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moderndayruth

~ Tarot inspired essays and more

moderndayruth

Category Archives: Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition

Queen of Wands as a Second Wave Feminist

26 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by moderndayruth in I Ching, Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition, Tarot

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

daily prompt

   Blame it  on the  Daily Prompt and mine being at writers residence: normally i write one post per week, but there you go – after days of being crazy busy with the book fair, i peeked at WordPress, checked the daily prompt by the way… and got stumped as i honestly could not remember which was the book to which i always go back (except the Bible that is, but -sic – there are enough preachers as it is.) And then it dawned on me, my last ‘Second Time Around’ (and third and forth) was Helen Gurley Brown’s “Sex and the Single Girl”, some ten years ago.

I was in the hospital back then (nothing too bad) and i remember a chatty nurse laughingly telling me how all the stuff was amazed by my choice of books – see, the book was at the nightstand, beside my hospital bed – and that couple of them, including the surgeon who operated on me, came in person to the room to make sure she wasn’t making it up, that the patient (aka me) indeed read the book of such a provocative title… I was too sick of anesthesia to say anything remotely sensible, yet i was in state of shock – by that time, everywhere else except in 3d world countries ruled by extremists, the book had become a subject of ridicule for its outdated views and presumably sexist advice.

Lo and behold, i am from Europe, from a country that’s candidate-member of European Union, which at the same time happens to be most conservative and traditional one.

I wrote about Brown and “Helenism” before in Single Girl, the Skinny God and the Plague of Labeling, what dawned on me as i was rethinking it all today was that HGB and the Cosmo Girl, as she envisioned her, are the perfect prototype of Tarot’s Queen of Wands.

Check her out:

Queen of Wands from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck

Queen of Wands from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

She’s hot, she’s pretty, like the flower she’s holding she’s sunny and radiant, open and positive, she looks to the right – which is the direction of the future in Tarot. And as if a beautiful, confident, and positive woman wasn’t dangerous enough as it is – on the top of it she’s accompanied by a mysterious black cat who stares at the reader  making obvious Queen’s power to charm and enchant… Oy, the threat that she is to the patriarchy! Of course that “popularly” (idiotically) when this card comes out in a Tarot spread, she’s read as “slutty”, as the proverbial “other woman”, the easy one and  whatnot.

Earlier today i read  an excellent essay on movies, morals and reading cards and while i don’t agree on all points with the friend of mine who wrote it (see, we didn’t dump our own fundies anywhere, we’ve kept them all to ourselves – said tongue in cheek), she does have a point: “There’s lot of moralizing by otherwise good people in online card reading groups. It’s AUTOMATICALLY assumed that the married guy somebody’s asking about IS JUST USING HER FOR SEX AND DOES NOT CARE, that the Snake is the OTHER WOMAN, that naturally poly people are ASSHOLES, and the world is full of DIRTY BIRDIES WHO MUST BE STOPPED. Sounds like a code movie to me. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a nice person – that stuff is for harpies who snoop in their mens’ cell phones, not you! Don’t fall in with that kind of thinking. The world is more complex than that. The CARDS are more complex than that – read them and see what they say, don’t twist them to what the current, dry Bible-thumper culture would have you say.”

Remember Marge Piercy’s, one of the most prominent 2nd wave feminists’, poem For Strong Women?

A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren’t you feminine, why aren’t
you soft, why aren’t you quiet, why aren’t you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts.

So does mine when i imagine a prudish Tarotist reading for Marge back in the day when she lived in an open marriage with her second husband and Ira Wood, her 3d hubby to be. I believe your fundie-reader would rather choke himself to death than read for her!

And i don’t even dare imagining what morals would be preached to Biblical King David upon his spotting  (oy the shame) Batsheba carelessly having a bath and sending her first husband, Uriah, to the battle and imminent death… Righteous Tarotist would dignifiedly wave their code of ethics and would firmly refuse to read on a third party… The king would be advised to hold back and by all means refrain from seducing the future queen… the tiny problem there being that this would have diverted the history of humanity as the Messiah comes from that very line and that King David did complete his spiritual correction before his soul departed: “When King David was very old, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him.” (Kings 1:1) The truth is that he wasn’t that old – he  started ruling at thirty and ruled for forty years, which at the time of his passing makes him merely 70 – not to forget that Abraham fathered a son in his late 90ies ( “Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him”, Gnesis 21:5) and that Moses became the leader of his people in his 80ies; expected biblical lifespan was 120 years.

Let us read further: So his attendants said to him, “Let us look for a young virgin to serve the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm.” (Kings 1:2) Rings any bells? Right, it was King’s chance to practice restriction and to make his tikkun hanefesh before departing.

Not to mention King David’s “gold-digging” great grandmother after whom i was named, Ruth the Moabite, who at night sneaked into bed of her older and wealthy husband to be… Oy gevalt! Isn’t she an epitome of the Queen of Wands?!

Gotcha!

In the Book of Thoth, Crowley expands on the Court: “The characteristics of the Queen are adaptability, persistent energy, calm authority which she knows how to use to enhance her attractiveness. She is kindly and generous, but impatient of opposition. She has immense capacity for friendship and for love, but always on her own initiative.”

Further, as she represent the watery part of Fire she’s attributed to I Ching’s 17th hexagram, Following, of which Hilary Barrett, my favorite contemporary Yi Xie scholar says: “This hexagram begins in the same way as the whole Yijing begins: with ‘the source, success, harvest, constancy’, yuan heng li zhen. Together, these four words show the presence of Creative Force, driving through to completion. There’s a sense of inevitability; ‘it follows’; everything will fall into place.”

The combo of Kabbalah, Western Hermeticism and Chinese Philosophy can and most often does blow the mind of the Tarot newbie, but no one said it was easy; what we claimed was that it’s possible to grasp this occult discipline and – with a lot of practice – become somewhat good in it.

Brown was eighty-seven when a biography, “Bad Girls Go Everywhere”  by Jennifer Scanlon, professor of gender and women’s studies at Bowdoin College was published. In words of Judith Thurman, “despite the title (“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere” is one of Brown’s favorite mottoes), this is a serious academic reconsideration of a figure who, Scanlon argues, has been slighted by feminist history, and deserves a place in its pantheon, particularly because she was speaking to and for the typists, the flight attendants, and the sales clerks who couldn’t afford to burn a good bra, rather than the college-educated sisterhood that was “womanning” the barricades of the nineteen-seventies… In everything that Brown has written or edited, she has promoted the message that sex is great, and that one should get as much of it as possible. (Ditto for money.) Just about everyone knows this, and has always known it, but in Brown’s youth few women would admit it, even to themselves.”

Some (many?) still have issues with women enjoying sex and financial independence and therein lies the root of the problem with contemporary  (mis)interpretation of the Queen of Wands, who’s almost as commonly despised by the pseudo readers as The Queen of Swords is feared.

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going listy: my top 10 oracles, besides Tarot

15 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by moderndayruth in Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Brian Froud, daily prompt, DPchallenge, Fortune Telling, Germany, Hay House, I Ching, Kabbalah, Piatnik & Söhne, Tarot

Daily Prompt: The Satisfaction of a List

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Here they are, in all their glory:

1. First among equals: The Kabbalah Deck, Pathway to the Soul by rabbi Edward Hoffman – probably the only “kosher” Kabbalah deck around (besides KC’s 72 Names of God cards which are not exactly a deck, but a prayer in a form of cards.)

2. Beautifully illustrated and dead-on accurate Symbolon Oracle which comes with the creepiest little white book in existence!

