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To: thelema93-l@bitsy.hollyfeld.org
From: tyagi@HOUSEOFKAOS.ABYSS.COM (xiwang mu)
Subject: Re: Tzaddi is not the Star
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 10:48:55 -0800 (PST)

kaliyuga
49960217

E6

|From: PStuart@AOL.COM

|>>'Cause Aiwass told 'im to.
|>
|>Really? I've never seen this conversation in print, please elaborate.

It wasn't a conversation, really.


|Liber AL I:57... Nuit speaking thru Aiwass...

Whom was Nuit addressing?  'Her prophet'?  Was this Ankh-n-f-khonsu?
Crowley?  Aiwass?  


|From: BillS@VAV-NUN.COM (Fr. Also)

[mark]
|>In the Thoth deck, why is the Emperor still Atu IV and the Star Atu
|>XVII, why not change them around? (Ie Star Atu IV and Emperor Atu XVII?)
|>Obviously this would make the daleth-he-vau and pe-tzaddi-qoph bits of the
|>tree neater

The blind of the Emperor/Star switch catches many a tarot-reader, and while
there are surely 'elegant' motives and explanations for their displacement,
I have never found one which persuaded me of their value.  Mostly on the
strength of one paradigm/association-schema do I reject it as extreme and
only indicative of Crowleyania, the one to which Crowley himself points:

	Emperor => Ares
	Star    => Aquarius

		(someone do the honors of filling in the blanks if you
		 are really interested in my argument here; perhaps I
		 am mistaken and it is substanceless or I have misunder-
		 stood some deep concept -- wouldn't be the first time)


|I do not buy any of his arguements and have He' and the Emperor at 
|Chokmah/Tiphareth. 

What *were* these arguments?  I've seen some of the Evil Book quotes
in other posts, but I don't claim to understand any type of rational
argument in them, nor have I read of Crowley where he offers something
logical for its justification.  In _The Book of Thoth_ he writes:

	It appears natural to a mathematician to begin the
	series of natural numbers with Zero; but it is very
	disturbing to the non-mathematically trained mind.
	In the traditional essays and books on the Tarot,
	the card numbered "0" was supposed to lie between the
	cards XX and XXI.  The secret of the initiated
	interpretation, which makes the whole meaning of
	the Trumps liminous, is simply to put this card
	marked "0" in its natural place, where any mathematician
	*would* have put it, in front of the number One.  But
	there is still one peculiarity, one disturbance in the
	natural sequence.  This is that the cards VIII and XI
	have to be counterchanged, in order to preserve the
	attribution.  For the card XI is called "Strength"; 
	on it appears a Lion, and it quite evidently refers
	to the zodiacal sign Leo, whereas the card VIII is
	called "Justice", and represents the conventional
	symbolic figure, throned, with sword and balances,
	thus obviously referrinng to the zodiiacal sign of Libra,
	the Balance.

	_The Book of Thoth_, Aleister Crowley, Samuel Weiser, 1981, p. 9
	________________________________________________________________
 
To me all of the foregoing makes sense and overshadows the rest of his
cogitation, resorting to 'Secret Attributions' and an exhaltation
of the Evil Book, before the very resource of logic which Crowley
erstwhile lauds in the bulk of his work (esp. in _Moonchild_ if
memory serves) with a swathe of propaganda.

Why does doing what is common sense to the mathematician (placing
0 at the start) make "the whole meaning of the Tarot luminous",
while doing the same wrt the Star Trump requires some sort of
'Secret Attribution'?  What was the original justification of
placing the Juggler/Fool in the position between XX and XXI 
(or any of the other spots aside from before I)?

What ever happened to 'the method of Science, the aim of Religion'?
I don't see the science of this Evil Book, nor the Beast's
adherence to a possible misunderstanding which has several
strains of persuasive argument against its validity.  Listen
to him yourself (as I always advise):

	Frater Perdurabo [that is, the person of Crowley and
	his initiated consciousness or esoteric fragment known
	to himself and others as 'Perdurabo']...  became entitled 
	to know the Secret Attribution.  He constantly studied 
	this and the accompanying explanatory manuscripts.  He 
	checked up on all these attributes of the numbers to 
	the forms of nature, and found nothing incongruous.  But 
	when... he was writing down [the Evil Book] from the 
	dictation of the messenger of the Secret Chiefs, he seems 
	to have put a mental question, suggested by the words in 
	Chapter I, verse 57:
		"the law of the Fortress, and the great 
		 mystery of the House of God" 
	("The House of God" is one name of the Tarot Trump numbered 
	XVI) to this effect: "Have I got these attributions right?"  
	For there came an interpolated answer, 
		"All these old letters of my book are 
		 aright; but [tzaddi] is not the Star.  
		 This is also secret; my prophet shall 
		 reveal it to the wise".

	... It was many years later that the solution [to the
	problem of tzaddi's placement and with which to switch]
	came to him.  Tzaddi is "The Emperor"; and therefore
	the positions of XVII and IV must be counterchanged.
	This attribution is very satisfactory....

	For "The Star" is referred to Aquarius in the Zodiac,
	and "The Emperor" to Ares.  Now ARies and Aquarius are
	on each side of Pisces, just as Leo and Libra are on each
	side of Virgo; that is to say, the correction of [the
	Evil Book] gives a perfect symmetry in the zodiacal
	attribution, just as if a loop were formed at one end
	of the ellipse to correspond exactly with the existing
	loop at the other end.

