Posts Tagged ‘78’

The Thoth Spread

Card 1: Represents the client and the nature of the question. It also represents the primary influences upon the situation.

A court card in this position refers to a dominant individual, influence, or personality trait affecting the situation.

Cards 2 and 3: Read this combination with reference to Card 1. All three cards are keys to describing the nature of the situation and the personality of the individual.
Cards 13, 9, 5 and 4, 8, 12: These two sets of cards indicate potential futures.

If the two sets compliment each other, the cards on the upper left are a development of the cards on the upper right.
If the two sets are in conflict, the cards on the Lipper right are the direction the individual will naturally follow. The cards on the upper left represent actions that could change the natural direction.

Cards 6, 10, 14: This set indicates the psychological basis of the issue.
Cards 7, 11, 15: This set shows the operation of forces beyond the individual’s control (destiny or karma), and how he can adapt to them. They are personal advisory cards.

NOTES

Princes and Queens often indicate actual men and women connected with the matter.

Knights mean the coming or going of a matter in accordance with the direction the Knight faces.

Princesses show ideas, thoughts, or opinions related to the subject.

LOOK FOR A MAJORITY OF CARDS IN ONE SUIT

A majority of Wands indicates great energy, quarreling, or opposition.

A majority of Cups indicates love, emotions, and pleasure, or intoxication.

A majority of Swords indicates either intellectual matters or sickness, depression, trouble, and death.

A majority of Pentacles indicates general business matters in general, possessions, and material success or failure.

A majority of Trumps indicates higher forces at work, therefore, the individual is not fully in control of the situation. This majority is a strong indicator of spiritual or karmic matters.

A majority of Court Cards indicates meetings, society and many people surrounding the individual or situation.

Source: tryskelion.com

The Naples Arrangement
(from [intlink id="1" type="post"]The Book of Thoth[/intlink] by Aleister Crowley)

The Qabalists expanded this idea of Nothing, and got a second kind of Nothing which they called “Ain Soph”-”Without Limit”. (This idea seems not unlike that of Space.) They then decided that in order to interpret this mere absence of any means of definition, it was necessary to postulate the Ain Soph Aur-”Limitless Light”. By this they seem to have meant very much what the late Victorian men of science meant, or thought that they meant, by the Luminiferous Ether. (The Space-Time Continuum?) All this is evidently without form and void; these are abstract conditions, not positive ideas. The next step must be the idea of Position. One must formulate this thesis: If there is anything except Nothing, it must exist within this Boundless Light; within this Space; within this inconceivable Nothingness, which cannot exist as Nothing-ness, but has to be conceived of as a Nothingness composed of the annihilation of two imaginary opposites. Thus appears The Point, which has “neither parts nor magnitude, but only position”.

But position does not mean anything at all unless there is something else, some other position with which it can be compared. One has to describe it. The only way to do this is to have another Point, and that means that one must invent the number Two, making possible The Line.

But this Line does not really mean very much, because there is yet no measure of length. The limit of knowledge at this stage is that there are two things, in order to be able to talk about them at all. But one cannot say that they are near each other, or that they are far apart; one can only say that they are distant. In order to discriminate between them at all, there must be a third thing. We must have another point. One must invent The Surface; one must invent The Triangle. In doing this, incidentally, appears the whole of Plane Geometry. One can now say, “A is nearer to B than A is to C”.

But, so far, there is no substance in any of these ideas. In fact there are no ideas at all) except the idea of Distance and perhaps the idea of Between-ness, and of Angular Measurement; so that plane Geometry, which now exists in theory, is after all completely inchoate and incoherent.. There has been no approach at all to the conception of a really existing thing. No more has been done than to make definitions, all in a purely ideal and imaginary world.

Now then comes The Abyss. One cannot go any further into the ideal. The next step must be the Actual—at least, an approach to the Actual. There are three points, but there is no idea of where any one of them is. A fourth point is essential, and this formulates the idea of matter.

The Point, the Line, the Plane. The fourth point, unless it should happen to lie in the plane, gives The Solid. If one wants to know the position of any point, one must define it by the use of three co-ordinate axes. It is so many feet from the North wall, and so many feet from the East wall, and so many feet from the floor.Thus there has been developed from Nothingness a Something which can be said to exist. One has arrived at the idea of

Matter. But this existence is exceedingly tenuous, for the only property of any given point is its position in relation to certain other points; no change is possible; nothing can happen. One is therefore compelled, in the analysis of known Reality, to postulate a fifth positive idea, which is that of Motion. This implies the idea of Time, for only through Motion, and in Time, can any event happen. Without this change and sequence, nothing can be the object of sense. (It is to be noticed that this No.5 is the number of the letter He’ in the Hebrew alphabet. This is the letter traditionally consecrated to the Great Mother. It is the womb in which the Great Father, who is represented by the letter Yod which is pictorially the representation of an ultimate Point, moves and begets active existence).

There is now possible a concrete idea of the Point; and, at last it is a point which can be self-conscious, because it can have a Past, Present and Future. It is able to define itself in terms of the previous ideas. Here is the number Six, the centre of the system: self-conscious, capable of experience.

