Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)

I really don’t know if I’ll be able to make feels with this, lol; it’s so…. Operatic, almost. But I do love Crowley.

And yeah: I am re-reading the parts of “The Book of Thoth” directly about the cards, (quite a lot of text, especially for some of the Major Arcana, like the Fool); if I just had the images and the little white booklet: I would just toss the whole thing out forthwith in immediate despair, you know.

(The Fool)

“The soft becomes the hard, the rough the smooth.”

He makes me sound like Marx, lol: only I’m not in “Soho”: “…. an exile, three-parts learnéd, one part crazy, an attic-dweller”: only I suppose it is part of brief sketches showing the folly of what is called power—Law. I also suppose old Carly didn’t subscribe to “Success” magazine, right. (Actually, I let it lapse, because I don’t read them as fast as they come in. But you know what I mean.)…. It is curious though, the way he associates the Fool—the Outsider—with the King, and politics. I don’t suppose I ~really~ understand it, but I suppose I could become rather important if I ever overcome…. “overcome the world”, like the fisherman-king, or whatever…. Hopefully it won’t end like that, lol…. (Jewish guy) What’s changed since the coming of your Messiah? (Anglican priest) (distantly offended) (sarcastic) Aside from the frightfully wonderful Empire? (stirring tea) Though frightfully Expensive, too; perhaps when Jesus becomes King again, he can lower the tax rate….

~The thing is: I shall probably HAVE TO become important, sooner or later, in one lifetime or another, right. I suppose there is the vanity, right—prove wrong the fuckers who don’t care, and won’t notice; and it’s something to do, other than to dissolve the other six chakras into the Crown, and just live as that, right: and it could be fun, anyway—you could be happier if you’ve done something, and have nice things, and meet people, right…. But really, although the Gods understand and I feel like They are not rushing me: it’s just frightfully ineffective and selfish for me to sit here by myself, having figured out how to go from a nutter to: I mean, there’s no Final End State, not if you’re in a body: but like, a non-nutter, right…. And then to just kinda look at the world populated mostly by sly, deceptive nutters—or sly, enough, for their purposes: they stay out of the psych wards…. And ruled by fucking…. And people are treated like: you know, WAY beyond anything they do, especially if say they…. ~And then to just kinda look at that and say, Yeah, well I don’t have the negative Fae in my head anymore; I’ll just meditate for four hours a day and learn the higher maths and stay outside the marketplace because I can’t bash through the walls of…. You know, that’s just…. I mean, the walls are THERE, don’t get me wrong. But eventually, if you’re me, you have to be the one building a trebuchet business, you know. You have to feel a certain responsibility, you know. I suppose there is a sort of “bodhisattva politics”, you know. Unfortunately it’s not the Marxism of this age: and it resembles being “American”, even less, you know.

…. “For below the Abyss, contradiction is division; but above the Abyss, contradiction is Unity.”

…. (finishes reading, looks at card again) So it does mean something; I just don’t know what it is—not really….

…. “The whole picture is a glyph of creative light.”

(head) Ok, well…. Ok!

…. (Fool meditation) It’s kinda your face before you were born, right: before you came out looking a certain way, and people said: Right; you’re one of these, not one of those.

…. (The Juggler (book)/The Magus (card))

“‘With the Wand createth He
With the Cup preserveth He
With the Dagger destroyeth He
With the Cup redeemeth He.’”

Re: the folly of language— “Manifestation implies illusion.”

(The High Priestess (book)/The Priestess (card))

The “high”, or, if I may, “good”, “version” of the Moon—the “best” Moon; “she is clothed only in the luminous veil of light”: beautiful, and benevolent….

Of course it is true that she is both capable of defense, and also kinda cloying sweetness, perhaps (the bow which can shoot arrows, or else play music): but I do feel like in II there is lacking the sense of hurt/sense of vengeance, in XVIII, you know….

Also mystery, initiation…. Feminine change/changeableness. I do agree with Crowley (he doesn’t write it out, but if you look at the cards, right), that the High Priestess should be the more “sexy” looking of the two High Priestess/Empress cards, although clearly in a mysterious way…. I read in that really long Jungian tarot book by that Asian girl, that the High Priestess is like the “girlfriend”, and the Empress the “mother”, right: and that clicked with me. Don’t repeat that to your wife-and-mother-of-your-children, right, if you’ll get a bad reaction, lol, but yeah: sexual, and very intellectual; vs nurturing, and very familiar, you know.

…. I agree that the Empress is the more universal and the Emperor more tribal—you know, marriage versus armies, to give a crude sketch—but apparently it goes beyond the political or social metaphor that comes to mind like that. They seem to occupy rather different places on the Tree of Life…. It’s not the sort of thing I understand. I don’t understand parents, let alone mothers. Even my own mother doesn’t understand “mothers”, you know—she’s always either being glamoured by it, or else dismissing it or something, or oddly a bit of both. Like the Hanuman blessings or whatever the hell it was, that she left me as a voicemail—that was typical of her, although it lacked most of the kinda alkie intellectualism which marks her so often, you know: a different state of consciousness, right. They should almost come up with a different name for it, you know, because it has so little to do with the actual…. Shaman sickness, is what it is, right: although spirituality doesn’t always make it go away!…. But yeah: I’ll keep that voicemail forever, until after she’s dead, until I die; the thought occurs because planning for her death is one of her main hobbies, you know; it’s like, I know you’re an older spiritual lady…. But give it a rest…. But yeah: I understand a lot about MY parents; but I don’t really understand “parents”, you know: like the Empress and the Emperor…. And I definitely don’t understand mothers…. At least I don’t have to convert any priestess into a mother, right; when I was ill, I thought that would be like my healing, you know: my fate…. Gotta make sure fate happens! It would have been the greatest mistake I could have made, you know. It’s one thing to get married: but I have no idea what it is to be with a mother, or to be the consort of a mother, you know—I have no business making that a goal of mine.

…. (the Emperor) but yeah, men are also very strange; I do not understand men…. I suppose I am very male, and yet, I feel like the second-greatest mistake of my life, (the greatest being the vain imagination of becoming a consort to a mother, in this life), was considering myself (unconsciously) so manly, in the boyish way—so masculine, so male, as a child, right; it destroyed everything…. I am very male, in a way…. And yet: not at all, really, not quite…. Men I have never understood, really.

…. The Hierophant I do think of as being very Taurus-y: it makes me think of marriage and exoteric religion, both of which I have embraced too much or shunned too much, taking the one and shunning the other, or else shunning the one and taking the other; now I think that neither of this things is ~easily~ mine, but I should have a relationship with both, but neither is my native territory—but neither is either one, “not my business”, so to speak.

Crowley though presents this card not as mainstream belief, as it usually is presented, but as being pictured by his own occult philosophy of the end of the age of Osiris and the beginning of the age of Horus, and of the liberation of women and the beginning of wisdom. That’s not generally the association I would make here—although each deck, even among decks that I will be able to attune myself to: as even for any purpose that is not all tarot decks, or even most, although I do think meditating upon each card in any deck or virtually every deck is a useful philosophical/spiritual practice, you know…. But yeah, each deck is attuned more to some purposes or situations or people, than others…. Crowley’s cards would be mostly for deep questions and alternative people, right…. But yeah: I guess the sense of it is in the changing of the astrological ages. I do feel like astrological time is a stronger influence usually even than geography and everything that springs from that. War and plundering spring from geography, but gender and many of the other essential features of life differ more according to astrological age, than anything else.

…. (the Lovers) I understood very little of that; it’s a bit like reading something not-too-simple in a language you don’t quite understand, you know: occasionally something comes through, but it’s mostly garbled. But, it is comes as no surprise anymore that I do not understand Love: an undesirable situation, (ie the not understanding), that I have begun to assign some importance to, you know. Anyway, I suppose I shall have to keep the guidebook and maybe make sense of that gibberish someday, right.

