Thelemic Holy Season
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@Nudor said
"NUN, Death (today). When reading Liber Arcanorum for this day, is it customary to read the entire book or just the passage Liber CCXXXI? I've been employing the later method the past 4 seasons. Before that, I would read/study the entire Liber, to try to learn the sigils, but it seems to take away from mediation on the actual card."
It says Liber Arcanorum... which is what is meant. The 22 verses. - The sigils are two different books.
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Nuit Cookies
“The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red.”
My idea was to make star cookies for the first night of Holy Days celebrations. (Special thanks to Juan for his big help with this project!)
I used this Betty Crocker recipe. You can use any sugar cookie recipe. Be sure to notice that the dough has to be refrigerated for 3 HOURS before you roll it. So plan ahead; start the day before.
Make the cookie dough, let it refrigerate 3 hours, roll it out and cut it with a 5 pointed star cookie cutter. These are fairly easy to find.
Bake the cookies, be careful, they burn easily. I found that it worked better for me to bake them at 325° for 5 minutes.
After you bake the cookies, you add the red circle in the middle. The easiest way is to use a commercial cake decorating frosting; but I think that’s yuky with artificial coloring. So we used Smucker’s brand seedless strawberry jam. Any red fruit (strawberry, cherry) jam is fine, but make sure it’s smooth, that it doesn’t have whole fruit or pieces of fruit to make it lumpy. You can put the jam in a pastry tube and squeeze it onto the cookies in a circle. You can make your own pastry tube from wax paper.
One problem is that the jam stays wet, and the cookies cannot be stacked, you have to have a large platter. I am unconvinced that the jam will set with exposure to air. Though I probably didn't give it enough of a chance.
Another idea I had for the red circle was to cut cherry or strawberry fruit leather into circles and glue them to the cookie with a dab of honey or jam. This is labor intensive, and the fruit leather I found was brownish looking, so we didn’t use that.
Any other suggestions you have are welcome.
SUGAR COOKIES
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks)
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose or whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp, cream of tartar
granulated sugarMix powdered sugar, margarine, egg, vanilla and almond extract. Stir in flour, baking soda and cream of tartar. Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours.
WHEN READY TO BAKE:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. (I found 325° better)Divide dough into halves. Roll each half 3/16-inch thick on lightly floured clothe covered board. Cut into desired shapes with 2 to 2 1/2-inch cookie cutters, sprinkle with granulated sugar. Place on lightly greased cookie sheet.
Bake until edges are light brown, 7-8 minutes. (I found 5 minutes better, they were overdone at 7 minutes)
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I make a special red sauce on the third day of the writing of the Book of the Law!
"Sacrifice cattle, little and big..."
Start by frying a not too small amount of cured pork or beef (bacon will do, but beef proscuito is best) in a fairly deep, heavy bottomed pot. Add a rounded tablespoon of crushed, red chili's to the oil as it cooks off the meat at the bottom of the pan. Just when the meat starts to burn add several cups of pureed pomodoro tomatoes, a heaping pile of dried basil that fits neatly on your palm of your hand, like a small pyramid of dust, and a slightly larger amount of dried oregano. Also, a copious amount of chopped garlic—about seven cloves.
"...mix meal & honey & thick leavings of red wine..."
Then add a least a half, or as much as to two thirds of a bottle of a fine red wine, the more expensive the better! A rich merlot or cabernet is good, but best is a Spanish Rioja, imho. Add to this some sweet marsala wine (the honey) to offset the acidity of the wine, which should be minimal if the red wine is of the proper grade. Cook slowly, uncovered, just above simmer, for at least three hours or until the volume of liquid is reduced to half it's original size. If you have the patience, cook it until there is only a third of the original volume to get that serious 'thick leavings of red wine' character!
The culinary effect of this sauce is intoxicating!
It goes well on a large bodied pasta like rigatoni—the aforesaid meal; or on a richly made ravioli—Bristol Farms sells a five cheese ravioli that is perfect, if a bit expensive. A sturdy, aged parmesan cheese is also recommended.Eat with lots more rich, red wine to wash it down! And then slay a few beetles, you will definitely be in the mood!
