Builders of the Adytum
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I would be interested to know what your opinion is about the BOTA system as a means of attainment, as contrasted with that of OTO or AA.
I do not mean to begin an ongoing negative criticism of a respected order, I am merely curious to know of any experiences or thoughts people have about BOTA
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@Parzival said
"I would be interested to know what your opinion is about the BOTA system as a means of attainment, as contrasted with that of OTO or AA."
I have the highest regard for B.O.T.A.
Paul Case's tarot instruction, and his way of organizing this into well-paced correspondence course lessons is IMHO unsurpassed in the whole of occult literature.
Contrasting it to either O.T.O. or A.'.A.'. isn't a one-for-one comparison.
B.O.T.A. has two primary levels of training: Their correspondence course work (which is an implementation of the Outer Court, or pre-initiatic phase of training) and their Chapter work (First and Second Order initiation in the fashion of the Golden Dawn). Their greatest strength IMO is in the Outer Court and First Order work.
A.'.A.'. on the other hand is quite a different level - its earliest stages are on a par with B.O.T.A.'s Second Order.
I see Crowley as having been sent to reform the Inner Order work, and Case as having been sent to reform the Outer Order work. (In Temple of Thelema we are blessed to be able to draw on both of these inspired streams.)
O.T.O., on the other hand, isn't what I would call "a means of attainment" - at least, not in the levels where most of the membership exists. I would more call it a fellowship forwarding a particular social philosophy.
Another difference between B.O.T.A. and anything you mentioned is that it rests on a Gnostic Christian foundation rather than a Thelemic one. Their Gnostic Christian themed Chapter work would be the closest parallel to Temple of Thelema's First Order initiation work (which, however, is on a Christian basis).
A very close parallel to B.O.T.A.'s Chapter work is the First Order of Fraternitas L.V.X. Occulta, which I can recommend heartily for those who seek a more Christian theme to their initiation work.
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@RifRaf said
"I was in B.O.T.A. for a handfull of years, and I did really take alot from the outer order work. They will send you packets on how to draw hebrew characters, alot of tarot courses, and of course the study of the Qabalah. They, however, do not perform rituals of any sort."
That's the correspondence work - the Outer Court - not the initiated Chapter Work. (And not entirely true in the correspondence work. Consider the ritual work in the second lesson accompany Seven Steps, and the esxtensive ritual work in the Color & Sound courses.
Their initiated Chapter work contains ritual on a comparable basis to the G.D.
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@RifRaf said
"from what I have seen, the O.T.O. is a Masonic styled gathering of socially inept people."
The O.T.O. folks I know (quite a few of them) seem no more socially inept than anyone else. I gather from what I've read, though, that some local bodies are more mature than others.
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I had always understood OTO to be a method of attainment, are there ways in which it is? I recall Crowley writing that one may attain 6=5 with OTO, but nothing more. I'm unsure where I read that.
How does Thoth tarot compare with the BOTA system? Would there be benefits in studying both? Are there known contradictions? -
@Parzival said
"How does Thoth tarot compare with the BOTA system? Would there be benefits in studying both? Are there known contradictions?"
BOTA follows the old Golden Dawn Tarot attributions, not the Thelemic ones. And this is where I'm confused. Jim has said else where that the old attributions of cards 4 & 17 are wrong, and The Book of the Law provides the correction. So what is the point of entering into a training system with the intention of imprinting your psyche with incorrect information?
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@Parzival said
"I had always understood OTO to be a method of attainment, are there ways in which it is? I recall Crowley writing that one may attain 6=5 with OTO, but nothing more. I'm unsure where I read that.
"The OTO used to have magickal training in its official curriculum and if one were to actually understand and undertake the teachings, then by reaching 9th degree, one would be on a similar magickal level as a 6=5. However, while Lodges may teach magickal seminars, it isn't a part of the official curriculum anymore and thus one may advance quite high within its degrees without doing so much as a banishing ritual. It is a mundane fraternity and isn't the same as when Crowley headed it up - quite another beast altogether
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@Her said
"BOTA follows the old Golden Dawn Tarot attributions, not the Thelemic ones. And this is where I'm confused. Jim has said else where that the old attributions of cards 4 & 17 are wrong, and The Book of the Law provides the correction. So what is the point of entering into a training system with the intention of imprinting your psyche with incorrect information?"
Oh, it didn't mess me up too much!
The course work is remarkable regardless. So little is related to that detail that I don't consider it a bother. If there were other courses with even one-tenth the value on Qabalah, Tarot, and general consciousness training, I'd happily recommend them - but, if they exist, I've never encountered them. I recommend the best I know.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The course work is remarkable regardless. So little is related to that detail that I don't consider it a bother. "
It's certainly bothering me at the moment while reading Case's, The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order.