At this stage it is convenient to turn away for a moment from the strictly Qabalistic symbolism. The doctrine of the next three numbers (to some minds at least) is not very clearly expressed. One must look to the Vedanta system for a more lucid interpretation of the numbers 7, 8 and 9 although they correspond very closely with the Qabalistic ideas. In the Hindu analysis of existence the Rishis (sages) postulate three qualities: Sat, the Essence of Being itself; Chit, Thought, or Intellection; and Ananda (usually translated Bliss), the pleasure experienced by Being in the course of events. This ecstasy is evidently the exciting cause of the mobility of existence. It explains the assumption of imperfection on the part of Perfection. The Absolute would be Nothing, would remain in the condition of Nothingness; therefore, in order to be conscious of its possibilities and to enjoy them, it must explore these possibilities. One may here insert a parallel statement of this doctrine from the document called The Book of the Great Auk to enable the student to consider the position from the standpoint of two different minds.

“All elements must at one time have been separate.—That would be the case with great heat.—Now, when the atoms get to the Sun, we get that immense, extreme heat, and all the elements are themselves again. Imagine that each atom of each element possesses the memory of all his adventures in combination. By the way, that atom, fortified with memory, would not be the same atom; yet it is, because it has gained nothing from anywhere except this memory. Therefore, by the lapse of time and by virtue of memory, a thing could become something more than itself; thus, a real development is possible. One can then see a reason for any element deciding to go through this series of incarnations, because so, and only so, can he go; and he suffers the lapse of memory which he has during these incarnations, because he knows he will come through unchanged.

“Therefore you can have an infinite number of gods, individual and equal though diverse, each one supreme and utterly indestructible. This is also the only explanation of how a Being could create a world in which War, Evil, etc., exist. Evil is only an appearance, because (like “Good”) it cannot affect the substance itself, but only multiply its combinations. This is something the same as Mystic Monotheism; but the objection to that theory is that God has to create things which are all parts of himself, so that their interplay is false. If we presuppose many elements, their interplay is natural.”

These ideas of Being, Thought and Bliss constitute the minimum possible qualities which a Point must possess if it is to have a real sensible experience of itself. These correspond to the numbers 9, 8 and 7. The first idea of reality, as known by the mind, is therefore to conceive of the Point as built up of these previous nine successive developments from Zero. Here then at last is the number Ten. In other words, to describe Reality in the form of Knowledge, one must postulate these ten successive ideas. In the Qabalah, they are called “Sephiroth”, which means “Numbers”. As will be seen later, each number has a significance of its own; each corresponds with all phenomena in such a way that their arrangement in the Tree of Life, as shown in the diagrams (pp.266, 268, 270), is a map of the Universe. These ten numbers are represented in the Tarot by the forty small cards.

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The Tarot has been around for hundreds of years. During that time it’s been used for teaching, playing games and meditation.
Its most famous use, of course, has been for divination. Today there are hundreds of Tarot decks available. Most people use them for giving readings, but some people simply collect them for their artistic value.The archetypal images on the cards are highly evocative. They bring out feelings, emotions, and energies that might be long hidden. The Tarot contains 78 images of power. The question is, “How can you tap into that power?”
The answer can be found in Tarot Spells by Janina Renee. In this book you’ll learn the basics of casting spells with the help of the Tarot cards. The techniques are powerful yet easy. Here is an example: Lay out an incense burner, a candle to either side of the incense burner, your Tarot deck, and Tarot Spells on a table. Light the candles and incense, then read the opening which calls forth the can you tap into that power?”

The answer can be found in Tarot Spells by Janina Renee. In this book you’ll learn the basics of casting spells with the help of the Tarot cards. The techniques are powerful yet easy. Here is an example:

Lay out an incense burner, a candle to either side of the incense burner, your Tarot deck, and Tarot Spells on a table. Light the candles and incense, then read the opening which calls forth the powers of the magical elements: Air, Earth, Fire and Water. You’ve begun this simple ritual!

Read the rest of this entry »

Discussions and photographs of 3,600 cards from 300 decks. Traces the development of various styles, focuses on Renaissance and medieval symbolism, and provides methods of dating antique tarot decks. Annotated bibliography of over 1300 entries. By Stuart R. Kaplan. Published by U.S. Games Systems, Inc. 584 pp., b&w illus. w/16 page 4 color insert, hc. Each book in The Encyclopedia of Tarot Volumes I-IV, is complete in itself, and none of the material is duplicated. Autographed copies are provided subject to availability.

Buy from House of Tarot

Superb reproduction of the famous Crowley Thoth Tarot cards based upon original paintings by Lady Frieda Harris. Each oversize card measures 3 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ and is reproduced in full color. Includes instruction booklet.

The magnificent Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck deck painted by Lady Frieda Harris according to instructions from Aleister Crowley, contains the kabbalistic and astrological attributions described in Aleister Crowley’s “The Book Of Thoth” .

History of the Thoth Tarot
Crowley originally intended the Thoth deck to be a three-month project aimed at updating the traditional pictorial symbolism, perhaps best demonstrated by the Rider-Waite-Smith deck; however, it was to span five years, between 1938 and 1943, as the scope of the project grew ever wider. Crowley and Harris were meticulous in their work; Harris painted some cards as many as eight times. The current printing of the deck actually includes two alternate illustrations of The Magus, each making use of markedly different style and symbols. Unfortunately, neither Harris nor Crowley lived to see the deck published; a follower of Crowley undertook the work of publication in 1969. This initial printing was of markedly inferior quality, and in 1977 Harris’ paintings were rephotographed for a second edition; the current edition is based on a further update that took place in 1986.

References:
Wasserman, James. Instructions for Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot Deck (included in the U.S. Games Systems publication of the deck).
Duquette, Lon Milo. Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot.