On the Road again: Coming back around to the Tarot du Marseille

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Over the last few years, I have been doing quite a bit of 'not quite pathworking', i.e. I knew which paths I was meant to be working according to my A.'.A.'. grade work, and can watch these patterns unfolding in my daily life. This is as it should be, particularly when working in the Briatic world there is little difference between archetypical process and what actually happens day to day. This all well and good, life goes on, we learn things, adjust, adapt and the process of the path is exactly daily life. However, I felt there was some need to engage with it consciously and symbolically, rather than simply letting the process run its course, but to interact with the forces governing my life in a conversation way, not to interfere, but to allow them to work more freely, understand where I am resisting, to clear the way, or 'get out of the way' so to speak.

The Tarot is the obvious tool for such a conversation. Yet I felt that the Thoth was not fit for purpose. As an A.'.A.'. aspirant I am very familiar with the Thoth, it was my bread and butter for decades, and at first glance it might seem the obvious choice, I already have a deck (received as a gift when I was about 15), and am intimately aware of its correspondences. But somehow there was a little too much 'Thelema' in it. The Thoth is very much the visual grimoire of Thelema, it's Crowley's system in pictorial form, but for all that it lacks a certain naturalness. It's not an organic system, but very much a concoction. And so, I find myself drawn more and more towards the older imagery of the Marseille, an imagery that really did develop over time, centuries rather than years, and based on the mythology, archetypes, history and memory of Europe. The older I get, and the more superficial layers I remove over time in the endless introspection which is the Great Work of life, the closer I feel to these much more grounded images. 

To that end, over the next few months (maybe years, I don't know), I want to spend time with the Tarot de Marseille, get to know it better, read on the history and mythology, and to some extent dig beneath my Golden Dawn/Crowley tinted glasses to look less at doctrine, but to get to know the cards on their own terms. There will be no great scholarship in this, I envisage it more as a series of meetings with individuals with their own experiences and stories to tell, observing, conversing, getting to know them, and seeking not so much to apply meaning, but to use my experience to understand them better at entities. At the same, time, it may be that this process will allow me to participate better in the Great Work which I have come to realise is occurring day by day irrespective of my awareness. And since it's going on anyway, I might as well align myself with it.

A note on the fool ‘La Mat’: I will save a deep discussion with him until later. In the Marseille he is unnumbered, not 0 as in the Thoth or Rider-Waite decks. He doesn’t come before The Magician (La Bateleur) so much as he comes wherever it is appropriate. He is not even zero in the mathematical sense, but is to my mind something closer the Hadit, the eternal and ubiquitous point of view, so in a sense he is clothed in each and every card, whilst remaining eternally himself. So, though I have some thoughts on this card, I will save them for the appropriate time. But for now, we can travel with him, see what he sees from his unique vantage, and see what the world of the Marseille tarot can show us.

(Images of the cards here are courtesy of the late Dr Yoav Ben-Dov)

Love is the law, love under will.

P.

 

 

Pedagogy and Tradition in A.'.A.'.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Like many aspirants, I started out, not just in the A\A\ but in occultism in general, absorbing the traditional structures and forms of Western Esotericism. For me this really began with early exposure to Wicca, primarily from the Gardnerian tradition, then Paganism more generally and from there into the tarot, then the Golden Dawn system, which led fairly quickly into Thelema.

In such a pipeline it's natural to absorb certain correspondences, systems of symbols and other magickal technology such as astrology, the Tarot, the Hermetic Qabalah, on into the Theology and philosophy of Thelema itself as described by Crowley, and later his successors who sought, with varying degrees of success and originality, to clarify and systematise. Thus, in some circles Thelema has become a fixed thing, a definite system in itself with little room for interpretation, while in others it is looser, given more to personal interpretation, and yet others hold that delicate middle ground between these extremes.

From the perspective of an A\A\ aspirant, a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of these things is more or less expected. By the time I began as a Probationer 0=0 I had already long since learned most of the major correspondences and rituals by heart. Learning from an instructor in the sense of them 'teaching' you the fundamentals and showing you the ropes, simply didn't happen with me, and so I didn’t really think too much about pedagogy and tradition until later on, when as a Neophyte 1=10, I took on my first students. Only then did I begin to understand that absorbing the system is not the same thing as transmitting it.

