Crowley

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I used to live with a couple, hyperintellectual Deadheads who were into the BOTA and OTO. Jeff was fast-tracked at Stanford in physics until one Lysergic day he realized that all his efforts could only lead to quickening a seemingly inevitable world cataclysm. Subsequently all that intellectual firepower was dedicated to mystical studies, in particular the study of Kabbala and Crowley. Jeff had a bookcase devoted to Crowley's books. He said he read all of them, and he was close to having them all. Sometimes I'd come home to a room full of students with a big tree-of-life poster and an oversized card from the major arcana on display, say the Hermit or the Sun, the group being instructed on the various meanings and aspects of the card as it relates to numerology, Kabbala and other western occult traditions. I found the tarot deck fascinating on all sorts of levels, not the least being the archetypical aspects, the idea that imagery of the decks used drew on something deeper than "Wil
l I Get a Date This Weekend? and was heading towards Jung's notions concerning the collective unconscious.
The Crowley "Thoth" deck, designed by Crowley and painted by Lady Fried Harris has an altogether more vivid visual vocabulary compared to the familiar Rider-Waite deck---Instead of "Temperance" we get "Art", instead of "Strength" we get "Lust". Each of the minor arcana cards has a descriptive label: the nine of wands is now "Strength", the nine of swords now is "Cruelty". The imagery is so much more vivid and arresting than the Rider-Waite imagery:

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/thoth/

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/riderwaite/index.html

The "Book of Thoth" seems to have been written by several authors, all of them Aleister Crowley in various (generally altered) states of consciousness. But there is gold to be found in "Book of Thoth", scattered with the bad poetry and remarkably obscure references to various mystical paths. 

One of many things I find most interesting and relevant about Crowley viz Pynchon is the copyright inscription:

Copyright 1944 Ordo Templi Orientis
O. T. O. International Headquarters
Postfach 332012, D-1418
Berlin, Germany
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: The Great Quail <quail at libyrinth.com>
 I'm not going to say that Crowley was an awesome dude -- he was a manipulative egomaniac who destroyed a few lives and always had one foot in the world of the carnival barker. But he also wrote some pretty interesting things, and his life and work are worth studying.