Path: typhoon.sonic.net!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3DCEB855.329B@luckymojo.com> From: catherine yronwode Reply-To: info@luckymojo.com Organization: Lucky Mojo Curio Co. X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01-C-MACOS8 (Macintosh; I; PPC) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.magick Subject: Re: Pitting Crowley against Waite (was: Re: Book for Tarot Divination References: <3DC6F86C.4080807@cox.net> <3DC962D7.28D1@luckymojo.com> <8fhy9.35$tk2.55581@news.uswest.net> <3DCAD023.48CBAA7E@luckymojo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 111 Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 19:41:31 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.204.150.140 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sonic.net X-Trace: typhoon.sonic.net 1036957291 209.204.150.140 (Sun, 10 Nov 2002 11:41:31 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 11:41:31 PST Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.magick:324389 Asiya wrote: > cat yronwode wrote: > [...] no one in these threads has said Waite definitely was not a > magician. That Waite was a Christian mystic is a fact. That Waite > wrote extensively with the attitude of disliking magick and magicians > is a fact. We were in fact speculating whether Waite was perhaps more > than a dabbler in magick. I have seen people who have been in this newsgroup for ten years, who are published authors on magick, called "dabblers" by those who disrespect them or want to start a fight. Calling Waite a "dabbler in magick" is, in my opinion, simply trolling the dead. > > And in the Crowleyized view of things, Waite becomes the enemy, and > > Waite's later disinterest in ceremonial magic is re-cast as > > something that he had within him all the time, like a cancer, > > perhaps, which renders all his earlier enthusiasms for ceremonial > > magic null and void. > > What "enthusiasms", where? Are there facts to support your assertion > that Waite used to regularly practice magick with "enthusiasm"? Or is > this just a fantasy/alternative scenario? His membership in a lodge of ceremonial magick (The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) is evidence enough, i should think. He attended regularly and performed the magickal workings for which that group is justly famous. > > Why then should we believe the equally unsubstantiated claim that > > Waite "really did abhor" ceremonial magic because he later became > > interested in Christian mysticism? > > Waite didn't "later" become interested in Christian mysticism. > Christianity became a part of him when he was young, before he > developed an interest in the occult, and Christian mysticism stayed > with him throughout his life. You seem to be revising history to > support your favored speculation about him. I see no evidence that Waite's early Roman Catholic training led him toward Christian *mysticism* at a young age. He seems to have had an entirely convententional Catholic religious upbringing. No one has yet brought forth evidence (and R. A. Gilbert, Waite's biographer, surely would have, had he had it) that Waite was a young Catholic mystic. He was not seen on his knees praying a lot. The neighbors didn't call him "that sainted little boy". He had no visions of the Virgin or Christ. He went to work for the Horlick's malted milk company, after all -- he did not take religious orders, nor become a lay brother. I do see evidence that upon reaching adulthood, Waite had a period of great enthusiasm for the occult, alchemy, divination (especially cartomancy), and hermetic studies, which can be demonstarated his translating books on occultism into English, writing books on the occult and cartomancy, and joining a hermetic lodge of ceremonial magicians. This period of interest extended through his 30s and into his mid 40s. I see evidence that upon reaching adulthood, Waite also had an interest in universalist mysticism, evidenced by his interest in the Theosophical Society. Theosophy gives plural emphasis to Hinduism, Buddhism, ancient Egyptian religion, and other cults. (Side-note: As Aleister Crowley was also a follower of Theosophy as an adult, it is assumed that Theosophy is the root of the later outcroppings of Egyptian religion in Crowley's Gnostic Church rites.) R. A. Gilbert states that Waite was critical of Theosophy for its "anti-Christian" bias under the leadership of Helena Blavatsky. This was an accurate assessment by Waite, but it cannot be taken as evidence that Waite was exclusively a Christian mystic at that time; rather, it could equally indicate that Waite was disenchanted with the NON-universalist underbelly of the supposedly universalist Thoesophical creed. During this same time, Waite also pursued an interest in Martinism, another form of universalist mysticism, which had a more overtly Christian bent. I see evidence -- again, in his published books -- that some time after he turned 45 years old, Waite dropped some of his earlier interests and spent the rest of his life focussing on two areas: initiatic rituals that were connected with a variiety of auxiliiary Freemasonic jurisdictions that emphasized Templarism, and Rosicrucian-style Christian mysticism. Again, i see a life spent in a multi-phased, multi-dorectional quest for knowledge of a variety of subjects. If anything, i think it is TEMPLARISM, not mystical Christianity, that characterises Waite's latter years. Templarism encomnpasses Christian mysticism, but not vice versa. Also, remember that at the time Waite lived, the Catholic popes were highly antagonistic to Freemasonry. (This was due to the late 19th vcentury Leo Taxil hoax, which Waite himself had exposed in his book "Devil Worship in France.") Obviously, Waite's continued and elaborated participation in Masonic Templar rites undercuts any theory that he was drawn back to the "Mother Church" of his youth, at least as it was then constituted. In fact, according to R. A. Gilbert, the only formal affiliation Waite retained throughout his entire adult life and unto death was to his Mother Lodge in Craft Masonry. One can see other traces of Waite's antipathy to Roman Catholicism in his book "The Holy Grail," which placed repeated emphasis on "a super-apostolic succession" -- that is, the belief that the true Christian church can only be found ouside the lineage of Roman Catholic hierarchy. Although he predates it by decades, Waite's writings about the super-apostolic succession in "The Holy Grail" almost seem cut of similar anti-Roman cloth to that worn by the Bigent, Leigh, Lincoln, and other authors in the contemporary "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" or "Bloodline of Jesus" movement. Cordially, cat yronwode Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodooherbmagic.html