Thelemic Holy Season
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@PatchworkSerpen said
"Why you attributed the 22 days (and thus readings) of the Thelemic Holy Season to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, rather than to the 22 Tarot trumps. I have no personal sway either way - I was just curious as to what made you choose one over the other."
No decisive reason. It would only have made a difference in four cases, of course. It did have to go in this sequence, from Tav to Alef, or XXI to 0, though I suppose there's no compelling reason to force it one way or the other.
Given that the sequence of Hebrew letters is our natural path of evolution up the Tree, it seems worthwhile to follow that sequence in drill whenever possible.
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I see, thanks.
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I knew that the Star and the Emperor were switched, "Tzaddi is not the Star"
But I didn't realize until today that the Lust card and Adjustment were switched.What is the reasoning for this switch?
Thank you.
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@AliceKnewI said
"I knew that the Star and the Emperor were switched, "Tzaddi is not the Star"
But I didn't realize until today that the Lust card and Adjustment were switched."It goes according to the Hebrew letters, not the (slightly arbitrary) Tarot trump numbers. In this sense, nothing is "switched." It just follows the pattern of the letters themselves (just as one does in advancing up the Tree).
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Why are the Hebrew letters in a different order than the numbers on the cards?
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@AliceKnewI said
"Why are the Hebrew letters in a different order than the numbers on the cards?
"Long discussion, T., that has been gone over here several times and is touched upon briefly in The Book of Thoth. it has to do with loops in the zodiac card sequence that seem to have been a way to track the procession of the equinoxes. (Notice how the zodiac card numbers pivot around Pisces and Virgo, where the equinoxes have been for the last 1,794 years: the cards that seem out of place are the axes Aries-Libra and Leo-Aquarius.)
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@Jim Eshelman said
"it has to do with loops in the zodiac card sequence that seem to have been a way to track the procession of the equinoxes. (Notice how the zodiac card numbers pivot around Pisces and Virgo, where the equinoxes have been for the last 1,794 years: the cards that seem out of place are the axes Aries-Libra and Leo-Aquarius.)"
Fascinating... Interesting to ponder what this all might mean, and how a connection with the equinoxes might differentiate the Tarot sequence from the Hebrew one as a whole. I wonder if the Tarot sequence is more... "temporal".
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Tarot has changed with time, so in that sense it probably is. An important thing to remember, though, is that it is fairly new (as the progress of the ages go).
If you take the esoteric history handed down through the initiated tradition, Tarot was created when the equinoxes were at 18° Pisces-Virgo. The slightly more conservative timing of c. 1300 (about the time The Zohar was written) sets the equinoxes exactly at 15° Pisces-Virgo. The exoteric origin dates of Tarot (c. 1450) sets this at 13° Pisces-Virgo.
In other words (whichever date was picked), Tarot was invented approximately halfway through the Pisces Age when astrology was (in Europe) starting to slip off the correct zodiac to the Tropical concoction. Inherent in Tarot's architecture appears to be a preserving of the actual orientation of the equinoxes and solstices (I can't look at Crowley's diagram in The Book of Thoth without having it look like it is showing the Sun's maximum declination in Gemini and least declination in Sagittarius - which is astronomically correct.)
One can speculate on whether the Tarot sequence will need to change to adapt to this once the equinoxes enter Aquarius-Leo in another four centuries. Possibly not, if the agrarian (and even earthbound) aspects of the human condition have been sufficiently reduced. Possibly so, though, because we don't really know where the human condition will be by then. On a totally speculative basis, one might thing the Tarot numbering sequence then would be something as follows - and would have its own new (slightly varied) story to tell. (Letter attributions stay the same. Only the numbering sequence would change.)
0 - The Fool
1 - The Magus
2 - The Priestess
3 - The Empress
4 - The Star
5 - The Hierophant
6 - The Lovers
7 - The Hermit
8 - Lust
9 - The Chariot
10 - Fortune
11 - Adjustment
12 - The Hanged Man
13 - Death
14 - Art
15 - The Moon
16 - The Tower
17 - The Emperor
18 - The Devil
19 - The Sun
20 - The Aeon
21 - The UniverseOr something like that. (But... remember... this is all speculation, and unlikely of any use for the next four centuries at least.)
