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The cards are not to be sold without the book.
If the book can be printed without illustrations it need not
cost more than [L]300.
If Lady Harris likes, she can give it away with the cards, I do
not want any money out of it: and she can say she wrote it, I don't
care.
But I will not allow the cards to be issued so that they can be
used only for gambling or fortune-telling.
The new catalogue, full of grotesque blunders which discredit
the scholarship of the Work, must be withdrawn.
.PA
[Actually written by Crowley, to himself; the "Society" is
fictitious as such.]
An open letter to Alestair Crowley
SOCIETY OF HIDDEN MASTERS
Dear Sir
For many years we have watched your career with benevolent
interest; wile we have been unable to approve many of your
activities in particular your policy of revealing secret knowledge
which we consider dangerous if in the possession of untrained and
uninitiated people. We have always respected your passionate
integrity, your fanatical (and in our opinion, indiscreet) love of
Truth.
I our view, this mistaken policy has been responsible for many
of your own personal mishaps. For this reason we re surprised that
you should acquiesce, even by silence, in so blatant and impudent a
hoax as the exhibition of Tarot Cards at the Royal Society of
Painters in Water Colours, 26/7 Conduit Street, W.1. beginning 4th
August 1942.
We hereby challenge you to deny any of the statements here
following:--
1. During the winter of 1898/9 you were entrusted by the Order of
A..A.. with the Secret Lecture on the Tarot, giving the initiated
attributions.
2. You published these attributions at the command of the Secret
Chiefs of the order in a Book of Reference numbered 777 in 1909.
3. You issued the Official Lecture of the Order on the Tarot, in the
Equinox Vol. I Nos VII and VIII, March and September 1912.
4. You have made the Tarot your continual study and used it daily,
since the Winter of 1898/9.
5. You have made the Tarot the skeleton or schema of all your
writings on mystical and magical subjects. We would instance
particularly "Ambrosia", "Magi Hortus Rosarum" (The Wake-World),
"The Vision and the Voice", "Theory and Practice of Magick".
6. You have been recognized everywhere in Europe and America (even,
to a less extent, in India) as the supreme Authority on the Tarot;
that is, by serious students of the subject.
7. You have contemplated the construction and publication of a
properly designed and executed pack, based on the Equinox
information ever since the issue of the grotesque and falsified
parody which appeared under the auspices of the later A.E. Waite.
6. In a series of conversations in 1937 beginning at Mr. Clifford
Bax' chambers in Albany St., W.1., you suggested to Lady Harris that
she might be able to carry out this work. Although she very rightly
protested that her knowledge of the subject hardly extended beyond
the name, you, with the imbecile optimism characteristic of you,
persuaded her that the descriptions of the cards given in the
Equinox would be sufficient guide, and persuaded her to make the
attempt.
9. It became obvious almost at once that the Equinox designs were
artistically impracticable. Lady Harris very properly asked you to
take the whole subject in hand ab ovo esque ad umbilicum. You
thereupon agreed to devote your whole knowledge to the work of
designing an entirely original pack of cards, incorporating the
results of your 39 years of constant study of the subject with your
profound--if at times unacceptably unorthodox--knowledge of
comparative religion, mathematical physics, philosophy and Magick.
Also nthat you should compose a Treatise explaining the subject in
full. It appears from a notice in the Exhibition that there is a
proposal to publish the cards as a pack without this book. To do so
would limit their use to fortune-telling, a form of fraud against
which you have constantly set your face your whole life long. We
refuse to believe that you have now consented to prostitute the
Sacred Wisdom of Thoth to this base and dishonest purpose and we
insist upon this point being made clear.
10. On May 11, 1938, Lady Harris became officially your disciple,
and was permitted to affiliate to the other Order of which you are
Head, the O.T.O.
11. You made an agreement with Lady Harris by which you were to have
a 66 2/3% interest in the work.