That was a long time ago now too. Students have come and gone; mostly gone it has to be said. I would not call myself a particularly good teacher, if my students voting with their feet is anything to go by, but I have on the whole tried to balance helping them to understand the A\A\ as a tradition to pass on, and addressing the need for flexibility and adaptation in their own path and practice. This is mainly because I view my role not so much as that of a teacher, but as a witness. I am not there to be anybody’s master, but simply to hold them accountable for their own path and practice. Perhaps I am mistaken and such people require more guidance, in which case they had better find it elsewhere.

The distinguishing feature of the A\A\as a system is the one-to-one nature of the system. An aspirant knows only their supervisor, and any students they may have assigned to them. There are no peers to rely on or compare ourselves to. Our grades matter to nobody outside those already mentioned. To my mind the most important thing for the aspirant is steady progress, not so much in the spiritual sense (since there really is no progress), but in the sense of continuing to learn, grow and develop as initiates.

The path is essentially practical, empirical, and based on seeing what works. That is not to say that existing theory doesn’t matter. It does matter, being musically literate will make you a better musician, just so being magickally literate will make you a better magician. It is for this reason that students are instructed to learn the basic rituals of the Golden Dawn tradition via Liber O and elsewhere, to learn the system of correspondences of the Holy Qabalah, and the columns of names, words, and other things found in Liber 777. These are the building blocks of the Western magickal traditions and they comprise a common language with which to communicate with others, and to create a coherent internal magickal universe. However, as the cliché goes, the map is not the territory, and at some point, we all have to draw our own maps, explore new territory.

On the other hand, the work of the Order is exploratory and empirical. Anyone who spends any time in the A\A\ system will realise that prepackaged occultism is really not what we are about. Not everybody thinks the same way, and while certain patterns exist aspirants will have a more or less individual approach to things like practical magick, ceremony, their approach to mysticism etc. Ability differs too, often due to simple physical limitations. For example, my knees, as I’ve gotten older, don’t let me sit in The Dragon posture for extended periods, so I don’t. Others may find that trance-states are better attained via music or via imagery and colour, or by movement, and this will also influence the nature and expression of any 'results' they might obtain, and methods organising energy, of ‘energised enthusiasm’ differ with the individual. Likewise, some may more or less discard the Golden Dawn patterns altogether and get more out of other methods; Witchcraft, Shamanic practices, Zen Meditation, Tai Chi, to name just a few. The A\A\system must to some extent be adaptable to the varying types of aspirants while maintaining its core framework and conceptual structures.

It should be clear from this that the A\A\ is not a one-size-fits-all system. But it is a system, and if people don’t like it there are others just as good, that might better suit them. The A\A\ is when finally considered, rooted in the Western esoteric traditions, with and injection of Eastern methods in the form of Yoga and Advaita, opening up possibilities in other areas of oriental thought. Despite this flexibility it does have to have a structure and a method by which training is conducted and progress assessed if it is to have any meaning.

My approach may best be described as this: The A\A\ system has set tasks laid out in the Oath papers and in One Star in Sight, and those tasks can be tested practically. For example, if I want to be sure a student has memorized their verse of Liber LXV, I have them recite it to me. If I want to test their astral vision, I devise a practical test for that. For Asana, I don’t really care which posture they have chosen, only that they can be ‘steady and easy’ for one hour in that posture. I set benchmarks, and ensure that the student knows what these are, but I don’t really mind how they get there. For example, I completed by Zelator 2=9 training due to my practice of Aikido, a form it has to be said that contains many concepts incorporated from Raja Yoga which was already tested practically in the dojo over years and afforded a high degree of mind/body unification. This essentially fulfilled the basic requirements of a firm foundation required in the grade of Yesod. The Asana test was relatively easy after all that, and my supervisor at the time, herself a martial artist, understood what I was doing and accepted it as meeting the spirit and technical requirements of the grade, despite not being literally included in Crowley’s system.

There is another form of assessing students, but this is not so much the formal testing of abilities, but of observing the students attitudes, thinking, way of living in the world, their whole way of being. But this is a difficult matter to discuss generally, and really depedns on interacting with, and getting to know them as people and as initiates, to give an indication of exactly where they stand in Tree of Life. But this is a whole topic in itself.