3. I Ching by Klaus Holitzka, the Book of Changes illustrated in traditional Chinese watercolor paintings;

4. Law of Attraction Cards published by Hay House with great affirmations and even greater illustrations;

5. Moonstone oracle by my beautiful and talented friend from Germany – Morwenna Morasch;

6. Hard-to-find Lenormand, Baralho de Cartas Ciganas, a gift from Brazilian friend;

7. Piatnik’s Gypsies, Zigeuner Wahrsagekarten, the deck i inherited from my grandmother;

8. The Faeries Oracle by by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth:

capture of an actual reading i did for a friend

capture of an actual reading i did for a friend

9. Mindblowing Druid Animal Oracle:

Druid Animal Oracle by Philip & Stephanie Carr-Gomm

Druid Animal Oracle by Philip & Stephanie Carr-Gomm

10. And the latest addition to my All-Darlings Collection: an amazing Fortune Telling deck – Ryder’s Lenormand by genius eight years old artist – Ryder George who is visionary and a seer son of worldwide known spiritual counselor and a friend of mine – Rana George.

I am a third generation reader in our family – i’ve written on what is it like in The Fortune Teller – so i know what blessing it is… It’s not that we are passed some family secrets, unavailable to others – all hereditary readers i know of pass their knowledge to others happily, it’s that from an early age we are blessed to be free from fear.

In Ryder George’s case – this unlimited vision comes together with an amazing artistic talent.

Blessed Be

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The Four Queens of Tarot and Gender Stereotyping

29 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by moderndayruth in Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition, Tarot

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

Aleister Crowley, Crowley, Pamela Colman Smith, Queen, Queen of Cups, Queen of Wands, Swords Queen, Tarot

The Queen of Swords has been stalking me  lately. I must confess that i still get goose bumps when her Royal Highness chooses to come out in a reading. In Raider Waite she’s usually the bitchy one, embittered one, “traditionally” – a widow… What not. Definitely, not an energy one would strive for, right?

How exactly Pamela Colman Smith‘s deck got a life of its own and how the common meanings attributed to the cards developed  – that’s a story unto itself.

In occult circles you’ll often hear the tale of presumed animosity between Aleister Crowley and Arthur Edward Waite, but was it really the case or theirs was merely a good marketing? When Waite referred to Crowley  – it was in terms of his rebellion, his letting out the best kept magickal secrets just like that, passing it to the undeserving who haven’t spent years in painstaking training, meanwhile Crowley, who did call Waite a “bore” , still painted the latter as an reputable scholar and the guard of old (and powerful) magical traditions… Yet none of them ever pulled hard artillery so to say, or anything else that would actually kill other’s career. Rob writes in detail on this presumed enmity.

Myself i am not all that interested in the history of the Golden Dawn and i think several points in Rob’s text are disputable, but anyway it is, we did end up with two distinct traditions in Tarot, that of RWS and Thoth, Waite’s and Crowley’s decks respectively.

While Thoth has kept its tradition more or less intact, RWS, the most popular and widespread Tarot deck, seems to have adopted “traditional” meanings on the go.

Thus, Crowley writes in The Book of Thoth: “The Queen of Swords represents the watery part of Air, the elasticity of that element, and its power of transmission. She rules from the 21St degree of Virgo to the 20th degree of Libra… She is the clear, conscious perception of Idea, the Liberator of the Mind. The person symbolized by this card should be intensely perceptive, a keen observer, a subtle interpreter, an intense individualist, swift and accurate at recording ideas; in action confident, in spirit gracious and just.”

The Swords Queen is further related to the Hexagram 28, Dà Guò – Across the Great Pass, in the Book of Changes

Capture

where first character  represents a big man and the second stands for a pass in a mountain, also meaning the completion of an action:

28. Da Guo

(Adopted from artsofchina.org )

So how come this Liberator of the Mind and the symbol of the Great Passing, has come to denote a dreaded bitch?! You’ll find online “traditional meanings” like these: A widow. An unscrupulous woman. 

How on earth this came to be?!

Here she is, in all her glory:

Queen of Swords from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck

Queen of Swords from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The problem with contemporary cartomancy is that some new-agey, happy-go-lucky attitude is applied to an ancient and scholarly subject, newbies are told that cards mean “whatever you want them to mean” and here projections start begetting  distortions.

The truth is that the Queens  stand for the letter Hei in the Tetragramaton and, as Crowley puts it “they represent the second stage in the process of creation whose fourth and last state is material realization.”

Lo and behold, search any Tarot forum for “what does Queen of **** mean” and you’ll get sick in your stomach: The Queen of Wands is dubbed the slutty one, The Queen of Pentacles is, like, a housewife at best and a kept woman at worst, while the Queen of Cups would go for the resident psycho or the other women… Sure.

Actually, such “meanings” speak of the society’s perception of women, so the Queen of Earth (Pentacles) , attributed to I Ching’s – Hexagram 31, Wooing and denoting influence, success and cordiality of a sage – in “Tarot folklore” gets to be either a gold digger, or a housewife! Goodness!

Alas, Tarot was read long before the Golden Dawn, so lets take a look at the granma of the modern-day-Swords Queen:

Royne D'Espees, Veritable Tarot de Marseilles

Royne D’Espees, Veritable Tarot de Marseilles

Here, the Queen is depicted as pregnant, her right hand  (symbolizing reason) holding  the sword is bigger then the left, she seems to be winged and ferociously protecting the fruit of her womb.

When dabbling with Tarot, the way to go is to read the cards – and that’s exactly what i did; i choose the Swords Queen as Significator and pulled five cards:

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The Queen has turned her back to the delusion of Seven Cups and to impasse of Eight Swords, she is facing the balancing of the Justice and the Ten of Pentacles.

Let’s take a closer look at the last card in the spread:

Pay attention at the pattern in which coins are arranged. Seems familiar? Right, the Ten Sphirot of the Tree of Life:

There is that legend, that wise men of the times long gone had decided to put wisdom on the cards so to preserve it for the future, they knew the human nature and bet on the chance that vice will grow on us… It turned out that they were right. As the time went by, Tarot had followed its mysterious ways and ended up in medieval Italy. Some believe that a young nobleman from the House of Sforza, as he was gambling under the influence of intoxicating local wine, started noticing that the cards he was playing were trying to tell him a story… He listened. From there on it started rolling and it never stopped.

That’s the story i came up with, and Tarot does encourage each and everyone of us to tell their own story, there are only two elements of the genre that can not be omitted: wisdom and nobility of the intent.

Now go and write.

 

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Kitteh Goddess &The Overlooked Power of Napping

14 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition, Photography

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bible, Elizabeth Gilbert, Hebrew, Hebrew alphabet, Judaism, Kabbalah, Tarot Six of Pentacles, Yesod, Zohar

There was that meme recently: internet is like ancient Egypt – there is plenty of writing on the walls and cat admiring involved! Right, Moses lead us out of Egypt and (said tongue in cheek) we are now going back there to the metaphorical land of bondage – by our own choice…

That being said, yesterday, in Jewish tradition, was the first Day of Rest in the new year and the part of the Bible that was read was Beresheet/ In the Beginning.

Of course, there all got lost in translation, as usually, and Beresheet does not mean In the beginning but (from the root rosh ) – at the head of things.

For further mind-blowing insights into the mystical etymology of the Bible and its connection to Quantum Physics  i strongly advice reading the unabridged translation of Zohar into English – this section is covered on some 600 pages in the first two books and is well worth it.

