteric Orders is to build up our visualization skills; we also make the symbolism of the Tarot (and other symbol systems) a part of our "mental furniture". Professional Tarot readers also do this.

There are many reasons why we do this. One of the side benefits of developing this skill set is that you can be doing a reading in a coffee house using a light Tarot deck as your physical prop; and in your mind, visualizing and reading from the initiated Golden Dawn Tarot or the Thoth deck.

The moral of all this is that with a little imagination, we can cope with our favorite Tarot deck falling out of print.

Source of Liber Israfel

Procul, O procul este profani.

Bahlasti! Ompehda!

In the name of the Mighty and Terrible One, I proclaim that I have banished the Shells unto their habitations.

I invoke Tahuti [Tehuti], the Lord of Wisdom and of Utterance, the God that cometh forth from the Veil.

O Thou! Majesty of Godhead! Wisdom-crowned Tahuti! Lord of the Gates of the Universe! Thee, Thee, I invoke.

O Thou of the Ibis Head! Thee, Thee I invoke.

Thou who wieldest the Wand of Double Power! Thee, Thee I invoke!

Thou who bearest in Thy left hand the Rose and Cross of Light and Life: Thee, Thee I invoke!

So begins Liber Israfel (LXIV) from number 7, volume 1 of The Equinox. What a lot of people do not know is that the source of this ritual is not Crowley, but Alan Bennett who performed it in a ritual alongside Florence Farr.

The original invocation starts:

Majesty of Godhead, Wisdom crowned Thoth, Lord of the gates of the universe: Thee! Thee we invoke! Thou that manifesteth in thy symbolic form as ibis-headed one: thee, thee we invoke! Thou who holdest in thy hand the magic wand of double power: thee we invoke! Thou who bearest in thy left hand the rose and cross of light and life: thee, thee we invoke!

The original working was done on 13 May 1896, six years before the version in the Equinox was published, and a year and a half before Crowley was initiated as Neophyte in the Order of the Golden Dawn.

The original working was the famous Taphthartarath (Mercury) ritual, the evocation of the spirit into visible appearance. More details about the ritual can be found in Talismans and Evocations of the Golden Dawn by Pat Zalewski.

(There is another source that I can not remember off the top of my head.)

Using Regardie as a benchmark

The biggest portion of published Golden Dawn and RC et AC documents (assuming that Stella Matutina can be considered Golden Dawn) was published by the late Isreal Regardie. His work has became the thirty-six inch rule (or twenty-four inch rule if you are a Freemason) that many people judge what is and what is not Golden Dawn by.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems with using Regardie as our benchmark for what should and should not be in Golden Dawn.

The first of which is that the branch he belonged to, the Stella Matutina, was a later offshoot of the original Order; it had roots in the original Order, but some changes had been made to the rituals and lesson plans. Yet many people consider his documents to be the proper standard despite this.

The second problem is that Regardie was a mere ZAM (Zelator Adept Minor 5=6) when he left the system. The few higher documents of the THAM Grade and of Waite's Holy Order that he collected and published are not enourgh to judge what the higher Grades of the Golden Dawn should look like. Yet many people consider his documents to be the proper standard despite this.

The third problem is that he picked up a lot of ideas from Crowley. Now, personally, I have no problem with Crowley in small doses, but Crowley's ideas belong more properly to his own Order, the AA, and to OTO; Thelema is not part of Golden Dawn; at best it is a sister system. Yet many people consider his documents to be the proper standard despite this.

(Though I will admit that the Thelemic Golden Dawn has combined the two quite nicely. I do not say that as a member of the TGD, though I might still be a member of that Order depending upon how you view my parting with that organization.)

(I still need to study the material of Open Source Order of Golden Dawn before deciding if they are combining the two in what I consider an acceptable manner; acceptable being defined as "does not make me run for the hills.")

The fourth and most important problem is that Regardie only attended his own initiations. He attended no lectures, had no exposure to the oral tradition, had no contact with the other members of his Order. He had only the Stella Matutina documents to judge what Golden Dawn is or is not. Yet many people consider his documents to be the proper standard despite this.

All this translates into a situation where people are using the documents that he had published to judge a system that had more branches and more differences in it than he was aware of. His Golden Dawn is not necessarily my Golden Dawn; nor is it necessarily yours either.

Roots of Golden Dawn: Part 4

And while we are considering terms that people assign different meanings to, and then forget that others are using other meanings for the same term, which causes a great deal of arguments, let's look at the term: Secret Chief.

In Golden Dawn, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors surrounding this term. Whether or not, an Order has made contact with the Secret Chiefs, or even believes in their existence, is the source of much of the opinion in the Golden Dawn community about whether or not a particular branch, or leader, is legitimate or not.

There are those who use the term Secret Chief to talk about entities that exist on the astral plane, who have evolved past the point of needing bodies, or perhaps never having a physical form in the first place; these entities are said to guide and inspire the Orders from a higher plane. Exactly when an entity becomes a Secret Chief and not just a random entity (angel, saint, demon, god, muse, old dead guy) is unclear. Aleister Crowley is the most notorious individual who claimed such contact, but he is definitely not even close to being the only one to make such a claim.

Others use the term to describe members of the ultimate esoteric secret society, so secret that even those they contact are not allowed to know their real identities. They are Uber-Adepts, of at least the 8=3 Magister Templi Grade, and more often than not are members of another esoteric tradition. They tend to be from regions that birth new esoteric traditions and movements.

A big point of concern among those who care about such things is whether or not these Secret Chiefs have actually crossed the Abyss or not. Some say that only those who have crossed the Abyss can be Secret Chiefs. Others say that it is not crossing the Abyss that counts, but the production and use of the elixir of life.

These are the two most common definitions of Secret Chief.

(There is another definition that rests solely on function, but you are unlikely to run into anyone that seriously gives it the time of day.)

The problem with both of these definitions, and their variations, is that the access to the Secret Chiefs is so terribly restricted that only a single person in any particular generation, or time period, can be in contact with them. And when more than one person, or Order, claims to have access to them, one has to presume that someone is lying, or perhaps delusional.

(There is also the slight matter of higher fraud: how can you be sure that your "Secret Chief" is not lying about being a Secret Chief?)

In the end, the only advice I can give is to beware of the disagreement in how people are using the term, and judge leaders and Orders solely on their usefulness to you personally.

~~~To Be Continued~~~

Humor: Crowley

A friend sent me this today. It sounds exactly like I would expect from him in the afterlife.