	Ibid, pp 9-10. [my comments/translations/etc. - mu]
	___________________________________________________

Why does Crowley claim here that 'Tzaddi is "The Emperor"'?  His
mention of the double-loop seems rather disappointing after his
approbation of common sense and 'what comes natural' wrt the 0
and VIII and XI Trumps.

		
|I believe he was eager to find a new trump for tzaddi and came up 
|with that as a best guess. 

That's it?  Above he at least goes into a nonpersuasive argument
wrt the double-loop (illustrated somewhat sloppily in my copy of
_The Book of Thoth_ between pages 9 and 10, btw).


|He' as the Star is a reflection of his Tet fixation imo :>

Please elaborate on this.  What is a 'Tet-fixation'?  Priapism? :>
Why does this explain his tzaddi-attribution?


|From: Brendan Everett 

|        I was wondering if some could point me towards the tarot attribution
|to the 15 path of He on the Tree of Life. From my research I have noted a
|few inconsistencies between The Star or the Emperor being related to it.
|Kraig in _Modern Magick_, Regardie in _The Golden Dawn_, and Crowley in
|_777_ , say that its is the Emperor, 

Interesting, if true, that AC was not confident enough in the tzaddi/Emperor
pair that he wouldn't have restructured 777 tables to that standard.  Perhaps
he arrived at the attribution-conclusion posterior to the construction of
that work (and thus only changed it in later works like ABBA).

I say throw out all the people, set up the attributions of the tarot 
in a table (here, in this elist) and think for yourself logically about it.
See what conforms to 'elegance' and to 'logic' for you.  Perhaps we'll all
learn something.


|yet Crowley... in the Big Weiser edition of _Magick-Book 4_, from an 
|"updated" table of the ones in 777 says it is the Star ....

He may have had an egotistical motive.  Then again, there is this
tradition within the Tarot of not publishing 'perfect instruments of
magical power', such that mages would be sure to twist a thing or two
out of proportion in order to make effectless the magic of those who
did not understand the majesty and beauty of the completed system.
It is what I mean when I say 'intentional blind'.


|From: Mark Nuttall 

|>>In the Thoth deck, why is the Emperor still Atu IV and the Star Atu XVII ?

[quotes from the Evil Book stricken, you centres of pestilence]

|>A better question is why did he switch them. 

Hard to know the motivations of the Beast.  It could have been his
obsession (at first rejectionist and then defensiveness) of the
Book of Evil Sayings, plus a desire to have 'uncovered a deep mystery'.
It could have been an intentional hurdle for people who have trouble
thinking logically and for themselves.  It could have been a jab in
the direction of the orthodox tarotsters.

I suggest that his real reasons for the switch and for justifying them 
in his double-loop theory is inserted into the text quoted above and 
has irrational overtones:

	[the tzaddi-Emperor association and Star/Emperor switch]
	...is, to clear thought, the most convincing evidence
	possible that the [Evil Book] is a genuine message from
	the Secret Chiefs.
 
	Ibid, p. 10.
	____________

I suggest that Crowley may have been skilled at the art of persuasion
and charlatanry.  He was trying to bolster his personal paradigm of
being the Prophet of the Aeon, which uses the Evil Book as a foundation
for its spiritual Current, as well as his presumed connection to the
entities he refers to as 'Secret Chiefs' (in some of his writings he
evidences obvious confusion about what exact connection might be 
between Aiwaz and these Chiefs, or indeed them and himself.  

None of these metaphysical speculations do I consider 'resolved' in 
the sense that there are known truths about them.  To withhold doubt 
and an attitude of skeptical inquiry just based on AC's image/reputation 
would seem at odds even with the Beast's writings (esp. in _The Book 
of Lies..._) concerning doubt and its value.

Tying the Star-Emperor in as a support for this egotistical cosmology
(beautiful though it may be) requires that we have either some motive
to accept the Evil Book as a cosmological rather than merely personal
revelation (which apparently at the writing of this text Crowley did) 
or that we are persuaded that the switch is in some sense 'rational', 
'natural', and above all 'necessary', especially given what he wrote 
about other such counterchanges.


|...I personally want to fully understand why A.C. did things as he did 
|before I go making changes.

How can you ever be sure you've 'fully understood' so as to go on to
make your changes?  I'm unsure that relying on any individual other
than oneself is beneficial to one's association-schema and encourage
all to start from the presumption that a mage is in bulk a fraud and
confidence huckster (even the ACman) before taking what they say at
face value.  Even hucksters can be profound writers.  

Do what the Beast and Buddha says and figure it out for yourself.  In 
some measure promoting ridiculous associations will encourage both 
fanaticism (following blindly the symbolic net of the Master) and 
sectarianism (as the illuminated reject the popular schema in favor 
of greater logic and elegance).  

First I would wish to look at the tarot and see what made sense to
me.  If I had no opinion, I would review a host of possible
attributary associations and the justifications given for how they
appear to vary from traditional tools or merely attempt to derive
one on my own.  From there I would utilize what resonated most with 
my own mind, which produced a sufficient quantity of satisfaction 
(in the quoted text this was one of AC's more emphasized criteria: 
satisfactive power, and I tend to think that this is also the best 
means of assessing 'effective ritual' in a scientific way).

Free love, right now!

xiwang mu
tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com