Thoth Tarot Tuesdays: Princess of Wands

This week's tarot is the Princess of Wands. The Princess of Wands is the earth of fire card. Which is to say it's the fuel. The princess is in some ways raw energy. She is naked because she is unimpeded in her access to and relationship with, the elements. Probably not surprisingly, she is quite moody, and prone to righteousness. When she has been wronged, it is not something she lets go unavenged. If it seems that way, it's because she is laying in wait to ambush.

The Princess of Wands is as Crowley says: "superficial and theatrical, completely shallow and false, yet without suspecting that she is anything of the sort, for she believes entirely in herself, even when it's apparent to the most ordinary observer she is merely in the spasm of mood. She is cruel, unreliable, faithless and domineering".

Her positive attributes is that she is all or nothing. When something enters her sphere she consumes it. Her love is total, as is her anger. In many ways she's quite the individual. Her beauty and energy can be inspiring and attracting. Even if at times she seems wholly irrational.

She's someone who will get her way regardless.

Tarot Thoth Tuesday: Two of Disks (Change)

This week's Ophelia.
Last Week's Tarot.


This week's tarot is the two of disks. This card is called Change. Which I think is fitting given that it's the Chokmah for an idea whose physical manifestation is wealth. Change, wealth...get it.

Anyways, Jupiter and Capricorn rule this card, which is a bit of a problem as they don't exactly make the perfect match. The meloncholy and pragmitism of Capricorn is a bit of a downer for the youthful verve and forward push of Jupiter. This of course hits on a core tenet of change which is that it's the result of two forces fighting for balance. In some ways change isn't really about change at all. Crowley uses the metaphor of the Universe again for this card, and that's kind of about right. When you think of the universe you think of this great big static whole, that is kind of always there. But when you look at the smaller details, that stability is built on constant motion, constant warring, and constant change. The yin and yang is prominent here. Two warring energies who together make a harmony. The card directly speaks to this in it's presentation of the snake in the shape of the infinite figure 8.

What we find upon meditation of these elements is that this is a pretty accurate and full description of what change actually means. We are accostumed to view change in terms of it's beginning and end, but change is actually the infinite middle. Real change doesn't start anywhere or end anywhere, it just is. We're talking about a process, not an ends.

Anywho. As a bonus treat, here is the cover for next week's Ophelia associated with this card:And if you're wondering. No that's not Ophelia. That's a new character that is going to be introduced, and who will become quite key to the story.

Tarot Thoth Tuesday: Ten of Disks (Wealth)

If you didn't know, issue two of my webcomic Ophelia came out today.

And that also means it's time for a new installment of tarot thoth tuesdays. This week's card is the Ten of Disks-Wealth.

The ten of disks card is actually technically the last card of the deck. Because it is a disk card, it is also an earth card, and because of this it is the last group that goes down over the tree of life. And since it's a ten, it lands in Malkuth, which is the kingdom. Malkuth is sort of defined as the complete opposite of the abstract spiritual idea that kicks the whole process off. This is the peak physical manifestation of the journey through the sephiroth. It has a function similar to the Universe trump, in that it's a pretty positive card in that it's about wisdom, and true happiness--because it's the last card, it's also the mirror of the very very first card. So the whole of the tarot deck is building to this card.

Crowley writes of this card:
"The Ten of Disks is called Wealth. Here again is written this constantly recurring doctrine, that as soon as one gets to the bottom one finds oneself at the top: and Wealth is given to Mercury in Virgo. When wealth accumulates beyond a certain point, it must either become completely inert and cease to be wealth, or call in the aid of intelligence to use it rightly. This must necessarily happen in spheres which have nothing to do with material possessions as such. In this way, Carenegie establishes a Library, Rockefeller endows Research, simply because there is nothing else to do.

There is another view to consider, that this is the last of all the cards, and therefore representes the sum total of all work that has been done from the beginning. Therefore, in it is drawn the very figure of the Tree of Life itself. This card, to the other thirty-five small cards, is what the twenty-first Trump, the Universe, is to the rest of the trumps....the symbol of the uniting of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, the accomplishment of the Great Work, the Summum Bonum, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness."

So in some respects it's both the first and the last card, because the imminations are never static, and while it represents an end, it also represents a beginning. This is probably the most transparent way I use this card for the next issue of the book. But a lot of the other themes are only going to be apparent as we get further down the road into the story.

Anyways. That's this week's card.

