Tarot and I Ching at Adepthood?
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Are the intuitive skills of an Adept normally high enough to understand very well the Tarot and I Ching without prior training/study?
Say a yogi meditated 10 years in a cave as the whole of his training to adepthood. How well could he theorically do at undestranding those books at "first read"...? Or say, if we let him meditate onto it.
As a less extreme example, say an adept of western tradition for some reason did not study these. How well would he tend to do when getting into it?
Is full mastery and undesrtanding(intuitive, instant, complete...) achieved in 5=6, or 7=4 concerning those matters? Or after? Or before?
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Complicated question - due to individual differences (and one tends to naturally awaken the capacities one needs to do one's True Will, and not necessarily other capacities); and due, also, to different levels of this capacity flowering at different stages of the work.
"Without priori training" is the tricky part. My first reaction was to wonder why someone (under any usual circumstances) would bother. Why not educate yourself on a tool first? But, then, it's an interesting question anyway.
With the Tarot, in particular (presuming a properly composed deck), the symbols speak on their own to someone who has the capacity to let symbols speak through subconsciousness (which reads symbols the way your ego-conscious mind is reading these words). One needn't be an adept for this: It's the usual way Tarot is taught. Any ordinary, interested person can learn it this way given enough time. Would an adept do it faster? Probably, because of the habit of coexisting with that channel of mind; but a Zelator could do that also (in most cases, about as fast as an Adept).
Or are you asking whether an Adept could just glance at a Tarot deck and instantly know everything? Unlikely. Rarely. Only if there was a deep necessity (and, in that case, life circumstances likely would have led the life-path so that there was exposure and time leading up to the intersection with such an emergency).
Yi Ch'ing is a little different. The lines aren't symbols in the same sense as the Tarot symbols. The system is much more mathematical. This one is harder for me to imagine. Nonetheless, there is a deep pool in human experience of using Yi Ch'ing, and Neophytes have sometimes been tested and passed to go to Zelator by giving them a Yi Ch'ing trigram to use as a starting point for astral vision. In this case, I think the explanation is tapping the universal pool of shared human experience that is the astral world. (This is one of the mysteries explaining the reversal of 2=9 and 9=2, I just realized.)
A digression: I once tested Soror Meral this way. She had been confirmed by Karl Germer 30 years earlier as a 5=6 (and was probably at least 7=4 at the time), but had not passed the individual examinations all the way through. As I moved past certain grades, she asked me to test her in different points. This was when I learned something about the different sensitivity of different people according to their grade. I threw the Yi Ch'ing, drew a nice copy of the hexagram, then banished (maybe other small things) and - this is important - read the 2nd Enochian Call. (This increases one's receptivity. I'd used it effectively in my own work to amp up my receptivity. It needs to be used in a 'sterile' environment, though, because you unresistingly receive and accept every impression without sensor.) Well, Soror Meral didn't need that last bit of help! In fact, after she gazed a bit at the hexagram, and then sat back in meditation, she soared so high and fast that she almost didn't get an intelligible vision - easily higher Briah (but the goal is to stay buoyed at a certain stratum of Yetzirah). She stabilized it, got a very exalted vision, and every symbol identifiable was consistent with the root imagery of the trigrams. But we almost overshot the mark altogether. (This is a lesson for the upper grades, btw: It may seem sometimes, especially if you're out of practice, that you've lost the ability to "do the astral." The point is that you have to scale down to it, rather than up: After a certain point, it's so natural to settle inwardly into a Briatic state that one has to find the exact stratum of Yetzirah and go exactly there, rather than somewhere else.)