12. For the next four years approximately, Lady Harris prepared
water-colours of the cards. She did this from your rough sketches
and descriptions under your continual direction, subject to your
constant and repeated corrections. In some cases you made her redraw
and re-paint a card which you found unsatisfactory as many as five
or six times. She has, when left to herself, no sense of dignify or
congruity; one of us has seen some attempts which you rejected, for
instance, her ideal figure for "The Fool", the Holy Ghost, was Harpo
Marx. Did you really pass this and Trump I? She gave the Sphinx in
Trump X a French cabahy sabre! And her first conception of "The Lord
of the Winds and the Breezes; the King of the Spirits of the Air",
was a clown in plate armour, waving rapier and dagger, sprawling
over a demented nag, diving through a paper screen in a circus!
13. You left Lady Harris a comparatively free hand in respect of
insignificant details; but at no time did she contribute a single
idea of any kind to any card, and she is in fact almost as ignorant
of the Tarot and its true meaning and use as when she began. We
cannow however, blame you for this.
14. You have followed with as much fidelity as was possible the
traditional designs of the mediaeval packs; but you have notably
enriched and revivified some of them, especially the Trumps, with
your scholarship, as observed above in paragraph 9.
15. In every trump you have not only incorporated symbols
illustrating the doctrines of Payne Knight, Hargrave Jennings,
Arthur Eddington, J.G. Frazer, Bertrand Russell, J.W.N. Sullivan,
Eliphaz Levi and how many others! --but introduced very many ideas
purely personal to yourself and based on your own personal magical
experience--see "The Vision and the Voice", "The Paris Working" etc.
16. In certain cases, in order to make sure that your doctrine of
the New Aeon is clearly manifest as the spiritual-magical basis of
the whole work, you have given new names to the cards. Notably
Trumps XI, XIV, and numerous "small" cards. You have made the final
correction to the attributions--Trumps IV and XVII, according to the
Book fo the Law given to you in Cairo April 8, 9, and 10 1904. You
have used "The Stele of Revealing" (see "The Book of the Law" Chap.
I 49, III 19) to replace "The Last Judgment" (Trump XX) to affirm
the supersession of the Aeon of Osiris the Dying God by that of
Horus the Crowned and Conquering Child. The entire composition is
soaked in and reeks of your own private and personal point of view
with regard to Magick.
17. You undertook this Work with two main motives:--
1. That it should serve as a Magical Atlas of and Guide to the
Universe, for this "New Aeon of Horus", that is, for the next
2,000 years.
2. That its undeniable beauty and majesty should be an
intelligible vindication of the whole of your life's work.
You rightly foresaw that sooner or later it would be clear
that you are the sole responsible author of the Work and Lady
Harris only your more or less docile and intelligent
instrument.
18. You and Lady Harris were at first agreed that the Work should be
put forth anonymously. She wrote to a friend "I intend to remain
anonymous when the cards are shown". You had, of course, pointed out
that any student of the subject would recognise your authorship at a
glance.
19. Too well aware that in the past your work has been stolen and
exploited by unscrupulous rascals and also that doctrinal argument
of a lightly technical kind may all too frequently prove rather hard
for a jury, you took the precaution of introducing certain symbols
into the designs of susch a character that the most stupid would be
compelled to acknowledge your authorship of the Work.
Your conduct is abominable and inexcusable to allow Lady Harris
to issue a catalogue crammed with the grossest errors of fact,
blunders of scholarsip, irrelevancies and absurdities; to allow her
to make herself the laughing-stock of London by larying claim to the
authorship of pictures of which all artists know her to be utterly
incapable, her work having been that of a wealthy amateur persistent
enough to acquire a good technique but with no personality, no
"message" groping in Bloomsbury forgs for the parasitic adulation of
a gaggle of sycophants.
We can understand your passionate wish to get these cards
exhibited, even by a subterfuge, but you had no right to sacrifice
Lady Harris and you have no right to lend yourself, even by silence
to the perpetration of a hoax transparent and nausient as it must
naturally be, which affects the honour of the Fraternity of Art and
Letters.