…. (the Chariot) Less intimidating but not more understood, although again I feel the thing lacking is my understanding of the universe. Cancer is a sign I do not understand, as my relations with my Cancerian friends make clear. It is so odd that the Chariot as been portrayed as Ares-the-Great-Smasher, basically: but it is also the sign of the Reception of the Divine; the sign of the Mother, you know…. It is easy to glibly say that all is one: but generally people say it, and turn away not knowing that means, and acting very much in line with their lack of understanding, or…. Is it understanding? Is it through understanding that we…. know, or whatever?

…. (Adjustment) [Justice]

“This card in the old pack was called Justice. This word has none but a purely human and therefore relative sense; so it is not to be considered as one of the facts of Nature. Nature is not just, according to any theological or ethical idea; but Nature is exact.”

“…. Equilibrium stands apart from any individual prejudices…. In this sense, Nature is scrupulously just. It is impossible to drop a pin without exciting a corresponding reaction in every Star. The action has disturbed the balance of the Universe.”

“This woman-goddess is Harlequin; she is the partner and fulfillment of the Fool. She is the ultimate illusion which is manifestation; she is the dance, many-coloured, many-wiled, of Life itself. Constantly whirling, all possibilities are enjoyed, under the phantom show of Space and Time: all things are real, the soul is the surface, precisely because they are instantly compensated by this Adjustment. All things are harmony and beauty; all things are Truth: because they cancel out.”

“This is again a hieroglyph of ‘Love is the law, love under will’. Every form of energy must be directed, must be applied with integrity, to the full satisfaction of its destiny.”

Most of that I didn’t understand. Most of what one reads and immediately understands, however, one already understood…. Learning isn’t so much a matter of books, necessarily. Certainly if one never goes beyond the known and becomes lost, making mistakes or standing still, and then recognizing, experiencing, learning—one never learns, another way, right?

It is amusing to read Crowley talking about Justice, though, right: like…. Men think of Justice as the retreat from Life, you know; the abbot returns to the monastery before he gives judgment; he rests in his cell, or cave, apart even from the brothers…. (chuckles) Even the vanilla “socialist” thinks that way, right. If a word like “socialist” actually means some specific thing, right. “Oh, I went to Italy; I met an Italian….” Oh wow, what kind of Italian; a baker, a monk…. “(shrugs)” Were you in the nice part of Milan or some godforsaken part of Sicily? Was there anyone there you knew? Did you have much money? “(shrugs) I was in Italy.” Like, VERY, ironically, “socialism” can be like that: like, as long as it’s not “capitalism”, right—another, precise term, no!…. Hahaha.

But yeah: to adjust…. You need a pulse, right.

…. About the Hermit and Fortune: either I already knew, or it passed without my figuring out if I knew, or else I just couldn’t figure it out—in any case, I’ve little to say.

…. (The Hanged Man) About cards I don’t understand, I won’t speak, and have passed over one before and will do so with others, since this isn’t a deck I understand yet, although I think it will find it useful. But here I will say, that sacrifice IS a wrong notion, Crowley was right: and the notion of “sacrifice” that arose from the execution of the god Jesus brought about much harm. But I can’t say I understand it all yet; certainly in another Great Year, the Age of the Dying God could have been more humane and less in love with weakness and defeat: I will have to think on this, though perhaps it is impossible to fully know. Another issue that doesn’t matter to Crowley since he is a philosopher and occultist and not a devotee of a god, really, is the question of whether it is wrong to “sacrifice” or “offer” or “give” things to the Gods, even if it is voluntary offering of inorganic matter or plant food, right. In doing that, am I involved in “sacrifice” and the worship of weakness and sickness-unto-death?…. And if so, how can I interact with the gods in a non-intellectual, and even an earthy way?…. Although it is true that say, CSL, in his book “Till We Have Faces”, about one of the Greek myths—as a Calm
Educated Scholar-Christian From A Relatively Non-Controversial Time, right: he has to acknowledge the link between pagan sacrifice and The Christian Sacrifice: and not that I ought to go looking for ways to cut people off so to speak, or other cultures, even if flawed: well, if it was the same error, then both are at fault…. CSL is almost ~better~ writing about pagan myths in an obscure book like that, since for a Greek religious idea he can muster both respect and a sort of boundaried, critical distance, which is healthy: for church culture he essentially just a learnéd propagandist, like the Frank Capra of the church, basically…. But yeah: a moment in the evolution of a species never comes again, nor does any astrological age…. And can you look at the Christian loyalist, and say, No, pagan human sacrifice was all right?—Though how Christian god sacrifice buys back the world from the devil of sickness-unto-death, right…. It is wonderful to be able to agree with people and make a treaty with the other empire: but if you are both wrong, you are both wrong, you know. The better man or woman changes first, you know.

…. (The Devil) “The formula of this card is then the complete appreciation of all existing things. He rejoices in the rugged and the barren no less than in the smooth and the fertile. All things equally exalt him. He represents finding the finding of ecstasy in every phenomenon, however naturally [repugnant? auto mis-correct is killing me: lol…. One time: it decided that BOTH a while (two words) and awhile (one word) were BOTH WRONG, and I was like: Bro, this is harassment], he transcends all limitations; he is Pan; he is All.”

…. (The Moon) “(no matter what wicked substance-beings or wicked witchcrafts you encounter, nay, become) ‘How splendid is the Adventure!’” Life is always Life. Existence is not always well: but it always IS.

(propagandist) (considers this briefly) No, I think I’ll tell the children: I mean, I’ll gamble that if I tell that if they get taken in by malevolent substance-beings, that they’ll have to feel so much shame that they’ll have to kill themselves: so that shame will keep them shackled to the right way, and society will hobble on towards success, right.

But your doctrine isn’t true.

(shrugs) Yeah, but I wanna see the game after work: and I don’t want my wife to shame me because I lost my job via independent thinking, right. “I look and I write my book, and I have my say, and I draw conclusions: and I walk away, with the wrong impressions. Don’t care, ‘cause I’ve done my share, and I need some time, for my own obsessions.”

Ah, Billy Joel.

Yeah: it’s great bar rock, right. Anyway: here come the children….

…. The Sun and the Aeon especially of the last three cards seem beautiful, although it seems I understand none of them well. Better than before, especially by Crowley’s way, but not well.

…. I just meditated on the Court of Wands, and I thought the most curious things about them, you know—the warriors and the lovers and all that, who go on fighting and doing “war” forever, right…. But I didn’t write any of it down, I guess because I was in a hurry: but it was just as well, because it was so strange—and maybe too vague to be poetic, just…. Like, an image in the sand, right…. And maybe I won’t comment about any of the Court cards, now: I’ll just say, (although coming to put it in words, one wants to take it back: that is the curse of language—it tries to take back the blessings of the heart, rather than relay them, right….). And it’s like…. When I feel good, I feel—and I believe this is the truth, though it is not what I “think”, right—I feel that everyone is righteous…. And to the eye or the mind, to the appearance or the analysis, they seem desperately pitiable at best, or else, simply rather absurd: irritating…. But yeah: really, they are all righteous…. They were always righteous; and they never sinned…. And sometimes I can even feel that way, even about my family, (decorating their house to imply, “I like T-45-34, right….” The T-45-34 was a Soviet tank, by the way: I in no way allude to President Voldemort…. Yeah, why wouldn’t your decorating scheme subtly manifest your whole delusion that you live in, right…. What’s not to like….), and I can even feel that way about the Christians, you know, (It’s not good to isolate; this is my community for the time being; there hasn’t been enough time to arrange for…. But then, there is always time in the end…. And, although I don’t trust them, exactly: they haven’t done anything wrong, really…. What’s more righteous than that? What’s not to like?….)

And it’s like: yes, I suppose they are all righteous, you know….

