Tarot Time Traveller

by Marcus Katz

  Complete your shuffle and select out two cards, placing them face-up, one card above the other card; that is, the second card above the first.

  Consult the table and read out (or write down) the word(s) in the right-hand column in the following way; “[first word] ABOVE [second word].”As an example, if we had the Queen of Cups above the Prince (Knight) of Wands this would be “the pool above the sun.”

  Contemplate the landscape and weather combination as a solution to your situation. It may suggest how you should act or how you should prepare.

  If it makes more sense, you can instead use the word “beneath,” so the Prince (Knight) of Swords and the Knight (King of Wands) beneath would be “the lightning beneath the clouds.”

  As an example, in the “lightning beneath the clouds” we might adopt a strategy of presenting a lot of confusion but underneath striking selected goals quickly and powerfully. If we were looking at the first example, “the pool above the sun,” we might want to drink from that pool before the sun dries it out; i.e., take immediate advantage of an opportunity that might suddenly be withdrawn.

  You might also see that this is a neat way of making the court cards function as a mini I-Ching reading, which is another divination system in which Crowley also had expertise.

  The Vast Aeons of Time

  Crowley perceived that time passed through great aeons, equivalent but not identical to the “Zodiacal Ages” of Pisces, Aquarius, etc. We have also met this idea in the first era of tarot, through Comte de Mellet. Crowley also developed this idea from several sources, including his own religious upbringing and the teaching of the Golden Dawn. He also worked from Eliphas Lévi, who followed a teaching based on the ages of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (or Nettle, Rose, and Lily) first codified by Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135–1202). In Crowley’s cosmology and illustrated throughout the Thoth Tarot, we see the passing of the Age of Osiris and the new Age of Horus of which Crowley (of course) was the chief prophet.

  The old aeon (age) of Osiris was characterised by a singular father-god, a central myth of death and resurrection, and a time of institutions and organisations. The new Aeon of Horus is to be a time of rebellion, individualism, and the practice of true will by every person not as anarchy but as a hard-won duty. These aeons last approximately two thousand years, and Crowley saw 1904 as the commencement or ushering in of the Aeon of Horus; leading in part to his rebellious tarot.

  We see this most explicitly in one of the renamed major arcana, Judgment, which Crowley has renamed the “Aeon.” At the back of the Book of Thoth, Crowley conveniently hid some advice about divination, before going on to give some “general characters of the Trumps as they appear in use” (i.e., divinatory meanings). Before we look at his divinatory meaning for the Aeon, here is his advice about divination:

  It is quite impossible to obtain satisfactory results from this [the Opening of the Key Spread] or any other system of divination unless the Art is perfectly required. It is the most sensitive, difficult and perilous branch of Magick. 156

  It is surprising to read that the same Aleister Crowley who attempted an ascent of K2 (the most perilous mountain in the world) and was told if he were not messing with the dangerous demons of the Goetia then they were certainly messing with him, and who experimented with tantric magick long before it became vogue, considers that a tarot reading is the most perilous branch of magick.

  Divination is a sensitive art in that it must never replace “will” or “agency” in our lives; a reading is not an excuse or confirmation of a bad decision, nor should it ever compel us fully into any act alone. Whilst the oracular moment is sacrosanct, our common sense and other evidence must always be weighed in the balance. Therefore, divination is difficult and perhaps perilous.

  Here is the divinatory meaning for the Aeon card: “Final decision in respect of the past, new current in respect of the future; always represents the taking of a definite step.”

  His poem for the card is:

  Be every Act an Act of Love and Worship,

  Be every Act the Fiat of a God.

  Be every Act a Source of Radiant Glory.

  The Aeon card is about every act. In every moment, we are acting. We are making one decision, one movement after another. Crowley’s philosophy of Thelema asks us to consider where those acts are leading us and whether they are congruent towards a singular aim. The appearance of this card in a reading challenges us to ask every decision, connection, and action: “Are you with me or against me?”

  We must also ask why Crowley changed some of the names of the cards and their fundamental design deviated from what had gone before. It is in the Aeon card we get this explanation from him. He firstly says, “In this card it has been necessary to depart completely from the tradition of the cards to carry on that tradition.” 157 He then says later, “this new tarot may therefore be regard as a series of illustrations to the Book of the Law; the doctrine of that Book is everywhere implicit.” 158

  The Aeon card illustrates the Stele of Revealing, a central icon of Crowley’s experience at the time he received the Book of the Law. This wooden funeral plaque, originally labelled 666 when Crowley saw it, features the ancient Egyptian deities of Nuit, the sky goddess whom we see arched over the card, and Hadit, the winged globe we see pictured in the centre of the card. Out of them arises the god Horus in two forms, pictured as the enthroned warrior and the silent child.