We repeat that we are surprised; for whatever your faults, you
have always been honourable and truthful with more than ancient
Roman rigour. You must speak now.
for the Society of Hidden Masters.
Justus M.
Sic vos non vobis.
Sunur evique.
.PA
[1st page of letter missing--this is Crowley's "reply" to the letter
from the Society of Hidden Masters.]
Their estimate in paragraph 6 is exaggerated: it depends on the
definition of "serious students."
Nor would it be useful to deny them, as in every case their
truth is guaranteed by evidence independent of my asseveration,
internal evidence of documents easily accessible.
"I do however most strenuously deny participation in the hoax.
This was perpetrated by Lady Harris without my knowledge or consent;
I only learnt of the exhibitions, in the first case several days
after the opening, from information supplied by loyal friends.
This letter is to authorize and to request you to publicize its
substance, either by a letter addressed to the Times and other
newspapers, or as you in your best judgment may see fit.
Believe me,
Gentlemen,
Yours faithfully,
Aleister Crowley
On August 1, 2010, a new temple of the Order of the Gnostic Star was duly chartered and established by a group of five individuals, which is the required minimum quorum. The new temple is officially known as the Binah-Ge Temple #2, which resides in the southeastern corner of Massachusetts. I am not only quite happy and proud that I can make this announcement, but it also brings up a couple of important points that I would like to discuss here. Anyway, let us all congratulate this group and the inauguration of their new temple! A great spiritual and magickal adventure awaits them. Soon they will be experiencing many amazing new things, since in addition to receiving a charter, they also got the Order's first three years worth of ritual lore. Once they get through all of that, then more lore will be forthcoming. It will lead them from the first degree all the way through the seventh, all of which has been completely written and vetted over the last twenty years. I suspect that it will take them a number of years to master all of this lore, and while they are learning, they will be building up their own individual as well as collective magickal systems. I envy the wondrous visions and discoveries that await them, since that is what I and other members experienced many years ago.
The important points that I want to bring up at this time is that the Order of Gnostic Star is an active order with a complete set of magickal lore. That lore is available to groups who have the required minimum number of five members. I have made this statement before, but around a month ago, a group actually did contact me and requested to receive a charter for establishing a new temple. I have received these requests before, but usually after I point out the basic requirements as written in the Bylaws, potential members get cold feet and don't bother to continue to correspond with me. This time the group spokesperson had not only read the Bylaws, but informed me that his group met the basic requirements. Those requirements are pretty basic, and they are easy to verify as well - even at long distances. They had five members who had been practicing ritual magick for at least a year together. They also had the requisite collective temple space. Over the period of couple of weeks, I got separate emails from each prospective member of the temple and even talked to their spokesperson on the phone a few times. I was convinced that they had met the requirements, so there wasn't anything further to do other than issue them a charter.
Amazingly, I didn't even have a template for a charter, since there wasn't much need to produce one over all these years since the last temple folded. I consulted a facsimile of the old charter for the Isis-Sophia temple #1, but that didn't prove to be useful either. So I used my imagination and inspiration and put one together, based on what I knew had been done in the past. The final result was quite impressive and looked very official, if I do say so myself. Now if anyone else asks me to present them with a temple charter, I will have one ready to go.
