Two new Tarot decks for my collection. October 30, 2009
Posted by Greywoolfe in Tarot.Tags: deck themes, Enchanted Tarot, Grail tarot, Tarot
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The first deck is entitled ‘The Grail Tarot’, and features some breathtaking medieval imagery, painted in a renaissance style on each card. This one shows the Major arcana as a procession of pictures following the quest of the Holy Grail, along with four suits, Lances (Wands), Vessels (Cups), Swords, and Stones (Pentacles). The unique thing about each suit and the Majors is that each card in the suit, when arranged in order, joins together to form a frieze telling a story. In the case of the Major Arcana, this is, as mentioned, the quest for the Holy Grail, and each suit depicts various activities within different chapters and orders of knights. The whole theme of the deck centres around the concept of knighthood and chivalry, and the Major Arcana have been renamed to fit the Grail story accordingly, with cards like The Gnostic Christ instead of The Magician.
Major Arcanum I- The Gnostic Christ (The Magician), The Grail Tarot.
The main drawback with this deck would be that I would have to relearn everything from scratch, from the new names of the Major Arcana and the suits, to the fact that the imagery on each card bears no relation to standard RWS or other kinds of tarot imagery, so the various card meanings will have additional values and layers of subtlety. Nevertheless, this is a stunning piece of work, and well worth looking into for study or meditation, which will have benefits for when I read with other decks.
The second deck, and my favourite of the two, is called The Enchanted Tarot. This deck comes with a lavishly illustrated hardback book, and a set of beautiful cards that just took my breath away. The imagery for the deck is traditional RWS themed, and coloured in subtle pastel shades of blue, purple and pink which remind me very much of the colurs and tones used in my beloved Cosmic Tarot. Each card’s image looks as if it were made of a photo-montage of differing fabrics and embroidery, which makes for some vividly textured and evocative artwork. Major Arcanum XIV- The Devil, for example, looks like a Balinese god, and hints at the spicy temptation of forbidden desires, which makes a great change from the traditional horned beast. Major Arcanum XIII- Death, looks like an embroidery depicting the Mexican Day Of The Dead, and conveys the joy of new beginnings rather than lingering on the sadness of the endings that preceded them.
Minor Arcana card 2 of Hearts (2 of Cups), The Enchanted Tarot.
The only major difference between this deck’s suits and traditional RWS-themed decks is the renaming of the suit of Cups into Hearts. Since the suit of Cups deals with emotions, relationships and the subconscious, (As well as becoming Hearts when the Tarot deck was reduced down to the standard 52-card deck of ‘normal’ cards) this is no biggie. The only drawback I have with this deck is that the cards are a fair bit larger than those of most other decks, which makes them difficult to shuffle, especially with my arthritic hands! I have no doubt that this will become easier with time, and experimental readings with this deck have shown much promise. I’m getting similar ‘vibes’ off this deck that I first had when I started off with my Cosmic, so this is most encouraging indeed. I’m confident that you haven’t heard the last of this deck on my blog, and I’m already considering using this for daily readings in the future.
Cheating The Ferryman; musings on the theory and its’ applications to Tarot. October 7, 2009
Posted by Greywoolfe in Metaphysical Musings..Tags: Aleister Crowley, Anthony Peake, Cheating The Ferryman, Tarot, Thoth
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I decided, firstly, to place this post in the ‘Metaphysical Musings’ category rather than ‘Tarot’, as it follows on from my review of Anthony Peake’s book, rather than being a straightforward posting on Tarot per se. To summarise from the previous post, Peake has formulated a theory based on extensive research, which claims that many of us have relived our lives time and time again; each life essentially being a construct made from memories of the previous one, with those memories sometimes acting as pointers to redirect our life path in each successive life. This theory is called Cheating The Ferryman, as each successive life begins just before we reach the moment of death, leaving the mythical Charon short-changed, and minus one passenger across the river Styx. I suppose you could say that each successive life fits inside the closing minutes of the previous one like a succession of Russian dolls. This collective life-memory has a personality of its’ own, and in accordance with Gnosticism and Greek myth, Peake refers to it as the Daemon, with our conscious self being called the Eidolon. Sometimes, in Near Death Experiences, the Daemon appears to us in various guises; one of the most familiar being some kind of guardian angel.
Going on this theory, the book shows that our Daemons sometimes give us clues as to how our life path will unfold as mentioned above, which sometimes take the form of precognitions, Déja-vú experiences and so on. Given that many famous seers from history, as Peake noted in his book, were able to accurately predict future events, (Although the accuracy of predictions tails off when future events fall outside the timeline of the person making the prediction, as Peake notes.) it would be logical to conclude that communication with the Daemon is possible, and beings such as spirit guides that give these insights to the seers must therefore be a form the Daemon assumes to make its’ manifestations less traumatic to them.