As a side note, for my Tarot buddies  – i believe reading that portion is the only way to really get Tarot Sixes which are related to the Sfirat Yesod.

“This is an immense reservoir that resides just above our physical dimension. All the upper worlds , or Sfirot, fill Yesod with their unique spiritual forces, where they are blended and prepared for transfer; Like a cosmic pipeline Yesod then funnels all this Light into our world which is called Malchut. We can arouse great Lights in the Upper Worlds through our actions, but unless the floodgates of Yesod are opened, the Light can never reach our realm.” (The Zohar, Unabridged English translation with commentary, KC International Inc.; Baresheet A, page 193.)

In my experience – there are two main ways to get your Yesod disbalanced – by not sharing with others, or – the other way around – by giving way too much of oneself; both lead to the depletion which Pixie depicted on the Six of Pentacles:

I don’t know of some other way of fixing the Yesod and opening this pipeline from the Upper Worlds – except for working with the very Book.

It’s not by chance either that Hebrew letter Bet starts the Bible – but to understand the magnificence of the Biblical code, and just before one dismisses its first level of interpretation as a bunch of (among else) Babylonian myths – it is indeed necessary to spend couple of days studying dozens of pages on which its commentary, the Zohar, expands merely on the opening letter…

Here it suffices to mention that letter Bet starts Hebrew words for  bracha/blessing and bayit/house and that meditating on it helps experience the true homecoming whenever we feel unsettled and uprooted in any way.

Kabbalah Deck by rabbi Edward Hoffman, Letter Bet; photo – courtesy of Vuk Vukovic

I actually re-read the whole thing yesterday – in addition to reading the Biblical portion first in Hebrew, then in English and Serbian translations; i also listened to Shaul Youdkevitch’s audio classes on Live Kabbalah for couple of hours and read Kabbalistic prayers… Actually, that’s all i was doing for 25h or so – interrupted only by occasional napping.

Those of you who suffer from insomnia do know how awful it is – and i contributed to my own because all the stuff i am busy with usually requires sleep denial; the Zohar is preferably studied at night and that’s how i spent years after i first got into Kabbalah over a decade ago; also – for my work, for writing, there is no better time than the silence of the night… Combined with hours of pc work which further messes with one’s sleep – i ended up with sleeping patterns which are least to be said – unusual; normally,  i get some rest in the early evening , like from 6 pm to 8 pm and i nap for couple of hours at dawn, that’s about it.

I gave up on counting the sheep and melatonin as it turned out that the only way for me to be functional is to nap whenever i feel like, in addition to meditating a lot.

I didn’t give it too much thought until stumbling upon an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert where she cites napping as her preferable spiritual tool – that’s after months spent in an Indian ashram, studying palmistry in Bali & all that jazz.

If you are surprised by my choice of reading, in  Bugger off, Nietzsche i explain why i’ll choose a memoir  like “Eat, Prey, Love” over what’s traditionally considered highbrow prose – any day. Thanks, but – no thanks, i have too much neurosis and moral dilemmas of my own, so to dwell on someone else’s, especially if the author of the presumably ‘serious’ piece was an as*le and clinically insane too, like Nietzsche was.

And when it comes to napping – like with numerous other important things in life, there are hardly more important role models than one’s own cat;  in words of another author whom i do like, Echkart Tolle: I lived with many spiritual teachers, most of them were cats…

 

L.R.S.

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Kabbalist’s Survival Kit for the Month of Virgo

03 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Baal Shem Tov, Elul, Gregorian calendar, Hebrew alphabet, Judaism, Kabbalah, Rosh Hashana, Rosh Hashanah

Solemn month of Elul is all about introspection, going through the last year’s events and getting ready for the new year ahead. There are as much as four New Years in Hebrew/Kabbalistic tradition and added the Western Calendar – all of it could just seem bit over the top… It is not so, there is enough room and it is indeed meaningful to be aware and prepare for all of them.

Personally, to me Civil NY by Western calendar is more like a mark of my work, what i do and where i am with my career, where as by Hebrew/Kabbalistic calendar i measure my inner, psychological time.

Rosh Hashana, accurately or not translated as a Jewish New Year, is a chance for all of us – regardless of the religious denomination, Jewish or not – to reset the movies of our lives, to write the new script if needed – and even to hire a new cast if the production so far wasn’t going as planned.

Do not forget that it is us who are the directors – the Light (kabbalist’s euphemism for Creator)  through outer circumstances provides us the movie studio so to say and the cast – but, at the end of things, it is us who direct the movies of our lives, so let’s get ready to make the next year’s movie – an Academy Award material!

The days of Elul are also known as the days of Teshuva or repentance, which etymologically comes from LaShuv לשוב – to return, meaning the return to our own selves and our own inner truth. There is nothing to lose on the way – except for suffering and pain which we hope to leave behind as we approach the new beginning.

It is said that at Rosh Hashanah planets align as they were in the moment of creation and that thus we are given the chance to start anew, from the scratch – it is here that we reboot our system and restart our lives.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov was pointing out that Hebrew word for correction –  tikkun תיקון – has the same letters as  tinok תינוק – a baby; and that very state of innocence and purity is the one we are striving for on our journey through the Month of Elul… and that’s the purpose of creation itself, according to the Kabbalists.

As you probably know by now, in Kabbalah the 22 Hebrew letters are considered to be energies (angels) that created this world and letters.

Reish is linked to higher states of consciousness and it starts the word for Holy Spirit, ruach ha-kadosh; it also starts the word ruach, denoting wind and breath.

Rabbi Moses Luzzato pointed out that albeit it is ordained that one should naturally be able to teach himself, understand and reason with their intellect – there is another mean of gaining knowledge and that’s what we call ruach ha-kadosh – the way of gaining knowledge unattainable through logic alone.

Focusing on letter Reish and also setting aside some time every day to practice breath awareness will bring tremendous benefits during month of Elul and enable us to connect to these higher state states of consciousness where both prophetic abilities and spiritual bliss reside.

To study and practice kosher Kabbalah might seem demanding because it is a way of living, a way of eating, and – before all – it’s the very awareness, the consciousness one imbues into every single word that comes out of their mouth and, last but not the least – into every single thing they put into their mouth; it comes naturally though, usually – gradually, and for many it is the only way, because you feel it is the right way for you, personally.

That being said – not all will feel that urge and it simply means they don’t need it at this level of development or in this period of time, but there are still amazing benefits and advantages we can get from the Month of Virgo – even if we apply only some of the spiritual tools available in this month and even if we can’t really be bothered with somewhat complicated dietary laws and all that jazz.

There are two out of 72 Names of God – the sequence by which it is believed Moses had parted the Red Sea – that are recommended for this period (scanned from right to left):

1. Vav Hei Vav, Time Travel 2.Yud Lamed Yud, Recapturing the Sparks

An alternative way to practice Teshuva, as thought in tradition of the famed Kabbalist Isaac the Blind, which doesn’t involve the letters per se – is when you go to bed, to recall and remember every single event of the preceding day and all the things you said while – if possible, imagining that you are in the place of the person to whom you spoke, that you are them. Most of us go through life – better to say – schlep, in the perpetual state of dormita, asleep, not being aware of the effect of our own words and deeds; Teshuva is the way to reverse that and to become awaken.

I can’t recommend strongly enough the book by Catherine Shainberg PhD – Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming; beside detailed instructions for the above mentioned practice of Teshuva, it also includes what’s probably the best available manual for lucid dreaming and many other techniques to reverse the unwanted events and developments in our lives.