It’s like, didn’t Epictetus say once: he basically just baldly put it in your face, right—and that is the correct way—that, “There is no such thing as sin in the world”, right: and then the commentator Simpleton or whoever was like, “I can explain that!”, and on and on he went, right…. And it’s like, no you can’t…. You can’t explain it….

~And yes: “but sometimes people….”— “I mean: my “sin” is basically, I do not have enough time left in eternity and infinity to learn the lessons, right; God has not deigned to give me sufficient control over…. What? I don’t know! I have to find out! I have to do all those lessons….” It’s like, that is my “sin”, right: but there is no sin.

Because it’s all like that. It’s all like that. Even…. Trump, you know.

…. Like, it’s one thing to have prisons: you know. But they should be there so that we can teach people, right: that they never sinned. It doesn’t mean that they’d be permitted to leave, of course. It’s like: “No, you haven’t gotten it yet…. Stay here, why don’t you….” But of course, in our system, the jailers tend to be comparably deluded as some of the…. You know? Although delusion describes that which does not exist: so they never sinned. They simply…. Delayed learning the lesson. And one can hardly blame them: they have all eternity, do they not?…. I mean, I think: why not start learning, today, right….? And yet…. You are caught in your sin, whether you are “religious” or “wild”: because you BELIEVE you have sinned, you know…. You won’t admit it; perhaps you literally can’t bring yourself to conceive that you hold yourself guilty, right. Or else, you’ve got religion: guilt is something you know well; sin has you in its teeth, you know; sin itself chews you up, but won’t let you go….

So stay in your sin, if you like. Perhaps later you realize, how foolish you are, as a judge. You have found yourself guilty and judged yourself worthy of eternal suffering, who never sinned. When will you see yourself, that you are the Fool: the greatest of Fool of All…. And the Only Fool: because, you’re it, right.

…. It’s like: and maybe the Past IS real, because the Past is Now: and the Now is what’s real…. The Future is also Now, I just don’t know which Now it is yet…. Now is Past, Present, and Future…. And the worst moments of my life are happening Now—everything is Now; and there is no sin and nothing amiss. And I have goals now, just like I did when I was an inpatient, right, (crazy shit—like you can’t describe), and now it’s not that I have no choice, or that I read about it, or that I found someone to recommend the practice of goals to me, right: now I’m going to start doing goals because I LIKE the idea—there can never be shame or duty failed; there can never be sin: there are only goals and their evidence that I have things I like to do, and that I give proof that I am here: in ways from the least practical to the most; or vice versa—and it’s like…. Yes, the worst moments of my life are happening now: only it makes no difference; all is well…. I do not know whether it is that the Now is the only Past there is: or that the Past is the only Now there is, right. It makes no difference. Zero. Delusion is enlightenment. They’re the same.

And now: to be upset with “Christianity”—or traffic, or whatever—THAT, is the “Christian” thing, right. Traffic is stress. If you don’t feel stress: you’re not in traffic. You’re just in your car, in a certain place, that was not the reason for your journey, but a place in between…. You know: and sometimes I AM “in traffic” you know: I am a veritable theologian, although I begin to doubt the faith, right…. But yeah: I can be the reason why someone—namely myself—takes the Tarot to be the Book of the Devil, right: because somewhere, in a reading not taking place, or not that I can perceive, the cards are describing reality to me: and to me that is the devil, right—and as the dean of the Traffic School of Divinity, I roundly reject it as heresy, as apostate…. And that is no sin: for there is no devil, and no sin. There are just…. Appearances, right: and rather than see them as beautiful, we rebel: although we are the very king, we rebel against, you know.

…. But yeah: I feel like, after all that, it might be a little anticlimactic to comment on “the small cards”, right.

But yeah: if I made a movie, right, I could call it: “The Black Lodge is a Play of Nuit”, right. We could get death threats! A few from Marxists, right: they’d kinda bluff and bluster, right. But mostly from Christians or racists or whatever they choose to call themselves, right: they could literally send gunmen around to attack the house, (which, by that point, would be a mansion, right).

We could put that in the movie! We could win an award!!! 😸

…. Anticlimactic comment, lol: it occurs to me that Crowley doesn’t seem to use reversals.

…. Additional comment: I also find I’m not as excited by Crowley’s version of the “small cards”, as I am by most decks. It’s not the same experience I had with the Mythic Tarot, which has wonderful Trumps, but which seemed un-usable to me, because of the cards from 1-10 in each suit. They also don’t seem as desperately gray and even poorly executed, as in the Marseilles deck I had once: although in some sense it is a reversion to, as well as an evolution from, that system…. But yeah: there is a hint of minimalism in the cards 1-10 in each suit, especially kinda pronounced given the extravagant maximalism of much of the Thoth cards, right. It appears that this is intentional: “The great point is that the Elemental Forces [small cards, and even court cards], however sublime, powerful, or intelligent, are Blind Forces and no more.”

…. But yeah: I connected very strongly with the Crowley cards: much more than I thought I would, and I wrote a lot: I don’t think there’s any need for doing a “tell me about yourself” reading with the deck, right.

…. Update: I wrote about this on my Rider tarot deck too, so I could draw AE Waite into it too, because it’s not Crowley as Crowley; it’s a case of, if everybody else is wrong: then you’re wrong, too, right…. Individualism is a strange creed, right…. Strange are the cults of Nacirema, right…. They worship a great eagle, and an old zombie, and all of them are free, though none happy, and all very intent on keeping things the same, though it has all been flushed upon them by an elite, not loyal to the empire, right, and the true way….

But yeah: I had a very powerful initiatory experience—at least in the sense of devotion; (as opposed to power/attainments, I mean—even ‘realization’…. But in terms of break from the past: YES….); and She chose me, right; I was simply drowned in the sea; that was my contribution, to Her ritual, right…. And I had been planning on waiting 7 years or whatever, but it happened about 10 months after beginning, a little bit past a year if you count the time from leaving church, right….

~But yeah: then it was impossible to take seriously what Crowley wrote about the Sevens, (again: back in the fucking Jazz Age when if a woman wanted to get a job after she was married she needed a special fucking waver from Hitler or Churchill or somebody: maybe both; maybe everybody, right….); yeah, ok: it’s “Debauch” and “Futility”, okay: (raises ‘L’, for ‘Loser’, to forehead: lol), try “Dreams” or “Delusions” for the one, (but make it fucking EXCELLENT AND SCARY, either way), and “Deceit” (the claws of the rose: fucking excellent, and bloody scary, alright 👌 😎….)….

Which isn’t to say that you should never have self-control, right. She likes that. It makes you easier to deal with. Eternity being too short for Her, for dealing with males that aren’t easy to deal with, right.

But yeah: historically, and in all that sense, even to study, perhaps, in some sense, it’s a excellent deck; but I’m not an academic or whatever, and eventually I’ll find a nice contemporary adaption, that isn’t so….

That’s different, you know….

It is funny how even in an age of great creativity, the scholars and often the randoms are drawn like flies to honey to the oldest and the most established stuff, right: like, if your truck isn’t in the gutter—the rut, I mean: the groove in your mind—you’re not going anywhere, right…. Although Waite obviously is the one who has his “bank accounts”? spirit ego? inflated the most, by that pattern, right….

And Crowley DID say, “Change is stability”, right. (shrugs).