With all this in mind, I pondered over the implications of how this could tie in with Tarot, whether divination methods like this would enable us to directly contact our Daemon, and how does the Cheating The Ferryman theory tie in with other occult practises. My first thoughts were directed toward the notorious occultist and creator of one of the most popular Tarot decks, Aleister Crowley.
Aleister Crowley, creator of the Book Of Thoth Tarot deck.
Crowley’s main claim to fame, apart from his notoriety as ‘the wickedest man alive’ and his contributions to the field of Tarot, was in the founding of an occult system known as Thelema. This began in 1904 while on holiday in Egypt with his then wife. She had begun to behave strangely, which made Crowley believe that she was being contacted by some kind of entity, and on her instruction, he attempted to invoke the god Horus. This led to his contact with a strange being that called itself Aiwass, which claimed it was the minister of Hoor-Paar-Kraat; one of the many names Horus was known by to the ancients. Over a period of three days, Aiwass dictated The Book Of The Law to Crowley, and this became the lynchpin of Thelema. The object of Thelema, which Crowley called the Great Work, or goal of each adherent, was to obtain ‘the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel’, and through this to ‘manifest their true will’. It is from here that his famous epithet ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.. Love is the law, love under Will’ comes from. Crowley believed that everyone has a personal guardian angel, and through communication with it, we could realise our divine potential and manifest our true, or divine will.
The above paragraph, when analysed through the Cheating The Ferryman theory, gave me much to ponder on. Firstly, there is the case of Aleister’s wife, Rose. During her marriage to Crowley, she had often experienced trance states that had led to visions; one of which, coupled with odd behaviour, led to the invocation of Aiwass in 1904. Although I can find no evidence that Rose or members of her family ever suffered from epilepsy, and it is evident that some of her experiences may have been hypnotically induced through rituals performed by Crowley, these behavioural patterns are redolent of classic Temporal Lobe epileptic seizures, as described in Peake’s book. This, along with many coincidential events (Described by Crowley as synchronicity) that helped to direct Rose and her husband towards that fateful contact with Aiwass, could all be ascribed to her Daemon; events like these, that seemingly by chance coincide and direct a person’s actions can, according to Peake, be triggered by the Daemon, and are referred to as ‘synchrondipity’- a combination of synchronicity and serendipity, or meaningful coincidence. It could be that Roses’ Daemon knew of her eventual marriage to Crowley and his founding of Thelema, and directed her towards that goal.
Aleister Crowley's wife, Rose Edith Kelly.
This brings us to Crowley himself. His encounter with Aiwass could very easily be a meeting with his own Daemon; a meeting that, as mentioned above, may have been arranged and set up by Rose’s Daemon. Crowley, in his writings, was ever one to put subtle clues to hidden meanings in the texts, and if this being was indeed Crowley’s Daemon, we must also assume that it, too, would have a predilection for giving subtle clues as to it’s true identity. The name, I think, is a fairly big clue in itself; Aiwass. It looks strange, but say it out loud- I Was. This being also claimed to be the minister for Hoor-Paar-Krrat, or Horus, and when later Crowley founded Thelema, it could be argued that he, also, was a minister for this god. Is this Crowley’s Daemon telling him, and therefore us, that it was Crowley in a previous life? When it dictated The Book Of The Law to Crowley, it could have been a memory from Crowley’s previous life of having written the book before, however, it told Crowley (And this is noted in the book itself) that this work should never be passed on to anyone, yet Crowley published it anyway. Why? Possibly, as Crowley claimed, he didn’t want this work to be embedded in dogma like so many other religious works. Maybe, in his previous life, Crowley was unable to get the book published. Maybe, this time around, Crowley’s life path may have been nudged into a different timeline due to his choice to publish the book. I suspect that Crowley eventually knew the true nature of this being, as the basis of Thelema hinged around the communication with one’s Holy Guardian Angel, in order to manifest their true divine will. Crowley, I think, suspected the true nature of this angel and of Aiwass, and believed it was possible to use the foreknowledge of one’s own future life, gained through contact with one’s Daemon, to turn events to one’s own advantage.
Crowley knew a great deal about Tarot, having learned the craft while a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Rider Waite Smith Tarot deck, arguably the only deck more famous and widely used than Crowley’s, was made by Golden Dawn luminary Arthur Edward Waite, in co-operation with fellow member Pamela Coleman Smith. Many practitioners of Tarot believe that this, like other methods of divination, can be used to communicate with an aspect of ourselves that exists on a higher plane of reality. Others say that it enables us to contact our spirit guides. Since our Daemon often chooses a different form in order to communicate to us, maybe the spirit guide is one of those forms. It is certainly very telling that some practitioners believe that we contact a higher aspect of ourselves on another plane!
