College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

Welcome to this forum - a forum which I find constantly enlightening and even entertaining!
There are some very erudite people here and they are helpful.
(I am not including myself in that as I am mainly a reader and lurker.)

Best wishes to you!

Yes.
Tutulu fthagn!

@Jim Eshelman said

"
@Jim Eshelman said
"
--- In Whose arms love’s mad fire I stoke.

(Not my best, and I've never liked the result of the last line..."
"

Ar bart Writing runes in the sky and the smoke?
Good poem, by the way!

The fish-hook is tzaddi.
The description that follows:

"a woman kneeling by the bank of the stream. It is she that pours the bright dew over herself, and into the sand so that the river gushes forth"
is The Star, Tarot XVII.

First there were mountains and then there were no mountains.

Some research shows that the balcony by McVicar-Anderson, the one based entirely on the Unicursal Hexagram design as shown in the photograph, dates from 1886.
It therefore predates the founding of the Golden Dawn by two years.
It may well be that the UC is a symbol used in some branch of Freemsonry - I would suspect that Mr Anderson was in the SRIS, a very Golden-Dawn-like society.

The proximity of *abominable *and *desolation *made me think of this New Testament quote.

Matthew 24:15 et seq

"15 “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand) then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak..."

Which in turn brings to mind the following passage which would have been well-known to GM Therion.

**Revelation 13:14 **

"...And by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived."

In the first quote the statue being spoken of was indeed **Jupiter **- Antiochus IV had it set up in the Temple at Jerusalem.

I always thought that The Great Beast invented the unicursal hexagram. But the other day I popped into a building near where I live that dates from the 1880s. It is the Headquarters of the London Scottish Regiment on Horseferry Road.
'Twas designed by John McVicar Anderson who, being a Scot and an architect, must be odds-on to have been a Freemason as well.

If you go to this link
www.alternativevenues.co.uk/content/westminster
and click on the picture in the bottom set of 5 marked "Hall". It is identical to the Crowley version.

How's about that, then?

I managed to find it. It is at groups.google.com/group/alt.tarot/msg/ccdaced936fec029?hl=en and it reads as follows:

"According to one Edfu local, once a year the priests set the statue of
Horus in a solar boat and carried it to the roof of the temple to bathe it
in sunlight. Seems a similar motif to Waite's six of swords.
"

*Very *irresponsible. Those priests should be sacked!

@Edward Mason said

"Maybe the writer at alt.magick was nuts...?"

Maybe the writer didn't realise that these 6000 year-old artefacts were so fragile that they couldn't stand an hour a year of sunshine.

@Jim Eshelman said

"12. Then was there silence. Speech had done with us awhile.
There is a light so strenuous that it is not perceived as light."

Is this possibly a mistranscription of tenuous.

Another possibility would be tenebrous.

What is strenuous light?

I read once, at alt.magick probably, that some stelae and statues were taken occasionally to the rooves of museums to expose them to sunlight. Sounds possible.

I am sure there are a few Freemasons at the Temple of Thelema Forum who are also Thelemis fellow-travellers. This question is for ye.
If a candidate who is **joining the masons **(that's the title!!) requests *The Book of the Law *as his VSL, which edition would you use if you had a choice and where would you open the Book at for the ceremony?
Also, would you inform your provincial Secretary or take an executive decision?

@Jim Eshelman said

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@mojorisin44 said
"**[attachment=0:3uqqegr2]<!-- ia0 -->locked in love.JPG<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:3uqqegr2]"
"
Superb poem. Truly worth many rereadings.

As an aside, dolphins and harps are often used in heraldry. If you imagine the arms of Mary I, Queen of Scots,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Mary_I_(Dauphin_impaled).PNG

altered to include the harp of Ireland, it might look like this one,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/England_Arms_1603.svg
but with dolphins. (The last one is the arms of James VI, King of Scots.)

I'd sell things over the phone. I'd be a thelemarketer.

@Jim Eshelman said

"4. Stooping down, dipping my wings, I came unto the darkly-splendid abodes..."

Is it possible that *stooping *is a misprint for ***swooping ***?

@gmugmble said

"There's a tarot deck called "Liber T: Tarot of Stars Eternal" that is essentially a re-drawing of the Harris-Crowley deck."
I had not heard of that deck before; it looks very good. It seems far clearer that the Harris deck.

The book Liber Theta is superb; it really looks like the book I have been looking for. Thanks, Jim!

@Jim Eshelman said

"65. So was it — ever the same! I have aimed at the peeled wand of my God, and I have hit; yea, I have hit."

The peeled wand is simply an arrow; God has hit the bullseye and the adept has emulated him by splitting that arrow with his own.

@Reef said

"**One mounteth unto the Crown by the moon and by the Sun, and by the arrow, and by the Foundation, and by the dark home of the stars from the black earth.

10. Not otherwise may ye reach unto the Smooth Point.
    **"

VVVVV is using rock-climbing imagery. I visualize a man ascending the sky using the crevices and outcrops mentioned in verse 9, then reacing a resting-point, a large flat *horizontal *smooth area.

However, to a rock-climber a smooth **vertical **area is a bit of a disaster - nothing to hold on to!

The colours of the gems in verse 4 are like this: green, blue, blue-green & green or red.

In verse 5 they are yellow, violet, blue-grey and (I suppose) blue-red.

Something to note as well is that verse 4 is addressed to one person (thou) while verse 6 is addressed to more than one person (ye).