It’s being said that the name of the month is the abbreviation of אני לדודי ודודי לי “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (Song of Songs 6:3), because it is during this very  month that we can connect to the love story between the soul and the Creator. In words of Shaul Youdkevitch: “Since we all get some of Virgo’s virtues during Elul, it is the time to review, cleanse and redecorate our thoughts and feelings. Let us use Virgo to return to ourselves and gain freedom from all emotions and thoughts that keep us away from perfection.”

further reading:

 

Elul/ Virgo, Live Kabbalah

Zohar Study Ki Tavo with Shaul Youdkevitch

The Kabbalah Deck

The Hidden Treasures of Dreaming; article by Catherine Shainberg, PhD

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Eight of Swords and The Great Escape of The Upside Down King

16 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Great Sphinx of Giza, Harry Houdini, Houdin, Houdini, Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, Listverse, Old Cairo, United States

Houdini, East Indian Needle trick,  threading 30 needles inside his stomach

What magic it would take for Erich ben Samuel, an Austria-Hungarian born Jew from a rabbinical lineage, to become  the most famous magician of all times and an all-American patriot?

That kind of magic only Harry Houdini could perform – and that’s exactly what he did.

Erich’s surname by birth was Weisz,  while Houdini was adopted after one of the most important magicians who ever lived – Robert Houdin,  regarded as the father of modern magic for it was he –  Frenchman born in 1805, who discovered magic by accident, did not start performing until the age of 40 and had a professional career  of only 11 years, who made the magic respectable.

Before Houdin, magic was performed only in circuses, alongside “freaks of nature” – the bias inherited from Middle Ages and bigotry of Scholasticism were still strong.

It was Houdin who first used his knowledge of science to develop illusions – and it was Houdin who at the same time skillfully mocked both his audience and the science itself by backing up his magic with pseudo-science; like when he performed the first levitation  – he made his son breeze ether and had persuaded the audience that smelling ether was making man lighter.

Anyway, his magic worked and his explanations were accepted, the stigma was removed and thus – the door through which Harry Houdini entered the history – ajared.

It’s been said that the greatest of all Hudini’s  escapes was the escape from back then backwater town of Appleton in  Wisconsin; but if seriously, it’s his escapes from straitjackets and milk cans that made him famous – it seemed that his mind was firmly ruling over matter, dissolving the physical hindrances and making the impossible – possible.

Yesterday, Listverse has published, in my opinion, one of its best lists so far – the top 10 fascinating facts about  Houdini.

I can’t recommend it strongly enough because the greatest showman ever was at the same time a remarkable philanthrop and patriot with a heart of purest gold.

Somewhere ‘at the crossroads of Science and Mystery, the heart and the mind, the “old days” and the modern age’ –   the Great Houdini will encounter Vaudeville itself. (1)

As the story goes, “in the spring of 1899, twenty-five-year-old Harry Houdini was ready to retire as an entertainer. For six years he had traveled ceaselessly, performing in small-time dime museums and medicine shows, sharing the stage with physical anomalies and other assorted freaks. For five of those years, his wife Bess had shared his meager lot, performing with him as he desperately sought an act that might lead to greater success and a life in high-class vaudeville. Acrobat, illusionist, hypnotist, and puppeteer – Houdini had tried all of these and more, and nothing had worked. Then he met Martin Beck, “(2)  owner of a chain of Vaudeville theaters and the rest is history.

Personally, i am ever fascinated by the genre – in theater and in literature – and i dedicated my third book and my first collection of poetry to it.

As a side note –  don’t get me wrong – i am not using this opportunity to promote my own work, rather to explain it further – the book THANKS GOODNESS wasn’t a commercial project in the first place; my third – “Devil, an unauthorized biography” published together with Francisco J. Campos’ amazing “Vaudeville Tarot” was financed by Montenegrin Ministry of Culture, after the expert committee had evaluated it as ‘a work of art, contributing to Montenegrin cultural heritage’.

During launches i often get asked “how did you get such cool people to contribute to the  book?” Namely – besides Francisco – the famous Spanish artist who created the deck; mystical British poet and avantgarde philosopher Stephen J. Mangan –  who is enviably popular in not-easy-to-impress international tribe of Tarot connoiscieurs – contributed selflessly to the book; so did Sanjin Sorel, leading Croatian linguist and poet; Tanja Bakic – poetess and world renown Blake scholar and  others.

So, i often get asked “how come”?! It’s “simple” – it’s magic , it’s the strange ways of Tarot  and Vaudeville itself.

Francisco J. Campos, Lena Ruth Stefanovic

(Scans of the deck and the review of the book by everyone’s favorite author and mystic Bonnie Cehovet are  here .)

“Mystery attracts Mystery”, as H.P. Lovecraft puts it. The genius writer’s work is in public domain and if you haven’t yet –  you can enjoy his short story on Hudini which the statement opens – “Under the Pyramids.”

Lovecraft sets the story in 1910, in Egypt, where Houdini is kidnapped by a tour guide – a lookalike of an ancient Pharaoh – and thrown into a deep pit near the Great Sphinx of Giza. While trying to escape, he stumbles upon a huge cavern where he meets the deity that inspired the building of the Sphinx.

Apropos, Houdini himself loved the story and worked with Lovecraft on several projects afterwards – until his death in 1926.

Had Lovecraft written only this short story and not a sentence more – i believe he would have rightfully earned all the admiration and popularity he enjoys nowadays (sadly – like with many geniuses from the past – it was not the case during his lifetime.)

I’ve been to Egypt and with my interest in the occult you can imagine what profound impact it had on me – yet i never wrote a single line about it; simply – it’s already being done – and in a way that hardly can be surpassed: ” Old Cairo is itself a story-book and a dream—labyrinths of narrow alleys redolent of aromatic secrets; Arabesque balconies and oriels nearly meeting above the cobbled streets; maelstroms of Oriental traffic with strange cries, cracking whips, rattling carts, jingling money, and braying donkeys; kaleidoscopes of polychrome robes, veils, turbans, and tarbushes; water-carriers and dervishes, dogs and cats, soothsayers and barbers; and over all the whining of blind beggars crouched in alcoves, and the sonorous chanting of muezzins from minarets limned delicately against a sky of deep, unchanging blue.
      The roofed, quieter bazaars were hardly less alluring. Spice, perfume, incense, beads, rugs, silks, and brass—old Mahmoud Suleiman squats cross-legged amidst his gummy bottles while chattering youths pulverise mustard in the hollowed-out capital of an ancient classic column—a Roman Corinthian, perhaps from neighbouring Heliopolis, where Augustus stationed one of his three Egyptian legions. Antiquity begins to mingle with exoticism. And then the mosques and the museum—we saw them all, and tried not to let our Arabian revel succumb to the darker charm of Pharaonic Egypt which the museum’s priceless treasures offered. That was to be our climax, and for the present we concentrated on the mediaeval Saracenic glories of the Caliphs whose magnificent tomb-mosques form a glittering faery necropolis on the edge of the Arabian Desert.”

If you read this two paragraphs by Lovecraft – you too have been to Cairo, you strolled along the cobbled alleys of its bazaars, you sipped on your coffee on Nile and listened to the city talk about yet another Saudi prince who fell head over heels in love with the famous belly dancer and spent his fortune in the process.

As charming as Cairo is – traditionally the task of the Kabbalist is to escape his/her own Egypt or  Mizraim as is is called in Hebrew; of course – as meitzar (מיצר), means “sea strait” and also  “boundaries, limits, restrictions” – we are not speaking here of an actual country, but of our own egos made of fears and doubts.