Thoth Tarot Tuesdays: The Hermit

I figured now was as good a time as any to do a blog on the Hermit card of the Thoth deck, considering the very large role it has played in my life the past few weeks. It just keeps coming up. The first place it came up for me, was in regards to deciding whether to move from Rhode Island or not. At the end of the day, I felt that the isolation while painful, would result in some good for the soul moments of epiphany.

Of course this happened a week later, when I decided to do a webcomic without an artist. The comic I previewed the other day, "Ophelia" is based around a much larger story, but the focus of each episode is themed around a tarot card I get from a reading before I sit down to write every week. And for the inaugral issue of "Ophelia" I drew the Hermit, again. So there's a weird crossroads conjoining here between the internet, the tarot, the comic and my life.

At any rate. The Hermit, as you might guess has to do with seclusion and isolation, focus on yourself. Going off to the cave to meditate and find your own path.

Over at Barbelith the poster Kobol Strom made a terrific meditation on the card:
"Mad man running through the forest.The poor guy on the street.Being secluded away from society by physical or spiritual means.Locking yourself away from parts of your headspace you can't deal with.Concern with other peoples acceptance is diminishing, creating isolation.Someone in your life who doesn't seem to want to talk,actually finds they have the most to say.Hidden talents that need space to grow.Mental calm.Clarity through ordinary perception.Finally seeing the wood for all the trees.Howling at the moon.Taking time out for a necessary spiritual search.The inner journey to find out how you feel,resulting in making your own mind up.
Time to remember just who the fuck you are.
Alone,with your fears held out in front,scrutinising their usefulness,and then throwing them away like a cheap coat should you feel the desire."


Another poster on Barbelith, 6opow made this observation about the Hermit archetype:
"It is also interesting to note that Nietzche's Madman bears many similarities to the archetype of the Hermit."

This is of course something I noticed as well with the card, and why the first thing my comic does is make a Nietzche reference.

As for what Crowley has to say about the card:
"Wander alone; bearing the Light and thy Staff.
And be the LIght so bright that no man seeth thee.
Be not moved by aught without or within:
keep silence in all ways.

Illumination from within, secret impulse from within; practical plans derived accordingly. Retirement from participation in current events."

As for the imagery of the card, the shape of the Hermit is based upon the shape of the letter Yod, which symbolizes Wisdom, and is the highest form of Mercury and the logos. The background of the card is a field of wheat, which refers to Virgo which is the lowest, most receptive and feminine of Earth. The card is also invoking the legend of Persephone and the notion of a psychopomp(guide for the soul)--this is why Cerebrus is in the corner of the card. This particular element of the card also has a cross section with my comic, but I don't want to spoil it much.

At any rate. That's the card for this week. It's pretty cool.

Ophelia: WebComic

This is the cover and the first two pages of a web comic I am doing. I'm using collage stuffs, because 1) it looks neat, and 2) I can't draw and 3) I'm tired of waiting to run into someone who can draw just to get my bloody stories out the window for people to read. Anyways.

The series is called Ophelia. Each section of the story is done in six pages, and is based around a certain tarot card for that week. Each issue can stand alone, but I've got a longer narrative here in mind as to why this girl is doing what she's doing.

I'm very excited about this. Additionally if anyone knows a good place to host my comic for free, let me know. Ideally, I'd like to have it set up where you click links to go between pages.


Page 1:



If you click on the images they get GI-NORMOUS.


Page Two:

Tarot Thoth Tuesday: The Sun

Hi folks, I think it's Tuesday, so that means it's time for tarot Tuesdays, because that's how I roll, all alliterative and stuff.

Today's Tarot is: The Sun.

I chose this tarot to explore today because I had a run in with the sun this weekend, and my friend had dreams at the same time involving Loki giving instructions about the sun. So this is what I've got.

From Crowley:
"Give forth thy light to all without doubt;
the clouds and shadows are no matter for thee.
Make Speech and Silence, Energy and Stillness,
twin forms of the play."

Glory, gain, riches, triumph, pleasure, frankness, truth, shamelessness, arrogance, vanity, manifestation, recovery from sickness, but sometimes sudden death."

Wiki:
"A. E. Waite suggested that this card is associated with attained knowledge. The conscious mind prevails over the fears and illusions of the unconscious. Innocence is renewed through discovery, bringing hope for the future."

Shane Hall:
Something to do with a sacred place. I think is what he said. He was quite tired and I can't find the text.

Bunnicula!

