Biblical history with NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani

And you know it is true because a Republican says so.

"And in those eight years, we did not have a fall from grace. The fall from grace all started when Clinton and Obama got into office."--former NYC mayor, Rudy Giuliani.

Updating the Tarot

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Wekcome to the Spring Fling edition of the Tarot Blog Hop. Our organizer for this hop, Ania Marczyk, posed a question to our merry little group of Tarot bloggers--Given that the Tarot is a product of its time period, created five hundred years ago, is the Tarot elastic enough that it does not need updating? or does the Tarot need to be modified to bring it into the modern world?

As always, my answer is one that just proves that I am of two minds about everything.

No, the Tarot does not need updating. The type of events and people that are present in the Tarot five hundred years ago are still with us today. There is absolutely no need to update the Tarot.

Well, except one. It is damn good fun to update the Tarot. So while the underlying structure of the Tarot makes it timeless, I am still going to be interested in, and willing to create modern versions of the Tarot.

(It should not be a big surprise that this is my position---after all, I updated the Fives in a previous Tarot Blog Hop. ex. The Five of Swords was a pro-wrestler.)

One of my favorite "updated" cards is the Magician card is from an (live-action) role playing game, Magic the Ascension. While the Magic the Ascension Tarot deck was created as a prop for the game, and used as a themed set of illustrations, and very much keyed to the worldview of the game, a few of the cards are worthy of consideration if one wanted to update the symbolism of the Tarot.

The Mage from the Magic the Ascension Tarot deck. 

While there is a lot of imagery specific to the game in this version of the card, there is something that I would be tempted to use if I ever did a modern deck of my own, and that is the elemental "tools" on the altar (table). The four elemental items are all modern (well, maybe not the key...but bear with me): a gun (aka firearm) is used to represent the element of Fire; a soda can is used to represent the element of Water; a key is used to represent the element of Air; and a set of credit cards is used to represent the element of Earth.

(I apologize for the following cards being only in black and white---a family issue chewed into my art time.)

One of the cards that I think needs updating is the High Priest or Pope. The reason for this is that for many people, the Catholic Church is not the Church that they know. In the modern world, at least in the United States, the evangelists are the keepers of the faith. Interestingly enough, the corruption that was associated with the Catholic Church in the times that the Tarot was first created can now be found in the ranks of the tele-evangelists--I assume there is some deep spiritual significance and lesson to be learned from this, though I am too tired to think of it at this particualr moment.

The modern High Priest or Pope is the Evangelist. 

A few years ago, I spent some time reading for teenagers. One of the things that I learned is while they understand the ranks behind the Court cards, many of them could not easily translate the older imagery into modern terms. Therefore, I highly tempted to update the Court cards.

This first example is from the suit of Pentacles. In this card, I show the Page of Pentacles as a youth working in some minimum wage job. This may seem to be an odd association, but I am standing by it because a lot of people who consult fortune tellers are the poor, whose associations with money tends to be poverty and minimum wage jobs, and not the wealth of the traditional version of this suit's Court cards. Or maybe it was just me that ended up having those associations, and those types of experiences...and almost everyone I have ever worked with.

Modern Page of Pentacles is the minimum wage worker. 

The second example of my attempt to update the Court cards is my version of the Page of Wands. Here we have an youthful artist, who is passionate both about their art and their politics. And yes, I accept the idea that artists smoke dope; that includes about half the pottery students that I know. I am quite sure if the Tarot was invented today that there would be a card representing the evil that this type of person can lead to....though in the original decks, it was a game for the worthy, therefore, this type of person (as well as my previous example) would not have gotten a Court card (probably both would have been dumped into the Fool card).

Modern Page of Fire is a pothead, sometimes in both senses of the term. 

Anyways, that is all the updating of the Tarot that I had time to finish (I have a whole list of cards that I have not even penciled yet). Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to visit my little corner of the blogosphere. And please consider checking out some of the other blog entries that my fellow and lady Tarot bloggers wrote.

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Impressionism and the GD color scales

King Over the Water by Nick Farrell.