This, of course, brings me to my next important point. The Order of the Gnostic Star has become reconstituted! There are now at least two temples in formation. The first and the original mother temple, Isis-Sophia, is being reassembled with a combination of old members and new. A quorum of three elders is now fully established, ready to engage the public through the edifice of the greater Order. However, there is no grand lodge and there is no overriding hierarchy, only individual and fully autonomous temples. What this means is that we can now guide and help any small group of individuals to form their own temple, provided they meet the requirements. It also means that once a temple is chartered, it becomes fully autonomous. No one who is not a member of that temple may make any group based determinations. A group can ask for advice or guidance, but all decisions are theirs alone to make. In addition, all internal group decisions must be determined by consensus. That group dynamic ensures that the elders will never be able to dictate policy to any temple, so a decision to give a charter to a temple is serious business. A charter thus will be duly given once a proper group is validated. Included with a charter is the lore, which is the first three years of rituals and documents. These will be delivered on electronic media for the group to learn, master and use to forge their own systems of magick. All of this is done at absolutely no cost to the group who petitions the Order. Our generosity has an important cause in the greater scheme of things. We expect the new group to show generosity and openness in its turn. So there aren't any hidden costs, strings, obligations or any additional requirements or expectations in this offer. It is given freely and openly to the greater occult community. As far as I am aware, there isn't any other magickal Order that runs its business in this fashion - at least none that I have ever heard of.
The members of the Binah-Ge temple are a collective of witches and pagans from various source organizations. They have done their time in groves, covens and community based organizations, and they know the basic elements of ritual and ceremonial magick. They are a fairly experienced group of individuals, and I am very pleased to have made their acquaintance. I am also happy to have been of service to them, assisting them in finding the lore and the pathway to a full mastery of the Art of Ritual Magick. I am still traveling that path myself, and I have n't finished it, so like them, we are travelers on the same basic path - the Western Mystery Tradition. I believe that in the years to come they will contribute some astounding new lore, discoveries and new techniques in ritual magick. They may come up with some really cool themes for their liturgical practices and seasonal rites, and I hope that they share some of these new directions with me and other members of this magickal family. Time will inform me whether or not I have made a wise choice in giving magickal lore to this group. I suspect that it was a wise choice.
So, here we are, my fellow readers of this blog, ready to broach the final four questions. Are you interested in such an organization as the Order of the Gnostic Star? Do you have a group of at least four other individuals besides yourself that you can assemble to work rituals and ceremonies on a periodic basis? Do you have a room or space that can be dedicated to this work? Are you presently involved in witchcraft or paganism? If you answered yes to all four of these questions and want to engage in some cutting edge ritual magickal lore, then drop me an email and let me know. I will happily engage all serious inquiries. You can email me through this blog.
Your humble servant -
Frater Barrabbas
Suggested ebooks:
John Sebastian Marlowe Ward - The Master Masons Handbook
Aleister Crowley - The Stratagem And Other Stories
A question I get asked a lot is "What are the best Tarot card decks?" Well, "best" is a relative term. I don't really think there is any such thing as "best" but I do agree that there are some decks that are more popular than others and maybe a little easier to understand. In this article, I'm going to briefly review the most popular and probably the most easy to learn Tarot card decks in the world today. Hopefully, after reading this, you'll have a pretty good idea of what Tarot card deck you will ultimately end up with.
Without a doubt, the most popular and easiest to learn Tarot card deck is the Rider Waite Tarot Deck. This deck was named after the very famous occult scholar, Dr. Arthur Edward Waite. The deck was first created in 1910. He had the designs drawn by a very talented lady by the name of Pamela Coleman Smith. Pamela was a member of the occult society group called the Order of the Golden Dawn.
The deck itself is very pleasing to look at. The symbolism is very easy to understand. But the best thing about using this deck is that there are so many books written on the use of these particular cards that learning to use the Rider Waite deck is going to be easier than just about any other deck in existence. For this reason, most occultists recommend that beginners start off with the Rider Waite Deck.
Another very popular Tarot Card deck, though nowhere near as easy to learn, is the Llewellyn Tarot. The illustrations in this deck are based off of the legends and the mythology of Wales. The artwork is created ina a very beautiful watercolor style.
The Llewellyn deck isn't as easy to read as the Rider Waite and there aren't as many books on it either. However, you can find some decent ones in your more established occult stores, whereas you can find a Rider Wait book in just about any book store.
