La papesse

 

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

La Papesse is a quietly subversive figure in the tarot de Marseille. In some of the Besançon decks she is one of those censored and replaced with the Roman Goddess Juno, (along with Jupiter as a replacement for La Pape), due to the sensitivity of such figures in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. It is uncertain whether this was to avoid offending the Catholics, because the protestants didn’t want reminders of papal authority, or perhaps a combination of the two. But in any case, I find it best to stick with the original designations and tend to regard Juno and Jupiter as placeholders, so will stick the La Papesse.

But who is she? She is sometimes called Pope Joan, referring to a woman who, disguised as a man, rose through the church hierarchy to be elected pope. Whether she really existed or not is unknown, and it seems likely that if such a person did exist then the catholic church would be keen to suppress such heretical information. As for Joan herself, the story goes that her secret was safe until she got pregnant by a lover, which obviously rather blew her cover!

In any case, La Papesse is an authority figure, but from the renaissance and late medieval perspective a paradoxical figure, and a rather countercultural one. In an age where the church was (as it still is) dominated by men, the fact that a woman could rise to such heights is unthinkable. Yet she did so, by intellect, by secrecy and immense strategy and wisdom, though she seems a passive figure, she’s clearly nobody’s fool.

In the card itself she is seen as a woman clad in papal vestment, holding a book of (presumably) scripture, perhaps her Breviary or Book of Hours. She thus teaches theological or spiritual truths from a position of authority, yet a veiled one where her true nature is not known. A Jungian might call her the Anima, and later traditions call her the High Priestess, but coming from a Christian society I feel that her designation La Papesse, should be honoured as her existence itself is a challenge to the monolithic authority and dogmatic rigidity of that system, one which we in the west imbibe, whether we know it or not, from the moment we are born.

La Papesse shows that even within a rigid hierarchical and dogmatic system there is room for quiet spirituality, intuition, receptivity and sensitivity to the higher. She is a gateway figure, but not a dogmatic one, rather she beckons from behind the veil for those who would seek real wisdom. She is transgressive in that she does not insist on norms and rules, all the while existing within those rules as a quiet current of spirituality.

All in all she is one of my favourite cards in the tarot for her simplicity conjoined with intelligence and not a little bit of guile. She fools by being unrecognised, unseen for what she really is to those bound and blinded by rules and structure, and thus is able to operate and teach in a gentle and intuitive way. She is the gentle home room teacher in an otherwise strict school, the kindly aunt, the older lady, not necessarily family, who has something to teach based on a life lived among adversity, experience turned to wisdom, and her lesson is the second to come in the series of trump cards, where the seeker is still young and clear eyed enough to receive her gifts.

Love is the law, love under will.

Le Bateleur

 

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

After putting it off for a bit, I wanted to make a start on my exploration of the Tarot de Marseille. This is not such a simple task as it seems, and as a seasoned occultist one thing I have to deal with is decades of Golden Dawn type interpretations based on book T, Crowley’s Book of Thoth, and popular interpretations largely developed from the Rider-Waite tarot. However, the Marseille is older, has a messier and more organic background, being essentially the first mass-market version of the tarot available, created shortly after the invention of the printing press, and drawing not on the occult writings of 19^th and 20^th century occultists, but on centuries of culture, philosophy, and the popular tropes and imagery developed especially in the period from the late Middle Ages to the renaissance.

Not being an expert on these things either, I don’t feel I can interpret accurately from that position either, and would be more likely to confuse than elucidate. So instead, I’m going to take a completely naïve approach, and while I cannot avoid drawing on my own experience and background to some extent, I want to avoid drawing up correspondences or anything so mechanical, and instead just say what I see. I would ask you therefore to take these observations in the spirit of playful exploration, rather than anything definitive.

On to the first card: Le Bateleur: who is this guy? He stands, brightly dressed, a big flamboyant hat, a short want held lightly in his left hand, the other holding some small object. In the Ben-Dov it could be a dice or a token. In the Jean-Pierre Payan it looks like a red ball. Perhaps he’s going to do the ball and cup trick? In any case he looks like the sort of street magician you might meet at the fair, willing to entertain you with the illusion that you might actually win something. There is something of the trickster, deft, poised to take you money and put it into the purse he has ready on his table. This is not somebody I would trust but the kind of person who with a twinkle in his eye and a friendly smile, would take the shirt of your back and encourage you to keep playing. After all, one more game, you might win it all back…

He also seems to exude intelligence, a sort of craftiness and worldliness. There is a creativity here, but it’s the creativity of manipulating objects and situations, even people. He could be a politician, spinning a fantastic vision of ‘sunlit uplands’ to lure the masses, appealing to their prejudice for his own gain. But he could equally be a sort of artist, a musician or other dextrous creative, perhaps an actor.

What would he mean in a spread? I guess it depends. If describing the questioner, he may speak of developing certain skills, he’s a tradesman after all, in his way. Nonetheless he’s not a high level creative but more at the level of the street hawker or the journeyman, he askes to develop your craft and rely on your wits. He may also represent someone out to deceive, a false choice, someone stringing you along with promises that never come to anything.

So far, I think my impressions have been largely negative, but I feel I would not be doing Le Bateleur justice if I left it at that. He’s undauntedly also clever, resourceful, and may represent the development of important social and life skills. How to get on in the world which, after all, if taken too much at face value, can be ruinous. So, he may also council to be aware, cautious, ‘as wise as a serpent’, navigating the world with a certain adroitness.

So overall he’s an interesting character, one of the first people we meet in our life journey, and whether he teaches us something useful, tries to fleece us, or anything else, we can still learn a lot from the interaction.

Love is the law, love under will.

 

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.