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That bit about using the swaps to communicate the progression of the equinoxes, with it's evolving resulting symbolism patterning the evolution of The Mythos...
That's deep...
The pictures are all still right, but Tzaddi is no longer The Star...
And what was once concealed in Heh and Tzaddi is now the Revealed.
...If you chose to read "but Tzaddi is not The Star" to indicate the expression of the current point in an evolving progression of communication from the Ancient.
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@Legis said
"The pictures are all still right, but Tzaddi is no longer The Star..."
I hold that Tzaddi never was The Star. That was a blind. The Zohar specifically says that Tzaddi has a secret that is being held for a later time and not revealed by God, and I believe this was the secret meant. Additionally, Nuit doesn't say, "Tzaddi is no longer the star;" she just says it is not the star. I don't think a single letter attribution to Tarot has changed, but that the truth couldn't be outed until the 20th Century.
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@Legis said
"Yeah, I may be daydreaming a bit here. but I'm entertaining the possibility that the "later time" for which the secret was "being held" began with the reception of The Law."
It makes sense to me that, during an era of reigning patriarchy, it was necessary to bullshit people into thinking Tarot exalted the imperial male high on the Tree. Also, The Star was generally taken as a symbol of nature, essentially a Nefesh symbol. In the "this is all they can handle" sense, it communicated better. {"The Lamb" was placed in the role that The Star rightly holds within us.)
With the signal to overthrow Osirian patriarchy and the revelation of the deeper meaning of the symbol of The Star, this could be revealed.
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Really interesting stuff Jim - the new Tarot sequence for Aquarius-Leo was exactly the line of thinking I was going along. Definitely an idea that goes deeper and deeper.
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@kasper81 said
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@AliceKnewI said
"
The Thelemic Holy Season is coming up! Yay! 
www.thelema.org/home/thelemic_holy_season.html"Is anyone finding correlations here with activity on the day?."
If this were so, it would be a claim that every year this would be so. Personally, not on a level I'd call "special." In other words, I can claim that I see correlation because I choose to make it so.
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What is the connection between Liber Arcanorum and the Death tarot card? (For the Thelemic Holy Season on March 28th.)
My understanding is that each line of Liber Arcanorum describes the trumps.
Thank you.
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@AliceKnewI said
"What is the connection between Liber Arcanorum and the Death tarot card? (For the Thelemic Holy Season on March 28th.)"
Well... read it.
I started to answer directly and decided I'd wait until after tomorrow. If it is still unclear after tomorrow (presuming you read it tomorrow), then write back and I'll answer directly.
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Well, I am giving a presentation on Liber Arcanorum for our study group tonight. And I don't see it yet, how Liber Arcanorum is related to the Death tarot.
I suppose I can't see the forest for the trees. I see that each line corresponds to the tarot trumps. I don't see how the whole thing relates to the death card.
I notice the tarot trumps in Liber Arcanorum are in the Rider-Waite deck order, with Strength card 8 and Justice card 11. I don't know why Waite changed that order. I know the Thoth deck follows the order of the earlier decks with Adjustment as 8 and Lust as 11. So Crowley had not created the Thoth deck yet when he wrote Liber Arcanorum, and was accepting Waite's changes at this time.
I will mention the sigil chart, though my understanding is that the sigil chart is not part of the meditation for the Thelemic Holy Season.
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The sigil are arguably not part of Arcanorum itself. Notice that the two halves have their own separate book titles.
OK, given your reason for asking... A lessee reason is that the winding of these 22 letters on the Tree are expressive as a serpent, a core symbol of Scorpio. The biggest reason is probably that the entire 22-verse book is the outline of initiation through death symbols, especially death interwoven with ideas of sexual love.
There are other small things.
