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.
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