There is the distinct possibility that the act of divination enables our conscious mind to escape the fetters of mundane reality by using a random element of selection, such as shuffling a deck of cards, and establish contact with our Daemon through use of symbolism, such as the images on Tarot cards, or the inscriptions on Runestones or Ogham sticks. Many of the great seers gained their future visions through lucid dreams, and according to Peake, this is the most common way in which our Daemon can communicate with us; due to the disjointed nature of the dreams that many of us have, it is also evident that this communication method is rich in symbology, hence the ready market in dream interpretation books.
According to Peake’s book, the Daemon tends to reside in the right hemisphere of the brain, which dominates the left side of the body. I also began wondering about whether this may have had an influence in occult matters, especially since, in olden times, left-handed people were often branded as witches, and witchcraft was often referred to as the left-hand path. As the majority of people are right-handed, I wonder what the proportion of right-hander to left-hander is, and also how many of these have Daemons in the right brain hemisphere or the left, taking ‘virgin lifers’ into account, which won’t have Daemons yet, and account for around 30% of the population. I would be very interested to know if there is a correlation in these figures.
I say this, as in many conversations with the good folks at Aeclectic Tarot, I have found that most people tend to shuffle and cut their cards predominantly with the left hand. Could this be a way for our Daemon to influence the outcome of the reading by directly selecting the cards? There is much to think long and hard about here, and I hope to return to this aspect of Tarot as I find out more. At the moment, I am experimenting with my own daily readings by using my left hand to cut the deck and draw the daily card, and I’m noting the accuracy of each day. At the end of the year, I’ll look back and compare with my readings before this experiment began.
In the meantime, I shall conclude this marathon-length article by returning to Crowley, and some other clues I think I have picked up through his work on Tarot. Tarot is traditionally very heavy in Gnostic and Quabbalistic symbolism, and the Gnostics believed in the dual aspect (Daemon-Eidolon) of man. Crowley used all this in the symbolism of his cards, together with Thelema and scientific principles, when he created the Book Of Thoth Tarot deck with Frieda Harris in the late 1930s. Looking at one card in particular, I think I can see some Daemonic influence in the imagery. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you exhibit 1, Major Arcanum (Crowley called these Trumps) XIII, Death.
Trump XIII- Death, The Book Of Thoth, by Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris.
As well as looking at the illustration, it is interesting to read Crowley’s notes on the card from the companion book to the deck. My emphasis in bold:
“This card means redemption through putrefaction, the seed in the ground decays, but rises again to new life. Death, crowned with the headdress of Osiris, is raising from his scythe the reincarnation bubbles of life. Behind him is the eagle, symbol of immortality, and below him are the embryonic amoeba.”
From this, it could be inferred that as the present life approaches the death point, we rise again to new life, making new choices that will give us a chance for redemption of our actions as our new timeline unfolds. Since our new life begins before we reach actual death, we are, effectively, immortal. Each ‘reincarnation bubble’ that appears from Death’s scythe indicates a new cycle of life each time the point of death is approached. Some more interesting points come from the notes Crowley made on the meaning of the card, again, my emphasis in bold:
“Transformation. Change voluntary or involuntary, perhaps sudden and unexpected. Apparent death or destruction that is illusory when viewed from a higher perspective.“
Again, this could infer that at the death point, we transform back into our newborn selves, and death comes when we least expect it. When looked at from the viewpoint of the Daemon, death is but an illusion, as we never reach that point; returning, instead, to the moment of birth. Traditionally, the Death card in most Tarot decks very rarely means literal death, and usually means the end of a current situation, or the beginning of a new one. Given Crowley’s experiences with Aiwass and Thelema, however, and especially looking at these from the perspective of Peake’s theory, the notes and meanings of this card in Crowley’s deck are suddenly thrown into a new light, and I, for one, am left wondering if the great beast new more about the Daemon and the Eidolon than he openly admitted.
I will add more posts on the subject of Cheating The Ferryman as time goes by, and as more thoughts and ideas surface with my growing understanding of the subject. For now, at least, I hope I have given you some interesting points to ponder over.
Don’t Pay The Ferryman (When You Can Cheat Him Instead.) October 1, 2009
Posted by Greywoolfe in Metaphysical Musings..Tags: Anthony Peake, Cheating The Ferryman, ITLAD
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Another month, and another post. Sorry I haven’t been too prolific with content recently, but Dr Who related stuff has been thin on the ground recently, and I have two juicy new Tarot decks I will review for you all in the next couple of weeks, I promise. The main reason I’ve not been online much here, is because I’ve been reading a book. Not just any book, but one that has given me a prime opportunity to make a first post in my ‘Metaphysical Musings’ category.
The cover for Anthony Peake's book, Is There Life After Death.