  When using this deck, it is a good idea to be able to utilise the deities in the cards as symbolic within the situation of the querent. We can point to these deities and read what is the overarching and supporting Nuit of the decision—what will nurture it? What is the fiery core of it (the Hadit)? And how will the long-term plan and the short-term passion marry together to create a new entity, Horus? Finally, how will that Horus be both expressed and protected in equal measures?

  Having briefly looked at how the Aeon is seen within the Thoth tarot, we will conclude with a practical reading method using the Thoth tarot or any other similar deck which expresses the primacy of Will and proactive decision making.

  Exercise: How to Be Prudent in Your Planning

  We take for this method just one card as the inspiration for the spread. This is using the tarot to design and explore itself, a common method used in our following chapter on Tarosophy. We will use the 8 of Disks, a card entitled “Prudence.”

  Crowley says of Prudence, “there is a sort of strength in doing nothing at all.” 159

  We are not sure that Crowley himself understood that dictum, given his own lifestyle, but it is certainly the one he puts forward for this card. He goes further to describe the atmosphere of the card:

  One thinks of Queen Victoria’s time, of a man who is ‘something in the city’ rolling up to town with Albert the Good advertised by his watch-chain and frock-coat; on the surface he is very affable, but he is nobody’s fool. 160

  He says this card is “intelligence lovingly applied to material matters” (8 = Hod, the Sephirah of intellect, in Assiah, the material world). It has the sense of investment as well as engineering.

  We can really drill down into this card and then use it in a reading. Each of the fruits of the Tree on the card can be considered one of the eight components of Prudence in terms of philosophy:

  Memoria—Accurate memory; that is, a memory that is true to reality.

  Intelligentia—Understanding of first principles.

  Docilitas—The kind of open-mindedness that recognises the true variety of things and situations to be experienced, and does not cage itself in any presumption of deceptive knowledge; the ability to make use of the experience and authority of others to make prudent decisions.

  Shrewdness or quick-wittedness (solertia)—Sizing up a situation on one’s own quickly.

  Discursive reasoning (ratio)—Research and compare alternative possibilities.

  For
esight (providentia)—The capacity to estimate whether an action will lead to the realization of our goal.

  Circumspection—Ability to take all relevant circumstances into account.

  Caution—Risk mitigation.

  If we create a spread with eight positions based on the card and its correspondence to these eight components of prudence, we might suggest these positions:

  30. Prudence Spread.

  Memory: What situation or resource in the past can be applied to this present situation?

  Intelligence: What is the smartest way to consider this situation?

  Response: What is the best response to what is happening now?

  Immediate Action: What is the best new action or decision to take immediately?

  Alternatives: What should I consider as an alternative if I need to change this plan?

  Likely Outcome: What is the likely outcome?

  Missing Information: What is the most important thing I am missing in my planning?

  Risk: What is the risk against which I must weigh the outcome?

  This spread is very useful for adding caution to your planning and throwing up any realistic questions about your expectations. It is extremely powerful when used with the brutally honest Thoth tarot or similar esoteric decks that have dynamic designs or accompanying interpretations.

  This method of using a single card to design a spread can be applied to any card or deck for specific situations; if you had a deeply spiritual and abstract question to which you really needed a grounded answer you might take an ethereal deck such as the Nigel Jackson Rumi Tarot and remove the 3 of Pentacles. This card represents a very stable (3) grounding (Pentacles) in a spiritual deck.

  When we look at that card, we see that it has a quote from Rumi reading “God opens the door of knowledge to the bee so that it builds a house of honey.”

  The design of the card features a sun, a bee, and a hive set in a frame of three coins.

  We might design a spread from this image with three positions:

  The Sun: What is the illumination that seeks expression in my situation?

  The Bee: What work must I accomplish to realise that illumination?

  The Hive: What must I build to know my work is realised?

  In this manner, we can use our deck of cards as a portable divinatory companion capable of not only answering our questions, but guiding us to ask the right questions in the first place.

  Aleister Crowley and his deck would come to be written in cartomantic history in addition to influencing the flower power age, the new age, and likely many ages we have not yet visited in the future. However, he was certainly not the only occultist, magician or mystic to take the tarot in deeper directions. Let us jump next to Los Angeles, two decades before the hippy generation, and see how the tarot was already carrying messages of spiritual revolution.

  [contents]

  150 Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1985), 97.

  151 Outside of the scope of this present work, we date the reception of the Book of the Law to a slightly different date than later established by Crowley himself, based on unpublished material from Crowley’s own 1904 notebook.

  152 See also Marcus Katz, Secrets of the Thoth Tarot (Keswick, UK: Forge Press, 2017).

  153 The Book of the Law was written on three sets of papers each marked 1 through 22, the number of cards in the Major Arcana.

  154 Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1985), 213.

  155 Ibid.

  156 Crowley, Book of Thoth, 253.

  157 Crowley, Book of Thoth, 115.

  158 Ibid., 116.

  159 Crowley, Book of Thoth, 184.

  160 Ibid., 185.

  11

  Spiritual Tarot

  The life of the mystic belongs to the divine degree, and it would be difficult to say that it is attainable in the life of the world; but some of its joys and consolations—as indeed its trials and searching—are not outside our daily ways.