The Sephirot, the Tarot, and a Small Anecdote

Learning the Sephirot is probably one of the most important things you can do for understanding the Thoth deck. The more you work with the Sephirot, the more the cards open up for you. I would actually say this is more important than learning the nuanced meaning of every card. Because once you figure each cards place on the Sephirot out, a lot of their meaning can be figured out just from that. I would say probably the two biggest knowledge systems for the Thoth deck are the Sephirot and Zodiac, with the former being more important than the latter.

"Qabalists have widely applied the cards of the tarot as keys to the Tree of Life. The 22 trumps (major arcana) are seen as corresponding to the 22 Hebrew letters and the 22 paths of the Tree; the ace to ten in each suit correspond to the ten Sephiroth in the four Qabalistic worlds; and the sixteen court cards relate to the classical elements in the four worlds.^[9][10] While the sephiroth describe the nature of God, the paths between them describe ways of knowing God.^[11]"

^"The emanations of creation arising from Ain Suph Aur are ten in number, and are called Sephiroth (סְפִירוֹת, singular Sephirah סְפִירָה, "enumeration"). These are conceptualised somewhat differently in Hermetic Qabbalah to the way they are in Jewish Kabbalah^[5]. See Sephirot for the Jewish conceptualisation.

From Ain Suph Aur crystallises Kether, the first sephirah of the Hermetic Qabalistic tree of life. From Kether emanate the rest of the sephirot in turn, viz. Kether (1), Chokhmah (2), Binah (3), Daath, Chesed (4), Geburah (5), Tiphareth (6), Netzach (7), Hod (8), Yesod (9), Malkuth (10). Daath is not assigned a number as it is considered either a false or a hidden sephirah^[6].

Each sephirah is considered to be an emanation of the divine energy (often described as 'the divine light') which ever flows from the unmanifest, through Kether into manifestation^[7]. This flow of light is indicated by the lightning flash shown on diagrams of the sephirotic tree which passes through each sephirah in turn according to their enumerations.

Each sephirah is a nexus of divine energy and each has a number of attributions. These attributions enable the Qabalist to form a comprehension of each particular sephirah's characteristics. This manner of applying many attributions to each sephirah is an exemplar of the diverse nature of Hermetic Qabalah. For example the sephirah Hod has the attributions of; Glory, perfect intelligence, the eights of the tarot deck, the planet Mercury, the Egyptian god Thoth, the archangel Michael, the Roman god Mercury and the alchemical element Mercury^[8]. The general principle involved is that the Qabalist will meditate on all these attributions and by this means acquire an understanding of the character of the sephirah."

It's funny, I had a brief flirtation with Qabalah back in early high school, if I had known better I would have just stuck with it. I wonder if I still have that old book? I'm slightly reticent about the Qabalah now in this post-Madonna world, but whatever, "I needz ur knowluge gunz, knowz!"

Incidentally, I had incidence to use the tarot this weekend. I had arrived at a crossroads in the middle of Pennslyvania, both literal and figurative. And I ended up using the tarot to help me get perspective on the options available to me. I also made an offering to Odin there, leaving some coins at the crossroad juncture. 10 minutes later it was storming and pouring down rain(it had been pretty clear to that point). I also saw a ton of ravens, and everyone was walking their dog in front of me(I'd parked in a pet area on accident). I still need to get much much better if I'm ever to make proper sense of any of that, but I try. There's no sense in doing magic if you aren't going to bring it in on the major events of your life.

Rune of the Week: Kenaz

This week's rune is Kenaz. It's one of the more mysterious runes out there. One of the meanings for it is "ulcer", but it's also associated with the flame of inspiration.

Kaun
Ulcer is fatal to children;
death makes a corpse pale.

The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem
Cen
The torch is known to every living man by its pale, bright flame;
it always burns where princes sit within.

The Icelandic Rune Poem
Ulcer
Disease fatal to children
and painful spot
and abode of mortification.

We do see some common threads here though. Note "death makes a corpse pale", "the torch is known to every living man by it's pale, bright flame". It burns "where princes sit within", it burns where naive ambition flowers? It's dangerous to those who aren't serious. It's tied with life and death. The mortal flame?

On Barbelith much of the discussion is around Kenaz as a creative inspiration. But there's something more dire here. When we consider that in order to learn the runes Odin hung himself from a tree with a spear through his foot, just to see the runes, and then gave up his eye to get the meaning of them--we began to see a kind of duality of knowledge. It doesn't come easy. Kenaz is an important life energy, but it can just as easily snuff you out. It's no child's game.

