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~ Tarot inspired essays and more

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Tag Archives: Joseph Campbell

Critique of Pure Writing Genius

06 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by moderndayruth in Uncategorized

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Calvino, Ghost, Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino, Joseph Campbell, Michel David, Religion and Spirituality, Tarot, Thomas Aquinas

English: An original card from the tarot deck ...

English: An original card from the tarot deck of Jean Dodal of Lyon, a classic “Marseilles” deck. The deck dates from 1701-1715. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sic. You know i am into catchy phrases, but there is something else… It’s that a genius  is presumably so exceptional and so out of ordinary, that it’s beyond critique – and often – even beyond the comprehension of us, the mortals.

Let alone that no one really knows what’s genius (except that we all agree Da Vinci, Einstein and Tesla were that ), sometimes being genius in one field obviously doesn’t mean the individual in question can transplant that geniousness  onto something else – or – better to say, on anything else.

If you wonder what got me into this flow of thought – it’s that i am reading Italo Calvino’s Tarot inspired book – The Castle of Crossed Destinies… Meh. I’ve been hunting it for years and only this time in Moscow i bumped into a forgotten (and damaged) copy laying somewhere at the sides of a big, flashy bookstore in my neighborhood.

Not sure why i thought Calvino’s would be any different than Pavic’s – or of any other good (or even great) writer who thought his genius writing style sufficed to bite into something as complex and as mystical as Tarot is. You see, it’s not enough. It takes way more than being good (or even great) with words to write about Tarot – given that in your writings you aspire to any depth and any subtext.

I loved Calvino’s others books, he’s simply a great writer. The beginning of the Castle sounded promising – again, at first it’s the master storytelling that gets you… But what it comes down to?

It seems what Calvino did is the following – he shuffled and pulled the cards randomly and than wrote whatever association came to his (rich) imagination.

Which is good, and every single serious Tarotist did it – as a learning exercise. That’s what you do, when you are just starting to learn reading Tarot de Marseilles; you pull the cards randomly, arrange them in a line, pay attention to the body language of the figures depicted – and tell the story.

If you are somewhat gifted for writing and more so if you were diligent in your high school history classes – you’ll end up with a good story and most probably – with a great story.

Then you learn to read the Tarot as cartomancers do… and a whole new paradigm, a whole ‘brave new world’ opens up for you.

That space, the discourse between you and the cards – it’s sacred and i won’t pollute your experience by retelling mine, but whomever did it – knows it’s deep and overwhelming and mind blowing… Oftentimes it’s beyond verbalization, but when peeps who were brave enough and nerdy enough to let the Tarot paradigm infuse their minds, those who were opened enough (and mad enough) to live the Tarot experience… when they start putting those into words, in their very words – and often  in between them, you feel the Light, or that which we normally name ‘geniusness’.

I am not saying Calvino’s book is not good – it is of course, but not more than that – and somehow i did expect more.

The thing is that many great minds – such as Joseph Campbell, who co-authored a book on Tarot ( “Tarot Revelations”, Joseph Campbell and Richard Roberts)- in their work touched on Tarot and left it at that…

Sad, because one can’t but think – what if… What if those great minds really spent prolonged periods of time with their decks, without presuming that they can put it to some use, as it is?

Mary Greer writes on Jung and Tarot. I claim Mary to be genius – and here is why: i’ve studied from her books and i’ve been reading her posts on certain Tarot forum and in several facebook groups, see – firstly she has an out-of-ordinary capacity to learn, digest and deconstruct enormous quantities of both scientific data and mystical texts; she found the proverbial middle way – not being a slave to facts, but not falling into mishy-mashy pseudo-scientific discourse to which many of esoteric authors are inclined. You see – to achieve that balance when working with the occult – is genius. Also, Mary is movingly honest in her search – and from Socrates onwards all great minds were such. See, that – the honesty in one’s search for truth – is the main reason that Thomas Aquinas by most in academia is not even considered to be a philosopher; the thing with him is that he ‘knew’ the truth and by various means is manipulating you into his believes and views… that’s dogma, not philosophy, no matter how skillful the orator.

So, for myself, when defining a genius i follow the notorious ‘i know it when i see it’ – and it is so; we all have this or that author to whom we are partial, but we mostly agree on who among them is genius.

Calvino’s writing style is genius, it’s a gift and when you read his work, even in a dreaded translation, you feel it, you feel that 1% of something, that can’t be put into words and which can’t be achieved with the proverbial 99% of sweating. Calvino has it in his words, my pet peeve is that he thought it sufficed to write on Tarot.