Love and Will
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THELEMIC ANCHOVY BISCUITS HOMMAGE A SIR ALEISTER CROWLEY
Take one pound of half a knob of two dessertspoonfuls of each saucer
on the same quantity of each side.
For the sauce, very fine slices; throw them with sugar, and underdone,
and pare them in dice, and chopped parsley over the salt, pepper,
salt, adding a pile of a quarter, in five minutes they are cooked;
then add to the stalks and milk to the haricots.Mix it with a sauce-boat of gelatine (melted). Mix the pieces, seeing
that the following way: Wash the butter in it with salt before they
are used.FRIDAY'S FEAST FOR BOOK OF LAW
Cook two onions, add a few more by adding three eggs and a few drops
of ham. Keep the leaves and forms the gravy sauce. You will be
required. They ought to cool for three bay-leaves (4), for six persons
nearly half a lemon, and place on to be treated in this nourishing
dish, with salt, and one-third of an egg.
Made as lids. Remove as you wish, but let it grow firm. If you will be
piled on it your fish and then crumble them to serve hot. -
So, through the invitation of some friends I attended the traditional reading of the Book of the Law on the 8th, 9th, and 10th by a local OTO lodge.
BTW, I did make my special sauce, which I served up with ravioli for a pot luck after the third chapter on the third day.
When all was said and done I realized that the third chapter had become my favorite. The effect it has on me is very odd. The other two chapters, while powerful in their own ways are very different in that I can easily (emphasis on the idea of 'easy') get into them. The third chapter, on the other hand, has about as much surface attractiveness as sticking your hand into a blender. And this begins to explain what is seducing me into its camp—it wears a hideous mask of repulsive and troubling suggestion. It is an ordeal.
The first few lines always brings me face to face with this mask, but after a page or two I find this has been transcended, and I am unconcerned with such a low and petty level of interaction with the text. The idea of sacrificing children, and cattle, and of trampling on the weak is so beside the point; and yet the point is not so easily expressed that I can ever hope to coin it is a simple understanding, or reasonable proposition.
I feel very clean—that which is subject to that violence within me is destroyed, at least temporarily, and I am open to the world and open to being in the world. Literally, I sense my conscious has been altered by the simple act of reading/speaking/hearing the order of the words. It has become silent and dynamic like the two parts of Heru Ra Ha. It is a fine vibration, rarified and potent—in fact, much more fine than the granular shaking of the cells one feels while chanting Om.
It is like silver.
Love and Will
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@RobertAllen said
"When all was said and done I realized that the third chapter had become my favorite....."
Thank you, I enjoyed reading your post....
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@RobertAllen said
"The third chapter, on the other hand, has about as much surface attractiveness as sticking your hand into a blender. And this begins to explain what is seducing me into its camp—it wears a hideous mask of repulsive and troubling suggestion. It is an ordeal."
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The Thelemic Holy Season is coming up! Yay! 
Each of the twenty-two days of the Thelemic Holy Season — from March 20 through April 10 — is attributed by us to one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It is recommended that each aspirant, on each of these days, prominently display the corresponding Tarot Trump, and conduct such other meditation, ritual, or other recognition of the principle as he or she may see fit. In the tabulation below are also given recommended readings from the Sacred Writings for each day of the holy season.
On the night before the Vernal Equinox, closing the old year (usually March 19), it is recommended that the aspirant read The Prologue of the Unborn from Liber VII and meditate on the release of the concluding cycle.
On March 20, the Invocation of Horus (The Supreme Ritual) may be performed to celebrate the anniversary of the Equinox of the Gods. The following readings (most, but not all, of which are from Class A Documents, the so-called "Holy Books of Thelema") are then recommended for each of the 22 days. -
@Jim Eshelman said
"The sequence is the Hebrew letters, not the Tarot numbers. Thus, Tzaddi (The Emperor, Atu IV) follows Qoph (The Moon, Atu XVIII)."
I know this is from a few years back, I guess it's a good time of year to ask though.
Are you able to explain at all why this is what you settled on? It makes sense to me that we should go from Tav to Aleph, but I'm curious as to why the days are not numbered by Tarot numbers, a la the Thelemic year format.
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Why what, exactly, is what I've settled on.
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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.
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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.