Of course, probably one of the most popular Tarot Card decks of all time is the Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot, which was created by another Order of the Golden Dawn member, Aleister Crowley. Reading this deck is extremely difficult and requires some pretty serious prior knowledge of Tarot Cards. One of the most unusual things about this deck is that it contains three versions of the Magus card. If you're going to use this deck for your divination, some serious study of the Tarot beforehand will be required.
There are of course many other Tarot Card decks, but these three should be more than enough to get you started. I suggest starting with the Rider Waite, then moving on to the Llewellyn Tarot, and then finally tackling the Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot, when you begin to feel more adventurous.
To YOUR Divination Success.
by Steven Wagenheim
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven Wagenheim
Well I decided to take a little break for the New Year and go away for a week, just to relax and re-evaluate my goals and what I want to do this year.
When doing Black Magic it is important to to set goals for your self and have an understanding of where you wish to take your craft. Sure it can be fun blindly waking around just doing whatever you feel like, but in the end you need to focus your efforts if you want to master any black magic skill.
Witch Sabbath
This is why, at the start of the New Year, I will cast a cleansing spell. After cleansing myself I will take time for me (another important thing to do in black magic). Touch base with myself, and figure out what I desire in the coming year.
There are many roads in life, and in Black magic we believe that we can take any road we want. The choice is ours where we we wish to go.
A wooden path
When I was younger I use to go hiking in the mountains ( I still do but not as much). On some of those trips I would just blindly walk around and play in the forest. It was those times where I usually never made it past the base of the mountain. When I walked in with a goal to get to the top of the mountain, I would usually end my journey on top looking down on the city ( a beautiful site to behold).
Vancouver from Grouse mountain
Anyway my point is that no path is wrong. When I stayed at the bottom and ran around at the base, I had fun, but never accomplished getting to the top. When I set the goal of getting to the top I achieved what I wanted. Depending on what you want your outcome to be, your journey will be different.
With magickal abilities it is the same thing. If you want to excel in black magic, then you need to practice and be committed to learning your skills. Setting goals can help you stay on track and focused on your goals so that you get there faster.
When I set my goals I will alway start by taking time for me and just relaxing. I find that the business of life can sometimes overpower the internal voice so every now and then you need to silence all noise and listen to what your true self is telling you. I use Meditation for this. Meditation is a very very important thing in Black Magic as it helps you to get in touch with yourself and understand what your needs and wants are. Basically meditation provides you with a door to seek out your inner self and find out what you want.
After I have meditated and found out what I want I will them make a list of things that I want to have, or wish to do in the coming year. The important thing with making the list is to not let the "I can't do that attitude get in the way." When you write something down and you feel like you cannot do that, that is your mind putting a limitation on you. In Black Magic we must work to remove these limitations and believe in our own power.
Believe me these limitations can take time to break down. Some of them take years depending on what the limitation is. Just make the list and do not worry about anything.
When it comes to magic goals, after I have made the list of things I would enjoy learning about I will then read as much as I can on those topic, as well as meditate on the concept seeing what information I can derive from the spirit world. Which is usually a lot.
One last important piece on information. Only do things if you enjoy it. Do not do anything you hate just to impress other people. Do things for you! In Black Magic the outcome or attaining the goal is not the most important part.
Getting to the goal is not the most important part. The journey, hiking up the mountain and taking in all that is around me, is. Sure acheiving goals is great, but the jouney is where the lessons are learned and where the growth happens. It is also where all your exerpiences and memories take place. Do not stress yourself out about making mastering your goals. Enjoy the Journey and learn all you can from the experience.
magick
If you cannot have fun and enjoy the journey, then you will never be truely happen IF you ever reach your goal. Your magick will be stronger if you learn with enthusiasm and passion.
Happy Goal Setting,
Priestess Akelta
Suggested ebooks:
Aubrey Bell - The Magic Of Spain
Meshafi Resh - The Black Book
Anonymous - The Basics Of Magick