  —A.E. Waite, Words from a Masonic Mystic (pp. 129–30)

  26 August, 1944: Los Angeles, USA

  A dark-haired woman in her early thirties walks into a small living room and takes her seat as around her more people arrive to listen to the spiritual lecture about to take place in this incongruous space. She is restless and under duress; her sister, Rosalie, has persuaded her attendance to learn about tarot. Whilst Rosalie is a gifted and ardent clairvoyant and psychic, Anne, her sister, is not, and knows nothing about the tarot other than it is a fortune-telling parlour trick.

  She leans over to Rosalie and complains about the hard, wooden chair and asks why they had taken a streetcar to get here, at their expense. She is just about to raise another complaint when the speaker (also the house’s owner) enters. She is shocked to find that her whole body is struck with an almost electrical force; she even begins to shake. She feels an overwhelming recognition of the man made even more astonishing when this stranger strides across the short space to her and throws his arms around her. He is saying how happy he is to see her again, and how very long it has been since they last met. She feels both recognition and confusion at the same time; he seems to think she has been here before but it is her first time, surely.

  After greeting several other students, the man begins his lecture. As he picks up a large image of one of the tarot cards, she groans inwardly. She had thought this man to have some presence, some inescapable power or spirituality, and yet here he is about to start convincing her about some fortune-telling bunkum.

  He holds up the card image, the numbered fifth tarot card of the major arcana and begins to speak: “The Hierophant corresponds to the Hebrew letter Vau, the nail. It is the perfect symbol for the Will of the Divine which is joined as if by a nail to our own Will. The Will is a small point but a beginning; it is a coming forth in a search for itself; a hunger; and a desire; and a longing. Out of that longing comes purpose and the fixing of your boundaries, but the Hierophant is the teaching of that divine boundary and the revelation of its mystery … ”

  As he continues, Anne is transported by his words into an astonishing, glorious, and joyous place within herself. Time is forgotten. She feels swept into a new world of wisdom and wonder. Indeed, she sits there, the hard chair long forgotten beneath her. She turns round and even sees us there in the room, observing everything. In the background, the man continues and it now seems as if he is talking to us …

  “And when thou hast reached this goal of conscious unity illustrated by the Hierophant tarot card, what shall be a day, or a month, or a year, or a lifetime, or a hundred lifetimes? Time ceaseth for those who come to this.” 161

  For a moment, we too are caught by his words and awareness. He is Paul Foster Case, and the woman looking at us is Anne Davies, and between them both they will develop the teachings of a new mystery school, from the ashes of the Golden Dawn, the Builders of the Adytum.

  The Cube of Space

  As with C. C. Zain and others, Case took the teachings of previous esoteric groups and developed them; modifying, adding, or removing subjects as he saw fit to his own philosophy. Case reworked a lot of the astrology of the Golden Dawn, developed much of the tarot teaching, and removed all references to Enochian magic, which he considered to be harmful to most students.

  Case was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the USA, but with much more information then becoming available to the public on all matters, both esoteric and historical, he could take those teachings and make them far more consistent and accessible.

  His brief and succinct work, 22 Tokens, is a major development in meditation work on the tarot correspondences with kabbalah. A further contribution to the esoteric tarot was his introduction of the Cube of
Space, a three-dimensional version of tarot correspondences based on the Sepher Yetzirah, one of the earliest written texts on the Kabbalah. This has since been touched upon by other teachers such as Gareth Knight and R. J. Stewart. 162 It has also been more recently described in detail by Kevin Townley and David Allen Hulse.

  The Cube of Space is built by arranging the Hebrew letters into their directions in space according to the correspondences of the Sepher Yetzirah. As the twenty-two Hebrew letters fall into three categories, it makes it more obvious as to their allocations to space:

  Three mother letters: Three interior dimensions (vertical, horizontal, diagonal).

  Seven double letters: Centre of cube and six faces.

  Twelve single letters: Twelve edges of cube on the outside frame.

  These are directly derived from the Sepher Yetzirah. For example, the section “Seven Double Letters” point out seven localities: Above, Below, East, West, North, South, and the Palace of Holiness in the midst of them sustaining all things. 163

  We then take the correspondences of the twenty-two Hebrew letters to the twenty-two tarot cards and “wallpaper” the edges, faces, and corners of our cube with the cards. We take the Golden Dawn system of correspondences for this section, but you can also try the Waite-Trinick model as an alternative.

  31. Cube of Space by authors after Paul Foster Case,

  The Tarot, A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, 1947.

  Why would we do this rather complex yet intriguing process?

  The Cube of Space serves us as a meditation model and a representation of these twenty-two powerful archetypes in many dynamic relationships.

  It provides a container for other models that can be mapped onto the cube to provoke new insight.