Have i mentioned that Lovecraft’s fiction inspired one of my favorite decks of all times, which is immensely helping me to cross over my personal abyss?

Here is the image of 8 of Swords from Dark Grimoire Tarot:

Dark Grimoire Tarot  Author: Giovanni Pelosini Artist: Michele Penco Lo Scarabeo 2008

In Bonnie Cehovet’s words: ” The basis of this deck is the concept of Grimoires – the ancient texts of magic, witchcraft and rituals that over time many people have looked on as being books of Black Magic…

Here the Tarot is presented as a possible book of magic – inspired by the dream worlds of fantasy literature, by grimoires (real and imaginary), by the nightmares that they may have generated and continue to generate in the depths of the subconscious. “

This is the traditional depiction of 8 of Swords, from Waite Smith deck: :

8oS, Raider Waite Smith Tarot Deck

The girl depicted in the card has wandered far away from her home – the castle in the background – surrounded by seemingly inescapable fence of her own self-limiting thoughts which swords symbolize,  hands bound, eyes blinded…

She needs a miracle to free herself – and that’s what all of us need to cross the abyss which Aleister Crowley considered to be the main purpose of the (occult) magician’s career; in his  Little Essays Toward Truth he says:

“This doctrine is extremely difficult to explain; but it corresponds more or less to the gap in thought between the Real, which is ideal, and the Unreal, which is actual. In the Abyss all things exist, indeed, at least in posse, but are without any possible meaning; for they lack the substratum of spiritual Reality. They are appearances without Law. They are thus Insane Delusions. Now the Abyss being thus the great storehouse of Phenomena, it is the source of all impressions.”

In terms of Jewish Kabbalah we are speaking of Da’at and B’tzelem Elohim – the “image of God embedded in humanity” – an omnipresent idea in the Jewish thought; Nahmanaides explained it in terms of human soul being immortal, Rashi said it stood for our quality of  discernment, while Martin Buber stated that God exists in the space between “I and Though” – in a direct interpersonal relation which is not mediated by any intervening system of ideas (or, as Kabbalists would put it – in the unconditional love for thy neighbour – neighbors of all ethnicities, nationalities, religions, of all sexual identities and of all social statutes included.)

In the Bible, Da’at is mentioned for the first time when we are told that Adam “knew” Eve and she conceived –  except being a brilliant metaphor – it’s at the same time quite precise depiction of how an idea (Chochma) develops fully (Binah) and becomes a concrete reality (Da’at).
Da’at is also used to describe  prophet’s connection to the Divine,  prophet been referred to as haskel vayodea Oti –  one who “perceives and knows Me.”

Another question i get asked often is whether Jews believe in this and that prophet  – we don’t believe in any other prophets, except the forty eight male, seven  female and one gentile prophet, who are recorded in the Bible.

When it comes to my personal believes –  i believe in the magic of art, i believe that Houdini,  who could thread 30 needles inside his stomach – did have abilities well out of the ordinary and, on my good days, i believe that every woman and every man,  tied in ropes and bounded by circumstances and by fears – is capable of Houdini – like spectacular   GREAT ESCAPE.

Upside Down King as Art Muse :

RX King

(1) Stars of Vaudeville:

Houdini

(2) Martin Beck, the American Experience:

 The American Eexperience

photo of the book ‘Devil, an unauthorized biography’: courtesy of Jim Maher ©2012, All Right Reserved

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Chinese Curses, Costa coffee and the Meaning of Life

12 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in I Ching, Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Ancient Greece, China, England, Facebook, Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Judaism, Kabbalah, May you live in interesting times

SOURCE: Bernstein, Jüdische Sprichwörter und Redensarten. This is a free translation. The Yiddish word for "snail" (שנעק, shnek) does not occur in the saying. A more literal translation: Understanding (or good sense) is a creeper.

 

On occasions i feel overwhelmed and i start doubting everything i know and even my own experience.

At times like that, Tarot doesn’t talk to me. I look at the beautiful patterns in which the vegetation grows on Tarot de Marseilles cards, i gaze at the smirky Empress and elegantly crossed swords – and as much as i appreciate cards’ poise and grace, i don’t have the slightest idea what they mean.

Sometimes it is the same with life itself, sometimes it’s good , sometimes it is not – and the direct or even indirect cause escapes me, regardless the analytic skills , logical thinking and even despite the intuition and all the oracles.

Before, at times like that i would wallow in existential sorrow  for days and even weeks, but as of recently i have learned some kind of proverbial acceptance.

In terms of I Ching, it’s in the twelfth hexagram – Stagnation/ Standstill – when  “heaven is above, drawing farther and farther away, while the earth below sinks farther into the depths.” 

This shall pass too, everything does – but when i get this  feeling that all i do is in vain –  like this morning – i get together with some dear(est) to me people  and head for a coffee at local Costa cafe and some shopping at the nearest mall; when all else fails, these two activities proved to have the desired healing effect on my existential anguish.

They say the most powerful Chinese curse is ‘May you live in interesting times’ (alternatively – in the times of changes), albeit i never heard it from Chinese; after all it seems the saying  originated with an Oxford educated British gentleman, Sir Knatchbull-Hugessen – Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to China in 1936- 1937.

In his memoir written a decade later this diplomat in career notes: Before I left England for China in 1936 a friend told me that there exists a Chinese curse — “May you live in interesting times”. If so, our generation has certainly witnessed that curse’s fulfillment  (Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War, 1949.)

Sometimes i think of my own life in terms of a prolonged Zazen meditation for as the time passes by  i merely witness the impermanence of various doctrines,  ideologies and systems; most of them turned out to be more fragile than my grandmother’s porcelain – you see, i still have my granma’s hand painted figurines and bowls, while i left behind three state unions, several ideologies and a concrete wall – that of Berlin…

The aim of Zazen – as well as of other Buddhist meditation practices – is to  detouch from the thought process and stemming from it judgement by letting it all pass by, by observing without involvement or reaction. It’s easier said than done – but the results can be awe-inducing as in some moment of (presumably non-existing) time we might get to peek at the reality as it is, without all the layers of preconceptions, social conditioning and emotional baggage we normally carry around… It happens seldom, but it is indeed worth years of sitting in oblivion (alternative translation of Zazen being: sitting and forgetting.)

I think all Westerners*, my little self included are suckers for proverbial meaning, yet sometimes it is painfully lacking – or at least it seems so.

 *I use the term loosely for everyone who’s been born into or living within geographical confines of the vast area where the civilizations called by umbrella term Judo-Christian has been predominant.

Be it the religious zest, characteristic of conservative circles, or the hard work by which at the time Protestantism had replaced the traditional fasting and praying – we all by default expect some kind of meaning to surface from somewhere – and to justify it all, the effort, the pain, the restrictions and sleepless nights.

On the other hand – those who ‘play against the rules’, by default expect some kind of punishment, sooner or later – because that’s what education is all about: awarding the desirable behavior and punishing the behavior which is unacceptable for the given society.

Murder, theft, adultery etc. aside – as these by now are deeply ingrained as wrong in the collective unconscious – we’ve been conditioned in our formative years to believe all if it makes sense at the end and the life unfolds by some kind of rules… Kabbalists of course have their own idea of what these rules are – and these are not  very different from, lets say –  Platonism, where the meaning of life is in attaining the highest form of knowledge, (which would be the Idea of the Good and thus human are duty-bound to pursue it/ the Good), or other schools of Greek Thought to which Judaism and Kabbalah are usually juxtaposed.