Anyway.… (more)

I don’t think I’m going to be able to use the Thoth Tarot in readings, even after I read the book and meditate upon the cards—although I think I will do all that, eventually; (ie: assess both the book and the cards); it’s good background knowledge. And really, the occultists of ANY part of the 20th century are a REAL evolution from the timid and sometimes untruthful masters of the 19th century and all those times, right…. But yeah: while I do NOT find Aleister to be “too rebellious”, and I like some of his writings, sometimes he just…. It’s a lot. Too complicated, really. I know I can be a little petty, but I was like ~he likes chess~ lol…. One of my own personal bugbears…. It took me a lot of time to realize that being forced to learn chess by my father was one of the burdens of my childhood; and I still don’t like the whole math-puzzle thing as the Great Intelligence Thing, right: why so many people give up on intelligence, even if they paper-thin pretend, because the smart people’s standards And ideals of intelligence…. Yeah. Although I have to say, I do admire his abilities in geometry; if you locked me in a room with a geometry teacher, today, I guess I’d bloody learn geometry, right: although not having a choice, or perhaps being offered a “choice” in which one of the options is highly stigmatized, just because people are petty…. Right…. But I do believe geometry could be used in mysticism, although I don’t rightly understand his arguments along these lines…. I feel like I’m not going to understand a very sizable chunk of the book, enough so that I won’t want to use the Crowley Deck, and be reminded of how little I know, basically.

But I had to know—what would happen if I tried, you know…. Maybe that’s what we should do with math: ask kids, require them, even, to take algebra or geometry for a year or whatever, and if they like it, fine; and if they don’t like it, they just have to find something else that they do like…. But all the demoting people and evaluating/placing them in hierarchies, and holding their basic personality type against them, right: it’s bullshit…. And it accomplishes nothing, basically, or very little aside from beginning the alienation process between those who are smart and conforming, smart but non-conforming, and everyone else…. To wit: basic brain size, but would like to conform, and the “bad kids”, right….

But yeah. But it’s a hundred million miles from saying it’s Aleister’s fault, you know. He was just another gifted kid that the system didn’t work for, your typical revolutionary type, basically…. And, again: I trust him over Papus and Eliphaz Levi and the timid pedants from the dawn of time in post-1789 Europe, any fucking day, right….

…. “What is the meaning of the Five of Wands? This card is subject to the Lord of Fire, because it is a Wand, and to the Sephira Geburah because it is a Five. It is also subject to the sign Leo, and to the planet Saturn, because this planet and this sign determine the nature of the card. This is no more than saying that a Dry Martini has got some juniper in it, and some alcohol, and some white wine and herbs, and a bit of lemon peel, and some ice. It is a harmonious composition of various elements; once mixed, it forms a single compound from which it would be very difficult to separate the ingredients; yet each element is necessary to the composition.
The Five of Wanda is therefore a ~personality~; the nature of this is summed up in the Tarot by calling it “Strife”.”

(p. 43, Weiser Books paperback edition, 1974 {reprint}).

That’s a great quote, and I will make a table of Crowley’s “names” for the cards, right. It is true that most of it falls under the three categories of: (I) already knew it; (eg Papus was an idiot); (II) still don’t know it (eg the Star and the Emperor thing); (III) and things I sorta understand more about now…. Maybe, but I’m not sure (some of the philosophy of Tarot and history of science fits in I, and some of it in III).

But yeah. It’s a book. It’s not shit; it’s a book, yeah.

…. More fun quotes:

“Reason is an impasse, reason is damnation; only madness, divine madness, offers an issue.” (p. 57)

“One must constantly keep in mind the bivalence of every symbol. Insistance upon either one or the other of the contradictory attributions inherent in a symbol is simply a mark of spiritual incapacity; and it is constantly happening, because of prejudice. It is the simplest test on initiation that every symbol is understood instinctively to contain this contradictory meaning in itself.” (p. 63)

I understand a lot of these basic concepts, but you quite often can’t say it fairer than Crowley, you know: and quite often these things bear understanding on a deeper level. We understand, until our native flaw grabs us: for me, I suppose, fear, specifically leading to a sort of tightening, a grasping after stasis, which makes me quite forget or perhaps ignore, what I know and do not care to disprove….

And many of the details escape me. Aleister was primarily a philosopher or something like a philosopher, rather than a storyteller, but he knows quite a lot about the old myths, and finds in old stories many philosophies….

…. And yeah, I’m probably more religious than Crowley sometimes presents himself as being—although even a devotional sort of Wiccan who is solitary is probably more like an irreligious mystic in some senses, than you’d expect a Christian to be—but I dislike capitalizing words like ‘god’ and ‘goddess’ and even ‘witches’ and ‘pagans’, and of course, ‘he’ and ‘she’, because it’s finally occurred to me, that although the gods and fairies are good friends to be treated with affection and respect, I should really be leaving all that awe, terror, and resentment behind with me my childhood religion—whatever the hell that was, right….

…. It’s funny how philosophers can kinda evaluate cultures or religions or whatever the way that an almost normal person would evaluate restaurants: like, Don’t eat at that Chinese restaurant on Chicago street—and if you do, at least, do me a favor and don’t get the soup, ok…. ~It’s like, they have a very definite opinion, and are not always in PR mode, or whatever: but they don’t have the same quality of attachment that an average lunatic has, you know, trying to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act or, supporting anti-Asian hate, right…. It’s funny, Crowley, (Aleister is a nice name too, and I love first names, but ~Crowley~ is a ~great name~, you know), could be like, (sips the soup) No I don’t care for the Hanuman cult; it’s not a proper expression of the idea of the Fool…. ~And maybe there’s something to that, although I’m not an expert on Hanuman devotion. India is permissive, but the Indian philosophers sometimes I think look down their noses on things like the Fool energy; maybe that combined to the philosophers ignoring and non-persecuting and non-helping people who just cut loose like, Yeah fuck that Brahman shit! This is Hanuman Temple! ~And then Crowley shows up, and he crinkles his nose, like, These people don’t understand, that the Fool is SO WISE….

[re-read upon posting: Or maybe it was—wasn’t Hanuman like God’s Little Helper, you know: like, Ram’s Little Helper….? Like, “he’s quick with a joke, or a light of your smoke”: he’s a good servant, that Fool…. And it’s like, No, that isn’t what the Fool is, you know…. Maybe hoomis misrepresent Hanuman, the way they misrepresent Jesus, as…. The church: I don’t even know what Jesus is supposed to be, anymore; or Loge, as the Irreconcilable Nut Without Good Qualities, right…. Yeah, no one more misrepresented than the Fool…. Lear’s Fool is alright; but people would rather be King Lear….!]

That’s my guess. Crowley understands a lot of things I don’t, even if I’d still have my own opinion even if I knew everything that he did, right.

…. Sometimes Crowley has a thought, and I can’t tell how I should say what I almost want to say…. Like about science and the church, right: I could say a lot, but it would probably piss off both of them, and I don’t want to offend the Christians unnecessarily, and I especially wish that I weren’t at odds with the scientists…. But yeah, it’s almost like baby science grew up in an abusive home, right….

Anyway: yeah. It’s funny how you can separate out books about tarot and books about runes and so on—you can separate out the thousand and one magical systems: tarot, runes, the various astrological systems, whatever you like—but not really books about divination and books about magic: because a system that can be used for (magical) information can also be used for (magical) action, right. Crowley uses different words—he’s so relatable, given his generation, you almost forget he was one of those Wise Old Men; I feel like someone should write a history of alternative culture in the 20th century called “The Misty Dawn”, you know: it would tickle the sensibilities of Gen Z, but the “good people” would be miffed at putting Mick Jagger and Gerald Gardner together on the same photo montage, right…. Also people would get angry and attack it, just because people are paranoid and attack things, pretty much in general, right; “she exists, and therefore, is to be attacked”—(lol, she is a woman, and therefore is to be wooed, right)—but yeah, it’s like, there are two things in magic: divination and “magic” or sorcery or whatever. You know, or you do. You take apart the world, to see what reality is going on, or you put reality back together in the way you want it to be, right…. Crowley’s phrases were marginally more Latinate, but I feel like that was the idea….