The fact that Case seems to be able to see meaningful insights in correspondences that are "supposedly" wrong is maddening. It kind of shakes your faith in the whole notion of correct correspondences.In my worst moments I almost believe that it wouldn't matter what correspondences were used because you can see anything you want to see, and that must be what Case is doing with cards 4 & 17, if they are indeed wrong.
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@Her said
"The fact that Case seems to be able to see meaningful insights in correspondences that are "supposedly" wrong is maddening. It kind of shakes your faith in the whole notion of correct correspondences."
There's always a little bit of "fudge" room in making interpretations - especially because all of these separate expressions are, in fact, describing a single thing that only looks like different things.
But remember also that most of the attributions of The Emperor and The Star stay with them.
Additionally, one of the filters here is that traditional Western mysticism has been predominantly male-deity oriented. There are so many ideas of divine expression that the Judeo-Christian express through an image such as The Emperor but which, with but the recognition of the female idea of deity, are even more elegantly expressed by The Star.
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@Her said
"The fact that Case seems to be able to see meaningful insights in correspondences that are "supposedly" wrong is maddening. It kind of shakes your faith in the whole notion of correct correspondences.
In my worst moments I almost believe that it wouldn't matter what correspondences were used because you can see anything you want to see"
It's interesting to see how others react to things like this. I guess I'm out of the mainstream in my "occult education," because this has always been at the back of my mind, and it's never been "maddening" to me. Maybe, though, it's been a hindrance to my ability to really "delve deeply" into one particular set of correspondences!
I would recommend Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game as an interesting novel to read in this context. The fictional "game" of idea association is one that readers of 777 would recognize on an intuitive level. But Hesse's portrayal of the "game players" is a very conflicted one: on one hand, they are removed from the world's problems in their effete and obscure pursuits; on the other hand, their play is tantamount to a sacramental celebration of ideas and their interconnections. The stress between the two positions recalls the strain between believing in one "true" set of correspondences (or even gematria "proofs?!"), and seeing that it's all arbitrary but still valuable.
One warning: you probably don't want to read Oswald Wirth's Tarot of the Magicians, because he makes a quite elegant case for Levi's French system of Tarot/Hebrew correspondences (Aleph=Magician, Beth=Priestess, etc), which is different in 21 of the 22 cases from either the Golden Dawn's or Crowley's attributions!
Steve
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@Steven Cranmer said
"One warning: you probably don't want to read Oswald Wirth's Tarot of the Magicians, because he makes a quite elegant case for Levi's French system of Tarot/Hebrew correspondences (Aleph=Magician, Beth=Priestess, etc), which is different in 21 of the 22 cases from either the Golden Dawn's or Crowley's attributions!
"Yes. It works until you actually start to put it on the Tree.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"There's always a little bit of "fudge" room in making interpretations - especially because all of these separate expressions are, in fact, describing a single thing that only looks like different things."
I quite like this response. It's something that the more that I study the Qabala, the more that I see.
I think that there's one key thing to remember is that each of these individuals, whether Levi, Case, Crowley, Achad, etc were writing about the Qabala as it reveiled itself to them. We can study their trees to aid us in finding insight but ultimately, its one's own Qabala - ones own Tree that needs to be discovered. This is a map of the Self, which I think people loose sight of.
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93!
I've worked with Thoth deck for years, I still do since it's always been my favorite. I started taking BOTA's correspondance course about a year ago to broaden my scope. I've enjoyed it so far since the pace set to do the lessons doesn't demand too much time, which leaves more time to do other studies. I haven't found it to give me any problem when i switch back and forth between Thoth and their deck, probably because Thoth is what I learned first.
I always switch the attributions between IV and XVII just out of habit when I use the BOTA deck.
IMO, BOTA is worth it if you are just wanting some easy paced lessons that don't demand a whole lot of your time. One thing I did liked about their course is they give you a bare uncolored set of major arcanna, and thru the course you actually paint/color your major arcana to the color scales for each card. I thought it was a very handy way to learn the color scales.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Her said
"BOTA follows the old Golden Dawn Tarot attributions, not the Thelemic ones. And this is where I'm confused. Jim has said else where that the old attributions of cards 4 & 17 are wrong, and The Book of the Law provides the correction. So what is the point of entering into a training system with the intention of imprinting your psyche with incorrect information?"Oh, it didn't mess me up too much!
The course work is remarkable regardless. So little is related to that detail that I don't consider it a bother. If there were other courses with even one-tenth the value on Qabalah, Tarot, and general consciousness training, I'd happily recommend them - but, if they exist, I've never encountered them. I recommend the best I know."
Is it possible to get copies of those correspondences online the same way you can get some old tomes on .PDFs?