Even nihilists and chaos magicians have pre-existing sets of believes and wherever we have those (read: everywhere), the door is ajared for disappointment which more often than not doesn’t make us hold the breath for too long before it arrives.

I must digress: certainly, Hellenism was a threat to Yiddishkeit and a lot of blood is spilled to preserve Jewish values – yet it is indeed difficult to explain  in a non-dogmatic way what exactly is at the core of these believes – even to someone like me who not only studies them at academic level, but also believes in this system and lives by it; more so – there probably isn’t even a need to do so, for those who are overwhelmed by desire to understand it will certainly look up some way more reputable sources. 

Bertrand Russell’s ‘History of Western Philosophy’ is often scorned at in academic circles as being overly simplified, but in fact this opus gives a pretty clear insight into the overall development of the human thought from it’s dawn to somewhere around/after Carl Marx.

I adore Russell for he was the first one to take down the philosophers from their imaginary pedestals and talk of them and their reasoning as it should be done – with a lot of common sense, without glorification and idolization;  it is definitely not the book recommended for PhD programs – yet i always go back to it for it succinct style and certain – albeit veiled – humor.

Anyhow, all good, until we get to Jewish thought – right, Russel does go to great lengths to introduce Maimonides for example, but he is very  honest in admitting  (paraphrasing) : I respect this people for fighting bravely and sacrificing all they had to stand up for what they believe in – and that’s throughout history , but why would anyone fight and even die so not to eat pork and to get circumcised – is beyond my comprehension.

What Jews believe is not the topic of this essay, but my point is that humans started thinking more or less at the same time – some six centuries before what’s commonly called the new era – in very different parts of the world – Ancient Greece, Far East (China) and Middle East – in the parts inhabited by Hebrews; all three came up with schools of thought that will rock the world ever since and i am not sure they are not somehow interconnected.

There is a mysterious verse in Genesis (25:6) which says: And sons of Abraham headed to the East, carrying the gifts.

It’s obviously about other sons he had, except Isaac and Ishmael , those of concubines, but whether the mysterious gift they took to the East indeed was the wisdom of Kabbalah – God only knows.

Anyhow, albeit the three great traditions can’t really be compared – there is some familiar feeling that arouses when prolonged periods of time are spent studying and living them, some common denominator does arise… and that very denominator, the pursuit of ultimate fulfillment which by default seems to be imbued by meaning – is indeed ingrained in all three.

If i had to do the improbable and retell the history of philosophy in one sentence, it would go something like this: people stood in gutter for quite some time, then some of them looked at the stars and the history of philosophy is down to how each one of them imagined getting out of that gutter and becoming – a star.

At times when gutter raises up to your neck and the stars hide –  keep calm and have a cuppa.

 

illustration adopted from: http://www.yiddishwit.com/gallery/snail.html

SOURCE: Bernstein, Jüdische Sprichwörter und Redensarten ; this is a free translation – Yiddish word for “snail” (שנעק, shnek) does not occur in the saying and a more literal translation would be: Understanding (or good sense) is a creeper

Hexagram 12, Stagnation, Wilhelm-Baynes translation: http://theabysmal.wordpress.com/2006/10/25/i-ching-hexagram-12/

 

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Living in No Man’s Land & the Usefulness of Useless

10 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Abraham Flexner, Cognitive dissonance, Judeo-Christian, Kabbalah, Leon Festinger, Russia, Social Sciences, Woody Allen

Hasidic thought explores the role of the Sephi...

Hasidic thought explores the role of the Sephirot, Divine emanations of Kabbalah, in the internal experience of spiritual psychology (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“This shall be the reward when you hearken to these ordinances, and you observe and perform them; Hashem, your G-d, will safeguard for you the covenant and the kindness that He swore to your forefathers”  Parshat Ekev; Deuteronomy 7:12 

These are the words of Moses.

Todays is 21 Av 5772 by Hebrew calendar and Kabbalists are in the seven weeks long period of meticulous preparation for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

I’ve been cleaning my place and planning the meals for Shabbat – the Day of Rest, which is the main measurement of my inner, psychological time.

Outside – it’s August10th, Montenegro is affected by tropical heat.  Last night  our national handball team secured the first medal by beating Spain at the Olympics, which is, naturally, a source of great pride.

August is the month of unbearable slowness of being in these parts, especially in the capital;  the government slows its activities during this time, schools are still in vacation and if you stroll in the city’s center around noon on weekends – you might think you are in a ghost city, often there’s literally no one around.

I can’t stand the heat – and even less so the crowded beaches – so i am spending time in the freshness of my place and, as usually, in my own world, living by my own time.

Those two worlds of mine rarely intersect, except in my writing – other than that these two realities exist in two parallel dimensions.

Sometimes i get stuck between the two – between these realities of two different calendars, inhabited respectively by people who don’t speak a mutual language.

On times like that i travel, usually to Moscow.

In October i need to pass the exam in methodics and prior to that to write a paper for the admission; as a topic i choose the development of so-called Secondary Linguistic Personality which presumably comes of age as we study foreign languages.

It’s an utmost intriguing concept of intercultural transformation, which so far has not been researched  extensively.

It’s been said that “to speak another language is to lead a parallel life” (Barbara Wilson), but these shifts in consciousness can be so profound that we could realistically speak of different personalities living those parallel lives.

You see, Russia has everything of  its own, in the same way as China does  – the realities of major cultures are indeed separate realities.

It’s not only down to language, for that is the easiest part – it’s the whole system of cultural references which natives of given language use to communicate and develop their respective discourses.

B. Wilson in ‘Trouble in Transylvania’ described it like this:
When I speak Spanish…I find my facial muscles set in a different pattern, and new, yet familiar gestures taking over my hands. I find myself shrugging and tossing my head back, pulling down the corners of my mouth and lifting my eyebrows…. I speak more rapidly and fluidly…. It’s the moment when you…allow the other language to possess you, to pass through you, to transform you… To speak another language is to lead a parallel life, the better you speak any language, the more fully you live in another culture. 

It’s only during last couple of decades that via internet these cultures started to interact, but still, the world is quite divided and cross-cultural understanding far from flowing.

According to Leon Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, which i am reviewing for the exam, an individual placed in alien to them setting experiences the so-called cognitive dissonance – “an unpleasant state of arousal created when a person becomes aware of inconsistency among his or her attitudes and behavior.”

The dreaded contradiction between self-identification (avowal) and the way person is identified by others (ascription)* is one of the major reasons for a cultural shock, caused by communication problems.

This dissonance motivates the person to modify their attitudes and behavior so to re-establish the lost consistency –  which is  – to adapt with time to a new cultural environment via discovering the forms and ways of self-expression by means of a new verbal and cultural code.

My first year in Moscow i shared a teeny flat with a postgrad student from China, thanks to her and to my very modest knowledge of Mandarin i got involved into yet another magical reality with its own social networks and just about everything else.

Certain versatility is needed so to shapeshift from one of these realities to another, and versatility itself can often get quite confusing.

Remember the case of Woody Allen’s human chameleon Leonard Zelig , who could mimic the facial and vocal characteristics of whomever he happened to be around at the moment? Something like that.

But mostly it’s fun – perpetual shapeshifting enables one to confuse their surroundings which ever demand  pragmatism and  thus spend prolonged times in no man’s land, acquiring “useless knowledge”.

For abstract knowledge – such as philosophy – in the rushing 21st century is widely considered useless, but is it so?