Oh yeah, and—I mean, there’s almost no point writing it if people aren’t ready, you know: Jesus and his pearls, right, and the piggies, right…. Like people are just going to throw a hissy fit over you trying to help them in a way that they can ~easily ignore~, lol…. Like, ok, You’re ill: but it’s ok—I have the general notion myself, if hashing out the many details is going to make the people who actually “value” petty details—and/or their illness—descend deeper into illness, we can just put it off for 150 years, right: maybe by that time, people will be able to form a more realistic view of the centuries, including their own, and including the distant ones, right…. But yeah, “The Misty Dawn” would be about the 20th century, and then the next book would be like a prequel, right: “The Pre-Dawn Hours: Alternative Culture in the 19th Century”.

And yeah: I’m not going to have a kid, but if we still keep up this ridiculous farce of this current inheritance system as being the best way to husband personal and collective wealth, and the whole bogus institution of the family and the rest of it—which was all kinda prefaced on the ideas basically: that female labor is free; you don’t give a fuck about your neighbor; and the community is too stupid/un-spiritual/callous/hostile to help people out, (admittedly many war socialists and riot socialists played into this, and many government socialists are only marginally better)—but yeah, I have a nephew; if he fathers a line, when the 2170s roll around you can write the kid a check for his ancestor’s roll in starting the “Misty Dawn” series of popular nonfiction history, right. (Obviously this is the best possible form of motivation for long-term planning! I can feel the juices of market freedom supporting this totally bullshit notion! How could people ever be free to accumulate wealth for themselves and their communities without the institution of the family! The very notion is a call to right-wing rioting! 😺)….

Anyway.

…. And then, yeah: if the first two “Misty Dawn” books sold well, we could do: “Working Through the Night: Alternative Culture in the Long Middle Ages, c.500-1789”. Or, if the publisher was getting a little tired by that point: “Getting Up To Go To the Bathroom in the Middle of the Night: Alternative Culture during the Renaissance (A Misty Dawn book)”—right?….

And 5th-century Athens or whenever, until Christianization, would be like—“Twilight: A Misty Dawn book”, right….

…. And then somebody could write like, a novel, Mid-day Splendor: A Novel (Inspired by the Misty Dawn series of creative nonfiction), about like, the matrilineal era, when the king was like the son-in-law of the old king: the daughter, the priestess if you like, chose the king….

…. (Re: Strength, renamed Lust)

“Lust implies not only strength, but the joy of strength exercised.”

The classic Christian occultist thing for this card would basically be to say that mercy is strength, I guess; strength is softness; self-‘control’ or even gentleness might be going too far, but something along those lines is often suggested.

Crowley’s saying is worth remembering, though. I suppose the main thing is just not to…. I mean, some people have kinda an animal strength or kinda a wild-mind-animal-strength, and call that strength; or else imagine that the thing is calm cruelty, that strength is the pain of lust destroyed and power seized and hatred embraced, you know…. At any rate, lust is certainly a sort of strength, and strength suggestive of lust being possible, at the very least….

At any rate, any seizing of power which you do not enjoy—which you do not ever, ever enjoy: year after year, decade after decade—is obviously unambiguously dangerous as well as supremely pointless, you know.

“Beauty and strength; leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us.”

…. (the will to live/the will to die: the Tower or “War”)

So you don’t have to reject what ordinary people accept; you just have to accept what they reject. Life and death are one; the will to live and the will to die are connected. Therefore, if one does not like life, one will not like death; if one likes life, one will like death. (I feel like that famous California Buddhist nun titled one of her books with something along those lines.) Therefore, I might say that the suicidal impulse is not “wrong” in the abstract or absolutely—people imagine that they’re supposed to say, “life is better than death; life is holy and death is abomination”—but is simply, although this is certainly bad enough, lacking in balance. We all naturally desire to change our state of mind, and doing things that inevitably cause “harm”—say, sports, for example—are a natural part of this; however, the will to live is meant to keep the death-will in balance, so that one knows that one changes something into its same-opposite…. So there’s no reason to be hasty, especially seeing as we are living eternal lives, you know.

…. It has been said before how the best words come from silence, even before a year or two or whatever before Eckhart Tolle was born, it was said how the best words float upon a sea of quiet…. And it will be said again. Silence is the eternal music, and in it each god hears a different song….

…. But yeah, among some sections of the population, the name “Aleister Crowley” is not held in the same, uh, regard, as, for example, “Oscar Wilde”—whose second book was attributed to “The Author of ‘A Woman of No Importance’”, and whose first book was, “By a Gentleman”—no, wait; I’m confusing him with someone…. Well, anyway. But yeah, all our researches and our classes and our “you give me that Ben Franklin portrait; I’ll give you the textbook” books have been unable to really decipher the sphinx’s riddle, as far as this “Aleister Crowley vs pop opinion” thing goes, right. But I promise, upon my alcoholic mother’s grave, that if you send me to study for seven years abroad in France and Italy, all expenses paid, then I will get lai—I will get labor-intensive, and this mystery shall be unraveled: both now, and for all time, like a disrobéd—“

“We’ll take it under advisement.”

…. I am very funny. People tell me this sometimes. They are correct. (Although obviously I kinda modify my humor to the circumstances, except for when I’m on LT, right.)

But yeah: it is strange and curious how the astrological signs of the cards don’t match up with the elemental signs of the cards: confusing, really. To some extent that itself makes sense—the world as something other than 78 sentences on the ‘cat sat on the mat’ level, but obviously in a specific sense it’s hard to grasp…. Occultism is not amenable to scientific control in that sense—and who doesn’t like control? Certainly not only chemists, right. Yeah, this stuff doesn’t go in ‘Success’ magazine next to ‘AI-run future: yay or nay’, and obviously we know what the writer of chemistry textbooks thinks about it, at least in his official capacity. Societal elites are endlessly amusing, you know: there won’t Be any more goddamn social control, as long as everybody shuts up and follows the rules…. ~If you state your theory more abstractly, you become your enemy, half the time, right…. But yeah: I guess that’s why occultism had to be suppressed when people wanted a religion that would “keep the loonies on the path”, basically: a philosophy of rationalism is hard enough to handle; it fills many with contempt: a philosophy of hidden symbols fills people with Rage and Fear—you might learn something! Or you might fail to learn, and find out that life is not a 10th grade math puzzle, you know…. But yeah, I’m not one of cry over the normies that often, but it is not such a wonderful strike of good fortune! Perhaps a little inconvenient! that they haven’t found the system that works for the average person, yet, you know…. And certainly that is the one thing the average person knows, on some level, perhaps too well: ask him what life is, he’d say, know what’s going on (What’s going on? Don’t punish me, with brutality!….), and who can do that: well if your name is Jesus Christ, or, less likely, if you Really Understand physics, right…. It’s not always easy to deal with life not always being unambiguously one thing rather than the other, but so it is: but then also, things CAN also be one thing rather than another, from experience: if I had been born one degree of Aquarius the other way, I’d have been the Prince of Swords, instead of the (Crowley Deck) Knight of Cups, but so it is, right: so I am…. I am not pure ratiocination, right, regardless of how rebellious; I am all things strange and unaccountable, right…. Often of all men the least…. Something, I am not quite sure what: it tends to change, from season to season, lol…. The least normal…. And the normals are crazy: but even if you’re not normal, ill normals will raise an ill non-normal, right…. Though the coward dies many times, and eventually, perhaps, is reborn….

…. This is kinda specific just to a group of four cards, but:

“THE FOUR SEVENS

These cards are attributed to Netzach. The position is doubly unbalanced; off the middle pillar, and very low down on the Tree. It is taking a very great risk to descend so far into illusion, and, above all, to do it by frantic struggle. Netzach pertains to Venus; Netzach pertains to Earth; and the greatest catastrophe that can befall Venus is to lose her Heavenly origin.”