This is the book I’m talking about- it’s called ‘Is There Life After Death? The Extraordinary Science Of What Happens When We Die’ by Anthony Peake. It’s a very interesting read, and delves into quantum physics, psychology, near-death experiences and other such things, and uses scientific data to propose an amazing theory of what happens to us at the point of death, which Peake refers to as the ‘Cheating The Ferryman’ hypothesis. (I bet you thought the title was a Chris DeBurgh reference, didn’t you? Well, shame on you!)
The book builds, chapter by chapter, explaining such diverse subjects as Quantum physics, Near Death Experiences, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and other things, which then pieces all these things together to propose the Cheating The Ferryman hypothesis in the final chapter. What is proposed is an incredible thing to grasp, but I’ll attempt to explain what little of it I understand for you here.
The universe, at the quantum level, is made of sub-sub atomic particles which are essentially vibrations of energy. Quantum physics has determined that particles of matter can exist in more than one place at the same time in potential until they are observed, which is when they become fixed points in space. You’ve heard of Schroedinger’s Cat? This is a demonstration of that conundrum. Time, as such, is an illusion created by our conscious mind as a way to make sense of the universe in a linear fashion, as time is simply our movement through the universe in a probability curve, and we exist at every point in our timeline simultaneously. Time essentially tidies things up into a sequence of events that we can make sense of.
During our lifetime, one half of our brain records everything that has ever happened to us, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, thoughts- every little detail. There have been cases where people have been regressed via hypnosis or various traumatic events, to previous times in their lives, where the memory is so vivid that, for all intents and purposes, they were actually back at that point in time. It could be argued that since they were re-observing that particular event, and since matter only becomes fixed when observed, they were recreating their own personal universe at that point in time. There have been many incidences, some of which are documented within the book, where patients that have undergone hypnotherapy, have experienced many hours or even years in their previously remembered events, yet have only been unconscious for mere minutes in the laboratory. From the patient’s perspective, they were actually at these previous events, and reliving them. Where is all this leading to? I’m getting there!
Most people who have had near-death experiences have told of how they meet a white, glowing figure- some call it God, some say it’s a guardian angel- which then takes them back to a review of their life, at which point they are then told ‘it’s not your time yet’, and come back to tell the tale. By examining these experiences, Peake discovered that what happens to the brain in these instances is very similar to phenomena like Temporal Lobe Epileptic seizures, Schizophrenia and migraines, but to varying degrees. (This does make sense in the book, honest.)
From these observations, Peake has formulated his ‘Cheating The Ferryman’ hypothesis: At the point of death, as also happens during migraines and epileptic seizures, the brain is flooded with a chemical called Glutamate. This effectively breaks down the conscious mind’s perception of time, to the point that time slows down infinitessimally for the observer- to the point where the moment of death is never reached, from the point of view of the person dying. During this time, the ‘glowing being’ detaches from the conscious mind- it is actually the collected sum total of that person’s entire life experience, which they see as an angel, or God, during an NDE. (NDE’s are essentially occasions when the ‘glowing being’ gets it wrong, and mistakes a near-terminal experience for actual death.) This then rewinds and plays back the total life experience of the person from the beginning, in real time relative to the viewer, and they begin to relive their lives from the beginning. Since matter exists only when it is observed, they have effectively recreated their own personal universe from scratch, and are reliving their lives all over again- but with a difference. The sum total of their life experience is still there, but the knowledge of what happened before is kept away from the new conscious mind, which is effectively as blank as it was when they were first born.
Taking his cue from Greek mythology and Gnosticism, Peake refers to the conscious part of the mind as the Eidolon, (Pronounced Eedolon) and the subconscious part that has lived before as the Daemon (pronounced Day-mon). Sometimes, the Daemon’s knowledge of events ‘leaks through’ to the Eidolon, which is where we get ‘Deja-Vu’ and precognition experiences from. Sometimes, these events prompt us to make slightly different decisions this time around than we did previously, which changes the course of the probability curve and creates an alternative timeline, which we then travel down until we reach the death point again- and again, and again. Events that usually trigger the intervention by the Daemon are life-changing ones, such as fatal accidents the person gets a warning of- usually by a ‘bad gut feeling’, ‘strange twists of fate’ that trigger the person into responding differently, or even hearing a voice in their head warning them to avoid something or do something.
The book obviously goes into much more detail, and is well worth a read. The book really blew my mind when I first read it; it sounds fantastic and hard to believe, but Peake has collated a lot of scientific data that builds a compelling case for his theory. I’d recommend any of my blog readership to read it- it’s one of those rare things that is pure science, embraces science yet also offers scientific theory for the basis of any religious experience. So much so that it’s compelled me to re-think a lot of stuff from my perspective, and I have already worked out how it could explain things like my Tarot card readings, for example. I’ll go into that bit in more detail when I do some more Tarot posts; I’ve already begun discussing this with other members of the forum at Anthony Peake’s site. If this idea fascinates you as much as it does me, go read the book, and have a look at Anthony’s site.