However, as a teaching system we must have a standard of measurement, a continuity, and we cannot expect to teach what we ourselves have not learned. Therefore, the A\A\ cannot be simply a free-for-all but a certain amount of measurable testing is necessary. Written, verbal and practical testing must ensure that aspirants have absorbed the essentials of the system, the framework so to speak, which means they can accurately transmit the same to any students they may have with minimal distortion. But at the same time, we must develop a methodology both flexible and adaptable enough to grow and develop, while also being rigid enough to add much needed structure and coherence to the Great Work. If we were to just do whatever we liked and casually set our own standards there would be no point continuing In the A\A\ as a system. In fact, it wouldn’t be a system at all, and would dissolve into meaninglessness, and empty form with no substance.

So, we must preserve the essential system of the A\A\, its basic texts and traditions, its Thelemic outlook and spirit as a vehicle of initiation in the New Aeon. While at the same time recognising that not only does knowledge advance; we have better sources than Crowley for Yoga for example, and there are multiple translation and interpretations of magick and occultism that were not available 100 years ago. We don’t want to preserve the Order as a museum piece, a sort of play acting of Victorian ceremonial magick, but a living tradition with feet firmly grounded in the reality of our lives, root that go much deeper. But also, with eyes that see, ears that hear, a mind that thinks, and the institutional adaptability to take on new knowledge, take advantage of advances in scholarship, science, knowledge generally. And this while adhering to the fundamental spirit of the A\A\ as a vehicle for the training of adepts able to actively and intelligently, in their own particular sphere, participate in the service of Humanity which is the final reason for the Orders existence.

Love is the law, love under will.

Pertinax

 

 

Your output isn’t the measure of your value

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Something I’ve seen a few times recently is the idea that ‘top tier’ Thelemites are out there writing and publishing books, making podcasts, creating something that can be appreciated by others and fitting into the occult ‘marketplace’ and those who are not doing to are by definition lower in the pecking order. This attitude leads only to an artificial stratification based not on the mutually supportive spiritual ideal of the Hermit, Lover, Man of Earth, but on creative and economic measures which have nothing to do with Thelemic practice.

To me this is a clear sign of the internalization of the consumerist mentality fostered by capitalism. The idea being that your value is directly linked by the extent to which other people consume what you are producing, as if you were a good worker bee that exists only to feed the hive.

Liber Al says a few things about human worth, the first that springs to mind is Liber Al 1:3 “every man and every woman is a star”.  That is to say, in my understanding, our worth is intrinsic, and not dependent on how useful we are.

I would exercise extreme caution in assigning value of one person over another based on economic, productivity, even intellect and social metrics. The sole mark of a Thelemite is the effort to understand and do one’s True Will, whatever that may be, and there are certainly no tiers of Thelemites by which to stroke the egos of the handful who choose to write, paint, teach, and sell, and get to distinguish themselves from the ‘hoi polloi’ by their exertions.

“Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt”. Liber Al. 1:22

Not to denigrate creativity, far from it, and certainly not to say that everyone should pretend we are the same either and try to pull down those who seek to create while others do not; there is star and star, system and system. But if we start grouping people into tiers based on their perceived productivity/creativity then all we do is introduce a cliquishness and elitism in a subculture that already has much too much of that sort of thing.

Love is the law, love under will.

Vocation to truth (Written after morning zazen)

For years I chased the idea of vocation,

as if it were something to get,

something to wear; a robe, a cassock,

a merit badge to show my worth to the world,

to myself.

 

I joined Aleister Crowley's A.'.A.'. in search of it, 

and was led along the road of truth,

up the garden path.

 

I considered joining a monastery;

Trappist, perhaps even Carthusian,

to spend my days singing psalms,

hoeing beans,

and other menial work.

 

For a time, I toyed with Buddhism, 

should I shave my head,

wear the robe,

carry the bowl?

 

Did I, do I, have a vocation? 

The question asked itself of me,

day and night.

“Yes”, came the reply,

again and again, 

and still I sought,

as if I hadn't heard.

