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.