Crowley

[rich]

i saw an exhibition of Dali's paintings of the Tarot Deck at the schloss
overlooing Heidelberg a few yrs ago--I stumbled upon it when I went to see
another exhibition on the history of the German pharmaceutical industry.
a nice unasked for gift way back when

rich


On 8/11/06, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> 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 th!
> an "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.
>
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