Back on track: Consider the different levels of formal attainment and what capacities they have. (I use the A.'.A.'. model here.) A Neophyte is gaining access to the inner worlds and, concurrently, studying divination. A formal test in divination doesn't occur until 3=8, but the 1=10 does lots of work with it, since the Path of Qof is hovering right there. This is generally accompanied by formal education in the system. To graduate to 2=9, the Neophyte demonstrates the particular capacities you are talking about - the ability to take symbols and interact with them inwardly on their own level, at least in particular cases. A Zelator is generally pretty comfortable with all of this, i.e., is naturally comfortable in Yetzirah and is spending most of the work of the grade stabilizing it and deepening the inward penetration.
@Frater Horus said
"Say a yogi meditated 10 years in a cave as the whole of his training to adepthood. How well could he theorically do at undestranding those books at "first read"...? Or say, if we let him meditate onto it."
If we let a person meditate on the cards for whatever period is necessary (it's the technique I teach in Liber Theta) then anyone can do it. Adept is way too high a bar for this requirement.
"As a less extreme example, say an adept of western tradition for some reason did not study these. How well would he tend to do when getting into it?"
Even if this person (in some fictional universe) never encountered a Tarot deck, an adept of western tradition (as you say) would have been living and moving through the very symbols and patterns that constitute Tarot in order to get to adepthood. These symbols and patterns would be hard wired into his or her body and psyche. (This is a fictional example, though: You would be hard pressed to find something rightly called the Western Magical Tradition, that wouldn't have given Tarot exposure.)
"Is full mastery and understanding (intuitive, instant, complete...) achieved in 5=6, or 7=4 concerning those matters? Or after? Or before?"
As I've tried to demonstrate above, this varies according to how strict you are defining the phenomena. Your words "instant, complete" are the problem. I don't know if anyone, at any grade, in any ordinary situation ever has this. Intuition doesn't work that way: the word means inner tuition, or inner teaching (though the instruction can be fast).
An Adept (and, for that matter, a Zelator) has the capacity to connect to the roots, where the information originates or is stored. These systems do evolve out of the inherent, common, shared structure of the human psyche - they are all marvelously useful projections of how our species is constituted. And they have evolved over centuries. Why should an Adept be expected to "reinvent the wheel" by recapitulating the entire development process? On the other hand, the deeper one goes, the more likely one will recognize something that is just a reflection of his or her own psyche.
And, fairly often, there is what seems like "whole system access" (seeming, at first impression, to grasp a thing in its entirety) which this turns out to be past life recollection - not "instant" at all, but something that someone once spent years mastering and now simply retrieves from deep memory.
There is also the very important issue of necessity. Everyone doesn't automatically gain access to all powers. Rather, one gains the capacity to access them according to necessity. All sorts of things "pop in" during an emergency. (This begins pretty early in the Path.) An adept has a particular work to do, given by the Angel, and, while all sorts of skills have been practiced and tested along the road to Tifereth, these are primarily to get one to adepthood in the first place, not because they are otherwise important to the Adept in his or her Way.
Especially from 6=5 on, there is a narrowing: One finds one has (more or less) all power whatsoever to do any magick one chooses, but - with growing intimacy with the Angel - one only chooses to those things that are aligned with True Will. (One is equally free if one has no capacity to do things one would never choose to do.) It is the intensified intimacy with the Angel that makes the work of the Major Adept possible: Geburah is on Biynah's pillar, and it is the Angel working through one to do Its Work that constitutes the magick of the 6=5 grade.
Without necessity, there is no particular power or capacity given to do much of anything. It's all about necessity. And necessity has another name in our system: To paraphrase the aphorism, Nuit is the Mother of Invention.
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What a reply. Thanks Nuit for having incarnated you.
You answered everything i was thinking about but it leads to new questions if you will
@Jim Eshelman said
"It may seem sometimes, especially if you're out of practice, that you've lost the ability to "do the astral." The point is that you have to scale down to it, rather than up: After a certain point, it's so natural to settle inwardly into a Briatic state that one has to find the exact stratum of Yetzirah and go exactly there, rather than somewhere else.)"