Once again, his is a good book – and even  a great one, if you don’t have a clue about Tarot; the thing is that equally well written texts you can find on aeclectic.net if you go to the Tarot de Marseilles subforum and dig out some older threads there… You know what? You’ll find way better written texts there – because the peeps who authored them – Le Fanu of the Curious Cabinet, Paul Nagy, Enrique Enriques , Jean- Michel David and others with great gift for words wrote those – and that’s after having spent years and decades with the cards.

Tarot-wise, i grew up on that forum, so while reading Calvino’s book, i can’t stop myself from thinking: Italo, my man, you should have tried harder…

“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” 
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

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  • The Disappearing Act: Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’ (theculturetrip.wordpress.com)
  • – it takes half an hour to write an article … (omstreifer.wordpress.com)
  • The Letters of Italo Calvino, Day IV (newyorker.com)
  • The Dreams of Italo Calvino (nybooks.com)
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Daily Draw: The Daughter of the Firmanent

11 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition, Tarot

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Crowley, Frieda Harris, Joseph Campbell, Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition, Tarot, Thoth, Thoth tarot deck, Yom Kippur

English: High priest offering a sacrifice of a...

English: High priest offering a sacrifice of a goat, as on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur; from Henry Davenport Northrop, “Treasures of the Bible,” published 1894 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Every man and every woman is a star. The Book of the Law 1:3

Crowley’s own description of the Star in the Book of Thoth (1) is completely useless  in terms of card’s working knowledge; as brilliant as most of his other observations are , here he sounds as a baffled newbie who,  not knowing how to interpret the card in a reading, starts describing its artwork ad nauseum.

It is possible that Crowley didn’t get it – after all, he was (as arrogant as he is presented usually) humble enough in his correspondence with Frieda Harris  to admit that he personally did not grasp all of the cards, and the confusion arising from his infamous Emperor/Star swap (2) makes this explanation sounds even more logical…

Usually enlightening Lon Milo’s book here is merely paraphrasing TBOT and Waite, in his ‘Pictorial Key’ is , if possible, even more vague: “The summary of several tawdry explanations says that it is a card of hope. On other planes it has been certified as immortality and interior light. For the majority of prepared minds, the figure will appear as the type of Truth unveiled, glorious in undying beauty, pouring on the waters of the soul some part and measure of her priceless possession. But she is in reality the Great Mother in the Kabalistic Sephira Binah, which is supernal Understanding, who communicates to the Sephiroth that are below in the measure that they can receive her influx.” (3)

The thing is that Waite (un)necessarily mystified his writings, Lon Milo has kept a lot of what he had to say for his course “Sexual Alchemy of the Thoth Tarot” and as per A.C., he actually puts it all there, albeit veiled: “I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.”

Because the Star is the female orgasm,  her male counterpart being the ejaculation  depicted on the Tower.

Observing the sperm being formed in goat’s testicles on the card numbered XV, the Devil, the ejaculation of the Tower (XVI) and, following the Star (XVII), womb-like Moon (XVIII), some go as far as to name it ‘The Sperm’s journey’…

I guess that’s tongue in cheek to the usual combining the elements of Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey ‘ with Tarot, which to me is equally inapplicable to it as Jungian stuff is. (I dare you to do a Tarot reading using Sallie Nichols’ “Jung and Tarot”! )

Which is – i do think that any story can be told through Tarot – and more so any mystical  or philosophical system can be applied to it – but does it have anything to do with Tarot itself, and more so – with Thoth Tarot, is all another story.

Apropos, Joseph Campbell knew close to nothing about Tarot, and as erudite as he was, Tarot has never been his main focus.

Anyhow, back to Thoth. Whether it’s actually The Star that goes attributed to Sephirat Binah or it’s the Empress, is anyone’s guess; to me, for various mostly intuitive reasons, it does make sense that it’s the Star that’s related to the Supernal Mother – and to me personally that’s exactly why it is so difficult to explain.

According to Kabbalists, the only they day in the year when we can experience this energy in its totality, is Yom Kipur, the so-called ‘Day of Atonement.’

Traditionally, one is repenting for the transgressions during the process of ‘Teshuva’ – asking forgiveness from other people – while Yom Kippur is the day  crowning the process when the forgiveness is asked from God.

Kabbalistically, Teshuva is a process of returning to one’s own unadulterated self and in many ways it resonates with Crowley’s ‘do what though wilt’, probably one of his most misinterpreted concepts.

In this vein, i must add that what’s usually labeled in Kabbalah as ‘desire’, the driving force behind all our actions, is what’s Crowley names “will”; more or less it is the things to which we are naturally drawn to and feel attraction for. Usually, these are distorted by  socialization and i believe that by late adolescence most of us are pretty much at loss about what we actually want.  Thus our most important choices are mostly conditioned by outer circumstances at the end usually have little to do with our own affinities and preferences.

Teshuva, mystically, is the way of the Kabbalist to re-discover his own Self.

Yom Kippur is a full fast, from sunset to darkness the following night, and, besides all the restrictions of Shabbat, it carries four additional ones – washing and bathing, anointing one’s body (with cosmetics, deodorants, etc.), wearing leather shoes , and engaging in sexual relations are prohibited.

One would say – what a challenging day it must be! The truth is that it is the only day when we can ascend to Binah – and experiencing its energies does feel (for the lack of better comparison) as a prolonged orgasm. It’s the only day when we can free ourselves from the domination of the physical body and other conditioning – and i must say that nothing can beat the experience.

That’s the very feeling i recall as i am watching the Star which choose to come out for me in the Daily Draw, as i start remembering what my own soul’s urges were once upon a time…

Copyright © L.R.S., All Rights Reserved

(1) TBOT, XVII The Star http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/crowley/libro_thoth05.htm

(2) Why did Crowley switch the Emperor and the Star?  http://www.psyche.com/psyche/tarot/RevivedTarot/crowley.html

(3) The Pictorial Key to the Tarot http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/index.htm

(4) Kosher Torah, the Secret of Yom Kipur http://www.koshertorah.com/PDF/yom-kippur.pdf

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The Politically Correct Journey of the Hero II

15 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Satire, Tarot

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Antisocial personality disorder, Charioteer, Hero, Hollywood, Joseph Campbell, Mental Health, Monomyth, Sphinx

As our liberal and open minded Hero was travelling further…

At this point, the narration was briefly interrupted by Hero’s personal PR& Principal Secretary, who called everyone’s attention to the following authorized press release:

In order to maintain the positive reputation of the Hero on whose journey, laid with unexpected turns, the only constants proved to be his purity of intent – and thus, to avoid as much as possible the inappropriate interpretations of his story as well as undesirable and potentially harmful influence on the audience, hereby we state the following:

Throughout his journey the Hero has remained aware of and responsible to his previous commitments and duties – the journey itself was undertaken during the sabbatical endorsed by the Human Recourse Department of the Reputable Corporation at which he has spent years as one of the highest performing employees. 

The Reputable Corporation, upon Hero’s request, has agreed to endorse his journey which is viewed as a contribution towards his coming back refreshed and becoming an even better employee.

Last but not the least, the Hero was regularly calling his mother.

Thank you for your attention. 

The next character Hero was to meet was – The Trump Previously Known As Hierophant, who meanwhile had left the chains of religions dogma and had become an Universal Spiritual Eclectic.

With one of his former two official followers, who so inappropriately used to be portrayed kneeling, he co-authored the best-selling horror novel: “Memories of an altar boy”;  all three of them have had became co-founders of a non-profit organization assisting voluntarily cult exit and thought reform which became widely known for its information-oriented approach.

After having acquainted the Hero with the moving story of his life – The Trump Previously Known As Hierophant introduced him to Sisters&Wives – The Trump Previously Known As Lovers.

Upon their public refusal to continue denoting hard choices and temptations of the heart, TTPKAL became well know televangelists; as a modern polyamorous family unit they used the onstage appearances to condemn the culture glorifying unnecessary sacrifice and stemming from it traumatic ramifications.

TTPKAL kept fighting the social prejudices and spreading a powerful spiritual message  in the framework of the campaign: We can have our cake and eat it!

Numerous qualified social researchers and – most importantly – several Hollywood celebrities have credited this very campaign in becoming the long overdue catalyst of change and consequent global paradigm shift from limited understanding of choices to comprehensive acceptance of alternatives.

Next non-conforming to traditional modes of conduct trio on Hero’s journey was the Charioteer and the two Sphinx; in order to meet them the Hero traveled to Egypt where all three had chose to spend their retirement.

The Charioteer shunned away from his title but choose to keep it for valid publicity reasons – he authored the book ” How to Win Friends and Influence Tarot Minors For the Highest Good of Everyone Involved” in which was given a chronological account of his struggle to overcome the unsympathetic public image.

In their turn – both Sphinx claimed their share of responsibility in Charioteer’s former lack of popularity by admitting their being affected with an antisocial personality disorder common in mythical creatures whose image was exploited in popular culture; its most severe symptom – the tendency to disturb travelers with unreasonable riddles has being overcome during the course of behavioral therapy which included their volunteering as  independent travel guides to Giza Pyramids.

Copyright©2012 Lena Ruth Stefanovic
All Rights Reserved

English: Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt. Español:...

Image via Wikipedia

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  • Politically Correct Journey of the Hero I (moderndayruth.wordpress.com)
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