And that’s why I don’t like that—I mean, it’s very typical; some songs are memorable mostly for being SO typical, right: unusually so—(looks up) it was actually just called “Venus”, made by an obscure Dutch band in 1969, singing in English—I guess mostly about the color of their eyes, right…. And it’s like…. This is where music theory helps: it’s not ~exactly~ music vs lyrics; the melody or whatever is certainly nice, but the lyrics ~would be~ serviceable, you know, if the “program”, or I guess, the application—application vs aesthetics—were serviceable, right…. I mean, the rhyming is nice; the words fit the rhythm nicely; they picked a simple, easy metaphor to say simply and memorably what everyone was talking about, you know—cheap, illicit love, basically…. But the program or whatever you want to call it is SO false, you know: because they’re not servants of the good Venus, you know—they’re servants of Debauch, Futility, and Failure: and probably that was pretty much ALL they were, right—they didn’t take the, I mean—“all we are is of the gods”, right: there is, ~in a sense~, a way in which a debauched, failed girl is Venus, right…. But they don’t even take both high and low, without distinction: they are Very Discerning About Taking Only What Is Harmful, right! (!)…. You know, like….

Like, what the fuck, basically.

…. One is surprised at some of these cards Crowley is pessimistic about, right—not so much happiness and contentment and licit bliss and order and empire and everything, as…. Materialism, dreams, delusions, and unhappy death on the sly, you know…. And then you remember his reputation. Frank Sinatra was singing jazz tunes and the world was, aside from the war, calmly marching into a future of rationality, peace, progress and…. Other lies, you know. It’s funny; he rejects propagandistic sentiment, and does it by being hard in a way that’s almost traditional, but without being, I don’t know, just the wild caveman Red, you know. I just imagine him at the top of the old spiral tower or something—I’m not saying it right, but you know what I mean—and it’s lightning or whatever, but they’re having a party, playing Forties standards, while the male businessmen exclude and harass women, and the women curse at the Black servants, and Crowley looks down from the majestic height of his tower and curses those fucking British people, and calls them the Black Lodge, you know. Like, none of this LaVeyan shit where it’s like, you say white I say black; you say order I saw Chinese fire drill; you say the world exists and it’s good I say the world doesn’t exist and it’s the devil, right—none of that shit. Like, No, YOU are in a delusion; YOU are abnormal. EYE am an adept; EYE see the truth…. I am Aleister Crowley, and you don’t have to see what that means, because you’re just a little delusional deceiver of the people, you know. Run along. Live your little life. ~Like, there’s a majesty to him, right…. We pick such little people to be our leaders, so often. Obama was nice, and a lot of the rest at least clean up in a suit nice, but there’s so much more to it than that, right. The average chap is deeply afraid to pick a leader who’s better at leading than he himself is, right…. We don’t pick people with ~honest majesty~, and ~vision~, you know—we pick fraud leaders, because we feel ourselves to be leading a fraud’s life, in the end…. So we get angry, you know, over something superficial, basically. Delusion, you know. Total delusion.

…. But yeah, it feels like a great instruction how Crowley is pessimistic about the Tens, whereas I feel like the conventional view is very optimistic about—at least some of the Tens, right. The conventional view would I guess be: you start with nothing, or little; you become more and more, and finally in the end, sometimes it all ends as it should, right. ~(“Nothing”, and “as it should”—lol.) Crowley’s view I guess would be that it begins in mystery, and passes through moments of beauty and pain, before ending in failure: and returning to mystery, you know.

💫

…. I like how Crowley is grown-up enough to meditate on the difference between “Pleasure”, and “Debauch”, although he has no time to waste on Christian negativity towards…. Existence, basically. Towards pleasure, basically, and self-expression. (I don’t like to think about how most of them weasel their way through that argument: like, they can’t admit what they want, really.)…. But yeah, it’s kinda like, to be incorrect and use the word “devils”—which doesn’t have any meaning, in truth, according to the classic Christian usage, since the Christians dream up things that were never, and shall not be: but it has a conventional usage, right—after the “devils” are freed from the tyranny of the angels, or the Christians, or whatever: they have to deal with each other. I guess I just mean “devils” in the sense of “natural” things, not dreamed-up or false, or, always-good, or not-embodied-never-embodied, right, (again: they just mean things they don’t have the fucking guts to come out and say, right….), and consequently, hated-by-the-pious, ie “devils”…. But yeah, I guess I just mean: whenever the supernatural tyranny is removed—or is not the current consideration, perhaps, you know—then the business of nature must be got on, which is not made easier by naivety or credulousness, you know…. The 49th percentile romanticism—the calling ‘debauch’, ‘pleasure’—I don’t know; there’s no way to really explain these things: you just have to live and find out—but the debauched common once-born ‘romantic’ is very much kinda this deluded Christian who doesn’t follow the rules of or participate in Christianity, but who is descended from the church, and caught in it, not always for the better, and credulously imagines that they receive the grace of Christ by…. Trying to live this debauched dream that never was, and shall not be, you know…. It’s the common Top40 view, and it’s insane. It’s not the ‘correct’ view of pleasure, you know.

…. Knowledges come in, like: 🫨

But yeah: Oscar Wilde said, Be yourself, everyone else is taken—but personally, I’d like to be able to stretch forth my hand and have Aleister Crowley’s brain, and Harry Styles’ fashion sense, right. 🕵️‍♂️🦹‍♂️

…. “It only makes things worse if one wishes that there were no Ten of Swords in the pack, or that the Five of Wands did not follow and upset the Four.”

I realize that for Crowley this is emphatically Not an accommodation with ‘Christian acceptance’, lol; I myself comment in an unfinished review that maybe Christianity is the joke that Loge played on humanity, lol…. But yeah: it is supremely ironic that the church preaches this sort of thing—acceptance, contentment—and then freaks out at tarot etc for not interpreting this as denial and, secret aggression, basically.

…. But yeah: Crowley wasn’t a Christian. People are afraid of Crowley; they’re afraid of mental illness; they assume they’re the same. But really, I find Christianity to be the—you know, loyalist Christianity, right: substitutionary atonement, right—imagine if one mentally ill person has a psychotic break, right: substitutionary atonement would be like, we’ll send someone else to the hospital, right, we don’t want to send the ill person; because it’s like, Well, Hell isn’t a place where you get treatment, right; it’s prison…. And it’s like…. I mean, it would be a very strange, very sentimental, very ill lie, you know, to pretend that you were the psychotic person, right….

~And Christians don’t really believe that way, you know; apparently there was some sentimental Victorian novel, right, where you give the thief an extra purse of gold and some fancy bread for the road, or whatever—some old, churchy novel people hear about second-hand, right…. But it would just be a symbol of illness to go to Hell imagining that that cures somebody, you know…. And nobody does believe that: it’s just, either sentimentality, or obscure sayings of the mythic rationalists, or else just custom, you know—loyalty to the tribe-customs.

As long as they’re not, you know…. “Pagan”, or magical, right…. Really, in our tribe, we believe in people being good. People are good…. (beat) You know, sometimes people are really bad; I get afraid.

(trying to gauge whether an escape will be necessary) Do you now, Christian.

…. But yeah: many sayings are left to be discovered in this book, and other books: but I do say it is not so good to feel pity, seldom good to be loyal, not good to feel guilty, a great sin to feel guilty over others. And it is not good to be frightened away from, or into, a belief. It is true that an agitated, disturbed, aggressive mind resists and often cannot really be helped: by your illness you can push away the medicine…. But what good doctor would a sane man be afraid of, and what sane doctor would try to frighten, you know—anyone? Whether over ‘rationalism’ and ‘anti-rationalism’ or—well, we know what the church loyalists were like.

…. But yeah, as instinctual, I guess, and custom-driven as the ordinary person is, and as useful and practical (in the broad sense: it obviously isn’t considered practical) as ‘weird’ things can be, sometimes including ‘rebel’ Christian ways, at times: when something bad happens, one wants to know that a responsible person is in charge, you know: and not a “Christian”, a Christian ideologue, right; obviously they would probably consider themselves Christians, random culturally appropriate responsible adults, right: but they wouldn’t get agitated and blame people based on some strange bit of theological “logic”-hate, right….