Could this be one of the reasons Crowley put astral mastery as the very first "siddhi" to master? Maybe to avoid this "problem"? Do you think for instance it is(or can be) significantly harder to master the astral(in the AA sense), paradoxically, for someone who's more advanced(except concerning this specific technique) than Neophytus?
@Jim Eshelman said
"Your words "instant, complete" are the problem. I don't know if anyone, at any grade, in any ordinary situation ever has this. Intuition doesn't work that way: the word means inner tuition, or inner teaching (though the instruction can be fast). "
"Inner tuition"
Very nice. I actually meant "perception", i guess. A complete and instant perception of all the tarot interactions onto all worlds and planes. Or something close to this. But you answered to this as well !@Jim Eshelman said
"An adept has a particular work to do, given by the Angel, and, while all sorts of skills have been practiced and tested along the road to Tifereth, these are primarily to get one to adepthood in the first place, not because they are otherwise important to the Adept in his or her Way. "
It seems to me a lot to master if its not directly related to one's true will. Is it even possible to become an AA(or "equivalent") Adept if its not itself a huge part of the true will?! I dont see how someone not built for it can do it.
But maybe there is something i dont get. Maybe i'm projecting my own vision of the stuff. Now i remember what say Denning and Phillips in "The serpent and the sword" concerning this(last chapter). They go almost as you put it, which surpised me too then. They say one can be surprised by the discovery of the true will. What i wondered then was "do they mean an adept can be surprised?".
It seemed to mean this in that context but i was not sure. So i ask you, do you think an Adept can be surprised? That is to say, after all the AA training to adepthood, is it still possible to experience the true will as something revolutionary, unexpected, strange...?! I saw the discovery of true will as very progressive and gradual by nature but you and Denning/Phillips seem to imply it can be experienced very differently, which surprise me especially knowing AA and AS are the two most complete and hardcore systems i "know". So if such initiates can be surprised at adepthood, i find it very impressive and surprising.
@Jim Eshelman said
"Without necessity, there is no particular power or capacity given to do much of anything. It's all about necessity. And necessity has another name in our system: To paraphrase the aphorism, Nuit is the Mother of Invention."
Beautiful. I'll meditate onto this
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@Frater Horus said
"Could this be one of the reasons Crowley put astral mastery as the very first "siddhi" to master? Maybe to avoid this "problem"?"
It's simpler than that: The task of 1=10 is not just to open the way from Malkhuth to Y'sod, but to specifically open from Assiyah to Yetzirah. That's exactly what the astral "mastery" is: To open awareness/access to Yetzirah and be able to function effectively.
"It seems to me a lot to master if its not directly related to one's true will."
Part of such an individual's Will is to attain. The tasks are for the purpose of attaining. Consider a musician training who wants to be a rock'n'roll musician, and the training involves deep penetration into classical music. The classical music has nothing to do with what the person wants to play, but DOES make them a better musician.
"They say one can be surprised by the discovery of the true will. What i wondered then was "do they mean an adept can be surprised?". "
Hell yeah. Of course. - But, in a sense, the question is ill-constructed, since discovery of the True Will is often (usually?) made well in advance of adepthood.
"That is to say, after all the AA training to adepthood, is it still possible to experience the true will as something revolutionary, unexpected, strange...?!"
The Lover, if he or she will, shall depart. An interesting question is... what shall each find that he or she needs to depart from?
"I saw the discovery of true will as very progressive and gradual by nature but you and Denning/Phillips seem to imply it can be experienced very differently, which surprise me especially knowing AA and AS are the two most complete and hardcore systems i "know". So if such initiates can be surprised at adepthood, i find it very impressive and surprising."
It often comes as a lightning flash!
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Becoming an Adept doesn't turn you into a Superhero. You don't get to know anything without prior study. What you do get is the chance to understand things better, see further, learn faster. But anyone who thinks that becoming an adept means you will effortlessly pull out actual factual knowledge out of nowhere and doing no work will be disappointed.
93!