V-2nd - Chapter 8 - Section IV - Stencil's soliloquy

[Robin Landseadel]

I believe the Angel is supposed to represent the Archangel Michael,  
least that's what I've read and others told me. Michael's supposed to  
be:

	. . .an archangel in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition. He is  
viewed
	as the field commander of the Army of God. He is mentioned by name
	in the Book of Daniel, the Book of Jude, and the Book of
	Revelation, in which he leads God's armies against Satan's forces
	during his uprising. In the book of Daniel, Michael appears as "one of
	the chief princes" who in Daniel's vision comes to Gabriel's aid in his
	contest with the angel of Persia (Dobiel). Michael is also described
	there as the advocate of the Children of Israel and as a "great prince
	who stands up for the children of your [Daniel's] people".

	In Hebrew, the name Michael means "who is like God"(mi-who, ke-as or
	like, El-deity), which in Talmudic tradition is interpreted as a  
rhetorical
	question: "Who is like God?" (which expects an answer in the negative)
	to imply that no one is like God. In this way, Michael is seen as a
	symbol of humility before God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_(archangel)

Make of that what you will, I don't know much about Michael, know  
plenty about Robin. But the Angel ain't in charge of these forces that  
surround. This fluidly gendered upwardly mirrored expression of the  
higher self is more like a conduit or passageway for those forces, an  
entity with the Art to fuse seemingly opposed forces. It's your better  
Angel. It's the Temperance of tempering steel with fire and water, it  
is the place where opposites have to meet anyway, might as well make  
the most of it. Temperance hangs out around the center of the Tree of  
Life . . .

http://www.songspell.net/tarot.html

. . . and is the best single observation post in the deck, the P.O.V.  
of the Artist's eye, which is one of many good reasons Aleister  
Crowley -- Mr. T.W.I.T. hisself—renames the card "Art" in his Thoth  
Tarot.


On Oct 11, 2010, at 7:15 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

>> like you said, another week or even a couple of weeks on just the
>> implications of that question might allow proper consideration.

I suppose one of the things that always turned me off about "V." were  
these negative images of the strange female, a negative cast to witchy- 
ness that later gets blown away by Geli Tripping and pretty much stays  
away for good after that.


> fortunately, Robin's nature spiritualism and his bringing up the
> Temperance card at this juncture indicate that he is more than aware
> of the issue.
>
> http://sourceryforge.org/index.php/Paul_Case
> very brief article; apparently Mr Case, before founding Builders of
> the Adytum, was a member of the New York chapter of the Golden Dawn;
> of the existence of which chapter aware this for the first time has
> made me...
>
> the Twits spreading their wings in NYC...building apartment buildings
> with girders having solid cores of selenium...
> "They just don't build them like they used to..."
> "You never studied, Peter!  They never made buildings like this!"
>
> is V. the Gatekeeper?  is Stencil the Keymaster?
>
> but, the Temperance card: http://tinyurl.com/27ufe9s
>
> is that right?  This would represent a woman with control over some of
> the most important primal forces of Nature...
>
>
> -- 
> - But you can wade in the water
> and never get wet
> if you keep on doin' that rag (Grateful Dead, "Doin' That Rag")

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