Thelemic Holy Season
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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.
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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.