In 1939 an American expert in methodics, Abraham Flexner, wrote: We hear it said with tiresome iteration that ours is a materialistic age, the main concern of which should be the wider distribution of material goods and worldly opportunities. The justified outcry of those who through no fault of their own are deprived of opportunity and a fair share of worldly goods therefore diverts an increasing number of students from the studies which their fathers pursued to the equally important and no less urgent study of social, economic, and governmental problems. I have no quarrel with this tendency. The world in which we live is the only world about which our senses can testify. Unless it is made a better world, a fairer world, millions will continue to go to their graves silent, saddened, and embittered. I have myself spent many years pleading that our schools should become more acutely aware of the world in which their pupils and students are destined to pass their lives. Now I sometimes wonder whether that current has not become too strong and whether there would be sufficient opportunity for a full life if the world were emptied of some of the useless things that give it spiritual significance; in other words, whether our conception of what is useful may not have become too narrow to be adequate to the roaming and capricious possibilities of the human spirit. 

Fast forward to 2012 and the economical depression in which we are living – most didn’t get any smarter; it’s the perpetual obsession with doing – and if possible – doing something quite trivial, preferably buying or selling, that’s sadly still viewed as desirable occupation; never mind that the result of this idiocy is the backlash of the global financial crises.

So, i am really looking forward to lighting the Shabbat candles tonight and being officially exempt from all the other realities – except my own, which i live in no man’s land, spending the time in acquiring the “useless knowledge” of Kabbalah, which has been sustaining the Judeo-Christian tradition since its very dawn… as “useless” as such knowledge gets.

Shabbat Shalom

*Nota Bene: The contradiction between self-identification (avowal) and the way person is identified by others (ascription) in Tarot is denoted by positions 7&8 of the Celtic Cross spread, while the so-called objective truth, given that it exists, is usually found midway between the two:  http://www.psychic-revelation.com/reference/q_t/tarot/tarot_spreads/celtic_cross.html

Zohar study Ekev, Live Kabbalah http://www.livekabbalah.org/index.php/home/weekly-zohar/deuteronomy-devarim/ekev/

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (Brain pickings): http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/27/the-usefulness-of-useless-knowledge/

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Parlez-vous TdM?

20 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition, Tarot

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Tags

Aleister Crowley, Book of Ruth, Friday, Frieda Harris, Kabbalah, Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite tarot deck, Tarot

Friday evening, when i am at home – and that’s most Fridays when in Montenegro – i pull randomly five cards from one of Tarot de Marseilles decks and i lurk at the cards while listening to weekly Kabbalah classes.

I was going to title this essay Scattered thoughts on TdM and 3 Negative weeks when it dawned on me that apart from most zealous Tarot enthusiasts  – hardly anyone would know what is it about.

My beloved Tarot tribe has developed its own lingo which  would take an expert in military ciphers to decode  – unless one is socializing with other Tarotists on a daily basis and hanging out on Tarot forums and facebook groups.

When you say Tarot – most non-connoisseurs vaguely recall the artwork of Rider-Waite tarot deck, the best known deck in English speaking countries.

I was for a decade or so in “monogamous” relationship with it, that was the only deck i read – and even now, after having learned other traditions and acquired over hundred of exquisite decks, it would still be the deck i’d take with me to the desert island.

Arthur Edward Waite was a member of  the Golden Dawn –  a magical order which probably had strongest impact on Western occultism – a Freemason and scholarly mystic whose work was well received in academic circles; yet he is most known as co-creator of Rider-Waite-Smith deck. Genius artist and fellow Golden Dawn member  Pamela Colman Smith illustrated the cards for Waite, and the deck of deceptively simple artwork, one of the first with 78 cards fully illustrated, was published in 1909.

If you look at attached scan of 7 of Wands, you see a man who seems to be defending himself. Look closer, pay attention to his different shoes. From there, Dan Pelletier – one of the most interesting and original contemporary philosophers of Tarot – makes connection with what’s known as Levirate marriage and The Book of Ruth and there your mind starts to boggle.

For we know Ruth, traditionally, is the first convert in history – albeit she is Moabite and it is said (Deuteronomy 23:4)  An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation shall none of them enter into the assembly of the LORD for ever.

Not only she becomes an Israelite, but she’s also great-grandmother of King David!

How did that happen? Is there some mistake in the scripture?! Not really, because when read indepth, The Book of Ruth is not merely a story of the first convert, also described as first gold-digger in history – but a manual on how to transform the darkness in each and every one of us – into the light.

Stuff like that.

But, back to different Tarot traditions, which i like to compare to what’s known in linguistics as proto-languages… For Tarot is a language, albeit constructed one,  a code if you like, not a natural one – but still a language in its own right.

In the same way the known languages which are believed to have descended by slow modification of the proto-language into languages that form a language family –  most of the thousands of contemporary Tarot decks ascend to the three proto-traditions: Raider Waite, Thoth and Tarot de Marseilles.

Aleister Crowley, Waite’s fellow initiate of the Golden Dawn and his fervent opponent, in partnership with Lady Frieda Harris created Thoth Tarot.

Crowley – a ceremonial magician, prolific author, mountaineer and the founder of  religious philosophy of Thelema, together with Harris seem to have crammed into this pack of cards all occult knowledge in existence; thus 7 of Wands here stands for Netzach (Victory) in the suit of Fire and is also attributed to Mars in Leo.

I know very few readers who can make sense of the card as it is (without recalling Pam’s depiction of “Defendant”) – and albeit Thoth can give amazing readings, it is basically a part of initiatory system of magical fraternity Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.),  or better to say – of its several competing fractions who claimed to be legitimate heirs to Aleister Crowley.

Basically you need to un-learn the RWS system in order to learn Thoth, and – albeit some respectable Tarot thinkers and practicioners have quite different opinion on the matter – in my view, Thoth deck, taken out of Thelemic context, makes very little sense.

But, let us go to the grand-daddy of both decks – Tarot de Marseilles and its depiction of Seven of Wands ie. Le sept de Bâton :

No Kabbalah here, no astro glyphs, levirate marriages or whatsoever – simply seven wands crossed in a particular way and some vegetation growing from it.

Yet this too will send you tripping if you focus on it.

Yes, of course it can be read traditionally – all sevens are related to the Chariot and Wands are work, so the card would on the most basic level denote something to do  with hard work which results in success, but…

Apply to it Enrique Enriquez  famous “Eye Rhyme” method, try reading card’s  rhyme, rhythm and resonance  – for this genius artist experiences tarot reading as an act of visual poetry – try hearing what song this card sings to you personally, all magical orders, ceremonial magicians and traditional meanings aside…

That’s what i tried to do this night and here is my reading with Jean Noblet deck:

On Fridays i read from right to left. Nine of Swords – first card from the right – to me is quite an ugly one; the eight swords (Suit of Air/ Thoughts/ Ideas) locked in a circle are cutting off and propelling out four identically shaped buds; to me – it can be about some kind of vicious circle, cliche thinking, speech patterns and so on.

The shortsword in the middle seems to be a Gladius – the primary sword of Ancient Roman foot soldiers.

As a side note – other words derived from Latin noun glădĭus  are gladiator  (“swordsman”) and gladiolus, the sword lily.

So, let’s presume the shortsword here represent some idea – could be”pure”, lily-like one – that has pierced some repetitive negative thought pattern; that idea is then excruciated on the Weel of Fortune, tempered in the fire of the Tower, and finally buried… Before it becomes a weapon in the Queens right hand – her left, significantly smaller hand being laid on what seems to be baby bump – that idea needs to ‘raise from the dead ‘ in the Judgement card, then to be internalized in the guarded Queen’s stomach – before it becomes the weapon of protection in her right hand.