But yeah: it would be nice when people are obviously in their head with the Delusion-Devil, and smash stuff before running off into the forest or whatever—the concrete forest—that you could then have a reasonably chat about what to do to clean up the bad vibes, right: like either do a tarot visualization together, or just do a smudging, right…. One of my old Episcopalian friends was like, “That’s the one thing I don’t like: the people who do smudging”: like it’s not Buddhism or something, so it must be sexual subversion; and it’s like, It’s literally a purification ritual; you do realize that it’s almost 180 degrees ~opposite~ to having sex, far more than chewing the cud of thoughts and ideas, you know…. (Although it was a weird story, me and the old liberal church lady: and I’m not telling the story right….) Even some of the Greek myths get in the dictionary—including the sexual ones, right—they just don’t include ceremonial magic on how to cleanse a space, right….

But yeah: people just kinda sit around, like, I wonder why there are crazy people…. And it’s like: I don’t know; there are So Many things I don’t know, right, but…. It’s like, Do you ever sit down and ask yourself what questions you ask of life, and whether it’s the right way to ask? It’s like, No, I’m normal.

But yeah: amazingly, it gets even worse than normal, lol…. Which is why I try not to be content with, just-normal, right…. Although I probably won’t do anything really ‘practical’ today; my intuition isn’t nearly as good as some people’s are, but I don’t assume that events are disconnected, or that if something bad happens, right, “Oh, I’ll just blithely assume that today’s astrology stuff is fine: and then, when that turns out to be a bullshit assumption, I’ll complain (to….?), bitterly, bitterly.”

Yeah: it’s funny, the task of magic…. Being sane, you know. Being practical. Advising the kings of earth, who gather in grain, armies, votes, and energy itself, you know….

And until you’ve made that a reality: you train, right. And so, life goes on.

…. Update: I’m a wordy bastard as you know, and I’ve written about this before, but just for completeness’s sake, and because a new way of talking about it presented itself to me, right: but yeah, re: Crowley and the Seven of Cups, granted, it may not be be entirely untrue in a ‘factual’ way—if I may stretch the word to cover the world of symbolism, right; certainly the cynical view of passion, right, is a possible view, and supported by some considerations, right; and both Waite’s card and much Top40 music (often even in eras with a rep for being tough and cynical, right) is pretty precious and moronic, about the whole “anything is possible means nothing bad can happen” thesis, right—like, wow, ok 👌 😎—…. But yeah: interpretations can be like lawyers, right, and if the lawyer is biased, is your enemy…. If Crowley was determined “not to be ruled by women”, as the rumor, went, right…. Where’s the border between fact and spin, and when do you know when you’ve gone over the edge, right?…. Our materialist civilization thinks everything is so objective, so logical: everything comes from analysis, right; when you go to a doctor or a lawyer, right—you know, you’re a lawyer going to your doctor, or vice versa, right—obviously it’s not a matter of trust, right…. But then, in occultism and philosophy, it’s obviously the same, right. Whom do you trust? And of course, for the historical church, the answer has always been: “the one who takes away my choice, (with or without my competent surrender, is a question for the doctors of the church to debate, right): the one who decides for me, him and the he’s, it is them I trust, right….” But yeah: even among ‘free thinkers’—not in the materialist sense, right, but, ironically: in the literal one, right…. It’s like, we learn from each other, right…. But do we trust the other guy not to lie to our face, right? ~Is my father/the priest/the boss/the vanilla expert, lying to me, right: “oh, I can help you find out….” But I do I trust you? “If you trust none but yourself: you will be like all men and followers, having learnt nothing….” Right?

But yeah: it’s a hostile summary, right: and also the Eight of Cups isn’t “Christian mysticism” (“the German measles of Christian mysticism”, lol): the Eight isn’t really part of the Christian symbolism. It is rather male, in a certain sort of way, and it appears Christian for that, perhaps, and for being the withdrawal from the senses after having drunk the Cups to the end—the Eight of Cups is, I mean—but it’s not really part of the Christian system of thought, you know…. It’s part of a polarity. Christianity rejects polarity. Retiring to the writers’ retreat after having had a nice affair isn’t really Christianity—nor is feminist separatism after being a groupie for a couple of years, right: but god and Fate, right! Even to take the male example, the fear and contempt Christians have had for writers who dwelt in the woods for a month or two after a crazy, beautiful, tragic love affair, right…. No, that’s not the faith of the church, right…. God, it’s so funny, you know: from the perspective of personal history…. It’s like I ~never was a Christian~, you know: seven years a non-Christian, you know: seven years a seeker, seven years a Dharmo-Christic philosopher, seven years a non-Pagan…. But never a Christian, you know. It just wasn’t written in the stars, you know. That was just the Lady’s Secret, you know…. I didn’t really like the Christians; and I didn’t really like their Christ, as a personality, you know: and he never was much of a personality, to me…. It was just a long elaborate de-tox, from youth in a dirty empire, right; and an education for a young slut who’d had very little proper schooling in any meaningful sense…. Just treating my slut sickness in the only way I knew: although it was just the prelude to…. Almost, almost, almost, (almost!), the only way that matters, right….

That’s not Christianity. Even Cynthia Bourgeois or whatever the fuck she calls herself wouldn’t call that Christianity…. (sighs) Yes, the bad in the Lady and in daughters and daughter-chasers, men and so-called “mothers” see, right…. But that women are almost the only adults, we do not see, right…. Men are just robots, or aliens, or else people who wish they could sit around being lazy and useless, eating potato chips and watching TV, maybe fucking, on call to kill and be killed, right…. But what real ~~~man~~~ is an adult, right…. And what moralist will allow herself or himself to see it, right: there’s always some good man who got himself killed, so that the children can be lied to, right.

That’s Christianity; but that’s not the Eight of Cups, right. It just isn’t.

The Christian system is the exclusive cultivation of the Middle Path, right—Buddhism is similar, although less deceptive, and mostly non-violent; the historical church is usually practically drunk—drunk!—on violence and lies, you know…. And yeah—strange to tell: Aleister Crowley, the great insider of Edwardian England, and the darling of King George or whatever—sarcasm; laughing out loud—Crowley, who, the rumors tell us, “would not be led by women”—and “1989” was a pack of lies, right; a season of illusion; a season of glamoring, and no clear-sight poetry, you know—but that one line, right: “the rumors are terrible and cruel; but honey, most of them are true”…. ~do do do, do!….. And yeah: every night with us isn’t like a dream, right. Maybe every Beltane—for a while, at least. But not every night…. But nobody accuses multi-platinum pretties of being initiates…. Still, it’s funny…. There’s much unschooled magic in the world, and not without some good it is, too: even if it could very well be the source of most of the world’s misery, right….

But yeah: the prejudice in favor of—the prejudice in favor of balance! Ha!…. The prejudice in favor of balance, right, albeit not the exclusive cultivation thereof…. You know: that’s Crowley’s system; and the system of the Church is the system of the exclusive cultivation of the Middle Pillar—or some ~part~ of it, at least, right. (They become very desperate men, right.) So judge for yourself, if it is the Seven and Eight of Cups, that are the signs of evil, or…. Well, judge for yourself. Choose for yourself, right.

