Newsgroups: alt.tarot,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick Path: Supernews!supernews.com!news.gv.tsc.tdk.com!news.iac.net!news.structured.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!207.172.25.142!ohno.news.erols.com!feed1.news.erols.com!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!ix.netcom.com!azoth From: azoth@netcom.com (Az0th) Subject: Re: Emblems/Symbols, Meditation/Reading and Case-workers (was Re: Plotinus, evil, ....) Message-ID: Followup-To: alt.tarot,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick Organization: Idoigo, Ltd. X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] References: <5lfgta$ghj@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <5m2e07$jv8@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <5m4gfu$jft@nntp4.u.washington.edu> Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 20:27:35 GMT Lines: 89 Sender: azoth@netcom.netcom.com Xref: Supernews alt.tarot:20179 alt.magick.tyagi:12317 alt.magick:102324 I heard R Brzustowicz (brz@u.washington.edu) say: : >I haven't spent any time with Tomberg, but my '68 copy of Sadhu's _Tarot_ : >uses an esoteric deck showing considerable Rider-Waite influence. Even so, : >his text, and I think also Ouspensky's, uses the images primarily as a bully : >pulpit for philosophical dissertation, and doesn't really qualify as an : >analytical commentary in the same sense as those other examples of our : >proposed genre-type. : I think they would be near the margins of the genre (either almost outside : or almost inside). Well, not to get _too_ silly about splitting hairs, it might still be useful to contrast discursive vs. analytical commentary text, and recognize the marginal samples as discursive in intent, and the pure or primary samples as analytical, WRT the reference imagery. In a similar vein, a relationship of restatement to privileged analytical material, as Arriens, Ziegler or Suster to Crowley's Thoth, would be discursive by definition. Levi's work, although suggestive and influential, is incomplete, as is that of de Gebelin and Pitois. Mathers' _Book T_ raised the ante considerably, and made less than complete, consistent formulations passe. : Yes: in the "pure" specimens the Tarot emblems become as much an : authorial utterance as the (written) text. It's not that the text is a : commentary on something existing independently, but the two have been : devised as a single work. Succinctly put, although I realize that the real world isn't quite so tidy. For example, Kuntz's _Golden Dawn Tarot_ chapbook from Holmes makes a good case for including as authoritative and necessary commentary text on the Rider-Waite artwork a number of his text productions above and beyond his _Pictorial Key_, such as his work on the Grail legendry. That this follows from a deficiency in the _Key_ & _Pictorial Key_ is the telling point, and is not the same as including the author's expanded works as a 'background' or discursive collophon. : This means that the genre would include things like various para-Tarot : image/text works, while leaving out things like Arrien's Thoth-illustrated : book. Yup, yup. Fallorio's Nightside Tarot, say, or Stewart's Merlin Tarot, would be good examples. : >Even Dummett admits the value of her study. It's a far cry from Petrarch : >to Luria, however. : Perhaps. Perhaps not. What's the metric of distance in such matters? Excellent question! I hope this isn't something like 'Just how big *is* your idea, anyway?' };-] Well, we could start with time and space, or period and distribution, and work from there... Was Lurianic Kabbalah _ever_ part of popular culture, as discinct from academic or vocational religious culture? : >Definitely, as in Rosicrucian symbolism as well. Has anyone ever : >remarked that the period of CRC's life provides a symbolic factor : >in the date of his birth? I was fiddling about one day, inspired : It is. Numerical transformations are fluid enough, though, to yield many : significant connections that, taken together, can reduce a text to : incoherence. It's not utterly implausible -- but a more likely connecton Absolutely. Studion's _Naometria_ does however stand out as just this sort of specifically Rosicrucian and millenialist numerology-gone-mad, although it doesn't seem to have had a really broad appeal to the apologists. : would be between CRC and the Holy Spirit (as in the ever-popular Joachite : notion of three dispensations -- that of the Father, that of the Son, and : that of the Holy Spirit). I've never liked Joachite aeonology, except possibly as a pretext for taking Crowley's refurb more seriously than I do, but Christianity as a species of solar mythology is not hard to reconcile with G.'.D.'. 2nd Order/CRC/Tiphereth/... associations, and helps resolve an apparent conflict between Thelema's solar forms and their Rosicrucian precursors. I think this may be another thread for another time... : I'm not an art historian -- and will probably never have a chance to : become versed in art history & intellectual history enough to make a stab .. : I was just yesterday talking about this with a friend, who told me quite : firmly that Tarot iconography is a recognized sub-discipline in the : Italian art history world. I have not had a chance to follow this up. I hope that doesn't mean that the essential sources are in Italian. ;) Az0th