 

Not to the cloister,

nor the robe and bowl, 

least of all to the costume

and the knowing, beatific smile of one who's got

what he thinks he always wanted.

Only a vocation to truth (small t).

Not the Truth:

(You can't handle the Truth!),

hidden from the profane

behind a robe and a wall,

which only invitation to ‘the club’ would reveal.

 

But the 'truth' of small things: 

Getting up, sitting down,

a cup of coffee.

Knee that aches on wet days,

A walk in the park. 

The quiet return to what is, 

as it is in itself,

when robes, orders, 

things to admire in a mirror, are put away, 

like my son's scattered toys

that I put away each morning.

Can the A.'.A.'. system be traversed alone?

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

This is something that I've often thought about since beginning the work, given that Thelemites on the whole, aside from those who join a group largely for the social aspect, tend to be solitary types, wary of authority, and really not 'joiners'. Given this propensity for solitude there is an important question to ask: Can you do the work of the A.'.A.'. alone?

The short answer I think is, yes, sure, you can, and a lot of people have apparently done so. There's nobody to judge them except their own Holy Guardian Angel, and if what they get out of a purely solitary path is acceptable to them, then the Order has served it's purpose with respects to them. 

On the other hand, what people don't seem to realise, is that the A.'.A.'. work is solitary anyway, even if you sign up under a teacher and formally undergo the rituals of initiation and receive testing and training before having a third party sign off on your work, the vast bulk of your practice is alone, self motivated. What you do get, or should get, is guidance on thing you might otherwise have missed, comradeship of one who has been where you are in terms of grades and knows how to gauge your progress, and not least, that tenuous connection to a line of initiates going back at least 100 years at this point to Crowley, and arguably before that to the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucian and back to the medieval hermetic traditions and beyond. 

While the work can be conducted alone I would add some caveats. Firstly, quality control will be severely diminished. You simply don’t have the benefit of an observer keeping you focussed and stopping you dissapearing up your own arse. With nobody to dispel illusions there is the danger of thinking you’re doing better than you are. There is always the risk of claiming grades with no outside validation. I’ve seen firsthand the fallout of individuals trying to claim grades before they are ready, and it’s usually messy.

Secondly, advancement implies potentially taking in students. But if you haven’t been evaluated by a supervisor then pretty much anyone can set up as whatever grade and take in students. 

Thirdly, if you are fully independent then you don’t have lineal connection to Aleister Crowley’s A.’.A.’.. in my opinion, to use those initials and that claim without having actually been joined to the chain of initiation is misrepresentation. While in a certain sense, anyone who claimed A.’.A.’. is A.’.A.’., this refers to the sempiternal Order, and does not automatically give linkage to the Order founded by Jones and Crowley, and to imply otherwise is pure deception.

Love is the law, love under will.

Field notes from Geburah

Do what though wilt shall be the whole of the Law

In my 20’s I spent four years in the British Army. I wasn’t a particularly good soldier, nor a particularly bad one, just a young guy doing something to raise money to go back into education, and choosing in a way to embody an archetype that many young men feel called to, that of the warrior. 

I left the army in 2007 after 4 years and 2 tours of active service. I went back into education, completed a bachelors degree and later a PhD. At one point a friend and teacher commented that the army didn’t seem to have left a lasting impression, and in some ways, I would have agreed at that point. But the reality is very different once you dig beneath the surface. In the army they sometimes say a person has ‘green blood’, that is to say they are a soldier beneath their skin, and now, nearly 20 years later, I would have to agree, the psyche has a way of revealing what the conscious mind overlooks or seeks to avoid, ‘the truth will out’ so to speak, as we will see.

After leaving the military, for many years I would dream that I was back in my old regiment, in the barracks, with old comrades and people I had served with. There were also anxiety and avoidance markers; often I would be without my kit, or carrying too much, or wondering where my helmet or other essential bit of kit was. Mostly there was something that needed doing before heading off on some journey. 

Usually I was annoyed, upset at being back there, I thought I’d left all that behind and yet there I was, still in uniform, still a soldier, if an unwilling and unprepared one. Dreams of this sort replayed for years on and off: recall, unpreparedness, a journey, unwilling to go back or frustration at the situation and inability to fix or control it. All these things expressing my inner attitude towards the Geburah archetypes in a more or less unintegrated way; rejection of the responsibility, of the job in hand that I didn’t want to do, inability or unwillingness to face the reality of it.