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You could just write to BOTA and actually pay for it.
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@Dannerz said
"Is it possible to get copies of those correspondences online the same way you can get some old tomes on .PDFs?"
Not legally
And I discourage acquiring them en masse (aside from the fact that BOTA deserves to be paid their modest monthly dues for them) because the lessons are well-paced so that you spend a certain amount of time on each. This gives time for subconsciousness to process them and integrate the information. (This is a pretty big deal, but it's hard to make it sound all that important unless you've done this sort of coursework before.)
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Dannerz said
"Is it possible to get copies of those correspondences online the same way you can get some old tomes on .PDFs?"Not legally
"I once ran across one segment of the BOTA lessons advertised for sale -- but the asking price was far more than it would have cost to join BOTA and obtain the lessons legitimately!
You can get a flavor of the BOTA approach to Tarot from reading Jason Lotterhand's Thursday Night Tarot, and of Case's approach to Qabalah from the endnotes in his Book of Tokens. Both books repay careful study.
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If one has already embraced Thelema, read and studied beyond the required student syllabus books, and is working with the Thoth tarot yet is too far from a TOT and the only resort to training and serious practice is the BOTA outer order, do you recommend taking this path knowing certain things like attributions of certain Tarot cards are wrong. Also, I've seen mentioned BOTA and the "Age of Aqaurius" so I understand they have not accepted the Age of Horus. I was wondering if this would interfere in any way with my Thelemic path if I took the outer order correspondence lessons. I have a Christian background (early upbringing) so that aspect does not inhibit me. But I certainly do not want to give up the LBRP, Gematria, Yoga or celebration of the Thelemic Holy Season.
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@Nudor said
"If one has already embraced Thelema, read and studied beyond the required student syllabus books, and is working with the Thoth tarot yet is too far from a TOT and the only resort to training and serious practice is the BOTA outer order, do you recommend taking this path knowing certain things like attributions of certain Tarot cards are wrong."
This kind of “speaks to my condition”, as the Quakers say. Although I have not “embraced Thelema” nor studied it as deeply as you, I want to continue exploring its ideas and enjoy the discussion here. At the same time, I am hungry for “live” contact with people of a seriously esoteric turn of mind.
Reading the discussion of BOTA here, I explored pertinent websites and was pleased to discover a BOTA temple within an hour of where I live. I gather a New Zealander back in the 1960s, having been involved with the GD, made contact with PFC’s heir, Ann Davies. She visited New Zealand about 1965 and approved the setting up of a local chapter.
They naturally asked me how I’d discovered BOTA and I said I knew the name and a bit of basic information from long ago, but had most recently seen it discussed in “an online forum”. This week one of them put me on the spot and asked “which forum?” I said “you’ll probably tell me to wash my mouth out, but they’re Thelemites.” I got a distinctly frosty reaction and was advised that it would be better not to talk about it with BOTAns [?] present
Nevertheless there’s a lot of “common ground” between me and them and it’s refreshing to attend their services. I haven’t made it to one of their Tuesday Ann Davies lecture series yet; other things keep interfering. Maybe there is a higher influence trying to keep me away (or testing my resolve)
The sermon at the first service I attended happened to be on the subject of Abel [Havel] and was illustrated, naturally, by the Tarot “keys” Heh (V, Emperor), Beth (I, Magician) and Lamedh (XI, Justice). The differences couldn’t have been accented more immediately if they’d deliberately planned it!
I’m also a little disoriented by their invoking the Archangels of the four quarters on a Northern Hemisphere pattern; as I said in a discussion here on Liber Resh, I feel more comfortable with Fire and Michael in the North.
For the present, I can, for the sake of the congenial and mind-stretching discussion, indulge in a little “doublethink”; at least I think I can. Maybe I am just a dabbler
I’d better settle to one Path soon, or it may be too late for my present incarnation."Also, I've seen mentioned BOTA and the "Age of Aquarius" so I understand they have not accepted the Age of Horus… "
Did Horus supplant Aquarius? I see the successions Osiris -> Horus and Pisces -> Aquarius as two different things.
One odd seeming link between Thelema and BOTA nags at me:
In AL II,7:Hadit says: "I am the Axle of the Wheel and the Cube in the Circle"http://www.2000biz.com/pfc/images/botacube.gif
The way the circle is drawn here, it’s very reminiscent of the Waite/PFC Wheel [Atu X]; “BOTA” is not far from “ROTA” [2/200], Sulphur, Salt and Mercury are in both figures, and there is the Cube as I have always imagined it from the Hadit verse, with its longest diagonal as the “axle”.
It’s unlikely that PFC (or whoever devised that badge) was citing AL, and the reverse is chronologically impossible. Were they both drawing on some older cube-in-circle/wheel tradition?
OP