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From: Jess Karlin <r3winter@bga.com>
Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.tarot
Subject: Re: Waite's translation of Levi, Transcendental Magic
Date: Fri, 03 May 1996 11:40:05 +0000
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George Leake wrote:

> Waite seems to make some thinly veiled references to Crowley.

Like what for example?
 
> Levi really didn't do his research very well.

Are you sure he simply did not have a different idea than you 
of what was meant by 'research'? Things have changed on that
point in 150 years you know.

> The fact that Crowley idolized Levi, 

Crowley did not idolize Levi. He simply thought he had been Levi
in his immediately former life. Crowley was known to 
criticize 'himself'.

I think, to properly illustrate this relationship it's helpful to
look at a couple of things from 'Key to the Mysteries'

For example, this is Bill Heidrick's note about the importance
of this text---

"THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES<<WEH NOTE:  Vastly underrated, this work 
is probably the most important in understanding Crowley.  Everything 
is here, save the influence of his childhood.  Even the name 
"Aiwass" and the fixation on "AL" may stem from unconscious integration 
of this work.  A first or even a second reading will be inadequate.  
Levi writes very much in his time, with the blindness of political 
and ethnic prejudice.  If the reader can see past the prejudice, 
even without Crowley's conceit of "deliberate irony", there are 
seminal ideas here of fundamental value to the formation of Thelema.  
The hard part is getting past the pseudo-logic and Christian 
propaganda.  The essense is below the surface."

That last bit can not be repeated too often in all this
material---"The essense is below the surface." Or sometimes
it is in spite of the surface.

And then there is Crowley's own introduction to Levi's work---

"THIS volume represents the high-water mark of the thought of Eliphas 
Levi.  It may be regarded as written by him as his Thesis for the 
Grade of Exempt Adept, just as his "Ritual and Dogma" was his Thesis 
for the grade of a Major Adept.  He is, in fact, no longer talking of 
things as if their sense was fixed and universal.  He is beginning to 
see something of the contradiction inherent in the nature of things, 
or at any rate, he constantly illustrates the fact that the planes 
are to be kept separate for practical purposes, although in the final 
analysis they turn out to be one. This, and the extraordinarily 
subtle and delicate irony of which Eliphas Levi is one of the 
greatest masters that has ever lived, have baffled the pedantry and 
stupidity of such commentators as Waite.  English has hardly a word to 
express the mental condition of such unfortunates.  "Dummheit," in 
its strongest German sense, is about the nearest thing to it.  
It is as if a geographer should criticize "Gulliver's Travels" 
from his own particular standpoint.
   When Levi says that all that he asserts as an initiate is 
subordinate to his humble submissiveness as a Christian, and then 
not only remarks that the Bible and the Qur'an are different 
translations of the same book, but treats the Incarnation as an 
allegory, it is evident that a good deal of submission will be 
required.  When he agrees with St. Augustine that a thing is not 
just because God wills it, but God wills it because it is just, 
he sees perfectly well that he is reducing God to a poetic image 
reflected from his own moral {vii} ideal of justice, and no amount 
of alleged orthodoxy can weigh against that statement.  His very 
defence of the Catholic Hierarchy is a masterpiece of that peculiar 
form of conscious sophistry which justifies itself by reducing its 
conclusion to zero.  One must begin with "one," and that "one" 
has no particular qualities.  Therefore, so long as you have an 
authority properly centralized it does not really matter what 
that authority is.  In the Pope we have such an authority ready 
made, and it is the gravest tactical blunder to endeavour to set 
up an authority opposed to him.  Success in doing so means war, 
and failure anarchy.  This, however, did not prevent Levi from 
ceremonially casting a papal crown to the ground and crying 
"Death to tyranny and superstition!" in the bosom of a certain 
secret Areopagus of which he was the most famous member."

and then later---

"It is necessary for the reader to gain this clear conception of 
Levi's inmost mind, if he is to reconcile the "contradictions" 
which leave Waite petulant and bewildered.  It is the sad privilege 
of the higher order of mind to be able to see both sides of every 
question, and to appreciate the fact that both are equally tenable.  
Such contradictions can, of course, only be reconciled on a higher 
plane, and this method of harmonizing contradictions is, therefore, 
the best key to the higher planes."

> and that Levi doesn't seem to
> understand some things very well, in part explains why Crowley ignores
> certain magical works. 

No, rather that Levi and others had well-defined opinions about
their magical forebears---

Refer to page 11 of the introduction to Transcendental Magic
for Levi's view of Agrippa (and read the note at the bottom of
the page). Clearly, he thought Agrippa an interesting but
in no way a profound magician.

> In particular it is odd, isn't it, that Crowley
> does not recommend Agrippa, and Levi's characterizations of that work.

Crowley and Levi do, in a way, recommend Agrippa's works, since
they reference them---for example, Crowley talking about a 
magical figure used in the creation of a ritual circle---

"The Sigil of the Spirit (which is to be found in Cornelius 
Agrippa and other books) you would draw in the four colours with 
such other devices as your experience may suggest."

> Could it be that Levi/Crowley's point of view is based on the degree to
> which people focus on the kabbalah?

What people? View about what?
 
> And what about the tarot? Both men seem to take it for granted that the
> tarot has its roots in Egypt.

Crowley on the 'origin' of Tarot, from Book of Thoth---

"The origin of this pack of cards is very obscure. Some authorities
seek to put it back as far as the ancient Egytpian Mysteries; others
try to bring it forward as late as the fifteenth or even the
sixteenth centuries. But the tarot certainly existed, in what
may be called the classical form, as early as the fourteenth
century; for packs of the date are extant, and the form has not
varied in any notable respect since that time."

"In the Middle Ages, these cards were much used for fortune-telling,
especially by gypsies, so that it was customary to speak of the
"Tarot of the Bohemians" or the "Egyptians". When it was found
that the gypsies, despite the etymology, were of Asiatic origin,
some people tried to find its source in Indian art and literature.

He concludes all his speculations by saying---

"The only theory of ultimate interest about the Tarot is that it is
an admirable symbolic picture of the universe, based on the data
of the Holy Qabalah."

So---

1. Crowley was not a great tarot historian, but few people have
been.
2. His conclusions about the origins of tarot settle on the idea
that the answer is ultimately mysterious and probably unknowable
but that this fact is irrelevant to the purpose for which
tarot has now been assigned (or for which it has finally been
revealed to be the sacred instrument).

I do not agree with him that the only theory about tarot of interest
is kabbalistic. I do tend to agree that one can bury themselves
in concerns over the origins of tarot at the expense of focusing
on any modern exploration of 'what it's good for'.

(jk)