But yeah: the world is a strange place. Exceeding strange, without doubt.… (more)

Aleister’s “The Book of the Law” is very short, and I used to have a thing about reading very short books, (I guess if it were sexual, you’d call it a hang-up, lol)—I read all of Shakespeare and counted it as one book, to take the extreme example. But I am glad I’m reading this as a separate work, because it’s very different in style from a lot of his other work, for example “The Book of Lies”—a great book, incidentally. The title is like some punk band calling itself Pale Zombie, or something—like, “Dude we are so above trying to prove to you people that we are better than everyone else, the way that everyone else is. Over it!” (Sometimes those old Edwardian or whatever radicals will surprise you….) Although it’s funny, “The Book of the Law” could almost equally have been called, “The Book of the Un-law”, and “The Book of Lies” could equally have been, “The Book of Truth”. That’s the other thing about the “Lies” title: ALL words are lies, interpreted in a brittle, inappropriate way….

But yeah, “Lies” is like spiritual psychology—spiritual philosophy…. This is more like special interfaith, (I was a cool Christian who read “interfaith” books when I was just trying to drain the shit out of the Christian house so that I could live there, and now, with some strange conservatism, I call the books that I relate to the most as “interfaith”, as some kind of “I am the universe” objectivity, although I’ve reformed it by dividing interfaith into two groups, general and special), occultist religion. A lot of Aleister’s stuff is more philosophical than religious, and he’s never really one for authority, and this is much more philosophical than Wicca, for example…. But it does seem like this is a sort of religion. (He also called it a religion, but I always have to decide things for myself, lol.) It is a very abstract religion, with more the philosophy/theology thing, without too much mythology, except as a metaphor or illustration, not as a story, right—but if authority is maybe not quite the right word, it is certainly a case of revelation, and perhaps if he’s not “revealing” that you have to follow his way, that’s it, (the way that Paul did when he was in jail, lol), he is I suppose “revealing” his own authority over his own life, and how you can do likewise, if that makes sense…. Unlike say, “Magick in Theory and Practice”, which sounds kinda, conversational, almost…. Although that’s not why I stopped reading temporarily; it was more—I mean, in the long run, there’s no separation, just like there’s no separation between indigenous mythology and paleface mythology and science, in the end; there’s no separation, in the end, between philosophy and magick, spiritual philosophy, and ritual…. But having read kinda a lot of the Wayne Dyer/Carlos Castaneda type, over the years, since even before the goosecap years with the first of those two, I was worried that my ship wasn’t quite balanced, so to speak….

(shrugs) But yeah: that’s all just to multiply words—in the end, just, ~Yes, it’s not “How To Live A Normal Life: The Liturgical Church and the Christian Walk Today”, you know.

Because, just…. No, right. Just, no. Yes to LIFE, no to…. All that, basically.

…. Little Child Horus want you be his friend.

We have to help the children, you know. We have to start telling them the right way to go. The children live inside us; we should help them….

…. It is a very high magic: and it is delight.

(shrugs) And you know: sometimes stylistically I don’t know about it; ‘magick’ with a ‘k’ lol; and I shall appreciate it better when I brush up on the Egyptian myths and on numerology: Aleister’s friend could have saved me some time and written like a little poem about each special number, right….

But it is quite beautiful poetry. Some of the poets in the ‘standard canon’ are alright, including some of the ‘best’, but just BBC announcer voice/factory school homework can make short work of it, you know…. A lot of the Bible is poetry, too; “if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you”, Jesus, (I won’t give the next line, lol: too perfect~~~) isn’t a line from the Bible, but maybe it should be, right…. Resentment can make quick work of a Christian of any description, until even the honest critic is left wondering what else was behind it all…. Was there a good god before there was a bad one?

But yeah: this book is pretty much exactly what poetry should be, you know. Maybe it’s ~poetry~ that’s ’high magic’s aid’, you know. Angels know that those old poets were wizards, not cunning-men from the villages, right?….

But yeah, the greatest thing is not to see division: not between all the this and all the that: and not even between, ~the people who saw no division first and those who saw it second, or between those of the first way and those of the second…. Between the Wizard and the Fool, basically.

…. It is true that there is much danger in the “pit called Because”. Mentation, philosophy, can be very debilitating—very disempowering. “And then the philosopher sat down to discover whether he existed, and whether anything at all existed.” Even Epictetus the philosopher cautioned people about that sort of philosophy, you know.

And then the journalists sit and come to tell why the bad things fly like bats unhindered over the face of the whole earth, and why the good things only are illusory, and why ten years ago or whenever, there were good things, but they have flown to fairy-land which does not exist…. And if you try, almost to reason with them, or to show them the flower of the Goddess, they close their eyes and shout loudly: ‘Because Because Because!!!’

Such is their own path, but it is not well to be like them….

And it is true that to esteem death and suffering is simply to do poorly, you know: and most of what is called compassion is merely to esteem suffering, and to value its cultivation. Sometimes the true strength, the true help, is to give your friend a sudden shake, to help dispense with the cultivation of suffering, you know—and not the voluminous words of a Dickens, praised by his contemporaries for showing people the way of pity, you know…. Poetry is stylized rather than technical, but I think a lot of pity is almost to praise someone for suffering, because you think their suffering brings out something good in you—namely suffering, you know….

But yeah, another point: Buddhists and Christian contemplatives, Thomas Keating the monk and all those people, say that the greatest thing is silence, and value it over the divine words that float up from silence. I value the practice of silence less than I once did, but it is easy to overestimate the difference between words and silence, really. For before there can be divine words, there must be silence. And well have they said, that you cannot force the deep silence or the divine words, you can only experience what comes up for you: what the gods within present to you, as a gift.

Perhaps they have neglected to say that sometimes at least you ought to be indeed enjoying what comes up, however.

…. Yup, the introduction said that the third chapter wasn’t going to make sense: and it didn’t. Bible promise made by the prophets in the Old Testament, Bible promise fulfilled by JESUS in the New Testament. 👌

lol.

Aside from the whole aspect of you know: (softly) if you try to convert me one more time, I’m gonna tell you what I think of you, boy, (raises voice) And, I’m Going To Tell You What I Think Of Your Mother!

👹😮‍💨

Although, yeah: words like “war” can mean a lot of things, right. There’s a “war on drugs”. My Trump-y father talked to me about a Christian movie called “War Room” once, you know. But supposedly, we as a society do not gun down unbelievers or irresponsible teenagers, right. That’s for people you like. Malcolm X talked about “self-defense”, but he never actually gave any orders for gunning down whitey, right. He was such a violent epithet, though. Whereas if, I don’t know, Guns and Glory 7 comes out, then Henry Standardissue isn’t REALLY talking about gunning people down right…. Or at least, he wouldn’t be if it were: Guns and Glory 7: Guns of the Confederacy, right…. Or at least, if there were a big NASCAR character who listens to country music and MAYBE, Talks About owning a Confederate flag, right: talk about how he feels emasculated by the civil rights movement, how he’s oppressed now by the….

And, you know: that’s not to promise Aleister anything. I’m not a Thelemite really, and maybe if I read a book about the Mysterious Chapter, it would seem like a dud, right.

But yeah: there’s a passage of the Bible, I forget which one exactly, where Jesus promises the Little Englanders that the sword will never depart from the witches and the trolls and the opponents of the British Empire, and the Jesus Christ Mission of Democracy & Progress, right…. Until Mr. Green can rest and be serene, roses in every room!

And Richard Dawkins would be all, Fuck the witches and the trolls, sure: fuck everybody: fuck the LOSERS, bro: until the Ghost of Chemists Future and the Spirit of “Pride and Prejudice” unite to bring smugness to all the English people, and all the children—except for the ones that I don’t fucking like because they’re losers, right. Bro, I’m telling you: non-atheists are LOSERS, bro! They’re weird! “But at least some of them aren’t going to HELL, in the Circle of the non-British non-humbug non-collaborators with the Little England Project for Decency and Empire!”

And yet, I would never imply that those people don’t view me with the utmost respect and that they don’t carefully guard my rights from any “marginal” types in society that would dissent from our broad societal consensus of kindness, respect, and mutually acknowledged self-worth, right.

Hmm. Well, okay.

Revision: And yet, in public, I would never imply that….… (more)