It’s a long way to go  – but probably the only one by which  repetitive negative thoughts which lead to self-sabotaging  behavior  patterns –  can be transformed into one’s advantages.

The so called Three Negative Weeks – the interval of “Bein HaMeitsarim” (between the straits) in which we are now according to kabbalistic calendar –  seem to be the ideal timing to do so – we are propelled to go within and prevent situations that might bring self-destruction.

In words of one of the leading Kabbalists of our times, Shaul Youdkevitch: “We often forget that we are the master of our body and soul, and have the right not to let in emotions which don’t serve us or our purpose. We must hold on to the belief and knowledge that we have the power to redirect our fate, as the alternative is to be “bnei beliya’al” (evil-doers, lacking conscience), useless in the ability to rise above emotion, thought and misery that overwhelms us… it is this time, during the three weeks, that we fight these negative forces with tolerance, open-heartedness and unconditional love.”

Absolutely amazing interview of Dan Pelletier by Enrique Enriquez http://tarology.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/a-conversation-wit-dan-pelletier/

Jean Noblet Tarot http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Jean_Noblet_Tarot

The 9th of Av According to Kabbalah http://www.livekabbalah.org/index.php/home/gates-in-time/holidays/the-9th-of-av-tisha-beav/

Weekly Zohar Study (Matot) http://www.livekabbalah.org/index.php/home/weekly-zohar/numbers-bamidbar/matot/

Weekly audio Zohar Study (Matot-Masei) with Shaul Youdkevitch http://www.livekabbalah.org/index.php/home/download-studies/

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Chomsky, Žižek and West’s fascination by pseudo-intellectual bullies

16 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition

≈ 43 Comments

Tags

Balkan, Buddhism, New Yorker, Noam Chomsky, Otniel Schneller, Paul Postal, Slavoj Žižek, United States

Buddhism in Bangkok, Thailand

Buddhism in Bangkok, Thailand (Photo credit: photo-555.com)

Can someone of my wise friends enlighten me on what’s so fascinating about Slavoj Žižek to Western taste? And what’s the guy’s problem with Buddhism? It seems to me  he is simply trolling and i find him to be an attention HO, quite unattractive one too.

I went to his lecture here in Podgorica and i really don’t get it – first and foremost, because he simply doesn’t make sense. His are ramblings, literally.

Is it that he is the first smarta** from Balkans who learned English properly and took Balkan bluntness to an all new level?

Check out this infamous article: http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/western.php

Firstly, it is built on false premises , secondly – even if this idiotic hypothesis was  true –  what’s exactly Žižek’s problem with Tibet and its religion?

(Tibet, rest assured,  won’t be ‘assimilated in couple of decades’ – and not because US gvmnt’s heart bleeds for Tibetan cause, so they won’t allow it  – but because it is one of the hot spots where US can pressure China’s ruling party –  and in that way exercise  some, even if minimal, upset – if not some control over it.)

He is not known to have spent any prolonged periods of time in Tibet, he doesn’t speak the language, probably does not hang around ethnic Tibetans either  and certainly does not practice Buddhism – on what exactly he based his opinion? And why does it matter? Except that it’s funny – a somewhat typical Balkan gastarbeiter thing to do – dismissing the things you don’t get with an arrogant attitude which only an utterly ignorant person can permit themselves. There are countless jokes on gastarbeiter still circling all around ex Yugoslavia – it was mostly the uneducated work force that filled positions with minimal wage in Germany, where the word for ‘guest worker’ originated. Being incapable of learning the local language and integrate – “guest workers” of first generation had developed a cultish mentality of their own: they gathered in “Yugoslavian  clubs”, eating their own food and  listening to Serbian folk music ; from the heights of hills of grilled meat  stuffed with onion and hypnotized by  the two accords of the  turbo-folc music & rivers of slivovitza, they disdained the culture of their host country – because they didn’t know any better.

That’s exactly how Slavoj Žižek’s verbal escapades come across to me.

If you want an intelligent reply to this verbal diarrhea of his – read Nathan, he explains it step by step: http://www.ethannichtern.com/tag/slavoj-zizek-buddhism/

But in Balkans you don’t get such detailed explanations under pretense that you misunderstood something – here you get punch in the face & i believe that’s the only reason Žižek choose to go ballistic on Buddhism and not on Christianity or Islam for example.

Or the other, in my view, bully –  Chomsky. You’ll hear that he alone started  the new shift of the scientific paradigm – if one has the slightest  idea what is a shift in scientific paradigm – that immediately sets off the BS alarm; he certainly did not.

What he did is the following: having overdosed on  Bakunin, an anarchist of times long gone and militant antisemite, about whom best part of contemporary anarchists don’t care the least –  Chomsky  thought that , given that he has Jewish blood, he’ll manage to get away with BS with which Bakunin, a CO Russian could not… well, next time he wants to enter Israel (and is not allowed into the country) he can indeed try “one of the tunnels connecting Gaza and Egypt” as he was recommended by MP Otniel Schneller.

Here is what some intelligent people  have to say about Chomsky:

“Even on the rare occasions when Mr. Chomsky is dealing with facts and not with fantasies, he exaggerates by a factor of, plus or minus, four or five.”
Walter Laqueur, The New Republic, March 24, 1982
“After many years, I came to the conclusion that everything he says is false. He will lie just for the fun of it. Every one of his arguments was tinged and coded with falseness and pretense. It was like playing chess with extra pieces. It was all fake.” Paul Postal, The New Yorker, March 31, 2003

And here it is –  exposed lie by lie, if you can stomach it: http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html

(I can’t, his discourse simply makes me sick.)

How he rose to academic prominence in the first place – is indeed beyond my comprehension. Except that – imho –  he’s an attention HO too. As per the imaginary shift , here on what it comes down to, explained clearly: Noam Chomsky, America’s Village Idiot http://theanti-chomskyanredoubt.blogspot.com/2006/07/noam-chomsky-americas-village-idiot.html

(I disagree only on one count – with author’s  derogatively use of  sophistry – which in academic circles is passe.)

I do know that if you posted hate speeches like  that on any internet forum in English language – except the supremacist ones –  you’d get banned  promptly; how come these two, in my opinion,  pretenders made it – is a subject for careful analyzes and a wake up call to us all.

Basically, what Chomsky has been screaming from the top of his lungs is DIE, DIE AMERICA –  his hatred for Israel is secondary ; Žižek calls for return to bolshevism – and not to mild Leninist kind, but to the hard’core Stalinism. And the latter probably doesn’t even mean it – it’s merely bluffing and a publicity stunt. And even if you bother to understand what he is trying to communicate in between tirades about Marx, Lacan and bashings of Shunryu Suzuki – even if  his faked or not neurotic tics  don’t bother you – there is very little to hear. Simply, in my opinion, he is fake.

There can’t be any wisdom, not even in disguise, where there is hate – and especially where there is  ‘hate for no reason’ which Kabbalists happen to consider the  root of all evil.

Haaretz Article on Chomsky being denied entry to Israel: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/noam-chomsky-denied-entry-into-israel-and-west-bank-1.290701

Slavoj Žižek: A Radical Critique http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/slavoj-zizek-a-radical-critique/

Žižek, the Borat of philosophy http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2007/04/slavoj-zizek-intellectual

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