The Book of the Concourse of the Watchtowers by Sandra Tabatha Cicero.

The other day, I was reminded that there are some soon-to-be-released books that are on my shopping list (well, after I managed to crawl out of the monetary hole that I have fallen into). Both Nick Farrell and Sandra Tabatha Cicero posted possible covers for their respective books (I say "possible" because I know how things change at the last moment in publishing).

Looking at the covers, I realized something---our required color scale work in Adept Minor (5=6) was not possible previous to 1841. Or at least, not in the form and style that we do it today.

Don't believe me? Think about how you did your color scale studies. Were there tubes of paint involved? If there were tubes of paint involved, then you are using a post 1841 method. Or did you use watercolors of straight from the pans of a box? In which case, your method of study could not have developed before 1832. The idea of using watercolors from a box only dates to 1766; before that point, watercolors were sold in lumps that had to be hand-grated before using.

The ability to do color studies while sitting in your living room is a product of the Victorian Age. Before the improvements to watercolor paints by Henry Newton and William Winsor in 1832, only professional artists worked with paints. Amateurs did not start to paint until Newton & Winsor developed the methods of creating watercolor paints that could be used directly from the box. Queen Victoria helped lead a national passion for amateur painting.

Paint tubes were invented by an America, John Goffe Rand, in 1841. Rand's invention was a technological leap for the artworld. Rand would tell his son that without his invention that "There would have been no Cezanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissaro; nothing of what the journalists were later to call Impressionism." I would go one step further and say that there would be no required color scale work in Adept Minor if he hadn't invented the paint tube.

Please remember that I am not saying that color was not important in magic previous to the Victorian Age (Agrippa is enourgh proof of the importance of color in magical work among our magical ancestors). What I am saying is that the creation of color scales studies and flashing tablets were much harder before that point, and were unlikely to have been an important part of the esoteric lesson plan---at least among amateur artists.

Westcott mentions that there is an older color scale that were used in the ancient Vault of the Adepts. Exactly what this older color scale looked like is hard to say for sure; the Adept Major ritual doesn't develop the idea enourgh to get a clear look at it without some knowledge of art history. There are also alchemical formulas that are actually about making pigments. So while there is definitely color scales involved in the older magical systems, they were placed much higher in the estoteric Grade system.

One of the things that Nick and I have disagreed over (publically on the internet if you want to go looking---I can't remember what Golden Dawn forum it was on) is the importance of Moina Mathers in the creation of the modern Vault of the Adepts and the modern color scales. My logic tends to be: if I needed a crash course in color theory to understand the color scales and its development into the Vault, then an artist had to be involved. My best bet is Moina Mathers, who was trained as an artist. Nick says that Samuel (MacGregor) Mathers and Westcott could be the ones that brought it in---I am not sure if he was implying that the color scales were built up by a previous esoteric group prior to their founding of the Golden Dawn or if it was invented by them (Nick will reply in the comment section about that one).

One thing that would be helpful to determine which one of us is right would be knowledge about whether Westcott or Samuel Mathers were amateur artists before meeting Moina. If they only started working with the complicated color scales after meeting Moina, then I am inclined to continue crediting Moina---after all, she is the one that was responsible for painting the first RR et AC Vault of the Adepts. I am hoping that one or both of these upcoming books reveals some evidence that would make the answer to this question clearer. Knowing the source authority would clear up some questions that I have about the color scales...beyond how much credit to give to Moina.

But while I am unsure about the source authority for our color scale work, I am positive that it is definitely an esoteric development of the Victorian Age. Before that date, the color scales were much simplier, and applied in a different manner when it came to magical workings. This fact affects a lot of stuff that we do and study today---a cascade effect---including the Tarot and the making of magical talismans.

And just in case, you are wondering, the modern Victorian Age color scales is something that I am not willing to abandon, no matter how wrong they are according to the older esoteric material. I may not be good at alchemy, but I am a fair hand with a paintbrush. For maximum outrage, just remember I use the modern color scales with the Elder Futhark (the Norse Runes).