If we borrow slightly from the Sephiroth/Tarot from yesterday, we can actually find some illumination in the Ace of Wands.
Which is the visulazation I get from the these concepts pretty much to a T. Now if we consider the Ace of Wands to be an uncommunicable ideal, the way we can learn more of it's nature is to follow it down the sephirot, focusing specifically in on Tipheret and Malkuth . We do this because the Tipheret or 6, is the balance of the suit, emanating from the ace of wands, and Malkuth is the last point before it breaks apart. Sort of the high or low point of all the energies of the suit, the physical opposite of the spiritual Keter.

At any rate. The cards are 6=Victory, 10=Oppression.

Which kind of gets back to Kenaz perfectly. A balanced state of the flame of kenaz defines that plane of balance which is victory. Victory is triumph. The adult surpassing the childish ways. Avoiding the death the poems warn of. Whereas Oppression, hits at the dualistic nature of Kenaz. Taken too much into it's extreme the heat of it's ideas are no longer triumphant, but are instead oppressive. The weight of them collapses and burns you down. This ties into what we know about worrying giving you an ulcer. The state of worry is if nothing else a state of oppression. So to a large extent what Kenaz is about is balancing between worry, which ends in death, and the burning ideas of life that we have as children. Kenaz is about finding the balance in your life between childish dreams and adult achievement. It's both the light which brings us into the world, as well as the one that snuffs us out.

Tarot Tuesday: O. The Fool

I've started working with the tarot on top of the runes, and while I'm going through it at a much more rapid rate, I would like to add Tarot Tuesdays as a feature for this blog. So if you'll indulge me, the first card I'm dealing with today under the watchful eye of Hecate, is the Fool.

The Fool represents creative mania--the biforcated balance of opposing ideas held together under the silent tongue of the prophet, the Bachanalian. It intones the vulture Nekhbet. The dove of immaculate conception. Jesus and Dyonassus. The holy man. The accepted angelic. People like Marx with crazy flowing hair. The horns of Zagreas.

The fool bridges the gap between the great unconcepted and wisdom on the tree of life. Existing between the Crown and Wisdom, the Fool is the jester.

He stands jubilant ushering in spring as the Green man on top of the Nile, where the creative energy of the crocodile Sobek. Between his legs, under his sun, sit the silent intertwined babes of Hoor-pa-kraat.

The fool is the great cosmic glossolalia of the divine strained in through the mundane. It's deception, it's innocence, it's restraint of the highest degree, combined with all the inhibitions of a drunken escaped lunatic. In the fool is the universe and nothing. +1 and -1, the great zero.

Thoth Tarot: Personal Experience 79 million

So the other day on a whim, I picked up some Thoth tarot cards and the Book of Thoth by Crowley. My aim here was that since runes are going to take a long time I can use and learn tarot alongside of it, and probably have one inform the other.

At any rate, here's a quick summary of the Thoth Tarot for the kids at home:

"Crowley originally intended the Thoth deck to be a six-month project aimed at updating the traditional pictorial symbolism, perhaps best demonstrated by the Rider-Waite-Smith deck; however, it was to span five years, between 1938 and 1943, as the scope of the project grew ever wider. Crowley and Harris were meticulous in their work; Harris painted some cards as many as eight times. The current printing of the deck actually includes two alternate illustrations of The Magus, each making use of markedly different style and symbols. Unfortunately, neither Harris nor Crowley lived to see the deck published; a follower of Crowley undertook the work of publication in 1969. This initial printing was of markedly inferior quality, and in 1977 Harris' paintings were rephotographed for a second edition; the current edition is based on a further update that took place in 1986.

The illustrations of the Thoth deck are rich in symbolism, based upon Crowley's stated desire to incorporate symbols from many disparate disciplines, including science and philosophy, as well as to draw on his extensive knowledge of various occult system (as described in detail in his Book of Thoth). For example, The Hanged Man and The Moon draw from Egyptian mythology, and the Princess of Disks holds a disk bearing the Taijitu. The pip cards in the four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords, and Disks) depict their objects in carefully-crafted positions; for example, the Four of Swords (which Crowley named "truce") shows four swords with their points toward the center of an imaginary square, suggesting a possibly tense peace. The card illustrations are uniformly stark and vividly illustrated throughout."

The cards definitely had a very weird charge to them when I opened the box. I actually had sort of anxious moment as I was opening the box for the cards and tearing off the wrapping. So there is something here. I don't know a lot about Tarot yet, but I did shuffle the deck and pull out a card that I felt pulled to.

It was this one:
Oh yeah. The art is amazing and incredible. I haven't looked at every card yet, but the ones I have seen are so trippy. You get lost in them. Incredible work.