Occasionally these would be interspersed with dreams of an enemy that I was unwilling to face, a feared conflict. Again, all myself trying to avoid facing something, feeling that I’d done what I could and wanted out, that I wasn’t ‘a soldier’ anymore and it was nothing to do with me. 

These weren’t memories recurring, memories actually don’t come up much at all, and unlike many I never developed any symptoms of PTSD, no flashbacks or panic attacks or that sort of thing. Rather, the images I see were symbols, the psyche circling something it wasn’t ready to face directly. I am reminded of a book that made a deep impression on me as a child, Ursula Le Guin’s novel ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’, where the Gebbeth figure, the protagonist’s shadow grows stronger the more he fled from it. These dreams have the same numinous quality: pursuit by something I didn’t want to acknowledge, thoughtless flight in fear and loathing from an unseen horror.

Gradually this shifted, life has a way of putting things in your path whether you like them or not, and somehow, we have to adapt. As life goes on and we consciously adjust, our inner/initiatic processes mirror this, and the internal, subconscious self adapts to the reality of things. In short, we mature. Here we see a slow turn from unintegrated Geburah, all avoidance and resistance, towards a more mature relationship with the warrior archetype, if we are willing to bear with it.

Last nights dream marked a step towards integration of sorts, and that at the behest not of the Ruach/Ego, but the insertion of archetypal, Briatic structure and material into the dreamscape. In this dream I was in a red sandy battlefield, with other soldiers in a unit that had been reconstituted, and I was a member of it, I knew these men (Karma, Fortune, the path of Kaph). This was different, mythic rather than personal, and definitely Geburan in nature: it wasn’t training, or the barracks, or searching for kit, I was on the journey, in the field, and much less looking for a way out in the usual sulky sense of refusal to participate that usually marks such dreams, I was in the thick, thinking only about how to survive.

We were under fire, and gradually all my comrades were killed until only I remained, alone (Yod, The Hermit), solely responsible, the only one left to make a decision. There was also one enemy soldier left; not a monster, but a highly skilled special forces soldier (skilled, aware, worthy, not a mindless monster but a warrior worth facing). This was no ordinary dream projection but a being with agency, a ‘player’ rather than an ‘NPC’, in modern parlance.

While I tried to creep close to avoid detection, he suddenly rose up in front of me where I hid behind a sand bank. When I went to open fire the trigger on my rifle just fell right off. I could do nothing. The ego’s tool, the soldiers rifle failed in the moment of crisis. In Geburah we can’t always just open fire when things get intense. Another approach is needed. The correct approach may be indicated by the tarot Atu ‘Strength’, and the path of Teth, which in a certain sense indicates grace. Out of the strong came forth sweetness.

I ran, I ran through the red sand desert (Classic Mars Geburah landscape), through old building and houses, barrack rooms and other familiar places (Yesod and Hod, the familiar structures of identity and memory, and here representing the path of the Tower, the path of Peh, where the tower is finally broken). I emerged  at night into green fields of arable crops under a starlit sky (Netzach, organic, fecund, alive). This segment of dream imagery clearly showed how the process was going to play out in Yetzirah. But rather than a rearranging of the psychological furniture, this is a flight through the Sephirah UP the path of the lightning, not away from it. Fleeing to find a weapon, to fight, not fleeing in terror.

The enemy soldier was still following me, the enemy army was still on my left, dug in just behind the hill and partially obscured by tall crops. At night all I could see were vast shadowy shapes like monsters and unknowable terrors ready to be let loose, vast, archetypical forces seen at a distance. Creeping past, hoping to find a weapon or an escape, I was suddenly accosted by a group of enemy soldiers. At that moment I knew I was caught, and I also knew that there was only one way out, only one ‘password’, so to speak. I stood up, with my hands up and shouted “I’m just like you. We’re not different!” Here we have recognition at an ontological level, and the separation between what I am and what I am not, the Briatic ego mask can finally dissolve at the recognition. Again this goes deeper than the shadow of the ego as described by Jung and Le Guin, back to the Geburah root of the Neshemah in which the first soldier was the test and the guide, the group of soldiers thus constitute the inhabitants of the Sepirah.

At my words they changed, they came closer, examined my kit, my broken rifle, spoke to each other in a foreign language, were more curious than aggressive. In that moment of recognition, the enemy ceased to be an enemy. The shadow became human. By recognising that kinship I had survived and been allowed to enter. Like the wizard Ged turning at last after long flight to face the Gebbeth figure, the shadow that grew stronger the more he fled, the alienated part of hisself that he dare not acknowledge. The act of recognition, of integration, dissolved the perceived threat of the unknown ‘other’ and allowed genuine communication to occur. 

What had pursued me for years as a perceived enemy became human, became manageable and relatable. In that that moment something in me finally turned to face myself, to utter the name of the shadow, which is my own name. For years these dreams showed me running from duty, from responsibility, my own psychological resistance preventing integration, but now, knowing the password, finally turning towards it, accepting, integrating, and being made whole by it.

In initiatiory terms this also highlights how we often need to revisit paths and processes at different levels as we go on, paths are never completely finished but remains open, recurring in the four worlds. My first time crossing the path of Peh many years ago now was fairly conceptual, yetziratic, psychological, involving the collapse of intellectual certainty and the illusions of thought and control, the breaking of a rigid Ruach. And now at the archetypal level where the story of the self, the ‘karma’ of the initiate, is destroyed by the supernal lightning and for the first time in a long time new energy can enter the world.

Love is the law, love under will.

On vertical and horizontal relationships in A.'.A.'.

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Teacher/student relationships of any kind are inherently unbalanced, the teacher appears to have authority, and the student is obliged to reveal themselves in ways which are somewhat unnatural in order for assessment to take place. This places great responsibility on the teacher, which is why my supervisor advocates that nobody of lower grade than 5=6 take on students.

In principle, I agree with his opinion. Unfortunately however this seldom works in practice for practical reasons, essentially not enough Adepti to go around. To deal with this issue we select students of at least one grade higher, but the higher the better, than their prospective students, who in theory should be able to take on the responsibility. In some ways this experience is part of the test of their grade, and at the very least is likely to give them a reality check.

These relationships are tricky enough as it is, but when you throw romance and sex into the mix, things can get messy quickly. I have seen more than one promising initiate founder on this particular rock, and so, while we cannot outright forbid such relationships, we in no way condone them. For a start, it's highly unprofessional, as much as, if not more so than if a professor were to sleep with their students, and more than one spiritual group has come apart at the seams due to these sorts of relationships, so this is a known risk and we'd be fools to ignore it.

In the Neophyte grade we hear of the Vampire ordeal. We should be aware that this can take any form and occur at any grade. The 'vampire' may also be as much victim as the vampirised, especially in a Probationer/Neophyte situation where both are relatively new to the system and comparatively untested, their vulnerabilities not fully uncovered. This mutual parasitism may at first appear sweet. Where each is delighted not only that their carnal desires are being satisfied, but that their paramour seems to share so much, even the path itself!

Such couples might last, and may settle into something workable, so are not to be entirely denied. But there is strong potential for real progress to stop right here as the couple direct their energies to one another, the Great Work becomes an afterthought, or little more than a pantomime, with sex as the real object.

The more common situation is eventual breakup. The relationship is inherently unbalanced, and being conducted between two essentially unbalanced individuals (initiation is an unbalancing act, by definition it upsets the status quo). Then, when the rupture comes, it affects not only the romantic, but the professional relationship with which it has become entwined. One or the other, but usually the junior member of a pair, is cast adrift, and both may suffer damage.

This is not just theory, I've seen it on more than one occasion and this lineage nearly fell apart about a decade ago for this exact reason, when a relationship at the heart of things fell apart, so did the lineal secession as the junior member, who happened to be my superior, resigned from the Order and was never heard from again. Therefore I can only recommend that teachers maintain professional integrity, so those who swear an Oath to attain by the methods of the A.'.A.'., and who recognise that their attainment is based on service to their inferiors, should really take this to heart, and think twice before taking a student to the bedroom.

Love is the law, love under will.